Reflection

I have grown so much as an educator through my study of integrating technology into the classroom at Walden University. The course I am just completing, Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom, has proven to be just as enlightening as my prior courses. Thought I have learned much in this course, the one thing that has really struck me is how our students need to be taught new literacy skills to be able to successfully maneuver in our digital world. Yes, reading and writing are still critical, but students need to be able to use these skills within a new setting. I remember being told to focus on having our students to read more and more nonfiction, and this was on the right track, but the information that our students are bombarded with requires much more than being able to understand how to read nonfiction print. Students are often faced with unreliable, inaccurate, and invalid information online, and they need to not only be able to read this information and glean what is relevant and important, but they need to decide if the information is to be trusted. This involves a whole separate set of skills, but they are skills that are definitely worth cultivating in both ourselves and our students.

As an elementary computer lab teacher, the bulk of the responsibility of teaching these skills is likely to fall on me, at least until the majority of my peers understand the importance of information literacy. However, these skills really need to be taught in the context of the rest of the content my students are learning. I don’t believe that any skill taught in isolation will make connections for the student and therefore will not be likely to be valued or retained. Because of this, I will be seeking more and more opportunities to collaborate with other teachers in my school and help my students make the necessary connections. This will also provide me the opportunity to teach the new literacy skills and their importance to my peers. I feel that as we share successful collaborative projects with the rest of the school, others will “catch the fever” and want to use the wonderful tools available to them. This should make the learning of both content and the information literacy more relevant to our students, and this should be a goal of all teachers, not just the tech savvy.

Because technology is always changing, a professional goal I have is to be able to keep up with new tools available. There are many ways to accomplish this goal. One way is to establish a network of others who value technology. There is a group of us in my school district, and we meet periodically and share a group on FaceBook. I am also working on creating wikis for teachers at my school to share digital resources. Other means include reading blogs focusing on technology, attending workshops, and joining ISTE. Their journal is wonderful!

Another professional goal that I have is to introduce new technological tools to my peers. Our school is about to start monthly professional development meetings for each grade level. This would be an excellent time to share a new idea for integrating technology with our staff. In a recent evaluation of our school, we were told that we possessed wonderful technology resources, but that they were not being used to their full potential. I think I can help to fix that problem. I also think that as the computer lab teacher for my school, I should be an advocate for technology. And as I work through my Walden courses, I am feeling more and more confident that I am quite capable to meet this challenge.

Critical Evaluation Screencast

Our Walden assignment this week was to use screencasting software to critically evaluate a website. I enjoyed looking through the websites listed for us. They were all quite humorous. I will list them for you at the bottom of this posting so that you too can get a chuckle.

As I was doing this screencast, I kept thinking of ways that I could use this technology at my school. It would be wonderful for makeup lessons for absent students. It would also be a good way to explain concepts to the faculty (such as our new gradebook software) so that they could visit and revisit the video as needed. So many uses.

Oh well. For now, here is the link to my screencast. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope I didn't say "um" too many times!

http://screencast.com/t/YjdlOTZj



Just for fun, here are the links we had to choose from. Enjoy!
RYT Hospital Dwayne Medical Center
Help Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
MartinLutherKing.org
The British Stick Insect Foundation
Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie
Britain for Americans
Computer Tan
Save the Rennet

Reflecting on My Personal Learning Theory

This week I am reflecting on the changes to my own personal theory of learning and my ability to effectively and appropriately integrate technology into my classroom. I am realizing that some of my views have been altered, but that others remain fairly constant.

At the onset of this course, I made the following statement regarding my views on learning, "My personal learning theory is that learning is reliant upon students being engaged in the classroom and making connections with new information." Of course I still think that this holds true, but after taking this course, I would like to expand on this idea. Yes, learning is dependent upon students being engaged, but I really feel that the principles of the constructionists and social constructionists are also a crucial part of my personal theory. I can think of no better way to learn and remember something than to dig in and do it. Constructionists call the product of this hands-on approach an artifact. Social constructionists prescribe that students need to interact with others while creating their artifacts. Both of these ideas ring true with me, and I think that both of these ideas will help students make the connections that they need to make to learn.

