21st Century Educational Technology Literacy

21st Century Educational Technology Literacy

My Favorite Web 2.0 Educational tool

While I'm very impressed with all that new technologies offer education, the one that I think I'll utilize to the fullest are blogs. I love the interactiveness of a blog as well as the accountability that one affords. All too often, in-class discussions are dominated by the most outgoing students and are too often interrupted by the bell. Blogs give everyone an opportunity to have their voice heard and the time they need to compose what they want to say. In addition, by offering the opportunity to react to each others' posts, they truly offer an interactive experience that can exceed that of the traditional classroom. I also think they will give me more opportunities to give meaningful feedback to all students based on their individual ideas. I've used a wiki with great success and can't wait to see how my blogging experience works out with my students next year.

Using Podcasts

Podcasts offer another interesting addition to the 21st Century classroom. In a recent exploration of the Education Podcast Network, I found a great number of resources that offer students an enhanced opportunity to experience information and ideas. I can really see myself using podcasts to provide students with the opportunity to hear great speeches or tales from some of our country's greatest storytellers that can serve as exellent prompts for discussion and activity. I can also see students utilizing the creation of their own podcasts, especially in cross-curricular projects. This past year my sociology class hooked up with an advanced art class to explore social commentary in art and I can really see how the use of podcasts would have enhanced these presentations. These applications would certainly help satisfy NETS-S standards 5 and 6, but most especially standards 1 and 2 (creativity and innovation, and creativity and collaboration).

Along with other Web 2.0 technologies, podcasts have the ability to change the structure of schools. As more and more students go to "online" schools, I see podcasts (along with wikis and blogs) becoming the primary structures of these "cyber schools". As they move from being "new" technologies to becoming part of the norm, I think they have the capability to really form the framework for a whole new structure to our educational system. I've created a podcast that discusses some of this and you can listen to it at http://sthorn.podbean.com/ or click on the link I've posted as "21st Century Educational Technology Literacy"

21st Century Educational Literacy

Promoting greater educational technology literacy is a great challenge for educators at every level of school systems - from parents to elementary and secondary teachers, to primary administrators and to central administrators. There are several struggles that impede that process, though. Technology costs money and requires that we break through one of the most formidable obstacles in all of education - tradition. New technology also requires time to learn and requires resources that aren't always available even if the finances exist to purchase them. Most of all, though, employing new technologies in the classroom requires courage. This is because it often requires breaking away from the pack even if the pack was a comforting group.

The pack is usually where tradition is king, and where the adage, "tradition stunts original thought" is usually exemplified. This "tradition" has also led to classrooms that favor the use of skills to teach information rather than using information to teach skills. Web 2.0 tools offer the greatest opportunities to come along in a century to break through this tradition. Changes that can be instituted with these new technologies will require that the content of courses be re-examined, but that's been long overdue anyway. This is another reason why it takes courage to promote these changes, because promoting the use of new educational technology takes leaders who are willing and able to institute tough changes and get others to follow.

Web Service's 2.0

Web Service's 2.0
Originally uploaded by Pipe 

Photo sharing is another Web 2.0 tool that can really tap into the creativity of your students. This can really help satisfy the NETS-S standards 1 & 2 (Creativity and Innovation as well as Communication and Collaboration). I found registering with Flickr to be very easy, especially since I already had a Yahoo login. Navigating around the site is easy and they make it simple to add tags and groups.

I can see using photo sharing particularly in my economics classes. One of the concept that we focus on is the inequality of income distribution and I can really see where photos can be used as a prompt to generate discussions. I can see myself posting photos to my class blog and asking students to comment on how the photo represents a side of the income distribution issue.

