Web 2.0 Educator

The Web 2.0-using educator that I have chosen is Bill Ferriter, a 6th grade language arts teacher in North Carolina who runs the blog The Tempered Radical.  Bill Ferriter's emphasis is on reading skills, especially in recent posts: he recently conducted a virtual conversation with Kelly Gallagher, the author of a book called Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It.  Bill believes that technology can help teachers be more adept at observing student reading abilities and improving them: one blog post explains how teachers can organize students in an Excel spreadsheet and use advanced Excel organizational techniques to determine who needs the most help to meet the bare standards, so the teacher can focus on imbibing them with a love of reading.  Another post, which looks at an interview between Bill Gates and Jonathan Alter, discusses how we don't need "highly qualified teachers, only highly effective ones" and ignoring technology would be resisting important changes.

Let me give you an example (which I've mentioned on the Radical before): My master's degree is in "advanced teaching techniques." I earned it in 1997. Do you think that the strategies I learned from college professors who hadn't been in classrooms since the early '80s in 1997 would still qualify as "advanced teaching today?"

This blog has a lot of attitude and I think his thoughts on technology, literacy, and education are hopeful and passionate.  I've subscribed to his blog's feed and will keep an eye on it.