Final Course Reflection

Here I am at the end!
Despite the feeling initially that there was so much material to cover, the course soon transformed into a fascinating guided tour of the highlights of the the Web 2.0 landscape.  I enjoyed going at my own pace, the optional detours, and the reflections of fellow travellers.
Happy memories of places I'm keen to return to are:

• Blogging (great to reflect yourself and with others)
• Twitter (a wealth of topical information, provided you search with a plan in mind)
• Google Drive (tools to collaborate and collect information)
• Animoto (engaging slide shows)
• Bubbl.us (collaborative mind-mapping)
• Feedly (all your websites in one place)
• Scootle (huge potential for finding, sharing and commenting on resources)

I think Bloom's Digital Taxonomy will be a useful reference for curriculum planning and in thinking about the lower order and higher order digital skills that our students need.  It's interesting to reflect that many students would routinely use many of the Remembering, Understanding, Applying and Analysing skills.  As teachers, we can also facilitate the acquisition of Evaluating and Creating skills through our knowledge of a range of Web 2.0 tools.

Of course, we also have much to learn from our students.  Now, more than ever, they have their own networks and resources outside of the classroom.  The more we can all share this knowledge, the better the learning will be.

The types of tools available will inevitably change.  But those which allow us to work together, to learn and to create knowledge will have the greatest impact on all students.

Finally, I looked around the Course Resource Collection which has a wealth of still more ideas to try.  I rediscovered Voki there, so I'll leave my farewell to my avatar:

Module 3

I really like Google Docs - I remember dreaming of something like this when I was doing group work for my Dip Ed!  I played around with it and shared 2 links with my homeroom class.  One was a drawing to come up with a class artwork.  As happens, everyone was soon overwriting each other's work, with little left at the end.  I'll have to rethink this approach!

The other use of Google Drive was with a form.  This was great.  A couple of questions on holiday plans generated a spreadsheet full of answers.  I could really use this in the classroom as a way of collecting results, opinions, information.

In the background I've been working away at Twitter.  I think I'm warming to it, particularly as a way of accessing a lot of new online resources.  I've downloaded Tweetdeck and set up columns to follow #scichat, #teachwithtwitter, #ceomweb2, #ceoelearn.  There seems to be interesting snippets arriving each day...lots to play with.  I haven't figured out quite how I'd use it in the classroom yet.