I am really getting excited about the possibilities for expanding my use of technology in the class—not only to engage students, but to encourage parent involvement and increase their awareness. I am looking forward to finding out how to control the timing of access to shared student assignment blogs so that a few lead students’ work isn’t excessively “sponged” off of. (I know, poor English.) With the use of both blogs and podcasts, I can see great advantages in helping parents be well-informed as well as helping students catch up with information missed due to absences from class. Talk about no excuses !
I teach at MMS, which obviously includes students in the age group where drama (often) rules. Because of the type of classes I teach, class sizes are often too small to utilize a variety of group work situations. With internet collaboration/teams, theoretically the groups wouldn’t even have to be in the same class and I could more appropriately/creatively group students based on their strengths & weaknesses. Theoretically, it wouldn’t even matter if the students “got along” or liked each other. I would like to know whether the group members could even be anonymous, at least temporarily. This might be a real eye-opener for those who thought another student would make minimal contributions or those who “couldn’t” work together. This also might encourage the less confident student to take more of an active role.
Although I have a general idea, I also want to know exactly what an “aggregator” is, how it works and how to put one together. Becoming familiar with and learning to use the numerous new “tools” that didn’t even exist just a few years ago is somewhat intimidating, particularly to those of us with almost no previous exposure & experience. I would think that becoming more comfortable and knowledgeable with the current tools should help in acquiring additional new skills as even more tools become available.
I can already tell that this class has already made a difference to you. You are using your Blog to "ponder" new learnings that will benefit you when school starts back. Keep "tackling" each task this way, and you are going to gain more than you ever dreamed you would.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned incorporating parents. How would you do this? You asked about making comments anonymous. Does this scare you at all? I would think students would not be as constructive if their comments were anonymous.
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