After this week’s lesson and activities, I find myself
asking the same question as before, “Where have I been?” I used to think I was pretty in touch with
available technology when it came to teaching, but as it turns out there is an
entire world of cool new things that I have never heard of; and the list keeps
getting longer.
This week, I found out that there is a tool available that
would not only make MY life easier, but would help out my students a great
deal. Social bookmarking solves issues
that I didn’t even know I was having.
For starters, I was a fan of
the old school way of saving websites. I
had my favorites organized into folders based on what I used them for. I thought this was the best way to do it, but
I was wrong. Social bookmarking is
beneficial because it doesn’t only allow me to access my favorites from
anywhere, but it organizes them using tags.
As a teacher this is a huge help.
Now I can do research at home and be able to access sites that I’ve
discovered from school. With tagging,
these sites can be categorized by topic, subject, etc. Also, with the social aspect I can link up
with other teachers and find out what they have discovered. We could share sites relating to the
political aspects of education, new teaching strategies, upcoming seminars, and
a million other topics.
Not only does this help make my life easier, but it can help
out my students. One giant problem that
social bookmarking has solved is conducting effective research. During research sessions, my students would immediately
jump onto Google, type in their topic and start selecting sites from the top of
the list to read. Social bookmarking is
so much better, because now students can find RELEVANT sites quickly. These sites have been deemed useful by real
people, not computers. Other users help
decide which sites relate to their topic the best. Also, during their research they might find
themselves branching off into new areas of their topic that they didn’t even
know existed. This is the definition of
a “teachable moment”. For each class, I
might start a list of sites and each student could share what they have found
during their research. As soon as the
research starts, the database starts to grow, making more and more relevant
sites rise to the top of the garbage that is available online.
Switching gears a little bit, the first chapter of the
textbook really helped me to understand what it is that this field is all
about. Some of the points made spoke
directly to me as an educator and really defined what I pictured this field to
be. This chapter made references to
exactly what I plan to do in my classroom using the information I gain from
this course. They mentioned that
technology is there to “facilitate learning” and we as teachers play a role in “improving
performance” using technological resources.
This is exactly what I had in mind when I heard the definition
Instructional Design and Technology.
One thing that I learned about the field that I was not
aware of was how previous definitions of the field placed a large emphasis on
the “process” of problem solving and learning.
I was under the impression that it had always relied a great deal on the
utilization of media/hardware/software. The
history and evolution of the field was something that I never considered. Another thing that I learned was that I, like
many others, have been confusing instructional media for instructional
technology.
I feel as though the changing definition of our field is a
perfect representation of what our field actually is. The technology used is constantly changing
and evolving. The way we interact with
the technology is changing. What we ask
of technology is changing. What a
perfect struggle there is now in labeling it.
It seems only fitting that there is no correct answer and the label
continues to change. Regardless of the
label that we place on it, the goal remains to “bring about more effective
learning”. The way students access and
use information is changing and we as
teachers need to do everything we can to keep up.
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