Reflexión sobre Blogs, Wikis y Podcasts

Reflexión sobre Blogs, Wikis y Podcasts translation can be found at http://www.microsofttranslator.com/

Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society is a course that should be required for all in-service teachers. This course gives its students real-life experiences with collaboration, developing Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Communication Rubics, and practical applications.

The activity that is the most stressful yet collaborative is the Wiki, because it required students to think differently about working together to produce a product. My first thought was to have a group leader and then to develop tasks for co-workers. This is 20th Century 'division of labor' methodology for creating a product.  In this model, there is a boss and co-workers with each co-worker in a cubicle making their ingredient but not knowing  about or having input to the other ingredients of the final product.

The Wiki activity gave me a peek at 21st Century group work.  It reminds of the  TV show Criminal Minds, where every team member contributes to the effort, yet no one seems to have a defined role.
If educators could change the classroom environment, so that no one has a defined role, yet the team moves forward toward a stated goal, I believe this model would be in-line with 21st Century collaboration.

Teaching students to develop this type of collaboration will require educators to develop scenarios that engage students on all levels of the Revised Blooms' Taxonomy. The revised taxonomy ask the question, can the student create a new product or point of view?"  Perhaps this should be changed to "can the students create a new product or point of view?"

I have always had the opinion that teachers lecture too much. I remember in middle school and secondary school, wishing that we could do something other than listening.
I plan to use a dynamic approach to teaching with the help of Dr. Richard Felder's model of instruction.
In his video "Introduction to Learning Styles", http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Learning_Styles.html
I am impressed by his four constructs, sensing - intuitive, visual - verbal, active - reflective, and global - sequential. I am going to use Dr. Felder's model as a starting point to develop my own teaching style.

My long term goal is to rework my Education Philosophy to include more student authentic digital work and secondly to rely more on students engaged in scenarios. This can be accomplished by using, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcast. All of the activities in this course will be used in my classroom to transform the learning environment.
Finally, several answers on the checklist have changed, beginning with modeling reflective practices and I using the blog to have students reflect on what they have learned. Another change is providing students with opportunities for sharing and presenting information by using the Podcasting site that was during this course. Lastly, collaboating with students to explore and evaluate new emerging technologies with the help of the Wiki site.

In conclusion, this course is exactly what I have been looking forward to enhance my teaching.