This coming Monday my students will begin utilizing their first technology tool - blogging. I think they are as excited as me! To start our journey in implementing more technology into our classroom setting, students will be given a blog topic to respond to at the beginning of the week, then by Friday they will revisit blogs an the blogs of their peers to add more detail to the topic based upon the week's lectures and activities.
Monday will also mark the day that the students become more web literate in terms of etiquette and cyber bullying - how to handle themselves in the various scenarios they may find themselves in, proper disagreement language, etc. My class will be a motivation and push for the other teachers in my building to incorporate more tech tools in their own classes. I look forward to being the model or "guinea pig" for moving the school forward.
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Your GAME plan sounds similar to mine. I have focused on blogging as a reflective tool used to concentrate on personal academic growth by implementing reflective comments, recent data, and electronic artifacts. I think your approach of requiring a set of inquisitive posts throughout the week from each student will promote the use of online collaboration. I have been using blogging in other ways for quite some time, and I have encouraged other colleauges to do the same. Many appeared apprehensive at first and decided not to incorporate such web tools in their classes. However, over time, students began to talk about the blog at school and discuss the topics they had recently shared with each other online. Having heard this, a fellow teacher became interested in doing so, and he now uses Edmodo, a different type of socially academic collaboration tool for his students to access. I was very satisfied knowing that my practices had influenced other teachers in my school, and I am quite certain that yours will do the same. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteIt’s amazing that just this week; a blog topic by teachers has become an issue in my local area. People are complaining about the topics, especially political ones. The other thing they said is that teachers don’t have the freedom of speech that kids have so they are getting students to speak for them. Now a local professor in our area interviewed by FOX29 reporter, Thomas Drayton, did defended teachers by saying blogging is a wonderful way to get students engage. He said we are living in different times now. Blogging is another way to get students to express themselves in a different forum. It went right over Drayton’s head; he kept bashing teachers for using blogs.
ReplyDelete@ Rodney,
ReplyDeleteThat is a shame. Learning to collaborate with peers is a lifelong tool that will come in handy no matte what field they work in when they go into the workforce. Besides, students communicate in this way everyday through facebook, myspace and even texting. Technology is a part of their lives. It is foolish to thing technology doesn't have a place in teaching digital natives.