I have been waiting for a course like this for a while. I wanted to be challenged and introduced to technology I have not yet added to my repertoire or current practices that perhaps I haven’t utilized in the best way for my students. Blogging is a new tool for me to use in the classroom. Designed to be an easy publishing tool of the Read/Write Web, initially so people can upload personal journals for mass consumption, it will fit perfectly with what is a 21st-century student need, that is to collaborate and share their work with a broader audience to write for others beyond their immediate area (Richardson, 2010). Also, podcasts are more familiar to me than blogging, but I have never used it in the classroom. I guess I like to think of it as an audio version of a blog. It is yet another way for students to share what they have learned with a limitless audience. Getting students to embed it into their Google Sites was a big break for me, and now, I have yet another fun and engaging way for my students to collaborate and share with others. The next step will be to have my students attach visual images to accompany and support their argument (Richardson, 2010).
My knowledge of the teaching and the learning process has been expanded by my learning these past eight weeks. Throughout the course, the idea of collaboration kept being presented as a benefit of technology and the Read/Write Web. Wikis, something new to me, is incredibly open to collaboration not only between students in the same classroom but with other students from around the world (Richardson, 2010). Another way my teaching knowledge has been benefiting from this course is the highlighting of 21st Century skills such as creativity and collaboration (Richardson, 2015). It is critical that I continue to learn how to implement technology that asks of the students to demonstrate their 21st Century skills, vital because they are competing in the global arena now more than ever, and will be required to use these skills in their future workforce (Tucker, 2014).
What might you do to apply that knowledge to how you facilitate the changing classroom of the 21st Century? To aid my changing classroom, I intend to continue to seek out best practices as well as expand my use of many of the Web 2.0 tools introduced in class. For example, from the first day of my course, I will ask students to blog, present themselves to the rest of their classmates (Tucker, 2014). I also plan to continue to use a wiki to deliver lessons. Thirdly, I plan to collaborate with other instructors in the building, so I can be exposed to different ideas and get a sense of what my students may be doing with technology outside my class time.
This collaboration will also help me further a two-year goal I have that will be presented at the end of my blog. One Web 2.0 tool I plan to use but have not yet would be social bookmarking which would allow my students to classify and organize links to web sites or any source from the internet. What I like about this tool is the collaboration component. A potential roadblock for using this tool would be the potential for students to waste so much time adding bookmarks that are not appropriate or do not relate to the topic. To overcome this, I think I would give them several samples of bookmarks and ask them to rate the quality of them. Social bookmarking will assist my students in learning to work collaboratively and is supported by the ISTE Standards for Students, having them become knowledge constructors (ISTE, n.d.). I believe social bookmarking will be a valuable way to meet this standard. Social bookmarking will likewise meet the standard presented by ISTE for educators, and that is educators as facilitators. Specifically, social bookmarking will challenge my students to come up with a design process by using tags in a way that will enhance their research stage (ISTE, n.d.).
There are two long term goals that I would like to define and reach within the next two years. By June 15, 2019, I will have transferred all of my learning material for all eight financial units of study to a wiki platform. This goal will be accomplished by devoting 180 minutes every week and is realistic because I will have an extra planning period, the last four weeks of school.
The second goal is to collaborate with our entire building with the goals of integrating Web 2.0 tools in all subjects. We are fast becoming a 1-1 school with the whole freshman class recently offered Chromebooks this year. Next year we will have two entire grades with Chromebooks. To my knowledge, there has been little to no training for teachers to help them integrate technology into the classroom. I want to assist with that by creating a series of five-minute spotlight videos that teachers can access via our shared google drive. In two years, I will have assembled a representative group of students from each grade who will collaborate and produce 10, 5-minute videos for teachers and students to access that will help the school use their chrome books.
One issue I would like to study would be how teachers can best compete with students on their cellphones during class. We have strict policies for students who leave the classroom without permission, yet we haven't address when they do so by mentally checking out by checking the latest Snapchat posting, etc. Our department and I am sure the staff in our building have been left with no guidance from administration about what to do for students who are distracted by their cellphones when in class. There is no policy at any level that I am aware of. Teachers are left to figure out how best to deal with this situation and resorting to collecting thousands of dollars worth of devices isn't something we at all feel comfortable doing. That has led to students getting inconsistent and mixed messages as they travel from classroom to classroom. I have struggled with this and have stopped short of implementing a no cell phone policy because I want them to use them during class because they compliment what I do so well. I feel that by studying this issue further, understanding what is happening to students when they are on their phones both psychologically and physiologically, we may be able to offer teachers a better perspective and perhaps help them integrate these devices into their instruction.
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