Day 2:
I'm feeling a little like toast at the end of the second day. Maybe I spent all my screen energy looking up garden images on Pinterest earlier this morning.
Curation Tools:
Twitter: I'm not sure I can conceptualize Twitter as a curation tool yet. It feels more like large scale talk. Processing its uses with Alice and Holly and in this morning's session was helpful and helped me to see how it can be a gathering tool. Claire brought up some good points in the discussions in the morning. In my experience, when the internet was first being used in classroom and I was introduced to tools available on the web, I felt skeptical because it all felt so commercial. And it is, but when you start using the tools and using them thoughtfully to support learning, it doesn't feel so commercialized. After I clicked "folllow" to Alice's Twitter feed, the Kanye West and Britney Spears images disappeared on my home page. The tools are adaptive. So, if you use them well, I believe they will get better.
Diigo: Being honest here...How is Diigo different from Delicious? As the tools become more advanced, they have more layers and more to figure out that don't feel instantly better or more useful. It seems like this is true for me so far with Feedly too. But maybe it's part of my fatigue? I bet many participants have written about feeling overwhelmed. When I learn a new tool on the web, I need to start using it to understand what it can do and how it can help me. So, I'll just keep the door open on that one.
And although it's not a curation tool, I worked on setting up Googlesites for my students to keep their writing work, which is a collector/publisher process and tool. I imagine using this tool throughout the year will increase the opportunities to collaborate and and talk about writing. Writing in the classroom has felt largely one dimensional in terms of publishing and sharing. I think up assignments...students write them...I help them...a little peer reviewing...I grade it...put it in a folder and on to the next assignment. One item I found and book marked on Diigo was a teacher website about more effective peer reviewing. This is a specific item that I can search for and incorporate into my ideas about publishing and collecting student writing electronically. As Alice said, you find the best tools when you're not looking for them and it feels like, duh...why didn't I think about revamping peer reviewing in the first place?
Confession: nothing I did with Pinterest today was related to school work, but I find it to be a really inspiring resource. Someone has already started following the garden design board I set up. In addition to being passionate about teaching, it's important to have other inspirations and passions and use technology to fuel and express them.
Thanks!
I definitely understand how you feel with Twitter. I think that Twitter could be a helpful tool in the classroom around the idea of building community. I could see myself using it as a way to share articles and helpful information about the topics we study in class, as well as a way to send reminders to students about due dates. Or like what you mentioned during our discussion about tweeting a positive comment about student work that you are reading/grading. I can also see how it could be helpful to build community outside of Yarmouth - perhaps following other US History classes where we could create a dialogue about what we are learning about. Since twitter is so popular with students as a way to chat/gossip/express feelings, I think showing them the different ways to use twitter and how it can be a helpful tool would be beneficial.
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