Many times, we look back on our lives and we try to think about the things we have accomplished. There are times when we forget the small moments and even some moments that may be on a larger scale. Events that occurred more recently in our lives may take center stage in our reflection. It would be interesting to see how differently that reflection would appear if we had been documenting our lives throughout our journeys. An electronic portfolio is a way for students of all ages to document the artifacts of their academic experiences. Over a period of weeks, months, or even years students have the opportunity to create, collect, reflect, connect and finally present a portfolio that displays an array of selected artifacts for an audience to admire and evaluate. These portfolios integrate technology into the presentation of collected artifacts, and with millennials filling in seats around the world any engaging avenue to tap in to this generational mindset is one that we must explore.
Electronic portfolios may mold easier into an educational environment where students are more technologically advanced, older and more independent. Typically students that are already knowledgeable about creating hyperlinks, uploading documents and manipulating web authoring programs will have more success developing an electronic portfolio. However, the procedures in creating a portfolio can be taught to many students with explicit modeling and practice. These portfolios display students' data, progress and mastery of skills and objectives over a period of time. Through the implementation of electronic portfolios, visual learners are provided with the opportunity to see their work displayed while logical-mathematical learners are provided with an opportunity to track their progress and growth over a period of time. Electronic portfolios are a way for students to reflect on their academic journeys, exalt their achievements and rejoice in their exhibitions.
How different would our journeys be if we were documenting our accomplishments?
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
One String to the Next: On a WebQuest
Day after day, people search for answers to questions that they've been longing to resolve. Our answers are found in books, magazines, newspapers, television broadcasts and the internet. Sometimes we look for answers through discussions when sit down and talk with people about curiosities, confusion or even searching for clarification. In the digital age that we are forced to face, we must still learn to work together and solve the problems of our own fortunes. When teachers bring learning experiences into their classrooms that integrate technology and require students to collaborate, today's teachers begin to prepare our current generation for the days of digital closure and solidarity. Learning projects that once focused on identification and summarization are transforming when teachers introduce WebQuests into their classrooms. WebQuests require students to use higher order thinking skills (i.e. analysis, synthesis and evaluation). The creation of a WebQuest can be carefully guided through many available websites, professional development trainings, journal articles and more. WebQuests prepare students to go beyond the two dimensional paper report and extend their learning through technological dimensions.
Naturally, WebQuests can be molded into a classroom whether one or several computers are available. Hesitation for implementing WebQuests should only stem from making a high quality quests due to the fact that high quality quests for learning take time and effort. It requires a great deal of time to search for websites that are engaging and appropriate. Sometimes the surface level websites may not be the sites that are the most interesting and teachers or designers may need to dig deeper to find more informative and intriguing websites. Time and effort continues when WebQuests attempt to challenge learners and thinkers. Creating a challenge requires thoughtful questioning that goes beyond knowledge, comprehension and application and the questioning begins to strive for analysis, synthesis and evaluation. True webs of challenge take time.
WebQuests can be teacher or student centered and they can be designed to explore any subject area. With digital learners sitting in classrooms, WebQuests seem idealistic for motivation. History and science, when brought to life in technology, open the doorway to drawing millennials into classrooms around the world. Famous North Carolinians, the United States of America, the Periodic Table and so many other topics only began to glaze the surface of possible ideas for WebQuest designs. Current local and world news could be heated topics of discussion in a WebQuests that is created to incorporate videos and images. WebQuests are webs of questions waiting to be linked, with many hands, from one string of silk to the next.
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Naturally, WebQuests can be molded into a classroom whether one or several computers are available. Hesitation for implementing WebQuests should only stem from making a high quality quests due to the fact that high quality quests for learning take time and effort. It requires a great deal of time to search for websites that are engaging and appropriate. Sometimes the surface level websites may not be the sites that are the most interesting and teachers or designers may need to dig deeper to find more informative and intriguing websites. Time and effort continues when WebQuests attempt to challenge learners and thinkers. Creating a challenge requires thoughtful questioning that goes beyond knowledge, comprehension and application and the questioning begins to strive for analysis, synthesis and evaluation. True webs of challenge take time.
WebQuests can be teacher or student centered and they can be designed to explore any subject area. With digital learners sitting in classrooms, WebQuests seem idealistic for motivation. History and science, when brought to life in technology, open the doorway to drawing millennials into classrooms around the world. Famous North Carolinians, the United States of America, the Periodic Table and so many other topics only began to glaze the surface of possible ideas for WebQuest designs. Current local and world news could be heated topics of discussion in a WebQuests that is created to incorporate videos and images. WebQuests are webs of questions waiting to be linked, with many hands, from one string of silk to the next.
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Friday, June 4, 2010
Digital Storytelling: Bridging the Digital Divide
Generations evolve, technology is enhanced and society is conforming to meet the needs of all ages. For years, people have written stories on cave walls, slates, scrolls, and a variety of different types of paper. Today, we can watch stories come to life as they are written with voice and images through the new age of digital storytelling. The audience is captivated by the visual whereas stories used to be filled with nothing more than sounds coming from an author's voice. Digital storytelling uses technology to enhance an author's words and provide an audience with insight into detailed effects of words that truly can come to life. Research on digital storytelling provides its array of users with many tips, tools, and tutorials to bridge the digital divide.