As I have stated before, I am the computer lab instructor in an elementary school where I teach students in K-5th grades. This makes my situation as far as technology integration a little different from most of my classmates. My entire school year is devoted to technology. (Well, at least the parts not devoted to testing: MAP, STAR, etc.) My biggest struggle is not how to use technology in my class, but how to integrate it with other subjects so that I am not teaching technology in isolation. This is also one of my long-term goals. My students need to have an authentic purpose for the tecnology that we use. To this end, I have decided to make an even stronger effort to plan with other teachers in my school so that the projects in my room reinforce the standards and material being taught in the regular classroom. For instance, I am planning virtual field trip projects with the fifth grade social studies and science teachers so that our students can visit places we would never be able to visit otherwise. This way our students will be able to create episodic memories of their experiences. I plan on extending this to the lower grades this year as well.

Another technology that I plan to incorporate this year is cognitive mapping. I want to teach the students in my lab to use tools such as spinscape and Kidspiration (which we have, but is not being used) so that they can create visuals to take advantage of Paivio's dual codong theory, but I also want to teach my fellow teachers to do this so that they can use it in their classes on their Smartboards. I just see this as being so useful in the regular classrooms, and I think my peers will, too, once they are introduced to it.

Perhaps the technology that I am most excited about is Voicethread. I am already working with our art teacher to create an online gallery of student artwork using this tool. We will post this gallery on our school website, just like I post the podcasts of our Principal's Pride Writing winners each month. I can't wait for the students to share about what they have learned in completing their art projects instead of just having "pretty pictures" to show to our community. I think the students and community will be excited about this as well. Voicethread has other possibilities, too. I want to use it to have students share projects thay have completed in their classrooms and to collaborate on problems they are trying to solve. With guidance, I think this technology could be used with even the younger students in my school. The trick will be to interest their teachers in it so that they will collaborate with me.

I guess this leads into one of my biggest long-term goals. I want to show my fellow teachers what technologies are available to them and help them integrate these into their classrooms. I can do this first of all by modeling the technologies with the students in my lab. I think that once the teachers see what can be accomplished with technology, they will want to use it too. I can show them what the students are doing in the lab by asking them to allow the students to share their projects on the Smartboards in their classrooms. I can also offer professional development at my school or dsitrict on using these tools. I am also willing to give up my planning time to help my fellow teachers if they need assistance.

One last long-term goal that I would like to mention, and perhaps my toughest challenge, is to do a much better job of using technology with my kindergarteners. Most of them cannot read yet and they are so young with such short attention spans that one 55 minute block of computer lab time each week is just not ideal. I would love to have their lab time broken down into two shorter segments, but since this is not going to happen, I need to think of other solutions. I have never taught kindergarten before, and last year I spent entirely too much time on Starfall with a little Word and Paint and a few other websites in the mix. I need to find other activities and projects for them to complete in my lab, and herein lies my challenge. Where do I find these activites? Everything I seem to find online is for older students or doesn't fit well into a lab setting. I think my answer is to begin building a network of other educators who teach computer skills to kindergarteners. A wiki would be a good place to compile and share our ideas. Another idea would be to share bookmarks through Delicious. I certainly hope that I can get some help in teaching these littlest members of my school.

I have learned so much through this course, and I am excited to share with my students and peers. It is amazing what is available out there for us to reach our students and help them learn if we are just willing to take a chance and try it. I think I will give it a try.

Online Art Gallery Ideas

I have posted a Voicetread project below in which I seek help in creating an online gallery of student art work. Please take a moment to visit my project and offer any helpful suggestions that you might have. Thank you!

I hope the embedded player for the Voicethread shows below, but if it does not, then the post below this one has a link to the same project. Thank you again for your help!

Student Gallery Voicethread

I have created a Voicethread that explains a need that I have at my school. I am trying to find a good way to create an online student gallery. Please use the link below to visit my Voicethread and add any suggestions that you might have to help me. I am also including the voicethread in an embedded player.

Thank you!

http://voicethread.com/share/571448/

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

New week at Walden, new topic.

This time we looked at Connectivism and Social Learning Theories. To me, this has been the simplest, most intuitive set of theories yet. In our video, Dr. Michael Orey spoke of social constructivism where learners are engaged with other students in the process of constructing something, but they are also engaged in the process of conversing about the construction taking place. Dr. Orey said, "Its those conversations that the students engage in that really help concretize and help them understand something." In other words, coversations and bouncing ideas back and forth between people is the way we learn best.

