Thursday, July 1, 2010

Reflection on New Tools

Ok; some of you may not be impressed by my accomplishments, but remember, I am not as adept at using all of these tools and you younger teachers are. I still look at my fingers when I type! That being said I have a few ideas on using these new tools in my classroom:

1) Glogster - My physics 1 students usually make a poster titled, The Physics of...(name your activity). Now we will be able to save paper and wall space by having the posters made virtually on Glogster. The students will also be able to view each other's work from any internet connected computer outside of class time.

2) Screencasting - First as a teaching tool I would like to record instructional videos to post on blackboard or my blog for my students to access throughout the year. Some students need more than one lesson on how to:use a new program or to measure something with Vernier callipers. Finally I would love have to students record some of their own accomplishments, like explaining conservation of momentum, to share with their classmates.

3) Finally, we have a large interdisciplinary project for all of our senior IB students. Right now they work in small groups with students from the other disciplines. Each group has to explore a possible alternate energy source in a foreign country. They create a Power Point presentation and post them on Blackboard for viewing by other groups. Although we already have to students working together on wikis, I feel that we could use some of these other tools to make the project more multimedia or more effective. However, I will not force them to use the new technology for the sake of the technology alone.

3 comments:

  1. Great ideas!

    For #3, have you ever thought about bringing google docs into the mix. I've used it for group collaboration in the past-even just to collect notes and resources. It's very user friendly and the students have always found it be a good way to communicate.

    And don't worry....I still look at my fingers when I type sometimes too :)

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  2. I like your ideas.
    A question about screen-casting...
    Everyone I have seen so far (including me) has used it for doing a tutorial. Is there a more creative use of this technology? I can't really think of anything.

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  3. Bill -- what if you had students creating the tutorials (or explaining content)?

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