Digital storytelling is a valuable tool for anyone, but especially classroom teachers. Students can find motivation in digital storytelling because current students are developing in an age of constant technology. At any grade level, students are recording the same stories on pencil and paper; however computers and digital storytelling give the students a variety of ways to share their work. This approach allows reluctant writers to express themselves and share their work with their peers regardless of the convention errors that may be evident in their written products. Digital storytelling must be presented to students in a way that the student know the purpose of tool and they are not distracted by all the "bells and whistles."
The most obvious use of digital storytelling is to engage and motivate student writers. The technology seems to integrate naturally with published writing pieces. The students can also use the same software to share information they learned and researched from other content areas. Individuals or small groups could research Native American groups and share the information learned or they could share the characteristics that they have learned about different types of rocks and minerals in science. In language arts, the class could do a unit comparing oral storytelling to reading written text. By recording stories, the students become fluent readers of a specific passage while also working on voice expression based on the tone and punctuation of the text. By integrating the visual arts with the content areas, the students' illustrations can be another showpiece that builds the confidences of learners with different strengths in Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. The software encourages curiosity and students buying into each other's interests and projects so that all children are motivated to not only learn, but share their knowledge within their community of learners.
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Digital storytelling is a valuable tool for anyone, but especially classroom teachers. Students can find motivation in digital storytelling because current students are developing in an age of constant technology. At any grade level, students are recording the same stories on pencil and paper; however computers and digital storytelling give the students a variety of ways to share their work. This approach allows reluctant writers to express themselves and share their work with their peers regardless of the convention errors that may be evident in their written products. Digital storytelling must be presented to students in a way that the student know the purpose of tool and they are not distracted by all the "bells and whistles."
The most obvious use of digital storytelling is to engage and motivate student writers. The technology seems to integrate naturally with published writing pieces. The students can also use the same software to share information they learned and researched from other content areas. Individuals or small groups could research Native American groups and share the information learned or they could share the characteristics that they have learned about different types of rocks and minerals in science. In language arts, the class could do a unit comparing oral storytelling to reading written text. By recording stories, the students become fluent readers of a specific passage while also working on voice expression based on the tone and punctuation of the text. By integrating the visual arts with the content areas, the students' illustrations can be another showpiece that builds the confidences of learners with different strengths in Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. The software encourages curiosity and students buying into each other's interests and projects so that all children are motivated to not only learn, but share their knowledge within their community of learners.
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Friday, May 28, 2010
Multimedia Technology: Engage Me
Webs of connections exist in forms other than communication. We are the world of connections through our own minds, and when we map our ideas for others to absorb we allow for varying perspectives. Our ideas bounce from one brain stem to the next and our connections are endless, yet we are provided with an opportunity to use an idea like concept mapping in any context of our lives. Concept mapping, in its technological form, has provided users with a new array of plotting ideas as well as discovering new information about viewed selections. Rather than pencil and paper, chalk and blackboard, dry erase marker and whiteboard, we can map out our ideas using a mouse click, a few keys and multimedia software programs. Many of these programs provide the reluctant and the keen with tutorials, step by step instructions, help options, templates and basic verses advanced features to design maps for an audience to view.
Multimedia software programs have slowly trickled into classrooms around the world. Currently, students are creating interactive Hyperbooks, research reports, class presentations and tours through a wide range of multimedia projects. HyperStudio and Inspiration are two software programs that provide students and teachers with a new approach to concept mapping and multimedia development. The International Society for Technology in Education (2000) has provided teachers with a systematic approach to integrating multimedia projects and daily learning and teaching. With this systematic and step by step approach to implementation of this technological advancement, new and old classrooms can come together as one and learn the ways of 21st century presenters.
Students sit in classrooms around the globe day after day daring teachers to engage their brains. When teachers submerge their students into roles that force constant interaction with stimulating technology, they dare their students to sit back and remain apathetic. Multimedia software that provides new, interactive, designs in concept mapping and projects brings to life an oral presentation or research report. A tri-fold board is no longer needed in reciprocal teaching when the leader and the learner can actively participate in a setting that was once leader and listener. Multimedia technology is a way to awaken the digital learners of our world and connect the web of minds that sit in solitude day after day.
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Multimedia software programs have slowly trickled into classrooms around the world. Currently, students are creating interactive Hyperbooks, research reports, class presentations and tours through a wide range of multimedia projects. HyperStudio and Inspiration are two software programs that provide students and teachers with a new approach to concept mapping and multimedia development. The International Society for Technology in Education (2000) has provided teachers with a systematic approach to integrating multimedia projects and daily learning and teaching. With this systematic and step by step approach to implementation of this technological advancement, new and old classrooms can come together as one and learn the ways of 21st century presenters.