Social Bookmarking

Got a great lesson on the value of social bookmarking recently and can really see its applications to a classroom, especially a research-based one. Getting started was easy. I chose to use Delicious as my social bookmarking tool and after filling out an easy one page registration and going through a short tutorial the site offers I was set. I use the Firefox web browser and an easy to install plugin produced a new set of buttons on my browser's toolbar which allow me to bookmark and access those bookmarks with one click. To test it out I went to several sites I consult and easily saved them to Delicious. One of the most valuable aspects of social bookmarking is the tagging practice that goes along with it. When you bookmark a site, Delicious produces a template that allows you to not only include notes on the site you're saving, but also asks that you "tag" the site with terms you think naturally describe the site. They even offer some suggestions that can take any guesswork out of it. My bookmarks can be viewed at http://delicious.com/shawnthornton .

I think there are some very valuable applications for social bookmarking in the classroom that fulfill the standards set forth by NETS-S. Social bookmarking very naturally allows students to demonstrate communication and collaboration (NETS-S 2) as well as research and information fluency (NETS-S 3) while practicing digital citizenship (NETS-S 5). I can really see myself utilizing social bookmarking in research assignments, but also as a means of generating a resource that could supplement classroom resources (text, handouts, etc.). I see this technology as a great addition to a growing list of "gadgets" that may soon be as commonplace as text and note books in our classrooms.

Using RSS Feeds

Learned about RSS feeds recently and I have to say I'm impressed with the technology. All you have to do is set up an aggregator (I chose Google Reader) and learn how to subscribe to a website's rss feed and you're set. Now I can check for updates on websites by going to just one site (Google Reader) instead of all individual sites themselves.

I'm really thinking this could be a great tool for helping students with their research papers. I really want them to immerse themselves into their topics early on so they come to a greater understanding of what mastery of a subject is and how much it impacts their ability to write about it. Having them select sites that they can be fed information from to stay on top of an issue should be a great way of providing them with updates on the most current information on their topics. (A great way of accomplishing the NETS-S standard of information fluency.) Hopefully it will encourage some of them to try to use RSS feeds in other ways as well.

my wikispace

I've used wikispaces for the past two school years with varied success. I had no trouble setting it up using wikispaces.com, and it has been a great way to create "unit pages" for the different things I cover in both my economics and sociology classes. Two years ago I used the discussion boards a lot, but wikispaces didn't offer threaded discussions, nor any ability for me to group my "members" (students) so it was a nightmare for both collaboration and grading. The Web 2.0 tools course has helped me see that there are wiki-building tools that may remedy these issues for me and I'm going to explore them.

My wikis can be viewd at http://thorntonecon.wikispaces.com/ and at http://thorntonsoc.wikispaces.com/

When you looks at the NETS-S standards for students, wikis help to meet all the requirements, especially the way they can be utilized for collaborative research. When it comes to demonstrating research and information fluency, I can't think of a better educational tool than a wiki. And I have to admit that I feel the same way when it come to standard #2, communication and collaboration.

So much of the collaboration that happens in traditional classrooms is impeded by the bell schedule and the inability for students to meet and work outside of the classroom. Wikis eliminate these obstacles.

Using this blog

This blog should help us not only explore topics in a "new" way, but will also allow us to more fluidly bounce ideas off each other and collaborate on projects. It doesn't really represent the utilization of a new teaching/learning strategy, but instead, is more of a way to employ an old strategy in a new format. In the past, sharing ideas in a classroom was more limited as individuals in the class gave their ideas verbally or written answers were shared within groups. In no way did this allow for every voice to be heard by all students. Now, through blogging, we have a platform for all class members' voices to be heard on all topics in a way that allows for much more reaction and collaboration. This also assists in making all students more accountable for being thinkers. While this may start off as a bit intimidating to some, we will work together to help everyone gain a comfort level with the process. The main way we will utilize the blog is in posing regular questions or theses that pertain to the big picture issues we will be discussing in class (probably one every 10 days to 2 weeks.) Students will be assigned the task of not only providing their own insights on the initial posting, but will also be asked to read and respond to the postings of other students as well.
Through this methodology, we will be practicing skills that fit the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS*S) and Performance Indicators for Students:
1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaboration (*a special area of emphasis for us)
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6.Technology Operations and Concepts