Digital Community Participation Project!

The first thing that I did for this project was create a Pinterest board focused exclusively on literacy. While I was familiar with Pinterest before beginning this project, I had not taken advantage of the website as a way to find teaching resources. Now, I've created boards for Science, Social Studies, and Math as well to keep my resources organized. I definitely see myself using Pinterest as a resource for teaching in the future. It's an awesome way to keep everything organized and in one place. The beautiful thing about Pinterest is that you are adding more than just activities to your "boards." You're adding whole websites. This means that EVERY online teaching resource that you find can be added to your Pinterest board, including blogs, Twitter groups, and Goodreads groups. The only downfall of Pinterest is that it can be difficult to find a particular pin once you have pinned a good bit. I have made sure to add a good description for each pin to help me keep track of them better. In the future, I may break down content areas even more so that there are less pins on each board.

The next community that I experimented with was Goodreads, which I LOVED. (I can not emphasize that enough.) Since discovering the community, I have used it almost daily, both to find new children's books and also to find books for myself. After rating a few books and marking a few books as "to-read," I started getting recommendations for children's books I had never even heard of that I would love to check out. I created a "future classroom" bookshelf where I've created a (rapidly growing) list of books that I want to purchase. As I scrolled through the endless list of children's books, I couldn't help but think of lesson after lesson that could use each book in the classroom. I also joined several groups for educators and lovers of children's and young adult's books, as well as a few book clubs just for myself. This website is extremely valuable for getting ideas and reviews on children's books from other educators, and I already know that I will be using it on a regular basis in the future. I never would have found this community without taking this class. (Thank you, Beth!)

Digital Is...

The major benefit of having students publish their writing online, in my opinion, is that it gives them an authentic audience. Of course, the teacher is always an audience for student work, but students appreciate the ability to share their pieces with a wider audience. Unfortunately, there is barely enough time in the school day to incorporate a daily writer's workshop, much less to incorporate time for each student to share their pieces. This is an area where teachers can fully take advantage of the digital tools available to them today. Having students publish their pieces in an online blog allows their peers to read them whenever they have time and give feedback where they can. Beyond their peers, students can receive feedback from their families and people around the world as well.

When students publish their work online, they are constantly reminded that they are writing for an audience. When writing is published online, people WILL read it. If writing is published on a class blog, each student's classmates will have the opportunity to read ALL of their work. They can then help each other find their strengths and weaknesses and improve. Teachers in each grade and across grade levels at the school can collaborate so that their students can read work from students in other classes, increasing the opportunity for students to receive valuable feedback about their work. Teachers can make their blogs available to principals and other administration at the school, allowing them to give feedback to students as well as keeping them up to date with what is going on in the classroom. Parents, grandparents, and other members of the community can read the students' work, bringing them in to the classroom. Then, using resources like #comments4kids on Twitter, teachers can open up the blog to classrooms across the country and around the world.

Amazingly, with so many resources available, I have not seen many teachers incorporate technology like this in the classroom. My field placement is in a first grade classroom, where it would be extremely difficult to incorporate technology in this way (students have trouble typing ANYTHING, let alone publishing full pieces.) I have spent time in classrooms in higher grade levels, however, and I have not seen teachers taking advantage of the technological resources available to them. Meanwhile, students are struggling to find purpose for their writing. I am thankful that digital resources have been emphasized so much in this class. While I definitely understand the advantages of having students publish online, I was unaware of the amount of safe resources available for kids to use. I will undoubtably search for ways to incorporate these resources in to my classroom regardless of the age of the children that I am working with.

Technology in the Classroom

Before last week, I had not thought very much about using technology in the classroom at all. I was in elementary school at a time before Facebook and Twitter, and I have always envisioned my future classroom being similar to the ones that I grew up in. Times have changed though (as cliche as that is,) and our classrooms have to change with them. Children are constantly exposed to technology outside of the classroom, and our classrooms have to compete with that. By using technology in our classrooms, we have the opportunity to help our students connect with the rest of the world while teaching them how to use technology PRODUCTIVELY. Instead of only using social networking sites for fun, we can show our students the many ways that these sites can help them learn.

Now, I am determined to incorporate technology in to my classroom, especially for writing. As we have discussed countless times, it is important for students to have a real audience for their writing. Through blogging and using resources such as #comments4kids, teachers can help their students reach a wider audience than ever before. Students have the opportunity to receive feedback from people who they would never have the opportunity to hear from otherwise, and they can use this feedback to grow in their writing.

Links:

50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About:

http://edudemic.com/2012/08/50-education-technology-tools-every-teacher-should-know-about/

A collection of technology resources for teachers. The links are categorized and there is a short link describing what each tool does and what teachers can use them for in the classroom.

How Are You Connecting Your Students with the World? Skype in the Classroom:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/mock-elections-via-skype-suzie-boss

This article describes the ways that a teacher used Skype to connect her students with the world outside of her classroom.

7 Reasons to Leverage Social Networking Tools in the Classroom:

http://www.emergingedtech.com/2011/06/7-reasons-to-leverage-social-networking-tools-in-the-classroom/

This article advocates for the use of social networking in the classroom and gives specific reasons why it is beneficial for students.

Miss Night's Marbles:

http://missnightmutters.com/

A kindergarden teacher's blog. Miss Night blogs about day to day kindergarden events, but she ALSO blogged about her experience using Twitter in her classroom.