Students sit in classrooms around the globe day after day daring teachers to engage their brains. When teachers submerge their students into roles that force constant interaction with stimulating technology, they dare their students to sit back and remain apathetic. Multimedia software that provides new, interactive, designs in concept mapping and projects brings to life an oral presentation or research report. A tri-fold board is no longer needed in reciprocal teaching when the leader and the learner can actively participate in a setting that was once leader and listener. Multimedia technology is a way to awaken the digital learners of our world and connect the web of minds that sit in solitude day after day.
Charlotte's Web Blogging Off
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Blog: A Voice
Avenues, for a single voice to be heard, travel in many distinct directions. From mind to conversation, from thought to pen, and from idea to blog, we connect others to our world. We cannot always reach our listeners at home or on the phone, and our thoughts on paper are often sealed away on yellowing notebook pages in the bottom drawer of our nightstands. Yet there is still a way for our voices to be heard. At our convenience, in the morning with a cup of coffee or late at night when we can’t sleep, we can pull up an internet page and type the words we long to speak to anyone who will listen. We can filter our language, or forget the filter, and neglect questions that are asked to pry deeper into our lives. With a blog, we can get feedback from family, friends, followers, outsiders, complete strangers and other random people that are surfing the web for something to read. Comments on our blogs may provide us with new insight or a varying perspective. Many blogging websites have a systematic process that walks the tech savvy or tech challenged down the yellow brick road to simplicity. Blogging is a window where the world can hear one voice and the voice has all the control.
Blogging knows no boundaries. A blog does not distinguish color, creed, nationality or age. Blogs may be personal, professional, political or even educational. With digital learners sitting in elementary and secondary classrooms across the globe, a blog seems ideal to merge old world writing with new. Through the implementation of blogs, worldwide connections are now possible on a daily basis. Students in classrooms across the world can have the opportunity to write generously about their literature choices, testing stresses, mathematical challenges, extracurricular demands and day-to-day life on growing up in the 21st century. Students sit down at a computer and type their inner thoughts about forty-five minute school bus rides, rectangle pizza every Monday, four-hour testing sessions and a dying parent who is waiting at home. After reading someone else’s inner thoughts, students are able to gain insight, respond freely, and question ideas on a deeper level of understanding. The circle of this online conversation continues and the blogger and the reader become engaged in this new world writing.
Often times an idea like blogging can slide through the fingertips of a teacher very quickly. Sometimes teachers lose sight of the purpose of blogging and they begin to assign specific writing prompts and assignments to the students. The idea that was once initiated as a voice for the student becomes nothing more than a generated response for a specific grade. Blogging is more than a writing assignment and it continues long after the school year has ended. It is certain that reading responses and mathematical brainteasers, via blog, could be more exciting because of the mass number of followers that the voice can obtained. It is also clear that with the use of blogs, equal opportunity to share writing pieces would require no hesitation; and free writing in blog form would be shared by the over eager, the too scared to read aloud, the student with a speech impediment, and the student that never thought anyone would read her writing. Yet blogging is more than academic. The true gain, from implementing blogs in a classroom, goes beyond standard activities. When students blog, they gain an audience, they learn that their writing is worth reading, and they write because it is their desire for their voices to be heard.
Have you given someone else a voice?
Charlotte’s Web Blogging Off
Blogging knows no boundaries. A blog does not distinguish color, creed, nationality or age. Blogs may be personal, professional, political or even educational. With digital learners sitting in elementary and secondary classrooms across the globe, a blog seems ideal to merge old world writing with new. Through the implementation of blogs, worldwide connections are now possible on a daily basis. Students in classrooms across the world can have the opportunity to write generously about their literature choices, testing stresses, mathematical challenges, extracurricular demands and day-to-day life on growing up in the 21st century. Students sit down at a computer and type their inner thoughts about forty-five minute school bus rides, rectangle pizza every Monday, four-hour testing sessions and a dying parent who is waiting at home. After reading someone else’s inner thoughts, students are able to gain insight, respond freely, and question ideas on a deeper level of understanding. The circle of this online conversation continues and the blogger and the reader become engaged in this new world writing.
Often times an idea like blogging can slide through the fingertips of a teacher very quickly. Sometimes teachers lose sight of the purpose of blogging and they begin to assign specific writing prompts and assignments to the students. The idea that was once initiated as a voice for the student becomes nothing more than a generated response for a specific grade. Blogging is more than a writing assignment and it continues long after the school year has ended. It is certain that reading responses and mathematical brainteasers, via blog, could be more exciting because of the mass number of followers that the voice can obtained. It is also clear that with the use of blogs, equal opportunity to share writing pieces would require no hesitation; and free writing in blog form would be shared by the over eager, the too scared to read aloud, the student with a speech impediment, and the student that never thought anyone would read her writing. Yet blogging is more than academic. The true gain, from implementing blogs in a classroom, goes beyond standard activities. When students blog, they gain an audience, they learn that their writing is worth reading, and they write because it is their desire for their voices to be heard.
Have you given someone else a voice?
Charlotte’s Web Blogging Off
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