"If students are to achieve their full potential, they must have opportunities to engage and develop a much richer set of skills... While there is still a need for more empirical evidence that these factors can be taught as transferable competencies across situations, there are a wide range of promising program and approaches" (Schechtman, DeBarger, Dornsife, Rosier, & Yarnell, 2013 as cited in Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.8).
This quote from our textbook highlights the need to expose students to skills that may be used in the future. As we have learned, most jobs that we are preparing our students for have not even been made yet. I agree with this statement because while we may not know the job that we are preparing them for, we can still instill an interest in learning new sets of skills. As an educator, I believe in the importance of lifelong learning. Web 2.0 is another vehicle for that to occur.
This semester, I am most looking forward to learning about making and using interactive/collaborative sites for students and teachers to utilize in the classroom. I feel that by developing students' technology IQ in an educational way instead of in a purely social way, they can benefit in future endeavors as well. Currently in my classroom, we use a few Web 2.0 tools. The most recent change has been to use Google Classroom. What I like most about this application is that all of my students may access their assignments and quizzes from anywhere. We haven't gotten familiar enough to start a blog, but I do see that as a future project that can help them voice their ideas and questions freely. While I don't feel like that personally I had initial thoughts about Web 2.0 that may have hindered my use in the classroom, it is difficult to go through school learning one way, go to college and learn to teach one way, but get in the classroom and see new things, new ways. Web 2.0, in my opinion, can only benefit our digital learners. In our push to make "real-world connections" for knowledge, we should be open to the idea that for some of our students, "real-world" may not be as meaningful as "simulated world" and may not make as strong as a connection to their learning. Web 2.0 tools can also be modified to support students with diverse needs. Students needing more assistance or needing to be retaught a topic can find and use resources easily; while students who have more learning needs may benefit from tools available on the web, like read-aloud modifications, or videos of certain topics so that he or she may watch and re-watch the content.
When looking at websites to gather ideas for assessing student work on blogs, a site I found very helpful was http://edtechteacher.org/assessment/ . An entire section was dedicated to student blogging. Of this section, I found "The Chronicle of Higher Education" had an informational rubric that served as a great foundation to help me start on a rubric. Their rubric, however, only consisted of a 4 point scale for overall grading of a blog (http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-rubric-for-evaluating-student-blogs/27196). I liked the descriptions, "focused and coherently integrates examples," but wanted more areas to focus on. Another rubric that was very helpful was http://www1.dcsdk12.org/secondary/trhs/staff/wilson/artdept/dcsdart/pdfs/bloggingrubric.pdf. I liked the general topics included and used it to help me guide mine.
This quote from our textbook highlights the need to expose students to skills that may be used in the future. As we have learned, most jobs that we are preparing our students for have not even been made yet. I agree with this statement because while we may not know the job that we are preparing them for, we can still instill an interest in learning new sets of skills. As an educator, I believe in the importance of lifelong learning. Web 2.0 is another vehicle for that to occur.
This semester, I am most looking forward to learning about making and using interactive/collaborative sites for students and teachers to utilize in the classroom. I feel that by developing students' technology IQ in an educational way instead of in a purely social way, they can benefit in future endeavors as well. Currently in my classroom, we use a few Web 2.0 tools. The most recent change has been to use Google Classroom. What I like most about this application is that all of my students may access their assignments and quizzes from anywhere. We haven't gotten familiar enough to start a blog, but I do see that as a future project that can help them voice their ideas and questions freely. While I don't feel like that personally I had initial thoughts about Web 2.0 that may have hindered my use in the classroom, it is difficult to go through school learning one way, go to college and learn to teach one way, but get in the classroom and see new things, new ways. Web 2.0, in my opinion, can only benefit our digital learners. In our push to make "real-world connections" for knowledge, we should be open to the idea that for some of our students, "real-world" may not be as meaningful as "simulated world" and may not make as strong as a connection to their learning. Web 2.0 tools can also be modified to support students with diverse needs. Students needing more assistance or needing to be retaught a topic can find and use resources easily; while students who have more learning needs may benefit from tools available on the web, like read-aloud modifications, or videos of certain topics so that he or she may watch and re-watch the content.
When looking at websites to gather ideas for assessing student work on blogs, a site I found very helpful was http://edtechteacher.org/assessment/ . An entire section was dedicated to student blogging. Of this section, I found "The Chronicle of Higher Education" had an informational rubric that served as a great foundation to help me start on a rubric. Their rubric, however, only consisted of a 4 point scale for overall grading of a blog (http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-rubric-for-evaluating-student-blogs/27196). I liked the descriptions, "focused and coherently integrates examples," but wanted more areas to focus on. Another rubric that was very helpful was http://www1.dcsdk12.org/secondary/trhs/staff/wilson/artdept/dcsdart/pdfs/bloggingrubric.pdf. I liked the general topics included and used it to help me guide mine.