I just watched the movie Harness Your Student's Digital Smarts by Vicki Davis and I was very excited to see someone working so diligently towards making her students technologically proficient. She gave them the opportunity to learn about the connectivity that technology can offer by letting them participate in projects with other students all around the world. To me, this is a very proactive teaching stance, but I also noticed that she gave the children assignments to learn and teach others about new technology and her students were not only motivated but also succeeded! She merely gave them the tools they needed to properly research the assignment and once they did (as she guided them along) the students discovered they were able to do most of it on their own. This gives students a sense of empowerment and is a strong motivator for them.
Another thing I saw that I liked was that Vicki Davis was not affected by the demographics of the town she was in. It was a small rural town and many times these types of places are the ones that are slow to take in new things. She did not let that stand in her way. Sometimes I think it can be easy to just say "well these kids will never need to know how to blog or twitter" because of their surroundings, but she did not. Instead, she made her class informative, entertaining, and opened the students' imaginations up to the entire world around them. She kept them "connected" to the places they otherwise may have never known about. I loved seeing her students excited to present their findings on avatar's and hope that I am able to instill this attitude among my students one day.
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Well done!
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