My personal technology goal

Personal Technology Goal

While doing this course I feel like a child who has been left in a candy store and then asked to choose, reading about the various tools through the book web 2.0 and the article by David Warlick “A Day in the life of  Web 2.0”, I want to start integrating so many tools which  would help students learn better but like that child I cannot be greedy and need to take smalls steps and later  graduate to using multi tools.

One particular tool I definitely want to use is the class blog. My aim would be to use the class blog to help the students and parent community to be better informed, use the class blog for writing assignments especially persuasive writing and also help students to become better collaborators to be able to comment on each other entries. As mentioned by Solonon G & Schrum L in their chapter in blogging – “blogging helps the students to enhance their creativity, collaboration, communication, connections and crucial thinking”.  The blog ideally will be syndicated through RSS feeds, I need to use an aggregation software like Google reader or Netvibes  so that students can further read on the topics of their interest. I see this tool particularly useful in the IB classes especially aligning with the new thematic curriculum. This would also give me another platform for formative assessments and will allow the students to seek a bigger audience for their writings which will act as a motivating tool for them to write more.

Another tool which I would like to investigate and use is electronic portfolios, I see this tool having a definite advantage in a foreign language classroom as it makes the student body of work more organized,  reflective, helps students to make connections outside the classroom, use different means to display their learning( audio, video & writing). These can be a showcase for the four different skills needed in a language classroom that are reading, writing, listening and speaking.  As I have mentioned before this will involve some more research to find the ideal format for my classes.

I already have a twitter account, which I want to use more often to connect with other educators in my field for advice and information. I can use these in my classroom to get instant feedbacks on some of the message and can also use the twitter as reminders for students who are working on different projects.

References:

Solomon G. & Schrum L. (2010) “Web 2.0 how-to for educators” c 2010 International Society for Technology in Education