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
Friday, May 28, 2010
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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