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.