Blog about Blogs

Chapter 3 of New Tools, New Schools really helped to put all of this information into perspective. Now I have a better (but not full) understanding of the functions of different tools and what can be done with them.
Blogs can be used by administrators to communicate with the faculty so it won't be a top down or bottom up distribution of power but rather a mutual process in decision making. Teachers can use blogs to communicate with students and their parents. Students can use them to improve their writing skills, learn from other students, form their opinions, and share their ideas with others.
With wikis, students can read, collaborate, peer edit, and make electronic portfolios. With both blogs and wikis, there is a danger that information and writing are inaccurate. There is also a danger that the content is subjective or trying to support a point of view. A good 21st century skill to have is the ability to evaluate content and question the accuracy of information and the purpose of the author.
The teachers at our school are being trained in Moodle next week and I plan to use it for my capstone project in training teachers to work with ELLs. I think this tool would be best because I read that you can include blogs and wikis in it, divide the content into modules, make quizzes, and have discussions. I also want to conduct a survey with the teachers as a pretest to determine the content of the training and a posttest to measure the results of the training. I learned that zohopolls would be a good tool to use for that. I also want to start using this stuff in the classroom!

Blog Subscriptions

I am coteaching ELL U.S. history this semester and borrowed Emily's choice which is
http://ushistoryeducatorblog.blogspot.com/
I also think that http://www.elearnspace.org/ will be useful to find effective ways to use technology in the classroom.

course goals

I hope to become comfortable with using new technology in the classroom and for my personal life.  I finally broke down and got a cell phone this year, which shows my resistance towards adapting to technology.  I associated lack of personal communication with new technology but this class has already shown some of the benefits that technology offers, and as an educator I need to learn about it before I evaluate it.  I think that potentially I can use what I learn in this class with my students and the teachers at my school.  I just fear that my computer will break down if I try to do too much with it and that our lives are becoming too simulated and less authentic.  Hopefully this class will prove me wrong.