Meet Suzie Nestico, High School Social Studies Teacher

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How are you involved in education?
Teacher of many, mother of one and life-long learner, Suzie is a public High School Social Studies teacher at Mount Carmel Area High School in Mount Carmel, PA, USA. Named one of Pennsylvania’s Keystone Technology Integrators in 2009, she thrives on bringing cutting-edge techniques and technologies to her students to open them up to the world. Suzie and her students thrive on global connection through technology use.

Involvement in projects such as Flat Classroom and Digiteen recently afforded some of her students to travel to Mumbai, India for the 2010 Global Flat Classroom Conference. Suzie was also featured by Microsoft Online Safety under the Education Highlights section for her work thus far with these global projects. Throughout the past two years, Suzie has participated in Flat Classroom Projects in the capacity of classroom teacher, judge, and most recently coordinated and analyzed the project’s multimedia judging efforts for the Flat Classroom 10-3 project.

Outside of the classroom, she serves as a football cheer coach, the school’s Homebound Instruction Coordinator, serves as a Student Assistance Program (SAP) intervention faculty team member for at-risk youth in school, and serves as advisor for the school’s Student Government Organization, amongst other extracurriculars.

What’s your ideal classroom or school like?
The “ideal classroom” does not exist in my mind as my view of what education looks like is ever-changing.  In an attempt to gradually shift students’ understanding of classroom learning to one of anytime/anywhere learning,  I can no longer think of learning as occurring inside of a classroom.  Instead, the classroom should be used more for additional support, mentoring and extension of concepts learned outside of class.

Have you ever attended an unconference before?
Sadly, not really.  Although, the Flat Classroom International Conference is a very hands-on participatory conference, it is not officially an unconference.  I will be attending EduBloggerCon for the first time this year in Philadelphia, as well as a Birds of A Feather session at ISTE ’11.

If you were to lead a session at EdCamp, what would it be about?
How to “Flatten” your classroom and how to collaborate with other classrooms globally  OR Using wikis for collaborative classroom projects.

Do you have a website or blog?
http://coalcrackerclassroom.wordpress.com

Are you on Twitter?
@nesticos

What is your favorite digital tool?
Do I have to pick just one?  Twitter, Wikis, Diigo, Ning, Blogs, Animoto, Video Software