My presentation at EduCon 2.1 helped me conceptualize some of my thoughts and research efforts on assessment in the 21st-century classroom. My interest in assessment emerged out of my research on blogging communities and adolescent literacy. The student participants in my study engaged in writing and reading through a variety of complex and rich interactions. [...]

I am delighted to report that the Virtual Classroom Project that I started last year on the island of jokaydia in Second Life is back in full swing. An Australian educator, Annabel Astbury, has been selected to be Educator-in-Residence on jokaydia until the end of February. Her residency was launched on February 1st at the [...]

A few days ago Will Richardson shared on his blog a conversation that he’d had with his daughter. I found his post to be very discouraging and, unfortunately, indicative of what often masquerades as education in many classrooms. I thought about this conversation for a long time and then decided to try to re-write it [...]

The Living and Learning with New Media (Ito, Horst, Bittani, et al., 2008) report was published in November 2008. I read it right away in its entirety and have been thinking about it ever since. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the findings of this project can assist teachers and teacher educators. What, I kept [...]

In August I traveled to Kenya with Teachers Without Borders - Canada. We delivered teacher professional development workshops to elementary and secondary teachers in a rural region, located about eighty kilometres outside of Nairobi. When I returned, I started looking for a creative outlet to reflect on my experiences. I wrote about my experiences on [...]

I returned from Kenya over a month ago and am still reflecting on the conversations that I had there with teachers, students, administrators, and officials at the Kenya Institute of Education. There’s so much to think about and digest. The one thing, however, that I have been thinking about ever since I came back is [...]

Karyn Romeis responded to my South African reflection by linking to her own African tale. Her words struck a chord because I returned from Africa (South Africa and Kenya) only a few weeks ago, and my experiences there profoundly changed me as a teacher and a human being. Her entry took me back to many [...]

I’m back. After traveling to South Africa and Kenya with Teachers Without Borders - Canada , I am filled with so many emotions that it’s difficult to put it all into words. That’s why I’ve been putting this off - I initially planned to start reflecting right after my return from Africa, but I think [...]

Filmed at Glendale Secondary School in Mitchell’s Plain, a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. The Teachers Without Borders team conducted workshops on ICT integration and Web 2.0.

Final video of the Virtual Classroom Project hosted on the Islands of jokaydia in April and June, 2008. For more information about the project, click here. Screenshots of the Virtual Classroom Project are available here.