Micro-Overload?

After reading a few of the articles on microblogging I became a bit torn on what to think. On one hand, I was really impressed with the possibilities of digital storytelling and how it could be used to get students reading and writing in the ELA classroom without having to stare mindlessly at a Folger Shakespeare book. Students are able to compose in so many ways beyond the traditional pen and paper that it is a necessity to invite digital literacy into the classroom. I can think of so many uses for microblogging in the classroom: writing tweets in the voice of major characters for whatever text is being read, keeping up to date with new technology and what's happening in educational communities across the world, having classroom twitter-pals instead of the old fashioned pen-pals, creating classroom Twitter accounts to keep parents and absent students up-to-date. One thing that I like best about Twitter is the brief character limit, I think this would be extremely useful in the ELA classroom to help take away the intimidation factor that many struggling writers face. Perhaps an assignment of writing tweets would be more accessible to some students than writing an essay or research paper but they would still be able to demonstrate their knowledge effectively.

As much as I love learning about all of these things and hope to incorporate them into my future classroom, this article on academic tweeting addressed the concerns I have about all of this. I think there's an extreme danger in taking all of these things that students enjoy, and learn from, and making them "just school". One way to avoid that is to not bombard students with these new things. During student teaching I made the assumption that of course all my students were using blogs and MySpace and Facebook and tried to incorporate them into my lessons. First lesson I learned: never assume and the second lesson I learned: there is no "everyone" using "everything", especially when it comes to adolescents.  As educators we have to truly think about why we are incorporating these things into our classrooms and ensure that we are using them in meaningful and purposeful ways, not simply using them for the sake of using them. I would hope that we wouldn't teach a text just because "everybody was reading it" and we should be careful to approach technology the same way.

Lightbulb

I got a little carried away with adding blogs to my RSS feeds so it was hard to narrow it down to one!  I finally decided upon the Bright Ideas blog that is published by the School Library Association of Victoria.  The Viddix post was interesting to me because it was a tool I had not yet heard of but could see how useful it would be in the classroom.  Viddix allows users to put documents, web content, powerpoints, photos and surveys next to video content and then easily upload and embed them.  I think students could get very creative with this tool and it would be interesting to see how they incorporate multiple aspects of technology into one cohesive piece.

Ning Me

I have used a Ning in a few graduate classes and have enjoyed the experience. Our classes used it as a discussion board, a place to upload, share and comment on one another's writing pieces, post podcasts we created and upload links and videos we thought related to the class. It is very user-friendly and would be a great way to extend your classroom onto the web. Students and parents would be kept updated, discussions could continue and a community of practice could be forged. 

A Ning that I have been a member of and find extremely useful and interesting is the University at Buffalo's English Education Ning. There are discussion boards that involve my content area as well as what is going on in the world of education, people share job openings, and you can network with current and past students of UB's English education program. One of the best things about this Ning is that it is constantly being updated and added to, it is never stagnant. I will be completing the education program at the end of this semester and have utilized the Ning in my job search.

Mold or be Molded

The learner of today is like a lump of clay. The learner is like this raw, unshaped form that is not yet aesthetically pleasing but through outside instruction and guidance as well as a learner's own internal desires and goals, the clay can be shaped into a masterpiece. Siemen's article explains connectivism as a way to "provide insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era". I was hesitant to use clay as an analogy because it has little relation to our technologically advanced world but he also goes on to describe learning as "a lasting charged state brought about as a result of experiences and interactions with context or other people". A  lump of clay will have gone through several transformations before turning into a final product. Learners are always being molded and shaped through their interactions in their own minds and the ones they engage in through the various networks available to them.

I initially struggled to wrap my head around Siemen's theory because I couldn't think of a time where learning ever lacked "connectivity". Listening to Siemen explain in his video of The Changing Nature of Knowledge helped clear a few things up for me. Technology is changing so rapidly in our world today that I agree that we have "to continue to stay current...as knowledge changes" and that we have to utilize our "network of knowledge" because "the network becomes the learning". Students will come into our classrooms with a variety of networks - home, family, friends, social, digital - to ignore these vital networks and not incorporate into the classroom would be a huge disservice to our students. Technology will only continue to advance and we must stay as current and connected as possible.