My use of blogging was a long time in developing. I was always reluctant to simply use technology for the sake of technology. But as blogging became more popular and the technology became more available I decided that blogging would be a way of using technology to educate students in a way that was previously impossible.If you are a teacher who is "still on the fence" about whether blogging is worth the time and effort for you and/or your students, I hope that Sal's comments help you decide in favor of allowing your students to move from being only consumers of content, into the roles of knowledge producers and contributors to the stories that "add to our understanding of the content."
First, the rise of blogging in general seems to necessitate, to me, a blogging literacy among students. A number of our grads have gone on to work in media and they have returned to school to emphasize the multi-media explosion of the last few years. For example, one student works for Fox and he is producer, but he also does on-air reporting and throughout the last presidential campaign he maintained a blogsite for Fox that would be updated throughout the day. Many other traditional news sources such as newspapers are turning to blogging as well. My first goal is to introduce students to this up and coming trend.
Second, I have been very aware of the change from a producer to a consumer society. We have become a nation of consumers. By creating a blog, it makes students producers again. The student-managed blogs are productive in that students are producing their own writing and thoughts. Blogging is unique in that it allows for a forum for students to produce something that reaches millions of people. The seriousness and meaningfulness of blogging changes the dynamics of what would be a traditional assignment. Rather than a journal that is turned in to a teacher and then discarded, the blog is something that can be accessed by the general public. One example from my own life recently is that I was googling an article that we read last year in class because I couldn't find my copy of it. The first few yields of the google search were my previous students' blogs about the article. Now I not only had the article I was looking for, but I also had the context with which we discussed it in class. Students are now helping to produce the content of the class, and content for anyone with the Internet to see.
Along the lines of being productive, the third point about blogging that I have found to be transformational is that it requires students to take the class content and apply it to their own lives. In doing so, and in sharing this application, the students become teachers for themselves. In other words, I am not the only one giving examples of our lesson to the students, but now the students are giving each other a lesson as well. I do not want students to be simple consumers of my sociology, but I want them to produce their own sociology that I can learn from as well. With the blog I am finding more and more that students have insights and stories to share that add to our understanding of the content, and these stories would not be available without the blogging.
One of the reasons that the student insights are available because of blogging is the limited amount of classroom time. The blog is an unlimited classroom where students can read as much as they want and are free to share as much as they want. On the blog, I never have to say to students, “Okay, we have to move on.” This virtual classroom allows motivated and interested students to be as involved as they would like to be, without dominating the class. Incidentally, this has been really useful in terms of absences. My classes have a notoriously high absence rate. When students return and ask, “What did I miss?” I say, “Check the blog.”
Lastly, I have always been wary of what we were measuring with our objective tests. The blog is a type of online portfolio that allows real assessment of a student’s grasp of the subject matter and the student’s ability to apply that subject matter to his/her real life.
Use technology to...
- Create students who are information literate
- Motivate students to learn 24/7
- Provide students with reasons and opportunities to connect globally
- Give students an authentic purpose and audience
- Encourage creativity and passion by utilizing their strengths and interests
- Engage the learner and allow them opportunities to become more actively involved in their education as well as develop critical thinking skills
- Act as facilitators guiding students to choose the right tools, find answers, and make decisions
Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.Take a peak at the sample topics and examples of data you can retrieve at http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/ which include Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Astronomy, Weather, Socioeconomic Data, Health and Medicine, Food and Nutrition, Words and Linguistics, Places and Geography, Sports, Music, Money and more.
Anne Smith and Maura Moritz are having their ninth graders choose a book, read it, and then discuss it in small groups. That’s not all that different than what has been going on in Language Arts classrooms for quite a while, but they’re extending the idea just a little bit. The students chose books that are somewhat controversial (1984, The Fountainhead, I Robot, Little Brother, Anthem, I Am the Cheese) and have either been challenged or banned by school districts around the country (to be clear, not necessarily our school district). The students will read and discuss the books and then have to prepare a presentation for the school board arguing either in favor of approving the book for use or defending blocking its use. They’ll follow our district’s process for book approvals (pdf). In Anne’s case they are also using a Google Site with integrated Google Groups to help organize their thinking and collaboratively plan their presentations.
When the presentations are ready, the students – for their final exam – will actually make the presentation to selected members of our own school board that we’ve invited to hear the presentations. The school board members will listen to the presentation, ask questions, make them defend their positions, and generally be – well, school board members.
There’s only one problem with this plan. Some of our school board members already have commitments during our final exam times (pesky little things like graduation ceremonies for our sister high schools, for example). Hmm, what to do? I know, invite other folks in to be “school board members.” What other folks, you ask? Well, you, for example. ......
"Government efforts to promote technology literacy culminated at the federal level in a national goal, adopted seven years ago in the No Child Left Behind Act, that all students be technology-literate by 8th grade. The federal law left it to states, however, to define the concept and persuade schools to teach it."The author mentions several companies offering technology literacy products, but not those offering literacy assessment tools. InfoSource Learning's free "SimpleAssessment" and Atomic Learning's subscription-based service are among online measurement tools to consider.
Google on Monday afternoon released a public beta of its Picasa for Mac desktop software for organizing, editing, and uploading photos. The software, which runs on Intel Macs with OS X 10.4 or later, marks the first time that Picasa has been offered for the Mac (it joins the Windows and Linux versions already available).I think the best feature of the Picasa software is the fact that my picture files get to stay where they are (since I have so many photos, and I do not keep all of them in iPhoto... I only add my favorites, or those that I will be using in presentations, slideshows, or movies.) And, Picasa scans and displays the photos in your 'iPhoto Library' as read-only files. If you try to edit or move these photos, Picasa will ask your permission to create a new editable copy. Learn more about how Picasa handles your iPhoto Library.
The free Picasa software is designed to help you organize your photos, regardless of where they reside on your computer. It imports (without moving or copying) photos from your iPhoto library and other folders on your Mac, including external hard drives if so desired (it's designed not to affect your iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed). It also includes many editing tools, such as those for straightening, text generation, create collages, and removing red eye, as well as Photoshop-like effects and adjustments.
Download Picasa for your Mac at: http://picasa.google.com/mac/
