21 Signs You're a 21st Century Teacher

I love waking up and reading inspirational and thought provoking blogs!  What a great way to start my day--thinking the technology and educational way!  So, today the first email I read is one from the Simple K12 blog titled, "  21 Signs You're a 21st Century Teacher.  Here there are:

1. You require your students to use a variety of sources for their research projects...and they cite blogs, podcasts, and interview they've conducted via Skype.
2. Your students work on collaborative projects...with students in Australia or other countries.
3. You give weekly class updates to parents...via your blog.
4. Your students participate in class...by tweeting their questions and comments.
5. You ask your students to study and create reports on a controversial topic...and you grade their video submissions.
6. You prepare substitutes with details directions...via podcasts.
7. You ask your students to do a character/historical person study...and the create mock social media profiles of their characters.
8. Your students create a study guide...working together on a group wiki.
9. You share lesson plans with your teacher friends...from around the globe.
10. Your classroom budget is tight...but it doesn't matter because their are so many free resources on the web you can use.
11. You realize that importance of professional development...and you read blogs, join online communities and tweet for self development.
12. You take your students on a field trip to the Great Wall of China...and never leave your classroom.
13. You students share stories of their summer vacation...through an  online photo repository.
14. You visit the Louvre with your students ...and don't spend a dime.
15. You teach your student not to be bullies or cyber-bullies.
16. You make your students students turn in their cell phones before class starts... because you plan on using them in class.
17. You require your student to summarize a recent chapter...and submit it to you via a text message.
18. You showcase your students' original work...to the world.
19. You have your morning coffee...while checking your RSS feed.
20. You are reading this.
21. You tweet this page, blog about it, "like" it, or email it to someone else.

Ok, here is the list and although I agree with most of them I think there are many more that can be added as well as made better.  As I read through this list I had many thoughts that I wanted to post.  Let me take them one at a time and discuss my thoughts.

1. Instantly here I thought about the multimedia projects that Gail has been doing with her students.  As I think about the resources the students have been using they have been the traditional resources although most of them have been located on the web.  After thinking about this for a while I have to admit that I have never looked at blogs, podcasts, or interviews as a possible resource for research...let along cite them!  I don't even know if how to search for such resources to be honest.  Perhaps Google searching for "podcasts on Albert Einstein" would bring some up.  I will have to give this a try.  My question would then be...are these credible resources?  I also got to thinking about the apps Joe showed me the other day...Time machine and Political machine might be interesting resources for some people.  For example, there was a video of Annie Oakly doing target practice...seems to be rare footage!  How cool would that be to include in a research report?!?!  At PRHS the students look at propaganda during WWII and then create their own propaganda pictures based around a theme or idea.  I loved that on the Time Machine app you can select the years you want and one of the categories for film clips was ADS!  How cool would it be to study ads over the last 150 years (yes the machine actually goes back into the 1800's) through this app and then begin creating ones for this age? I think that the projects the students turn out after developing this background knowledge would be much stronger and more effective than the current way they are developed.  I feel like a lot of times in education we just glaze over topics, spit out a project and move on.  I think back to my first years of teaching and how powerful it was to use discovery teaching methods with my students...yes we only covered two and a half units the whole year...but my students learned much more than that and say the relationship between the units much more than probably any of my students after that.  I think there is a lot to learn and it would be nice if some of my local teachers were willing to begin the process of moving into the 21st century.  SO, what does that mean for me...?  As one job comes to a close...now what?  How do I take this information out and share what I have learned?  That will have to be debated in another blog post.

Ok, looking at this lengthy response tells me that I might want to break these replies up into separate posts.  Some I have more to say than others, but I will spare you the extra reading here.  Look for additional post around these subjects!  I am off to work out!