Tech Tool of the Week: Word Sift

This tool struck me as really interesting for use in the ELA classroom

http://www.wordsift.com/


I did a practice run with the tool using the text from one of the many really brilliant writer/thinkers in our English cohort. Her post can be found here:

I think that its a great tool to allow students to see a visual representation of what would be the main ideas or key words of a text. These are some things we ask students to identify when examining a text.

I still need to sift through some more thoughts on this tool and its uses and implications before my post is completed.

Pros and Cons of Tech

Things that should be done with technology:

Ø     showing video or graphics that will help clarify concepts and excite their imaginations!

o      using technology to expand the kinds of activities students can do in regards to a subject 
like a literary map on Google maps to help the setting come to life

Ø     facilitating parent-teacher communication

o      email, weekly/monthly online newsletters, teacher webpage

o      facilitating teacher- student communication

o      webpage, email, EDU 2.0

o      Facilitating student- student work/collaboration

o      tools like Google docs to do group work at home

Things that shouldn't be done with technology: (with focus on my subject area, English)

Ø     replacing reading with using media

Ø     replacing face to face parent-teacher communication

Ø     small group discussions

Ø     close readings of a text

The main claim I would make about the use of technology as a learning tool is that it shouldn't ever be used to replace something but to enhance it.

Technology tools should not replace face to face human interaction, they should be used to facilitate learning by expanding the possibilities of interaction. Technology should not replace the content but be used to enhance the content.

I have reservations about the uses and reliance on technology, as you may have seen in other blogs. This is based on the tendency for tech to become distracting or from threat of it having unforeseen implications. Yet, I am definitely for using technology in ways that enhance learning for students. I want to/ must prepare them for a world I can hardly fathom because it will be so technologically integrated.  My role is to help guide and provide ways for them to interact on a human level and on a technological level.

ED Tech Tool of the Week: Google Forms (Drive)

link to notes on google drive


Here is my practice of the use of Google Forms:

Cracking the Code

There has been a huge push towards integrating technology tools into the classroom these days, and while some teachers are digging in their heels against incorporating technology in the classroom (see previous post's example of tech. mishaps, maybe for good reason), other teachers are trying their best to reach out to their students and prepare them for a digital future by wholly embracing technology in the classroom.

While we are still in the preliminary stages of the use of technology in education it is important to investigate and analyze the effectiveness in promoting learning. Using a pretty rudimentary tool, a rubric, teachers can develop certain standards by which to measure the effectiveness of a technology tool in their classroom. Kris Campea, an 8th grade English teacher wrote a blog post about her troubling with the idea of how to use Twitter in the classroom, as a classroom communication facilitation tool. Before implementing Twitter she thought about how much work it would be to set up in order to be able to monitor what her students were actually using the tool for. She then discovered a different tool called TodaysMeet that would allow her to let her students use the Twitter format (140 characters) and participate in a dialogue forum online. Using a rubric we developed in class, I evaluated TodaysMeet as a tool to promote student learning. The rubrics' criteria ranks three types of learning tasks that would happen in an ELA classroom along three of the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.  TodaysMeet is a very interesting tool (you can learn more about it here) it serves the same purpose as a tool like twitter would, in allowing students to engage in online communication with each other and/or the teacher. The use of the tool for basic back and forth communication ranks low on the Bloom's taxonomy criteria yet if the teacher uses this tool and projects the forum as a live stream in the classroom, the students have a chance to have to varying levels of analysis in conversation, then the tool facilitates more higher level thinking- ranking it higher according to the rubric's criteria.

Overall, TodaysMeet is an inventive tool I could see myself using in the classroom, yet I would not rely on it solely. I think that other tools should also be incorporated in order to facilitate higher level thinking and learning.