Final+Paper

As a professor of composition and literature at a large community college on the East coast, technology plays a prominent role in my professional life. Since I am the coordinator of the Online Professor Program, I tend to utilize technology as part of the program (teaching professor the pedagogy and methods involved in using Blackboard to teach) and in my own classroom work. Reviewing the methods identified in class, I would utilize each as follows: **Blogging: ** Currently blogs are used as part of the online journals that students are required to write; these journals serve as responses to readings and are only seen by the student and myself. Blogs allow students to “share their thoughts and opinions” in a non-threatening way. (Hill, 2008) **Video blogs: ** Video blogs or live journals are not used in my classroom as the primary focus is on reading and writing. While I do see benefits to using video blogs as part of a professor’s mode of delivery, especially in an online classroom, it is problematic in a class that focuses on the art of composition. **Microblogging: ** Twitter or “tweeting” has become synonymous with the term microblogging. The blog “Web20teach.blogspot.com” showcases the numerous usages for Twitter in the classroom and lists numerous resources including “teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk,” a blog that focuses on using Twitter in secondary education. (Alan, 2007) In my online composition 2 class I utilize Twitter as a means of reviewing readings; each week I send one tweet to my students That asks a specific question about that week’s reading. The students can answer the tweets either through a Twitter response or via email. Remarkably the students hate this as they feel that the tweets intrude on their personal time but I find that it acts as a catalyst to force them to <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt 1in; text-indent: -1in;">read the material. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Screencasts: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> After reading the Educause piece, I learned a great deal about the potential use of screencasts in the classroom. (Educause) Screencasts can be excellent methods to teach students how to solve specific problems in a math class or how to do an experiment in a science class. In addition, I can imagine using a screencast as a way to teach educators how to use our new learning management system that we are converting to over the summer. By capturing the actions of a “user” as they move through the actual course building process and then adding audio as part of the demonstration, a previously static demo can become an engaging one. Screencasts can be excellent tools to showcase the system to professors who are reticent about trying something new. As stated in the Educause piece, “screencasts can also add a new dimension to embedded learning. Instead of simply consulting a reference book to learn or refresh your memory…you might access a library of screencasts and watch the one that addresses the concept at hand.” (Educause) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Social bookmarking: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Prior to this class, I rarely used social bookmarking as I normally kept a running spreadsheet or Word document of pages or sites that interested me. While I did find that Delicious and/or Digg were helpful for keeping a list of bookmarks, I don’t believe that I would utilize either in class. However, I can see that such services would be useful for helping students create annotated bibliographies for research paper; rather than “paging through thousands of results to find a needle in a haystack, simply by going to a social bookmarking site” students can easily find the most recent articles on their particular topic. (Nations, 2008) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Wiki and Collaborative Editing : **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Recently I was a participant in an WikiEducator course on using wikis in the classroom and was amazed at the ways that Wikis can be utilized including discussion forums, resource lists, fluid documents that can be worked on as a class and as a learning tool for dissemination of information. After taking that course I set up a Wiki for one of the college committees that I sit on so that we could have a collaborative work place. As stated in “Wikis in Education,” a document created by the University of Oregon, the “real power of lies in the fact that groups can collaboratively work on the content of the site using nothing but a standard web browser” and the wiki has the “ability to keep track of the history of a document as it is revised.” (Oregon, 2009) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Wikipedia: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">My college has a very definitive policy that Wikipedia may not be used by students as a resource. Accordingly, I showcase how easy Wikipedia is to edit by pulling up the school Wikipedia page and actually making changes (we have changed the school colors and the name of the mascot). However, I do allow my students to look at the list of resources on a specific Wikipedia page as a starting point for their research. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital Storytelling: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital storytelling lends itself perfectly to a composition classroom as students must write a “script that relates a story and is then made into a digitized voiceover during production of the digital story.” (Digital Storytelling, 2008) Such a story helps students integrate technology into written projects by creating an image and audio oriented work. As part of a class that I teach where students must rewrite fairytales as sonnets (14 lines), I have students create digital stories using the site Glogster (glogster.edu); students must incorporate images, videos, text, links and music as part of the project. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Flickr: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Flickr is a great resource to help students find images that can be used in their work and also allows educators to deliver important lessons about the use of Creative Commons and the issues surrounding intellectual property. As Flickr users can create accounts that use RSS feeds as a means to distribute images, “schools can take advantage of RSS capability to create a database of appropriate images about their school that can be delivered automatically to parents and other community members…” (Jakes, 2008) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">YouTube: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Unfortunately my college firewalls YouTube so we cannot use it in the classroom. This firewall came about after students were found watching pornography in a computer lab. The only way to use YouTube videos in class are to embed them in a PowerPoint which I do quite often using the iSpringFree software which easily embeds YouTube videos in a document. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Instant messaging: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I tend to use texting or instant messaging in my class for quick dissemination of information such as assignments, class cancellation or weather updates. At the beginning of the semester I give students my cell phone number and advise them that they are responsible for letting me know if they will be absent; in addition, I ask them to send me any questions that they may have that are of a personal nature through the text system. While this is not truly instant messaging (i.e. use of a system such as AIM or Google Chat) it is instantaneous. I also allow them to contact me via Blackboard’s chat or via MSN Messenger. