The use of the class blog I think will be a good addition to a 21st century classroom. It uses many of the different skills that we want our students to learn to communicate, to think creatively and critically, and work and share collaboratively with their peers and the world, This makes the tool stand out from the others in the way it can be used in the classroom. The versatility of the blog will allow for students to make contributions based not just on writing but they can use many of the multimedia tools and things that we also learned about in this course. Students will be able to add pictures, video, Slides, Docs, screencasts and more to their blog posts.
There's a quote that I'm sure I'm going to mess up a little bit and I don't remember who it's from but it said something like this, "when students are writing for others they will make sure it's good. When students are writing just for the teacher, they will make it good enough". Having an audience outside of the classroom can be exciting and help our students understand the importance of the writing process and carefully communicating ideas.
In addition to share thoughts on the web, students will be able to critique and communicate feedback to their peers. This will help them become a good digital citizen in producing good, positive feedback that is specific and helpful. Being able to give AND receive this feedback can be a little scary at first, but hopefully I can create a classroom culture that allows for this. Doing this course and being challenged in different types of technology I might not have done has helped me stay in the learning mindset--learning new things can be hard, scary and fun. Hopefully I can share that with the students.
Derrick
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