Dr Orey also spoke of Social Constructivism where the learner has a zone of proximal development, which is the level of work that provides just enough challenge that a more knowledgeable other can provide the necessary support for the learner to be successful. The learner is dependent on the more knowledgeable other, and that is what makes this a social learning theory.

The strategies and tools that we examined this week tie in very nicely with social learning theories and with each other. For instance, the strategy of cooperative learning in our text, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, is just about as social as you can get. In this chapter we studied the best ways to have "students interact with each other in groups in ways that enhance their learning" (Pitler, et al, 2007, p. 139). According to the social learning theorists, "By combining teamwork and individual accountability, students work toward acquiring both knowledge and social skills" Learners are responsible for their own learning as well as the learning of their group members. "This process results in a deeper understanding of the material and more potential to retain the material." (Orey, 2001).

Most of the tools that we looked at this week are based on cooperative learning principals. We read about a teacher who uses a movie-making project to teach about mathmaticians. The students are learning about the mathmaticians from each other. We also learned about web resources that allow students to interact with experts in different fields. How's that for a more knowledgeable other? Keypals allow us to expand our cooerative learning groups to include other learners or more knowledgeable others from anywhere. Webquests allow teams to work on problems presented virtually.

Website creation is one social learning tool that I have personally used in my classroom. In this activity, I had my students use a wiki to create our webpage, and it provided the opportunity for multiple classes to work on the same project at different times and to be able to communicate with each other regarding the project. I hope that my students got a better understanding of the material as they debated what should and should not be included on the wiki.

I really enjoyed exploring the social networking tools listed in our resources this week (Any excuse to get on Facebook is a good one!), but I worry about the classroom use of some of them. Facebook is wonderful, but I am an adult and I have enough wisdom to avi=oid many of its dangers. I don't think that putting my elementary students on there is a wise decision. I loved what I saw of SecondLife, but I would need more time than I possible have right now to explore it and evaluate its safety. Honestly, I would expect it to be blocked by my district's block-happy technology big wig. I wonder how long it will take other developers to create a similar platform that might be safer for educational useage with minors. I bet it will happen very soon. Can you imagine having students studying history to create the town, city, or settlement as it appeared at the time an event took place. Can you say "So long, diaramas!" For the digital natives we teach, this will be wonderful! It sure beats a poster or a shoe box.

The webquests I looked at seemed an aweful lot like virtual field trips with a problem to solve for groups. Is this a fair assessment? I don't know. Anyway, webquests certainly do involve having students work together on virtual problems, so learning will occur as they create a solution.
I am looking forward to exploring using Google Docs this coming year so that my students can comment and collaborate on projects and work on projects at home or on any school computer just by loggin on. Edublog will also allow the sudents to comment on other students' ideas.

As our book says, "To be prepared for the fast-paced, virtual workplace that they will inherit, today's students need to be able to learn and produce cooperatively." I love this quote. I hope that I can do my part to prepare them for this challenge.

References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Orey, M. (Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Constructivism/Constructionism in Practice

The Walden assignment for this week is to look at the correlation between the instructional strategies we have explored and constructivist/constructionist learning theories. To be honest, I had some trouble distinguishing between constructivism and constructionism, so I had to watch our video a second time. In it Dr. Orey describes constructivism as "a theory of knowledge stating that that each individual actively constructs his/her own meaning.' He describes constructionism as "a theory of learning that states people learn best when they build an external artifact or something they can share with others." He also describes Symour Papert's idea of the principal mechanisms for learning: assimilation, accomodation, equilibration, and schema. Schema are our concepts of things, and equilibration is when the input we receive fits nice and neatly in our current concepts. When something doesn't fit, we experience disequilibration. We regain equilibration by either cexpanding our old concept to allow the new information or by creating a whole new concept to fit the new information.

In Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, the authors suggest several activities that demonstrate this process. They all have the students learn by constructing some sort of artifact. In one, they suggest a spreadsheet activity that has the children predict which types of investments will earn the most given certain circumstances. The students then plug formulas into a spreadsheet, graph their results, and present their findings. In this process the students start with one schema about the best way to earn money through savings. When they test this theory, many find that their assumption is wrong (disequilibration) and have to change their idea about the best way to invest (assimilation). The same process happens with the data collection tools for the rain pH project and in the the history game.

