Blogging is a tool that can be used in education to create a forum where students collaborate with one another. It encourages learners to be active throughout the course and helps learners improve their writing skills. Two blogs that would be helpful to me are Edmodo and YackPack. Edmodo is a place that I can manage classroom assignments and activities and I think it is important that the conversations are protected. YackPack could be very beneficial because of the live voice feature. Emailing or texting math language can be very difficult with all of the different symbols.
According to Johnson, Smith, Levine, and Haywood (2010), teachers are finding that the online tools, such as blogging and wikis, are avenues where students can collaborate to improve their creativity, develop teamwork skills, and learn from people nationwide. Before reading about blogs and what they can bring into the
classroom, I was not sure if this was going to work for me. But, after reading about all of the advantages
of a classroom blog, it is definitely on the top of my list! It is a great
place for student’s to collaborate and help one another. I would love to see my student’s posting
pictures of problems they are having difficulty with and getting help from other
classmates. Students truly start to
understand information when they begin to speak it and teach it. Some may feel that blogging is just one more
way to inhibit social growth, but I see it as an avenue to actively participate in classroom discussions for those that are shy and unsure of themselves.
Twitter is an online social networking site where people can
connect with friends and family, or stay up to date with topics of their
choice. I learned that the the most used
words are known as trends and when clicking on a trend it shows the most recent
tweets using that trend or phrase.
Hashtags connect related tweets so they can be part of a
discussion.
I, like David Pogue in his article about Twittering Tips for
Beginners (2009) , see both pros and cons on tweeting.
Learning about worldly events and local news can be interesting and
useful, but as a secondary high school teacher, I have seen Twitter have more of a
negative effect than a positive one.
Twitter is a place for immediate, real time responses and when placed in
the hands of a teenager, does not always have a positive result. However, I really enjoyed the “Many Voices”
project where students contributed to an online story via Twitter posts. After reading through the articles and
watching the videos regarding Twitter, I am not sure I a see a place for this
in education.
I am following a Flipped Classroom Network on Twitter because it provides educators with knowledge, skills, and resources to successfully implement flipped learning. It posts free webinars that help educators with the flipped classroom. It is a great resource to learn about new ideas and readings associated with the flipped classroom.
Johnson,
L., Smith, R., Levine, A., & Haywood, K. (2010). 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas:
The New Media Consortium.
Pogue, D. (2009, January 15). Twittering Tips for Beginners. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/twittering-tips-for-beginners/?_r=0
I have to say I love the whole flipped classroom concept and it is something that I look forward to seeing more of in the future. It's a great way to learn. I've been on both ends of a flipped classroom now, and I have enjoyed it and felt that it facilitated learning. I'll have to check them out on twitter!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading how you would use YackPack I decided to check it out. It does sound like a great a way for students to collaborate. I even found more blogs explaining how they use YackPack in their classrooms. Always Learning Website, 7 Ways to Use YackPack for Online Collaboration gave me some great examples and would probably help you to when getting started. One example on that site explained how a teacher left his plans for his substitute teacher as a podcast. I thought that was awesome. You can even leave individual messages for students when you are out about assignments that they can only read and/or hear. Pretty neat. I'm happy you shared some ideas you had in your blog because it inspired me to do a little more research myself. It great that Edmodo is free. There are so many websites for educators that require memberships to review lessons and share worksheets. Now with educational blogs and online programs we can utilize free programs, save trees, communicate with students and parents, and collaborate ideas-a win win all around!
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that some avenues of social media such as blogging can promote positive social growth and self-confidence. Students who are shy or not really comfortable voicing their ideas at this stage of their lives can open up through social media. We often hear about the negative aspects of social media but not the positive. Many people became great novelists, journalists, and screen writers years ago behind a pen and pencil, now we have a new world of technology that will open doors to dreams and aspirations of students. They now have the ability to put a picture and a voice to stories and reports of what going on in other countries, which can produce future world leaders and humanitarians. It is good to have this class help us find ways to incorporate various forms of technology into our classrooms.
I think I would utilize blogging more than Twitter in my classroom when ready. I found ways to incorporate Twitter into lessons from reading online but I would prefer setting up a blog. If I become more familiar with Twitter I might change my mind. I watched some few video clips regarding flipped classrooms. It seems like an awesome concept. I think it depends on the school district, support, and accessibility of technology for students for it to be successful. With any changes from traditional learning, it will take time/training, money and a pilot group for some but I think it will be very beneficial for students in all grades to experience this learning concept.