I think this article really nails the best, easiest ways to use technology in classrooms right now. Using technology to break the ice and discover skills that the students possess can give the teacher and students a head start, with knowledge of their peers that they would normally have to discover as the semester goes on. I know that having the Google Presentation with all of our pictures and names in it has been a helpful way for me to remember everyone's name in this program (the Facebook group helps with that too). And knowing ahead of time which kids are able to do something, like editing video, enables you to do video projects more smoothly by sneakily putting at least one experienced kid in each group.
I think one of the best ideas this article presents is having the teacher make a website for the class. I have found that many teachers have a tendency of telling students homework assignments vaguely in class and not sticking to the syllabus, so the kids go home and freak out because they aren't sure what is expected of them. After having some college classes where teachers would post online exactly what they wanted from us, I now get a little paranoid in any class that does not have a course website, as I fear I may have forgotten to write an assignment or part of one down. As a teacher, I want to have a website with a skeleton outline for a syllabus at the beginning of the semester, and then I'll fill in the assignments for each week as we go along. I also want to have additional resources and videos up that help kids with the course material outside of class.
Apart from these more obvious ways to use technology, I liked that the article had some tips that I had never heard before. For example, the website Wordle, which can take a bunch of text and make a wordcloud out of the most frequently-used words. You could put students' papers into this individually, or even all at once, and it would likely reveal common themes, vocabulary, and transitions used by the students in their writing. This could then be used to create very interesting class discussions. I also loved how the article used the terminology "back channel" to describe the conversation that could take place outside of classroom discussion through services such as Twitter, blogs or wikis.
Tyler, I really like the website Wordle, too! This is such a great way to organize material and student work. This will allow teachers to focus more time on content and their intended purposes rather than other organizational strategies!
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