למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

I don’t need someplace else to go to on the Internet. I need it to come to me, to my aggregator, or my mail box. I need it to be organic, infinitely shapeable, and to be a valuable conversation.

תוויות: בלוגים, כלים חברתיים

I've learned more in my four-plus years as a blogger than I have in all my years of formal education.

He's not talking about blogging as a teaching tool--he's talking about blogging as a personal and professional development tool. And he's saying that it's been a better learning tool than all his formal schooling. How could that be?

It's because, for Will and many others of us, to blog is to be engaged in really meaningful conversations about education. Indeed, the tools of Web 2.0 (or the "read/write Web") often trigger a personal learning renaissance.

תוויות: בלוגים, כלים חברתיים, שימוש בבתי ספר

תוויות: כנסים

תוויות: כנסים

תוויות: כנסים

Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations.

תוויות: כנסים

This portrait of a digital native is particular to the year 2007. It is not what we would have seen 10 years ago, and it's definitely not likely to resemble what we'll be seeing a decade down the line. So when we, as adults, bandy about the concept of technology literacy, inherent within that is the knowledge that technology and the digital native are constantly evolving.

to "collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences," and "use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences"

creativity and innovation now top the chart of standards identified as essential for students and that cultural understanding and global awareness have also been elevated to crucial skills.

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, נוער, סטנדרטים

It paints a fascinating, and for some people disturbing, portrait of the cultural difference that exists between teachers and today’s students when it comes to understanding the role of media in everyday life.

I keep thinking about how the students and the teachers reacted differently. Over the years, kids have acted out all sorts of playground role-playing games, from the cowboys and Indians of my parents’ generation to the Dungeons & Dragons adventures I used to play when I was that age. Kids always take their role-playing cues from iconic motifs of their surrounding culture, and today’s kids are thoroughly immersed in digital culture, including YouTube. So I can’t say I’m shocked that kids would want to play video journalist with cardboard camcorders.

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, נוער

It quickly became clear that an online blogosphere that I created with my students for the purposes of my study is a place where writing and reading are closely intertwined. In fact, the study shows that reading leads to better writing (more expressive, narrative, and personal) and, gradually, to an increasing sense of belonging and community. My students created their own networks by interacting with their peers, by reading and commenting on their work. The ones who benefited most from being part of the class blogosphere were the ones whose posts were based on reading - on specific texts (online articles, own research, other blogs, other comments).

When we think of blogging, we think primarily of writing. That’s why I am sure that there are now many classrooms all over the world where student blogs are reduced to mere writing journals.

If we look at blogs as nothing more than an electronic journal and it only replaces the written journal, than I can understand why educators do not get how blogs work. Blogs as journals do not engage students any more in the learning process than a regular journal would. A journal is simple; a student writes, the teacher reads. An online journal is much the same. The students write on their blogs and the teacher and the world reads.

The word ‘blog’ might be short for Web Log, but the power of blogs is not in the writing, it is in the thoughts, the comments, and the conversation that they can start, sustain, and take into a million different directions.

תוויות: בלוגים, כתיבה, שימוש בבתי ספר

14 - 17 year olds still yearn to participate and express themselves to society at large. The difference is that in the last few years they have begun doing it online. She pointed out 4 things that make this unique:

(1) Persistence - The fact that comments, posts, social network pages don't go away
(2) Searchability - The fact that anyone can find information about others easily. She commented that her mother would have loved to be able to easily search about her interactions, but when she was growing up this wasn't possible.
(3) Replicability - The fact that you can easily replicate a conversation (such as IM) in many other places (such as a MySpace Page)
(4) Invisible Audiences - The fact that you don't know who you're talking to.

תוויות: גלישה בטוחה, נוער

תוויות: בלוגים, כתיבה

There is a tension, I see from this reading, between portfolios as showcases for mastery, and as tools for inquiry.

I’ve been treating my students’ blogs as largely informal writing spaces, giving students about 30 minutes a day to work in them. Practically speaking, though, they don’t have a lot of time to read each others’ writing on the website, which limits its impact for them.

I think my biggest struggle, aside from the time spent, is deciding where to draw the line between my authority and the students’ autonomy. They all like having a space to write about whatever is on their minds - even when they don’t have anything to say.

Come to think of it, that isn’t much different than this blog. We all have our days, I suppose.

תוויות: בלוגים, כתיבה, שימוש בבתי ספר

As educators, we are in the business of reducing the dissemination of misinformation. Even though Wikipedia may have some value, particularly from the value of leading students to citable sources, it is not itself an appropriate source for citation.

When confronted, many would say that their high school teachers had allowed the practice.

תוויות: מידענות

I am thinking of teaching Western Civ (European History from the Greeks to the present) without a textbook next year. I already use many outside sources, but I am thinking of just going with outside sources (subscription services, primary and secondary sources, etc.) entirely next year. I want to do this for two reasons: I don't think that textbooks in their traditional form are going to exist much longer, and I really don't think that they are useful because they necessarily summarize information that otherwise is very interesting.

תוויות: מידענות