Putting the Pedagogy into the Tools

Putting the Pedagogy into the Tools by Anne Davis

I enjoyed this presentation and how Ms. Davis incorporated these tools into her lessons with students. Her ideas and summaries of each of the tools lend themselves as a jump start when discovering and using this free online software.

I especially liked the beginning of the presentation when she states that the teachers are the facilitators of learning. In order to do this, educators are charged to: grab their attention, encourage curiosity, build anticipation, foster creativity, prompt students to wonder, explore their world, get involved and feed inquisitiveness and to captivate the moment. Wow, I think I’ll somehow post these expressions in the media center. These are encouraging in themselves

These are some of the things that I will take away from this presentation. Blogging seems to be a great way to tell a story. Students love to talk about themselves and this online tool gives the teacher the opportunity to facilitate that type of learning. As stated, this type of writing (blobbing) for the student can be profound. No longer are they writing for the teacher and a grade but to connect with others, a wider audience in a place where they can be heard. Blogging can encourage and show respect for writers and their ideas, it promotes ownership and creates an archive of their writings. This is a great tool to incorporate into any curriculum or discipline.

There are a few of the highlighted programs that I would like to try using with the students in media classes. I would like to use Audacity with students and record them reading stories to share with others in their class or other grade levels. Using Flickr I would like to use Ms. Davis’ idea to show visual images with a descriptive writing project. Skype is a tool I would like to use with a partner school in our district in conjunction with the SmartBoard & webcam to discuss and share book talks similar to what they do at the end of the Reading Rainbow videos. Google maps could be used with all grade levels to make visual connections with places that are being discussed in stories or classrooms. Mindmeister will be a great way to create images and share mindmaps. This could be model initially as a group project and eventually used to organize thoughts. Others tools that I don’t have specific plans for but will like to experiment and share with others include: PBwiki, SlideShare and Talking Cats Generator (kids will love this!). A grandiose plan would be to create blogs with the upper elementary students and throughout the year include many of these tools into their pages.