Friday, March 13, 2009

Communicate, Collaborate, Connect

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the 2009 NCTIES conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. NCTIES is the acronym for North Carolina Technology in Education Society. “The mission of NCTIES is to provide leadership in educational communications and technology by linking all who hold a common interest in the use of educational technology and its application to the learning process.”

The tagline used by NCTIES gives pause for reflection… Communicate, Collaborate, Connect. In this, the 21st Century, those words are powerful. Let’s look at each one individually and then collectively.

According to Webster, their definitions are as follows…

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Communicate: to convey knowledge of or information about; make known

Collaborate: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor

Connect: to become joined; to place or establish in relationship
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Collectively, those three words can easily be used to shape and define the skills that are developed through the use of 21st Century classroom initiatives! What comes into play?

· Telecommunications (Skype, Twitter, etc.)
· Global Communities (Quest Atlantis, ePals, etc.)
· Wikis (PBwiki)
· Blogs (Blogger)
· Shared Documents (Google Docs)
· RSS Readers (Google Reader)
· Social Bookmarking (Delicious)
· Moodle
· Video-Conferencing
· The list goes on and on….

How will you communicate? How will you collaborate? How will you connect? The tools are already in place – just add creativity. Your students will appreciate it.

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