- Why/How is technology an effective tool in the classroom?
- What obstacles keep us from using technology in our classroom?
- Technology is a tool--not a new program or gimmick, not the end-all answer to all of our problems, and not a replacement for teachers… technology is only useful as we, the teachers, use it in creative and resourceful ways.
- In our planning and deciding which tool we want to use, and how we want to use it, we need to ask ourselves,
What is the purpose of this? How will it help me to teach this concept? - My purposes for the tools listed here:
- Reader Response
- To monitor understanding
- To promote creativity and higher-order thinking
- To practice summarizing and determining importance
- To enhance understanding of character in a story
- To communicate with students in their ‘language’
www.facebook.com
Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Since September 2006, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address (and not residing in one of the countries where it is banned) can become a Facebook user--Definition from Google Web Definitions.
A place where I can spy on my friends and family and waste a good hour or two without even realizing it—My definition.
FaceBook Personality Quiz--have students create a personality quiz for characters from a book. I would have students work in groups of 2-4 and before having them do the quiz on their own, I would model how to do with a common story/book. Students can create a quiz on their own paper or you can provide a worksheet for them. Click here for the worksheet I created.
To further use this tool, I would challenge students to create their quizzes on Facebook and would offer incentives (points on a test for each person who takes their quiz or a prize for the group who gets the most people to take their quiz). Students can print out a page from their Facebook quiz that shows how many people have taken their quiz and breaks it down to percentages of how people responded.
Twitter Ideas
www.twitter.com
--From the ‘About page’ on Twitter.com
On NPR, the Morning Edition host, David Greene challenged the Song of the Day editor and music reviewer, Stephen Thompson, to review an entire music album in a tweet, just 140 characters. Thompson compared tweets to haiku. I love that comparison! Lengthier writing is great but a haiku can also have great power and beauty. So can tweets! In our fast-paced world, students need to learn to write succinctly and to the point (something I'm still learning).Twitter Music Reviews: Criticism as Haiku
Some Tweet Ideas:
•Admit/Exit slips
•Quick reading summary
•Book report, review
•Flash fiction
To take these ideas further, you could easily set up a class Twitter page and encourage students to check out the class tweets by choosing the five best tweets from each class and posting them. If a student sees his/her tweet posted, he/she can tell you and receive a piece of candy (students will do anything for candy). This would also be a great resource if you were to post admit/exit tweets (tweets about what students are learning in class). If a student is absent or needs reminding of what was taught, he/she could find out from the class Twitter page.
Instant Messaging (IM)/Texting Ideas
Instant Messaging (Iming) or Texting is a real time conversation. You talk through typing text either on a cell phone or through a chat/IM program on the computer (such as chat on FaceBook, Googletalk, or any other chatting service available with most email accounts).
One activity that you could do with this is have students create a text/IM conversation between two characters. Remember, with this you are NOT focusing on grammar but ideas. The idea behind this is to help students really understand the characters and for you, as the teacher, to see if they understand the characters.
An interesting study about technology use in the classroom: http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010040.pdf
