always learning

When I went home for vacation last summer I spent a small fortune on a selection of books about technology in education. There were a few extra special books that had a major impact on my teaching and learning this year so I thought I’d make a list of my top 3 books for the 21st Century teacher:

My first purchase was Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. I think I read this one in one afternoon and it was so inspiring and practical that I started our students with blogging as soon as we returned from summer vacation. We’ve been quite successful with wikis in recent months and I’m just about to start working with podcasting. I feel extra lucky because this year my job has changed slightly and I’ve been given 40% release time to work with other teachers on integrating technology into their classroom – this book has been invaluable as an introduction for them, and also for practical ideas and advice on how to implement the technology.

I’m just finishing Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century by David Warlick this weekend. What a powerful book – everything I’ve been saying to teachers and administrators is all right here. To me, this is the quintessential book for the 21st Century teacher. For the last seven years, my philosophy of education has been to teach students how to learn, because we never know what will be coming next, especially in the area of technology. To read this book and see everything so clearly laid out is the perfect resource in my opinion. I am definitely going to recommend this book to every teacher I work with in the future.

Another favorite: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. I read this one a while back, but I am part of a book club (made up entirely of teachers) here in KL and we just had our discussion about this book. Much of our conversation was focused on whether or not teachers are doing their job if they do not utilize technology in their classroom. This is the kind of discussion we need to be having in schools so that we all have a common understanding of how to prepare our children for a future we can not imagine (to paraphrase David Warlick).

What else should I be reading? What’s on your list?

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