Sunday, February 21, 2010
Raya-Jean EdTech Blog
A. Before this class I had never been exposed to Blogs, Podcasts or Wikis. I have read a few blogs, podcasts and wikis as preparation for this assignment. The website articles opened my eyes to all the possible ways to incorporate these items in my classroom teaching. From the online articles I learned that these tools can be used in a variety of ways to interest my students and be used to motivate them to be involved in their work and give it their best effort.B. A Blog and Wiki are both text based tools to communicate information and share responses or be interactive between students and teachers, the classroom and even global community. These tools are able to be monitored for appropriate content by the teacher and edited saved and linked to allow only specific viewers access. They require no extra tools beyond a computer with an Internet capability. They can both be used to relay personal news or viewpoints. A wiki is usually content driven, can have more than one author and can get e-mail updates. These are both great ways to give students an opportunity to share learning in the classroom, community or globally and gives them a way to reflect on comments if enabled.A Podcast is a personal on demand show that can be viewed through mobile devices along with a computer. It has voice and music capabilities along with video if recorded that way. ThePodcast is different (from Blogs and Wikis) in that it requires extra software capabilities and equipment to record. There are some free programs available to create a podcast if one has access to a microphone. Once a podcast is published on the Internet it is out there for everyone to see forever. The time involved in creating a podcast can be much longer than that of creating a blog or wiki.C. As a teacher I could benefit from using a blog, podcast or wiki in my classroom because they are interactive and more appealing to students than traditional paper and pen assignments. Students are much more willing to use technology tools to create written assignments and have the benefits of spell check/grammar and not have a messy paper with holes in it. The students are very proud and invested in their own learning and want to share with families, friends and the community. They enjoy seeing comments about their published work and are more likely to value their education and complete work when interested in what they are doing. These tools also give students real world experience in a society that values technology and prepares them for researching and using tools they may need in their jobs. The use of these tools also gives me as an educator more opportunity to connect with students' families and the community to provide feedback and a window into our classroom. D. Blogs, podcasts and wikis open up a whole new avenue of professional development. The world is available to search for professional lesson plans and teaching tools, most of which are free, and a welcome addition to my own knowledge. These new resources allow me to provide more challenging and differentiated instruction than I would have time to create and produce on my own. These tools can be searched for appropriate grade level information that is already aligned to national and state content standards. I would benefit from more parent and student interaction when using these Internet tools because they are asynchronous and can be viewed when convenient for them allowing the lines of communication to remain open.
Posted by rjz at 1:12 PM