WELCOME to my first blog!

Welcome! I am glad to say that this is my first blog. You are welcome to comment on the various educational technologies that I will post information on in the next few weeks. There are links to the various technologies so that you can view samples of how each of the technologies work. Enjoy!

I hope that this will help me and you increase the use of technology in the classroom to enhance our students learning.


Telecollaborative Projects

How do teachers motivate their students?

That is the question. One common denominator for all students is the Internet and social networking. MySpace and FaceBook are a big part of secondary students lives outside of school. Even when I have mentioned these words in class, students instantly perk up and participate, because they are motivated. Telecollaborative projects can be a very motivating factor for students. One website that I enjoyed looking over was Taking It Global. It consists of blogging between students across the world concerning various topics. Various projects are also collaborated between classrooms regarding the various topics.

For example, TakingItGlobal. This website incorpoates blogs into their projects.


Please look over this wikispace: http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/

This telecollaborative project is a working wiki that has been used for several years. There are many different types of projects to choose from through the flat classroom project. One of which is digiteen, which I have decided to use as my telecollaborative project for ET 630. In this telecollaborative online program, it uses a combination of a wikispace, a Ning, as well as details within each project.

Using these types of projects allows students to become more interested in what is going on in the classroom because most of their life is ONLINE. They enjoy using the Internet and if teachers combine what students enjoy with what they learn in the classroom, it can keep the students interest. Maintaining their interest will be most important, but these projects allow reality to sink in because they are authentic and real situations for the students. These real situations can help the students in the long run when they enter the real world. Students need exposure to other cultures and experiences to prepare them for the real world and these 2 telecollaborative project opportunities allow for that to take place.