Classroom Exchange?!?

Hi friends!

I've been reading Alan November's "Empowering Students with Technology" for my school. When our leadership team went to the conference in June, our principals asked us to read the books that were given to us and we all partnered up and are giving a presentation about the books to the rest of our school. 

I chose this book because I feel like it is completely applicable to our everyday actions as teachers and (hello!) I love technology {and blogging!}. The book talks about exactly what the title says... empowering students with technology. Dr. November makes the analogy that we are often "automating" our technology- teaching the kids how to use it, but nothing really more. This is like using a $1,000 pencil {the computer} to write a paper.  Sure, it makes our lives easier, but what are they really getting from it?!

If you are here, you *probably* feel differently about technology. You read teacher blogs because you are dedicated to teaching and making learning for your students the best that it can be! Blog-land is like a *huge* team where we collaborate and share. THIS is how we are empowered as teachers. We have ALL these resources at our fingertips! So how do we do this for our students??

This is where my idea came from - I want my school to participate in a *classroom* exchange - kind of like pen-pals, but through technology and obviously amped up a bit ;) I knew that I could probably find lots of teachers who were willing to correspond back and forth maybe once a month or even less with teachers in my school. This correspondence might be sharing pictures about something that your grade level would be learning about together or about your geography, common books you've read, really the possibilities are endless! I would like to set it up as a collaborative blog so that you could post as you wanted and for older grades I would *love* to see student comments, writing, etc in response to what you have posted.  I would like there to be at least a few teachers per grade who are willing to participate. I've set up a blog for this purpose:

If you would be interested in participating, please reply with a comment. I am just kind of putting my feelers out there right now - Please leave the grade level you teach so I can get an idea if this is feasible or not. I'd *really* like for it to happen!!

If you have any other fabulous ideas about how this could work, please please leave a comment!