I really like the idea of the By Kids for Kids website because it really makes students think as they create their artifacts. I can see how students would face disequilibration when their ideas don't quite work out or even when they are deciding on an invention that might solve a problem that they have. In the process of testing their inventions, they would have to open their minds by expanding schema (assimilation) as they find new materials to accomplish the same goals (what if we made this out of aluminum instead of paper) and as they realize that they might actually have to try something completely different (accomodation).

Two other websites caught my eye. They were Darwin Pond and Astro-Venture. I can see my students getting very excited as they manipulate the environments and situations these sites provide. It makes me think of their Webkins that they are always dying to check on. Obviously, students using these programs would be constructing artifacts, and even better, they would be having fun doing it.

The Cognitive Learning Theory

Well, the task for my Walden cohorts and me this week is to take a look at the cognitive learning theory and evaluate how the strategies we read about this week correlate. We read two chapters of the book Using Technology with Instruction that Works, "Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers" and "Summarizing and Note Taking." We also looked at concept mapping and virtual field trips. I am going to tackle these in reverse order.

Virtual field trips have a strong correlation to the principles of the cognitive learning theory. In this theory, information processing goes through three stages. First of all, we receive the information through our senses. If the information is attended, it goes into our short term memory. If the information is processed deeply enough, it goes into our long-term memory. Information that makes it into our long-term memory can be procedural memory, declarative memory, or episodic memory. Of these, episodic memory is the strongest. According to Dr. Michael Orey, this the memory of the events in our lives. Virtual field trips provide the opportunity to artificially create these events and subsequently create episodic memory. For instance, my fourth grade students last year were studying France, so I took them on a virtual field trip to Paris. Obviously, I couldn't fly 90 students to Paris, but thanks to technology we were able to visit the Louvre, a little cafe, the Metro, etc. My students saw images of Paris to accompany the text they read and in some cases had the sounds of Paris as well. All of this played into Paivio's dual coding hypothesis that images are more easily remembered than text. We compared what we saw in Paris to life in our town in SC and with other palces the students had visited. This was to create connections with the students. I hope my students will well remember our trip to Paris.

Concept mapping is another strategy that we learned about. I have always heard this referred to simply as graphic organizers. With these tools, we can help students organize information, but they can also create visuals to take advantage of Paivio's dual coding, just as we did with virtual field trips. Concept mapping also allows the students to create a visual depiction of the links and pathways that a learner makes in their mind relating to a subject. These pathways are crucial for information to become stored in long-term memory.

Summarizing and note taking also correlate to the principles of the cognitive learning theory. As I stated earlier, only information that receives enough of our attention actually makes it to our long-term memory. By having our students take notes and summarize the information, we are having them to think about it and evaluate what is important in it. Obviously, the students are attending to the information in this process. I really liked the combination note idea presented in our text because it included nonlinguistic elements that, once again, allow the student to use dual coding. Also, if we allow the students to use graphics that are meaningful to them in their note taking, we are encouraging them to elaborate on the topic, thus increasing the connections they will make and their chances for retrieval.

Honestly, I don't know what else to say about cues, questions, and advance organizers, so forgive me as I repeat myself. These items help the students to make connections with the information by helping them to organize and make sense of it. Students cannot connect with what they do not understand. Videos, as the text suggests, will go far in aiding understanding. It is one thing to read about an event, but to see it is another. Once again, we are back to the dual coding hypothesis. Storing the visual is so much more powerful than just storing the words.

These strategies really do have powerful implications in the classroom. I think that many of them are used by teachers on a regular basis without their understanding of why they are so effective. I hope as my understanding of the cognitive learning theory increases, so will my implementation of its principles in my classroom.

Behaviorism in the Classroom

In my latest course at Walden University, my cohorts and I have been asked to post our thought on how certain instructional strategies correlate to the principals of the behaviorist learning theory. In particular, we were to look at reinforcing effort and at homework and practice.

Our reading came from Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works by Howard Pitler, et al. I have to admit that I had a bit of trouble seeing the behaviorism in first chapter that we were to read on reinforcing effort. I understand why reinforcing effort is important and that students need to be explicitly taught about the importance of effort, but fitting that with behaviorism was tough. However, as I continued to think about this I began to see the behaviorism involved.

