Take a look at the top 100 learning tools for 2014 available at http://c4lpt.co.uk/top100tools/. Of the top 100, I have used 30, 13 of which are in the top 20. I am not the least bit surprised by the sheer number of learning tools out there. But I am surprised by how many of the top 100 I have never heard of before, i.e., 37. It appears I have a lot to learning about learning tools, but I can’t wait to explore some of the unknowns on the list. Maybe I’ll start with the ones that have exotic or intriguing names, like Camtasia or Udutu.
A.P.E. is a very unique. Every student has their own challenges, and what a general education student may learn in minutes may take months for an A.P.E. student to learn. As with any physical activity, repetition is a key to success, and I find that students who practice what they learn at home do so much better than their peers. The trouble is that many of my students are “turnkey” kids. Both of their parents work to make ends meet and often are unable (or unwilling) to attend parent-teacher conferences, I.E.P. meetings, and other school functions. These parents often do not know what their children should be working on outside of school. I think YouTube could fill in this gap. Parents may not have time to come to a face-to-face meeting, but they often have Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts, and other social media outlets that they use. How great would it be if parents could watch a video of the skills their children should be working on from the comfort of their couch? And what better way to educate parents about their child’s needs than through demonstration with a YouTube video? YouTube does have features to make videos “private” and “unsearchable” to protect privacy. I think YouTube could be a great tool for helping students outside of school.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mr-Williams-APE-Page/523861014420132?ref=bookmarks
I was just introduced to Facebook this year. I’m still learning how it operates, so bear with me during this process. I remember when teachers took roll by passing around a sign-in sheet or calling names off a list, when desks were arranged in a circle and students were asked to stand in the middle to answer a question or share their thoughts, and when the fastest way to reach someone was by picking up a telephone (not the hand-held kind). It’s safe to say a lot has changed in a short period of time.
From my perspective, the biggest impact of social networking on undergraduate education is communication. Students no longer have to be in the same classroom to benefit from the discussion—the conversation can occur in a coffee shop, an office, or a home and with someone on the other side of the country. And with the aid of smart phones, tablets, and other devices, students can instantaneously share photographs, videos, documents, music, thoughts, ideas, etc. I even FaceTime my co-workers at different school sites and Skype with family out-of state. In short, social networking is making it faster and easier for students and teachers to communicate with one another. But there’s a downside to everything, and one of the drawbacks of social media is the lack of face-to-face interaction. I’ve heard stories about recent graduates that were so socially awkward and/or terrified of face-to-face interactions that they took their parents with them to job interviews. Talk about making a first impression. Being able to put something in writing is important, but there are certain professions that require speaking in front of a group (even if it’s a group of Kindergartners). If a graduate cannot speak in front of an interviewer alone, how can they handle speaking in front of a group? This is why I agree with Buzzetto-More (2012) that social networking should be used to augment—not replace—traditional instruction. I think colleges and universities are trying to strike a balance between the two (i.e., online and in-person interaction). One of my recent online courses required students to create a PowerPoint presentation using audio. Just the addition of students’ voices to the presentations really made a difference by adding a person touch to the presentations. References Buzzetto-More, N.A. (2012). Social networking in undergraduate education. Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, & Management, 7, 63-90. A term used to describe those who will be in their teens and 20’s in the year 2020. I did not get a cell phone until I was in college; I have 4th grade students that have them. I can hardly walk the halls without seeing dozens of students glued to their cell phones, checking Facebook, listening to music, or texting. I often wonder what is so important that they don’t even have time to watch where they’re going. But as the name suggestions, the “always on” (AO) generation has to be plugged in.
In my experience, the AO youth have an incredible amount of information at their fingertips, but sometimes lack the maturity and patience to deal with this information. Last year, over Christmas break, we had a 7th grade student post his suicide on Instagram. A girl he liked didn’t feel the same way, so he said goodbye to friends and then jumped off a parking structure. This was shared with most of the 7th and 8th grade students in real time, and it took days for the family to remove the Instagram page. It was a case of over-reaction, impulsive decision making, and lasting impression. This is not to say technology is a bad thing. The internet and social media is an invaluable way to spread a message. My coworkers and I decided that our department needs to have a greater presence on the web, and from that we created a YouTube channel for adapted physical education as a resource for parents, students, and other educators. We’ve probably learned as much from creating the channel as we have taught through it. And we’ve gained a lot of followers in the process. The reality is that, with so many students using technology to communicate and learn, teachers cannot afford to keep technology out of the classroom. Technology may be the only way to reach these students to help them with their life experiences and give them the wisdom they won’t learn from their smart phones. With so many options out there, it makes it hard to choose a personal learning network. But I ultimately went with Storify because there are multiple videos on YouTube demonstrating how use it and how to embed it into a blog. I had no idea this kind of web resource existed, and I can defiantly see myself using this in the future when updating my leisure and professional blogs. The great thing about Storify is that you simply type in a search term and it collects information on that topic from various social media, etc. in a story of timeline. A word of caution: Storify works best with well-known topics as opposed to obscure ones. My first story includes a combination of adapted physical education and beep baseball using web resources from Google+, YouTube, and Twitter. |