Come and See

Web 2.0’s Role on the Road to Teacher Leadership

Alejandra Quaglia

The world in which my students are growing up is changing very quickly. With smartphones, video games, wikis, blogs, texting, and e-mails as an integral part of their lives, students are multitaskers, fast-paced, and highly collaborative. Over the last 10 years, I've found that I can no longer apply teaching methods that were developed before the rise of technology. My students got bored, and they didn't pay much attention to highly structured textbook lessons.

As a language arts teacher in the bilingual St. Andrew's Scots School in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I was determined to change my education approach to help prepare my students for our changing world.

Opening Up the World

After attending professional development courses about integrating technology into the curriculum, I began acquainting myself with new technological trends in education and all the Web 2.0 tools available. I subscribed to different blogs, started my own class blog, and linked my class blog to other blogs, encouraging social networking and community building.

We contacted an international blog, Bringing Us Together, that was created to build friendships and encourage students and classrooms from all over the world to connect with one another. We got involved by volunteering to be in charge of the blog for two weeks by including posts related to our units of study. My students could not believe what was happening to them, because it was the first time we were opening the classroom walls to other peers around the world.

I also built and developed my own personal learning network, PLN for short. My PLN is a group of teachers and technology experts I follow using Twitter or blogs using my own personalized iGoogle home page. They all became an integral part of my own daily learning and thinking. I became connected and alert to what other teachers use around the world.

When I realized just how helpful technology is at grabbing my students' interests and engaging them in my content, I was hooked. I started implementing technology tools in my lessons on a regular basis, and I was greatly supported and inspired at all times by my school's information and computer technology (ICT) coordinator.

For example, my students created their own wiki to collaboratively write a "Choose Your Own Adventure" piece with fantasy genre characteristics. It was ideal for group work. The four members of each team wrote the introductory paragraph together. Then they divided into groups of two, and finally each student wrote an individual ending to their group stories. The different parts of the story were hyperlinked to each other.

Another example was when they created an online digital poster, called a "glog," on an assigned hero, such as Indian leader Mahatma Ghandi. It was easily created and visually attractive. Students brought their creativity to life when presenting their information to the rest of their peers. My students, who've noticed the increased use of online tools, say they like that they learn language arts and information technology at the same time.

Such lessons give my passion for teaching an outlet as I seek to create dynamic and challenging learning environments that engage and motivate my students. Integrating new technologies has also fostered a joy for learning in students and enables them to be independent, competent, and creative thinkers. My most important teaching aim is structuring the learning environment so that each individual child is able to succeed and feel valued.

Showing Others

In 2008, after reading and exchanging ideas with some peers about teacher leadership, I noticed that I was developing ideas about myself as a teacher leader. I try to accomplish the school mission in enriching the school community daily and catering to each child according to his or her age, personality, and range of abilities. On a regular basis, I encourage colleagues to change, to do things they perhaps wouldn't ordinarily consider. More and more, teachers ask for my guidance on Web 2.0 tools to implement in their units of study. So I show them how to create a blog, a wiki, or any other necessary tool to use effectively in their daily lessons.

At the ASCD Annual Conference in San Antonio, Tex., this March, my ICT coordinator, Marta Lavista, and I presented "Global and Collaborative Projects Using Web 2.0 Tools," a session about our work in my classes for the last three years. It was my first time presenting at a conference, and I felt honored to have been chosen from among so many educators to represent my country to share our ideas, challenges, passions, and successes with educators from around the world.

From the audience's observations and reactions, we knew they wanted to reflect on their education practices and shift the way they taught. I really felt at home because many of the participants had the same concerns as our colleagues at school. And my social networking with fellow ASCD Scholars enriched and energized me before and during the conference, so I left the United States having experienced personal and professional satisfaction.

Moving Forward

The next step will be to share what Marta and I do with other teachers in Argentina. Like many teachers around the world, sometimes Argentinean teachers are reluctant to use technology in their lessons. Our goal is to provide different courses in our school and in other bilingual schools that can help teachers build a sound use of technology, a crucial 21st century skill.

I know that, at first, using technology may seem to be extra work, but afterward teachers and students will see its benefit and make it part of their daily work. My students write comments daily in my classroom blog, Creative Writers, Readers, and Thinkers, where they can reflect on their feelings, opinions, and interests as they post reactions to short assignments. In some other cases, the blog enables those students who are timid in class to communicate with me more easily.

For me, teacher leadership has been a natural part of growing as a teacher. One of Mother Teresa's quotes reflects my passion about this lifelong journey of teaching and learning: "We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it."

Alejandra Quaglia, a 2010 ASCD Annual Conference Scholar, is a 6th grade language arts teacher at St. Andrew's Scots School in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Learn more at her 2010 wiki Miss Ale's Class or her class blog Creative Writers, Readers, and Thinkers.

ASCD Express, Vol. 5, No. 17. Copyright 2010 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.