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Podcasting: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Although I would love to use Podcasting more in my classroom, I find that I simply do not have the necessary time to create a podcast. Acknowledging that many students learn by reinforcement, a podcast can serve as another means to disseminate important information in a format that students can download onto their IPods or listen to on their computers. As noted in the article by Gardner Campbell, podcasting helps students comprehend material that was previously difficult to understand; “hearing a classmate [or a professor] read it aloud with emphasis, feeling and comprehensions makes a huge difference.” (Campbell, 2005) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">While the benefits of podcasting are quite clear, creation of a podcast takes time and has a rather high learning curve; accordingly, it will be some time before podcasts become part of every educator’s classroom. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Facebook: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Facebook has become both the bane and the joy of the educator. I use Facebook as another means of communication between myself and my students as I understand that it is something they are constantly checking and always engaged with. Some professors create Facebook group pages where they allow students to place additional materials and to interact with one another. Clearly Facebook has potential in education; educators can create groups, can easily email an entire class, can publish notes and tag specific students, can keep the class up to date with status updates and can add course examples. (Elon, 2009) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Ning: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">While I used to use Ning all the time in my class, I no longer do due to cost issues (Ning used to be free and is no longer). Ning was an amazing tool to allow students to share photos, videos, to have a forum and to have a class focused social website. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">RSS: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">RSS feeders are excellent tools for students to collect information for their research papers as they aggregate all the feeds subscribed to (i.e. Google reader updates your feeds hourly and they the user can simply log in and read everything at once). Educators can use RSS to check student’s weblogs (if used in class) for any updates and to place any comments on particular posts. In my college, we have students create feeds for specific searches on databases used so that they will be informed immediately when there is news on their specific topic. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Skype: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Personally I use Skype for a great deal of my collaborative work with other educators or organizations as it is an easy way to connect either via chat, phone or video. Recently Skype texted “Skype in the Classroom” which is a “directory” that allows teachers to interact and share resources about ways to use the resource in their classrooms. (Skype in the Classroom, 2011) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Google docs: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lately everyone I know uses Google docs for almost every type of work product imaginable from collaborative to schedules to work documents. Since it is easy to use, allows for real time collaboration and open access, Google docs is truly a revolutionary tool. One of the greatest aspects of the system is that educators can easily see who has completed an assignment when and allows for publication of documents so the entire class, or even parents, can view work. (Using Google Docs in the Classroom, 2008) **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lulu: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I have never used Lulu in my classroom and due to cost, probably will never do so. Lulu, as a pay publishing service (i.e. pay for the books ordered when ordered) would be a wonderful tool for students to “publish” their own works as books or to publish their thesis in a professional manner. While I can see how Lulu can be a beneficial tool in a classroom, I believe that its use is quite limited as it requires students or schools to actually expend money. **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Augmented reality, Virtual Reality and Second Life: **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I have grouped all of these together as I truly believe that you cannot discuss one without discussing the other. All of these incorporate real world elements with virtual worlds that allow users to engage in real time. A perfect example of augmented reality occurs when a newscaster super imposes a graphic on a screen and then manipulates it (i.e. weatherman or sportscaster). Virtual reality takes augmented reality one step further by actually creating “immersive” environments where users can become part of the world they enter using avatars or specific objects; this is the world that one enters when using Second Life where the user creates an avatar that moves through islands of interest. All of these forms have incredible use in education as they allow students to actually move through worlds of learning, to manipulate objects (i.e. math problems or surgery) and to take trips through worlds previously closed to them. Last year I was able to move through an entire presentation from the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC that I would not have been able to physically see; this experience was an amazing one as my avatar moved through halls and experienced an actual ghetto. While I have tested virtual reality, specifically Second Life, with my students, I have met incredible resistance on the part of my colleagues and administrators. Part of this reticence is due to the need for a strong computer system that can hold Second Life and its applications and part of it is simply due to fear and ignorance. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">This semester I have learned about applications that can be used in many different ways; my eyes have been opened to uses that I did not consider and that were unknown to me. Educational technology continues to thrill and excite me as I learn of new ways to engage my students. Works Cited Alan. (2007, August 19). //Web 2.0 Teaching Tools//. Retrieved March 2, 2011, from web20teach.blogspot.com: web20teach.blogspot.com Campbell, G. (2005). //There's Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education.// Retrieved March 2011, from Educause Review: www.educause.edu //Digital Storytelling.// (2008). Retrieved March 2011, from digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu: digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/powerpoint/ Educause. (n.d.). //7 Things You Should Know About Screencasting.// Retrieved February 2011, from Educause Learning Initiative: www.educause/edu/eli //Elon.// (2009). Retrieved March 2011, from Elon.edu: org.elon.edu/catl/conference/documents/ Hill, M. (2008). //Using Blogs to Integrate Technology.// Retrieved March 2, 2011, from Glencoe: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47 Jakes. (2008). //Flickr in the Classroom.// Retrieved March 2011, from Jakesonline.org: www.jakesonline.org/flickrinclassroom.pdf Nations, D. (2008). //Social Bookmarking 101.// Retrieved March 2011, from About.com: webtrends.about.com/od/socialbookmarking Oregon, U. o. (2009). //Wikis in Education and Other Tools for Collaborative Writing.// Portland: University of Oregon. //Skype in the Classroom//. (2011). Retrieved 2011, from Skype: education.skype.com //Using Google Docs in the Classroom//. (2008). Retrieved March 2011, from Google: doc.google.com