- What communication and collaboration tools did you explore?
- In what ways can you help your students improve their communication and collaboration skills?
- In what ways can you as a teacher use communication and collaboration tools to enhance your own learning?
- Did you have any “aha” moments?
- What was your favorite part today’s training?
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Delectable Discussions
After tasting each course on the menu, reflect on the following questions and respond to at least two other posts from your peers.
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Even though I’ve use two of these tools before, I learned many different approaches on how to incorporate it in my classroom. I believe that if I can show my students the benefits from some of these tools my students will be able to improve their communication and collaboration skills. For example, by using google tools like Docs, students are able to collaborate together, improve their grammar, and create and amazing end product. Using some of these collaboration and communication tools can enhance my own learning. To do so I’ll need to engage more and expand my PLN to address my personal professional development needs. My favorite part of training today was being able to play around with the tools we’ve heard and discover new things on tools that I already knew how to use.
ReplyDeleteThe only way I can learn about new technology is for me to get into it and play around with it. I try to teach my students the same thing, they can't break anything but some are still unwilling to try new things.
DeleteI am going to take a day for my students to explore these various avenues and technologies for themselves. Although it is a lost day as far as instruction of content, it will be well worth it in the end.
DeleteI agree. We all learn best through experimentation, this class allows us to do that. Thank you for being allowed class time to play and learn!
DeleteI explored the educational blogs including Free Technology for Teachers, Cool Cat Teacher, and Nerdy Teacher. I also explored the Lino, Padlet, and Diigo collaboration tools. These tools help improve student communication as they experience organizing and expressing their ideas in a new format. Providing multiple opportunities to use these tools will help students improve their collaboration skills also as they become more efficient with contributing to a forum. As a teacher, I like viewing blogs from other teachers to get ideas to use in my classroom. During the school day, many of us do not have time to collaborate with our colleagues beyond our own grade levels. Blogs become resources of tools or strategies that are working for other teachers that can be viewed at our leisure. I have a Pinterest board dedicated solely to teachers’ blogs I have found useful to enhance my own learning. My favorite part of today's training was learning about Lino and Diigo. I believe these two resources would be very applicable at my school. I liked the ease of use Lino provides. I liked Diigo because I now have a tool I can use to focus on specific information I want my students to get. Students can use it in the same way when researching a topic and sharing information with their classmates by posting a link on Lino. A few weeks ago, a teacher used the computer lab to find facts about toys in the 19th century. As the students wrote their facts on paper, I noticed many of them calling out to their classmates to call their attention to pictures or websites they found interesting. This would be a perfect scenario to use Lino and Diigo. Students could highlight their facts in Diigo, and then post snapshots of their highlighted facts, images, and sticky notes on Lino. This would facilitate discussion as students contribute and examine ideas on one wall.
ReplyDeleteI explored blogging, using Google docs, and sticky notes as well as Pinterest. Blogging, Google docs and sticky notes seems to be a good way to bring some of the more hesitant students out of their shells when it comes to talking to others in the classroom. When you have those students that don't want to talk in front of their peers these forms would be a good way to get them involved in a conversation with the others in the room. They can say what they want to say without the repercussion of anyone laughing at them for not being able to stand in front of the group to speak and making mistakes won't be as bad for them. Pinterest is a great site to find wonderful lessons, hands on manipulatives, and class projects to use with students. I have found that a lot of our teachers on campus dig into Pinterest for ideas of things to do in the classroom with their students.
ReplyDeleteI would encourage my students to participate in a blog or a Google doc that is shared so they don't have the feeling of being left out of the experience in the class. I can use these tools to communicate with my students about assignments and test that are coming up or to remind them of due dates to remember.
I can partner with other teachers to learn some of their methods when it comes to communication and collaboration. I can learn better ways to teach my students about their Digital Footprint in the world. Digital Citizenship is a must for everyone to learn right now and especially for our students who might not understand that they can lose college money and even jobs for the things they are putting out on social media.
Meograph was a new one for me and I think the students will love putting one together. They can tell a story in their own words and present them for book reports or presentations for the whole class to learn.
My favorite part of today was learning about Meograph, Thinglink, and Educreations. They are all great ways for students to put together collaborative work and make it fun in the process.
I have wanted to start blogging but have been hesitant to do so, but now I think I will see about getting started on that.
I like your approach on using docs and sticky notes to have shy or hesitant students to participate and collaborate with others. I believe is a way you can assess informally and check for understanding. In my case it helps with second language acquisition, as it lowers their affective filter and helps the students to communicate without thinking about others making fun of them.
DeleteI totally agree with you! Sometimes is difficult to release control of total control. As educators of the 21st Century we need to become facilitators. Most of the time is hard due to the way we were educated. Once you are able to sit back and look at what happens in your classroom with a fresh pair of eyes you are able to reflect on what you need to change.
