Hi! I am coming to the belief that it is less important to teach a specific piece of technology than it is to teach students how to choose the appropriate tool in technology for different purposes. While I work out how to go about teaching that (any ideas would be most welcome!), I can take some comfort that I am at least choosing tools wisely (as near as I can tell!) in my own classes and serving to some extent as a model.
Blogs: Readers Response Journals, and the Online Poetry Slam run by this group - the format of student entries with others commenting serves the purpose of these two activities well. Wikis: Writing Resources wiki in earliest stages of development. A private wiki where my school and The Children's Storefront have been joined by three other schools in a web-based classroom exchange, to teach reading and writing skills as well os positive behaviors in something resembling a social networking context. Skype: videoconferencing with The Children's Storefront and, hopefully, other schools on the wiki-based exchange, to add voice and facial expressions to the on-screen words and deepen connections between students. Email: distribute homework assignments to full class via school-based email and store a copy in a class folder. Our current project is scriptwriting, and these daily updates help keep us focused and moving forward, and serve as a record of any consensus we may reach in a given class. Zoomerang: follow-up surveys to certain class discussions to determine new directions for the script. What use are you making of technology in your classes? What ideas do you have about teaching students to choose the appropriate tool for the job? Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