This chapter recommends having students use software such as spreadsheets to track their effort in a subject and the resulting grades. The idea is that as the students see the effect that their effort has on their grades, they will be motivated to put forth more effort. In this case, poor grades could be seen as punishment for the undesired behavior of poor effort, whereas good grades could be positive reinforcement for the desired behavior of good effort. If all behavior is learned habits (http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Behaviorism) then this process is teaching the students the habit of studying.

The chapter on homework and practice was an easier one in which to find behaviorism. This chapter recommends several websites that use an instructional strategy called operant conditioning. In this strategy, a student answers a question and is immediately given feedback, either that they were correct or that they were incorrect. If they were incorrect, then some form of remediation is applied. The response that the student was correct is the reinforcement of the desired behavior. When an incorrect answer is given, the program provides modeling by showing the student how to work the particular type of example. Then the student is given the opportunity to try again.

Behaviorism may seem to be controversial in today's educational circles, but a closer look shows that it certainly has valid uses in the classroom.

The Classroom 2.0

Since last fall, I have been working on my M.S. degree in Integrating Technology in the Classroom from Walden University. The course I am finishing right now was titled “Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society.”

This course has added many new tools to my belt that I can draw upon as a teacher. Two of the ones that excite me the most are wikis and podcasts. I have decided to use wikis as both teaching tools and as a means of teacher-driven professional development in my school. As a teaching tool, I am working with a fourth grade teacher (I am a K-5 computer lab teacher) and her social studies students to create a wiki about the Oregon Trail. Our students are so excited about being able to make their own web site. They have taken ownership of this project in a way that would never happen with a traditional group report. I have also begun two teacher wikis, one for teachers to share arts integration activities and one for our teachers to share Smartboard ideas and resources. I have started these two wikis with some of teachers in our school who are more comfortable with technology so that I can get my feet wet before I introduce them to the whole faculty. I want the less comfortable teachers to be able to see how the wiki works so that it is less intimidating to them. I really hope these tools take off and become valuable to my coworkers.

I plan on introducing podcasts to our school website next week as our principal changes the Principal’s Pride writing displayed in our halls. Each month, one writing from each grade level is selected as a Principal’s Pride writing. I am going to have the students read their writing for me and then I will be able to post that as a podcast on our website. I hope this example will excite the teachers in my school so that I can show them how to do this (it really is easy!) and they can have their own podcasts on their own pages. I also hope it will excite our parents and students so that they begin to see our website as a site worth visiting!

The most important thing this course has shown me is that it so important for me to teach to the students that I have, not the students that I would have had if I taught 30 years ago. Students are different now, and they learn in different ways than past students. This is due in large part to their exposure to technology and the changes in society that technology has initiated. Our class’ discussion of digital natives versus digital immigrants covered this. I also learned that today’s students will have different expectations made of them by colleges and employers. As a result, it is critical that I teach them 21st Century Skills. In order to do this, I must do as our video suggested and move farther and farther from a didactic, teacher-driven classroom to more inquiry-driven project-based classroom. As a computer lab teacher, this is very easy to do. Everything I assign my students is project-based, and I encourage students to cooperate and collaborate even on individual assignments. This increases my students’ engagement. As Tom Krucli said on our video, “Technology allows the students to really break down the classroom walls. They become responsible for their own learning and amazingly enough, they really do move beyond what you would normally expect out of the curriculum.”

Obviously, technology is continually changing and improving, therefore, I must stay abreast of these changes. I can do this by seeking out courses and professional development on emerging technologies, but there are other ways to do this as well. I can follow blogs that cover technology in school, and I can use wikis and other technologies to collaborate with other teachers as a sort of teacher-driven professional development. I can also read professional journals and follow websites devoted to technology and education. The means to keep myself updated and informed are seemingly endless.

I have set a few long-term goals for transforming my classroom environment and the environment of other classrooms in my school. One of these is that I want to motivate other teachers to incorporate more technology into their classrooms. Our school is fortunate to have decent technology (better than many) and district leadership that understands its importance. However, we do have many teachers who are either intimidated by it or who fail to see how vital it is. I want to help these teachers see just how much technology can help them reach the children they teach. I can start this with the podcasting and wiki activities that I described earlier. I hope that as the teachers see successful implementation of these new tools, the excitement will be contagious. I can lead training sessions to help them. Another goal is to use technology to increase parent involvement. Parent involvement is always desired in schools, and I think that parents are more likely to be involved when they are excited about what is going on there. Technology can help us get them involved. As our parents read our blogs, listen to our podcasts, and view our wikis, how could they not get excited?

