Language Skills and Technology

One of the things I want to share with you this week is on Google Docs. I am sure many of you already know this, but I did not. We have a project at school called the Creative Dialogue.  This project is groups of students who develop a project together and progress through the project creation over several weeks.  As you know, when you have group projects it is often difficult to know who did what- how did each student participate?  Did they all participate somehow?  Though it is not fool-proof, when you create folders and share them with your students as a place to keep their documents, you can also keep track of who wrote what on the document.  As I mentioned, I am sure it is not fool-proof, but it does reflect the login for each student.  Also helpful is the ability to keep track of the drafts they do. It saves everything based on drafts and you can look at the previous drafts by date to see how they have progressed. So, not only does it save paper as th...

I have read quite a bit about ideas for dynamic versus static learning.  Static learning is the old-school (pun intended) way of teaching and learning and dynamic is well, not that. Theory is great but when it comes down to brass tacks, concrete examples of what it means to do dynamic learning in the classroom are sometimes harder to come by.  This post actually shows some real examples of assignments that capture the differences between these models.  I have to admit, the projects in the dynamic learning sound really compelling.  What do you think?

Great title, huh? It's a recent blog post by Scott McLoed at Dangerously Irrelevant . This post highlights his new book which is full of multiple 'relevancy gaps' in education.  It made me think about my own notions of technology in the classrooms, especially the issue of feeling out of control as a teacher... what are they really looking at behind those screens? There are other interesting and challenging ideas, too like equity in the classroom, providing engaging environments for all children and interpersonal skills (which I confess does not come to mind when I think of technology.  What am I missing?). Overall, food for thought from an interesting blog that is sometimes rant-filled but always thought-provoking.

This recent post that I saw made me think quite a bit about what questions we ask when we try to measure success. Of course teachers want to understand that the students heard or read the material, but then what do they do with the information?  Anything at all?  This post takes that idea to the life-level: what will the students DO with the information? Now they know about technology but outside of themselves how will it benefit others?  Of course, this is what we want students in a civil society to do- take their knowledge to assist in the betterment of themselves and others. Take a look and let me know what you think.

I am Mira Gefen and this is my blog for the Language Skills through ICT class.  I have created several blogs for education purposes using Blogger and EduBlogs, but it has been a few years. I am looking forward to this course because I want to be able to engage my learners in ways that are exciting and relevant for them. I am privileged to teach in a wonderful school with terrific young people in my classroom. I hope that this class will help me understand how to better connect them with our subject and the world around them.