"What a Cool Tool!" Temptation
From LiteracyTentWiki
- Back to Adult Literacy Professional Development
- Back to Technology
- Back to Using Social Media
Subject: [PD 4836] The "What a cool tool!" temptation
From: Steve Quann
Date: Wed Jul 14 23:55:46 EDT 2010
Instead of approaching instruction by always thinking of learning
objectives first and then seeing if there is a technology that might
help meet those, I have to admit I sometimes find myself in the trap of
being enchanted with a new social media tool and saying to myself, “This
is cool! Now how can I use this with my class or facilitating this
workshop?” There can of course be pitfalls to forcing the use of a
technology when it isn’t appropriate. However, I often find a way to
integrate a tool appropriately when I focus on how a tool might mimic a
teaching strategy I am already successfully using in the classroom. For
example, Wendy Quinones notes that synchronous chats during an otherwise
asynchronous course seem to work well. My sense is that this is because
it more closely resembles how discussion would happen in her class.
Now it might be interesting to examine how some social media tools don’t
resemble our F2F work, but here a few examples of ones that I think
worked because they are similar to real life situations.
PD -Teachers share about a lesson activity and colleagues comment and
give advice.
Tool: Blogs to my mind can actually have the potential for deeper
reflection and more extended interchange than a short exchange in the
teacher’s room or crowded workshop.
Reading circle/book club -Worked well in the ESOL classroom.
Tool: This approach was mimicked with small groups by using the group
conference feature in Skype.
Pre - reading or writing activity - As a warm-up, students are asked to
respond to questions before beginning to read or start writing.
Tool: A tool like Voicethread http://voicethread.com/#home.b409.i848804 can not only mimic a class discussion, but does so in an engaging and multimodal way.
Steve Quann
World Education
Boston, MA
