Technology Reflections

Today’s struggle was getting students set up with their own learnerblogs.org. I followed MHetherington’s advice on setting up blogs, but decided to make some changes. He suggests setting up all the student blogs yourself, but I figured I’d save myself some time and let them set up their own. I told them what to use for a username blog name, but of course, they didn’t all listen and then I realized that they then all knew how to access their own blogs and I have no control over that. I have two more classes that I want to use learnerblogs.org with and I will take the time to create their accounts for them.

Other issues arose when I didn’t realize the time involved in giving each student their password once the blogs were created. I ended up with a lot of downtime for the students which created havoc, which, in turn, stressed me out because I was trying to keep them quiet and give out passwords. I finally solved the issue by having them start writing a response to a prompt on paper which they could them transfer to the blog once they were able to comment. There were still some issues with student not able to log in (solved that by having them close IE, then reopen and go back to the blog and log in).

While I should have anticipated some of the issues that arose today just because I am a veteran teacher, I learned from the experience – no matter how well you think something might work out, it also might not

Hello All!

I am a Middle School Computer and Reading teacher embarking on what I hope to be a year long journey incorporating new technologies – at least for me – into my teaching.

I have begun exploring the uses of Blogs, Podcasts and Wikis in teaching. After attending FETC2006, I began using Gaggle Blogs in my reading classes. The ways that I have used Blogs include responding to readings mostly through the use of a prompt that I posted. I have also had students create study guide questions and then they could comment on each other’s questions with the answers. I have also had students write book reviews and allowed others to view the reviews and leave comments.

My thoughts for future uses include the above and also to add more reflective writings. I would like to hear what my students have to say about their education.

I’m not sure what angle this blog will take – isn’t that the point? but I do hope to look back at the end of next school year to see how far I’ve come in incorporating new technology into my teaching and how it impacts my students’ learning.