Tech Tools

Tools for TEKS:

• I think it’s a great idea to have student work (projects) published to the web, because it makes them more responsible, and gives them that greater sense of ‘this is important to get right.’ I know that if someone I didn’t know was going to see and possibly critique my work, I would want it to be flawless. This, I believe, would hopefully "raise the bar” of students’ personal expectations for themselves, and in turn teacher expectations.
• Unless a teacher can be physically present when group members meet to work on a project, they will never really know who does what for the final project. By incorporating a wiki into the project, a teacher would be able to better see what contributions each member is giving, by seeing which member added what information to the wiki.
• Using one of the many online photo galleries and editors, people can see their pictures much more quickly. The biggest draw of digital cameras to me, was the fact that I got to see the pictures I took instantaneously. In a classroom, a teacher could easily have a different gallery for her class each year, share that link with parents, and not just be ‘taking pictures for themselves.’ (Of course, the teacher would also have to make a separate permission slip at the beginning of the year, letting parents decide if they want their child’s pictures up or not.)

Tech Tools for Learning:

Streaming video is amazing! When you don’t have the opportunity to see an actual tornado or hurricane, a lightning bolt in slow-motion, or a reenactment of the American Revolution, streaming video is the best! Students in my classroom got to experience Unitedstreaming for the past two years, and they loved it. Every time I said we were going to watch a video, they were excited-they only thought they were getting out of work. One video about the Florida Everglades, I was able to reference several times, along with personal digital images, during a project on endangered animals in the region. Students think they’re just watching a video; teachers know they’re really learning something. You have to be careful, though, when picking videos that are not too advanced or too juvenile for your students, or they will lose interest quickly.

With this project, I think it would have been great to have student teams create podcasts for their endangered animal. Instead of a poster or simple PowerPoint project, students would have had so much more hands-on technology use, and been able to actually use that technology later in their education, whether in high school or college.

Library 2.0 Theory: by Jack Maness

I hadn’t thought about the implications of the web and it’s resources on the Library until I read this article. I worked in our town Library for two years putting books away, and at times, it became very tedious. I can see how using IM-like response technologies would have made it more interactive, not only for me as a worker, but for those patrons who regularly required assistance. It’s strange to think of the huge change that would be made to the traditional idea of Libraries as they incorporate and change with their community. I can also see that there will be many librarians who may be resistant to the changes, as they are used to and like the ‘old’ way of doing things.