Reflections on Educational Technologies

The more that I have learned about Ed Tech, the more I discover how much "stuff" is out there. There is a program for every particular niche and then some. One program does something one way and a second program does seemingly the same thing but slightly differently. It begins to become difficult to sift through after a while.

This is why I believe that when all is said and done we need to make sure not to loose sight of the goal. Our ultimate goal is to use these tools in order to better prepare our students, to help enable greater access for their learning, and to help them think creatively. Could this be done without Ed Tech? Maybe, but Ed Tech tools can make it more easily possible to fulfill these goals.

My suggestion is keep your eye on the field and constantly try new things because the world of Ed Tech is changing every day.

Web 2.0 Tools

The tools that Web 2.0 can be great however the piece which still frustrates me is that they are not all seamlessly in on place. It is bothersome to have to go in and out of various accounts in order to accomplish a task. It is great to be able to access these files and tools from anywhere via the web but I have to keep track of various accounts and log-ins currently. I look forward to the day when Web 2.5 can bring bring all of these different tools that exist on the cloud under one roof so that my work on them is more integrated.

Wiki Project Management

There is a great new feature on Wikispaces that enables a teacher to have better control over timing of an assignment using Wiki's. This new project management system allows the teachers to automatically allow specific groups of students access to a Wiki project without having to turn on the Wiki manually. It can be done from the outset when you are creating the project. What a relief for a teacher not to have to worry about going back in to make it go live! Thank you Wikispaces.

Check out the following link for a quick tutorial:
http://blog.wikispaces.com/2012/03/a-new-way-to-schedule-events-for-your-projects.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wikispaces+%28Wikispaces+Blog%29

Not losing ourselves to a world beyond our own

I think that there is great wisdom in our tradition in placing most emphasis on the here and now and not focusing all that much of the hereafter. God placed us in this world so that we should watch over it and take care of it and serve God through it. I feel it a shame that we feel the need to send out students into virtual worlds in order to peak their interest or broaden their horizons. Why can't we have our students engage in the world that is all around them rather than sinking into an alternate world like Second Life. I stop and wonder as to whether SL is yet another human attempt at creating the Tower of Bavel. Tyring to become creators and controlers of our environment rather than having to live in the world that God has given us as it is where we are not in control. By losing ourselves to SL we can escape our own realities. Why do we need to visit virtual Rome? Why not either visit the real Rome or else spend more time focusing on actually paying a bit of attention to the towns and cities that are right around us. Instead of learning about poverty in Africa through SL, why not have our students volunteer at the local soup kitchen? Rather than learning how to interact with an Avatar, why don't we spend more time face to face with our students helping them learn how to interact with each other?

Keeping It Fresh

So I just signed into Prezi for the first time. I still remember when Power Point was first introduced. It was the rave and everyone started using it. If you didn't use it, it was like you were a pariah and your presentation was considered second rate. In truth, it did in fact help to organize ideas and present them in a linear way. But, the presentations were in fact then linear. The presenter would go from start to finish in a straight path with no real ability to fully connect multiple points of the presentation to another. Enter Prezi... This newish tool, which allows its users to develop more of a mind-map, enables the a presentation that is more fluid with multiple connection points. the presenter can easily move back and forth between ideas and layer the concepts visually. I found that it not only helps me present something nicely but also helps me think more clearly about the connection between the various pieces which I am presenting. I am sure that it will continue to push my thinking further as I use it more... until the next presentation software comes out and expands another aspect of visual presentation.

Too much of a good (mediocre) thing

It was only about a year and a half ago that I took the plunge and set up a Facebook page. Then this year, I took yet another step and established a twitter page. Since then I have been looking into and singing up for other social media site. As I delve deeper into social media, what I have realized is that it is all overwhelming. For every service, it is a yet another account with yet another log-in and yet another network of streams and streams of e-conversations. How in the world is a person supposed to be able to keep up with this information overload. And, how is a person supposed to be able to sort through the droves of what every human being on the planet finds of personal interest. No matter how specific the network it still seems like a brain dump. I have found that the more networks that I join, the fewer that I pay attention to at all. So instead of spreading out to more social media networks, I have decided to constrict my usage back to the initial two - Facebook and Twitter. Even these have lost some of their edge for me. It seems troubling that in today's day and age everyone under the sun can have a public forum whether they have something intelligent or interesting to say or not... including this blog. I apologize in advance for any time that I have wasted for my readers - three minutes better spent on planting strawberries.

The context where I can see value is when the network is so small that a very specific framework can be laid out for usage with a particular goal in mind. One such example would be a classroom setting. A tool such as Edmodo could be a great platform by which to engage students outside of the classroom. Classroom notes, texts, and even videos could be posted to a class network. Classroom conversations can be continued online and students could ask questions to the network. HW and test dates could be posted to the calendar and assignments can be posted as well. When the network is a class, the use of a tool such as Edmodo can actually benefit student growth by expanding the classroom beyond the 45 minutes during which a teacher sees students in class. It also provides a space in which to help students organize classroom work.

So although I would not suggest becoming a follower of this blog, I would encourage teachers to try out social media platforms for the classrooms.

Productivity tools to help ease the work flow

The two main purposes of productivity tools seem to be to help ease the work flow and to be able to connect teams together around information. A great tool that I have discovered is http://www.instapaper.com. It is a tool that enables you to instantly save a link to a running file for later viewing or sharing. I have lots to read throughout my day and little time to read it at the moment that it comes across my desk. The ability to file a link a way to a place which is easily accessible from any online device and which has a way to create folders to organize these links has posed invaluable to my work. It has enabled me to keep up with my reading without having to read things on the spot. It also gives me a way to share these links with my colleagues. It can share via email, Facebook, and Twitter to name a few. In a world of over inundation of information it is nice to be able to file things away in an organized fashion for later read/use as well as being able to share the information with others.