Social Book Marking & Education
In my opinion, social book marking could serve similar purposes within education as an RSS Reader could, especially for specific subject areas (see D/B2). However, for the English classroom, I could see social bookmarking being even more useful. For example, I would now consider using social bookmarking as a way to have language reference tools and websites easily assessable for student use in the classroom. Websites such as: on-line dictionaries, on-line thesauruses, and websites that reference and support grammar, writing conventions, writing usage, reading strategies, spark or cliff-notes, homework, organization, and time management tools, and other tips and strategies, even those for struggling readers, would be beneficial for serving the English classroom. These tools could serve students as well as teachers as quick reference tools and helps.
Teachers could also use social bookmarking individually, across content areas, and school-wide to host and share websites created to support teaching in general and specific content areas. For example, the MEAP site (or other proficiency testing sites), AIMSWEB and Ed Performance sites (which my school uses to diagnose and assess students’ reading proficiency school-wide), etc. could be bookmarks within a school-wide delicious account for easy reference to the tools that are important for educators to view and visit throughout the school year. This would be especially helpful to newer teachers or teachers transferring to a specific school to be acclimated to important sites, tools, and topics talked about amongst the staff and administration. I’m sure there are many other websites and tools that could also be very beneficial to teachers, administrators, and even to parents if shared within social bookmarking.
Trends & Issues- Ch. 1
Until reading chapter one of “Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology,” I did not realize that there was such intense discussion and debate over what to coin or how to define the field of educational technology (instructional technology), or that the issue had been up for discussion for as long as it has been.
I am surprised by the amount of attention and revising that has and is (and will likely continue) to be done to the terminology within, or that encompasses the field of educational technology. Prior to reading this chapter, I’ve always thought of it, as the text mentions many individuals do, as “the design, production, and use of instructional media.” Technology has been something that I infused within my lesson designs to help improve instruction and familiarize or help students and myself to use the modern technologies with success and ease for the students’ transition into proper real-world use/application.
I understand that the definition has gone from simply meaning media used to teach (film/video to audio-visual), to meaning and incorporating not only the use of media, but also an in depth, systematic process of improving performance (learning) by using appropriate technological resources, along with human performance technology. I would prefer to keep the definition as simple as possible—as instruction and the improvement of instruction using technology. To me, the “design” has always been a normal part of my lesson planning, and the media has been used as tools within my lesson plans to help reach the learning goals.
There should be appropriate systems and processes used to aid in the meaningful demonstration of learning, but I wouldn’t have originally thought of that part as belonging to “instructional technology” but to instruction, planning, and implementation period.
Most likely, the definition of the field of educational technology will continue to evolve as society changes and new technology, needs, and human issues are introduced to the world.
I hope to continually improve and sharpen my understanding of current technologies to grasp students’ interests, to prepare them for the kinds of technology that they will need to use outside of school and in the workforce, and to help to improve instruction, making it more efficient and up to date. In my opinion, schools usually lag behind the technological curve.
Reiser, Robert A. and Dempsey, John V. "Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. 2nd Ed. 2007.
I found social book marking, delicious to be much easier to use than the RSS. I had a hard time finding what I wanted in the RSS and had to sort through everything the same author posted to find what was suppose to be relivant to what I was looking for. In delicious I set up the websites and sorted them as I would use them. Example: I listed all the library addresses I used when cataloging items--so they were all organized where I could quickly locate them.
ReplyDeleteI think that teachers sharing web sites on relevant topics they are teaching would be a very handy tool.
Margie
I think that RSS and Social Bookmarking have two distinct uses. An RSS feed is really only useful with sites that are constantly updated with new material and information, like a news site, a blog, a magazine, something of that nature. Whereas Social Bookmarking COULD be used to link to some of those pages, but lacks the ability to show you exactly what that content is before you go to it. What is its strength though is the ability to share link to different information based on headings. In my case I think of saving links to stuff on "Computer How To Guides" or new online tools, good places to buy things from, documents and information. All these are examples of more "static" information, information that is generally not going to change. There things I need, but know what I am going to get when I get there, verses a news source which may or may not have the article I am looking for.
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