Microblogging in Education

Here are the links for 2 useful sites in which explain how Microblogging can be used in education:

http://teachingall.blogspot.com/2008/07/microblogging.html  

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2008/06/24/01twitter_web.h02.html

With Microblogging, you are able to view or write about simple things you may be doing at that particular moment.  It's a shorter, quicker version of Blogging.  Microblogging would be a great technological tool for ELA teachers in the mid-elementary to middle school years.  Microblogging would allow students to write simple sentences about the events going on in their lives throughout a day.

As with many online communication devices, the notion of privacy weighs heavily in importance.  We are, after all, talking about children and their safety and privacy from online predators come first.  Teacher-controlled accounts can exist, but the teacher must be dedicated to always staying on top of the privacy issue.

A Plethora of Review Games

The post that I read was off of http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/ . It was called "A Plethora of Review Games" and talked about different ways to review in a middle school class. I am a middle-school teacher, and so from the beginning, when the author said "as a middle-school teacher..." this post caught my eye. I think if you are a good teacher, you can find ways to adapt many games or means of review to your content area. I try to "beg, borrow and steal" whenever I can, regardless of the subject the idea originates in. Great post - check it out:

http://21csyers.blogspot.com/2008/09/plethora-of-review-games.html

http://edubloggerworld.ning.com/

http://edubloggerworld.ning.com/

The above is the social networking group that I chose to visit and briefly explore. Originally, I tried to find a social networking group for teachers of Spanish, but the ones that I looked at didn't seem like they had recent activity, so I decided to nix them. I like this group because it appeals to all teachers, and with quite a bit of emphasis being put on interdisciplinary skills in the district that I am working in, I think it would be useful for me to search for ideas on how to connect material in my class to other subject areas. I currently belong to professional organizations for LOTE teachers, however I feel Edublogger offers a peek into others' classrooms, no matter what the subject or grade level.

A learner is like....

A learner is like the planet Earth - standing still is not an option. I use this analogy to describe today's learner because today's learner cannot and should not be satisfied using only the knowledge that was learned in college, or any other sort of required schooling. Siemens says in his article on Connectivism that "Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime. Information development was slow. The life of knowledge was measured in decades. Today, these foundational principles have been altered. Knowledge is growing exponentially. In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years". To paraphrase, one cannot simply function in today's technological world without an open mind to learning the new technology that can be used for both personal and professional purposes. Siemens also says in his article, "Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important that what we know today". To learn technology is to prepare for and succeed in the future. A good learner is not satisified with knowing "just enough to get by", but rather is always standing on the verge of learning what's out there.