Profiling the Students of Today

I sat down today with some of my fourth grade students to find out which types of technologies they are using and which types of technologies they prefer. Here is a link to the podcast of our conversation.

http://bethbjeffers.podbean.com/

I hope you enjoy it!

I Don't Get It.

I was just visiting the website for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), and I came across the article from Education Week titled "Backers of 21st Century Skills Take Flak". This article is a report of an ongoing debate and p­­­anal discussion between proponents of 21st century skills and opponents to this movement. One side says that we must focus on teaching our children skills such as critical-thinking, analytical skills, technology skills, creativity, collaboration, and communication, while the other side says we must focus on content.

After reading the article, I was left unsure of exactly what the debate was all about. Did the opposing sides really listen to each other at all? And if they did listen, did they stop to think about what the other side was saying? Diane Ratvich summed up my thoughts nicely when she said that this argument is one that has been going on for quite some time. “There is nothing new in the proposals of the 21st-century-skills movement," she said. “The same ideas were iterated and reiterated by pedagogues across the 20th century."

The thing that surprised me about this article was that both sides were really arguing for inclusion of both ideals. When Ken Kay discussed the vision of P21, he said, “There’s no question from the beginning that our work has been built on the premise that skills and content support each other, and the notion that you have to choose between them is a false dichotomy.”

Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville also described the interrelatedness of skills and content. "(He) argued not only that the teaching of skills is inseparable from that of core content, but also that it is the content itself that allows individuals to recognize problems and to determine which critical-thinking skills to apply to solve them. "

Yes, I understand that there is discrepancy between their viewpoints on the details, but it really seems to me that they all have the same goal, and that is a goal I can share. We all want our students to obtain the necessary knowledge and the necessary skills to succeed in life. I have heard over and over in my teaching career just how important it is for students to possess all of the skills advocated by P21, but we have just recently given these skills a name. Despite the newness of this name, these skills were, are, and will be critical for our students. I also know that students must understand the content. I am just a firm believer that the best way to teach both is by merging them in our lessons for our students so that they are inextricable and no longer in isolation. They will not be in isolation in "real life," and once again, preparing our students for life is our ultimate goal.

Introducing Blogging to my School (Oh My!!!)

I have to admit something. I am a little intimidated by the idea of using blogging in my lab. I can think of ways that I might do it, but they really make me uneasy. One way I could use them despite my misgivings would be as a way for my children to share book recommendations with their peers. This would not only encourage their use of this new communication tool, but they would be motivated to read and publish their writing to an authentic audience. I think I will soon be brave enough to try this, but I need to play with this technology a whole lot more before I am ready to jump in with elementary students.

One way I can easily imagine using blogs is as a means to keep my parents informed of what we are working on in my class. As I teach all grades in my school (K-5), connecting with my parents can be a real challenge. I have had parents email me to ask about lesson we have worked on, and I have even had parents ask me in person. They love the idea of their children becoming technologically proficient, and I think sharing details of the process would be wonderful. Honestly, I much more likeley to start with this implementation first.

Does anyone else have novice-friendly ideas of how to implement this technology in a manageable way?

What an idea!

I had never thought about doing something differently versus doing something different before this week, but this is a very powerful idea presented by Dr. David Thornburg of the Thornburg Center. He described teacher's use of technology in the classroom, and he says that very often technology is used to do something differently, meaning that we are doing the same thing in a new way. An example of this would be wordprocessing software. Using this software allows us to more easily create a typed document, but essentially we are still just typing. By contrast, creating a blog would allow us to do something different. It would allow us to access an audience we would otherwise not be able to reach. This is doing something completely different.

As I thought about that this week, I found that I most often use technology to do something differently. I want to offer my students the opportunity to get all they possibly can from technology, but I have been limiting them to creating PowerPoints and Word Documents. I am really a bit afraid of stepping out and doing something completely new. I would like to introduce blogs and wikis. I am just not sure of the logistics of it all, and I would love it if someone experienced in this could offer any suggestions.