I’ve been tagged by Murcha for a meme challenge. Here are the rules:

• Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce

That’s a big question – what are you passionate about teaching your students?! I want them to love learning and I want them to feel empowered to make changes. I see Web 2.0 as a pathway to both those goals. Yesterday I spent the morning with a group of 1st graders from one of our semi-rural sites, Franklin Elementary School, a small (about 500 K-6 students) site on our district’s outskirts . To get to the school, you actually drive through a historic cemetery. Less than half the students in this classroom have Internet access at home.

The purpose of my visit was to connect this group of students to a group of 1st graders in Edmonton, Canada, for a Read Around the Planet videoconference. I was too busy working the remote control to take any photos. Fortunately, a 7-year-old artist named Giovanni captured the interactivity of the event with the sketch below, which he graciously presented to me at the end of the conference.

 

It is my hope (passion) that in the years to follow much of the time Giovanni and his classmates spend inside the four walls of the classroom will be spent connecting, exploring, learning, and creating beyond those four walls – much like the scene depicted above.

I am tagging Steve Hargadon, Monica Edinger, Janine Lim, Larry Ferlazzo, and Mathew Needleman, whose work/passions have already inspired me.