Classrooms for my grandkids

These are exciting times for those of us in Nunavut who have a passion for promoting the use of technology in the classroom to enhance learning. I find the recent announcement about the improved bandwidth for Nunavut schools very encouraging, for you see I have a vision of how I would like my grandchildren and all the children to learn. This is a vision for Nunavut classrooms where students of all ages are excited about learning and more engaged through the use of available technology. This vision includes K-12 and our learning centres and campuses here at Nunavut Arctic College, too.
I was reading Ann S. Michaelsen’s blog this morning, Teaching English using web 2.0. Ann is a high shcool teacher in Norway that writes about how she uses web 2.0 tools to engage her students–a site well worth checking out if you are interested in learning more.She posted a video by Sal Khan that I also want to share with you. In it he describes approaches to teaching and learning that are made possible through the use of online learning technology, and provides a very good explanation of blended learning and the flipclass.
For those of you who haven’t heard about the Khan Academy, I suggest that you check it out. The site is well worth an exploratory visit, housing as it does over 2800 free online lessons.

A colleague of mine that I connected with through blogging, Jim Stauffer, an adult educator in Wahti, NWT, uses the the Khan Academy extensively in his ABE classroom to engage learners and enable them to work at their own pace. His model presents some interesting possibilities for those of us at Arctic College who are currently examining how we might use internet learning technologies to enhance our ABE programs. Come April we will have a report to share with you about what we learn as we investigate this further. The report will be available on the College website, so stay tuned.