Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the 2006-2007 edtech predictions category.
Teacher Podcasts
What if we looked at podcasts in Williamson differently? Sure, the podcasting with students is great; it’s working out wonderfully and people are loving the idea. I know it’s still a relatively new idea in the district, but what if teachers were to start podcasting? Teachers could create short podcasts reviewing main ideas for quizzes, exams, and regents. Many of our students already have an iPod or MP3 player. They could download the data at night and listen to the review on the bus before school, on the track as they practice, or in the computer lab during a study hall. They could listen to their own teachers explain and describe difficult content before walking into the doors of their classrooms. Because we can name the files and give them ID3 tags, we can organize our WCS podcast content by subject area, teacher, narrator, grade level, curriculum content, or whatever! The possibilities are endless! What else could we do with our new digital voice recorders?
technorati tags:podcasting, ipod, mp3, williamson+central
Google vs. Flickr
Educational Application Analysis
Source: Harry Tuttle
What would you use in your classroom?
Can teachers do it alone?
I just read a post from Harry Tuttle’s blog about teachers and their dependency on technology staff is schools.
Have
teachers embedded technology-infused learning activities into their
curriculum so that they are self-sustaining and even constantly
improving? Or is technology use dependent on people outside the
classroom?
Education with Technology: Dependent or Self-Sustaining Technology-Infused Learning
It made me think about the blogging/web 2.0 transition Williamson is trying to make. I have met with each of the teachers and showed them how to login to their blogs and post. I have even shown a few how to utilize RSS and other web 2.0 tools. Once I leave their rooms or they leave my office, what happens? Will they need to contact me for more help? Are they ready to “run” on their own? I worry that pushing technology too fast can mean more work for the technology professionals and more headaches for the faculty attempting to use them. What’s your take?
Why blogging? & How can we control it?
A few teachers have stopped me in the hall and asked “why the push for blogs?” I say, why not? What have blogs done to earn such a bad reputation thus far? Sure, a few employees (OK, maybe 36) have been fired over the content found within their blogs. But why? Probably because they were not following the rules and regulations set-forth by an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). These employees were posting confidential information, gripes about co-workers, and innapproriate photographs. Sure, all of these offenses warrant the given punishment. It would be no different than a student posting answers to an exam (confidential information), bad-mouthing a teacher or other students (gripes about a co-worker), or posting crude images (innapropriate photographs). If done, students would face immediate consequences and likely a pretty harsh punishment. So why is it a surprise that these employees were fired? Just as we need to make sure our students understand the severity of publishing for the world to see, so do corporate employees. How do we accomplish this? Through the use of an AUP. If a student were to post innapropriate pictures on his or her blog, how would we be able to appropriately punish if the offense was never deemed an official violation? Through the use of an AUP.
What would a blogging AUP do for Williamson?
It would list all accepetable and unacceptable uses of blogs in the district. It would also lay a framework for infractions and their respective punishments. The WCS Classroom Blog Policy would require both parents and students to sign before being allowed to actually blog within the district.
Personal Learning Environments
Have you heard of PLEs? Me neither. But, while doing a little research, I read about Personal Learning Environments and really like the concept. Traditionally, educational environments have used Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, WebCT, and Moodle for a way for students, teachers, and community members to “congregate” on the web. (I speak of LMSs as traditional… Yet, most K-12 schools have barely heard of them - look at how quickly technology changes.)
PLEs, as Stephen Downes explains, can be places where teacher and learner are peers. They are lifelong learning environments that *belong* to the learner. So what does this mean?
In current LMSs, users use tools such as “chat” and collaborative environments to communicate. Such a system would look like this:
PLEs would change the way in which we structure our teaching, learning, and communication. According to James Farmer, [traditionally] “users would ‘re-invent’ themselves in each new online context they work in.” Other than the occasional photo or email addresses, users lacked a presence or persona. Their files were deleted at the end of the term. There was no “real” ownership. PLEs change this - users are able to represent themselves. Communication used to be centralized around discussion, rather than the individual. PLEs afford communication between individuals and make that communication centered around them.
So what does this have to do with WCS? Maybe nothing today. But as you begin to explore blogging, Moodle, and other educational technologies (LMSs, PLEs or others…), please be aware of the user. Think about your students, who they are in class, and who they are online.