ReplyDeleteI explored many collaboration sites but some of my favorites were Padlet, linoit, google drive, and Twitter. My students, however, will need help with not interfering with other people’s work. They often find it funny to go in and delete what someone else is trying to type and offering up comments that may or may not be very appropriate. I can definitely use collaboration for my own use because I tend to get tunnel vision when it comes to particular topics in my subject area and it would also help with not allowing particular students to monopolize my time. My “aha” moment occurred many times as I discovered “gems” of technology that I did not know existed. My favorite part of this academy is always the collaboration and sharing time--no teacher has the time to sit and surf the internet, twitter, pinterest, facebook, and the like for all the apps and websites and blogs that are out there, so having a collaboration and sharing time like this workshop is fantastic for that end.
ReplyDeleteI am so going to get started blogging along with you, my students would love to see what is on my mind I am sure.
ReplyDeleteFor this assignment I reviewed the uses for Skype in the classroom, Quadblogging, and Diigo. I'm sure we have have a million ideas on how to put these tools to use. I really like the idea of connecting internationally with Quadblogging and opening up the world for kids in our schools who rarely leave their own neighborhood. They have no idea what's out there and are sometimes close minded in their thinking, limiting their future. In my day, I had pen pals that helped me open up my eyes to life outside of Texas. Today e-pen pals can do the same thing, all while fostering healthy collaborative relationships. Skype can do the very same thing, just in video instead of written format. Finally, Diigo, keeps us from doing the same searches over and over again, reinventing the wheel every time we want to re-access information. It can also be very useful in pre-addressing problems. Before conducting a lesson on ____, the teacher can have a list of resources ready for students that are pre-approved and trustworthy.
ReplyDeleteI really was off to a poor start today, maybe if we Skyped this class, I wouldn't miss it when my car breaks down, lol. Just kidding. I'm so glad I made it because I also made progress today. Personally, I got a lot out of the Google discussion. For a while, I've been hesitant to allow Google so much access to everything. I don't really like the idea of not choosing what gets loaded and uploaded on my phone or backed up when I don't need it backed up. However, considering my Dropbox that I rarely use is now full, I am ready to give it a shot. With the knowledge gained from today's lesson, I feel more confident in doing so.
It's easy to fall into that trap especially since everything we do in the classroom and every test score our students get is looked over and scrutinized by administration. The things we are required to do and required to show, is not conducive at all to how we should be teaching and how we are learning to teach at most of the workshops we attend. Someone needs to get together and decide what is best for the students.
ReplyDeleteWe have used journaling in the classroom for ages, maybe if you allow the blog to be the student's journal, there will not be a need to control, but instead it will become a peephole into the student's view of your class.
ReplyDeleteToday I sat down to explore Quadblogging, Google Docs/Forms, and Twitter. I chose these because I hadn't had much experience with them.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, with blogging, all my experiences have been bad. I find that after creating a blog and trying to write on it and keep it going, I never get the user base needed to make it feel fulfilling. So when I saw Quadblogging, I thought it was genius. Every blog needs an audience and by setting up for classroom blogs in a group that engages with each other's blogs, every student participating gets an immediate audience. It allows students to work for an audience and connect with people all over the world. This should enrich any blogging experience for both the students and myself.
I then explored google docs/forms. I have become very familiar with Google docs, but I hadn’t ever really played with Google forms. I was excited to learn about what all could be done with Forms, especially being able to embed videos and redirect responses to additional pages. This got me thinking about how I could utilize Forms to create differentiated instruction for my students. I’m going to definitely be trying out google forms.
As for twitter, I have had a long standing internal struggle to resist joining twitter. I was actually one of the first people to be part of twitter in beta and back then I found it to be lacking. I did not like the character limit. However, now seeing how often students post to twitter, the character limit doesn’t really matter. So I created a twitter account in order to start exploring how I can use it to engage my students. My goal is to make it a space where students can engage with me and each other to promote community. In addition, I can couple my twitter account with Google forms and better get out my forms when sharing them.
Overall the activity was great. I always enjoy time to just explore on my own. The resources that accompanied each of the menu items made it easier to jump in and start learning about something. My favorite part was learning about what all could be done with google forms. I feel like it is a treasure trove that I just found and am ready to look over.
I visited Webquest, Diigo, and Skyping for my assignment. Using Skype in the classroom will definitely help my students in their communication skills and in interacting outside of the classroom. I found the Diigo particularly useful as well, and I can use it in helping me to become a more organized teacher. I did not realize that there was a website out there that could store all of your websites and anything else that you want to save.
ReplyDeleteI explored a few tools today that I have some basic experience with, such as blogging, Pinterest, Twitter and (lesser so) Skype. My aim was to take tools that I am somewhat comfortable with and find ways to carry my use further and in more beneficial ways. I found new ways of using these to not only be a consumer, but a producer and facilitator of student engagement. My intention is to find ways for students to use tools such as Twitter, and to engage students with the wider world around them using Skype. Knowing that many students do not have ready access to the same technology, I can facilitate technology engagement using the tools available in the library. There are so many amazing tools available that I am finding to bring in to the 'classroom' to take students
ReplyDeleteI explored Pinterest, Edutopia blogs, and Padlet. I can help students by supporting the BYOD initiative and by encouraging teachers to do the same. I can create more opportunties for students to use their devices within the lessons. My plan is to continue to enroll in professional development related to digital fluency. I like being able to hear what people are doing in other districts so that I can compare and grow.
ReplyDelete