Web+Technologies+in+the+Classroom

=Overview=

Our access to resources for the classroom has grown tremendously in the last ten years. Teachers have the opportunity to expose their classrooms to new and innovative ways of learning and succeeding. Though it is understood that technology is continuously evolving and may not have the copious amount of research to back up its effectiveness in the classroom, we also see that it would be a shame not to utilize the proficiency and advantages that we can see technology offers right before our eyes.

Educational technology offers educators a number of robust tools to enhance student learning--transforming simple fact acquisition (the bottom tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy) into a string of evaluative and synthesis activities that can potentially interconnect all core content areas. When students are permitted to use the Internet to pool their strengths and collaboratively shape their learning, instructors are invariably afforded the ability to simultaneously spend more class time guiding student-led metacognitive discussions and less time focusing on individual deficits in understanding.

The web is an excellent tool to use the knowledge and to develop skills because the web can lead the students to a different place without going out of the classroom. Also in the web, it is possible to simulate different situations and problems in order to be solved for the students with the help of other students, teachers, or experts in the specific area just with a click. Those activities are useful to the students because they are learning about new topics, and at the same time they are learning new literacies. Therefore, that kind of activities allows to the students be prepared to their current and future real life.

The Web offers an opportunity for educators to provide students with a 21st century educational experience that meets students’ unique needs. In the sense that the Web allows two-way communication, students are able to take ownership of their processing and sharing of information. In this way, use of the Web is truly differentiated and individualized for students. Teachers using the Web in innovative ways can support students’ creative agency and multiple intelligences to “leverage the natural ways that humans learn” (Brown, 2000).  Learning and communication is clearly what your future is headed towards and our students need to be knowledgeable and experienced to operate this new way of learning and communicating! =Web-based tools for learning in the classroom (beyond using search engines to gather information) include: =

1. Educational Games and skills for life
The implementation of web-based multiplayer educational games foster connections between multi-faceted learning objectives and encourage student leadership, team-building, and pro-social communication. Gaming, when designed to include positive goals tightly bound to curricular learning objectives, has been shown to slightly improve academic performance and greatly improve student engagement, cooperation, and behavior. In combination, these affordances provide students with access to the 21st century skills they need to be successful in government, law, medicine, and private industry. This kind of activity could be very useful because it can engage the students in the process of solving problems in a global way, like in the real life. It is an opportunity to use the information from the web with a purpose for the students. That makes the process of learning more useful because the students can observe the results and the accuracy of their answers. The students can analyze and understand their performance in the different activities in a harmless way, but at the same time in an environment very similar to the real life one. Also, the games encourage experimentation and trial and error learning, without the consequences that one may face in real life. One example is bringing online resumes, job interviewing (through skype), online shopping, online banking, etc. to the classroom to teach teenagers with the technology they will actually use instead of using role playing or other "pretend" methods to teach about real life.

2. Wikis and the collaborative work
The creation of wikis serve as on-going, student-controlled centers of learning. Not only do wikis encourage students to work collaboratively, they are (by definition) constructivist and inquiry-based (meaning that students must acquire the information themselves before being able to share it with others). This serves as a way to empower students and encourage them to learn on the basis that it aids their peers and provides them with a class-wide product to share with individuals not immediately involved with the classroom environment.

The students can use material from the web in order to create the wiki, and at the same time they are learning new literacies, like reading the information critically on the web, and working collaboratively with peers and experts (Leu, 2004). However, this depends on the prompt of the teacher if the students just retrieve information, or if they really can create new material in order to learn some topic, or develop a skill in class. For example, create the class’s newspaper in order to enhance in the children their reading, writing, argumentative and other communicative skills.

In that way, high school and college journalism and creative writing classes may also have a way to write collaboratively using the Web. Gone are the days when writers would have to sit at their computers struggling to start their school newspaper submissions or start their creative writing assignment, not to mention, EDIT them. Programs like GoogleDocs or BuzzWord may help to ease those brain cramps. Students can sign on together to write their stories--and with each other's help and ideas, assignments may be done more proficiently. Sure, students could get together and do their assignments like the old days, however, this creates an innovative and convenient environment for the student. Exposure for writers can also be heightened with these tools, and allow writers to access publishing in a better way than without such tools.

3. Talking and learning with others
The use of online threaded discussions allow students to continue their learning outside of the classroom environment, converse one-on-one with the instructor, and share their learning through a mediated forum. Not only does this benefit the students who post frequently, but it enables those who are socially uncomfortable with the notion of public speaking the luxury of "lurking," or reading more about others' opinions and thoughts without the anxiety of posting themselves. In many cases, threaded discussion systems serve to have students evaluate and reconstruct what they have learned by rephrasing the concepts taught in class, thereby reviewing the course content and establishing new ways of thinking about those topics (which breeds metacognition - "students thinking about their thinking").

Videoconferencing to expose learners to a dynamic and interactive academic experience, maybe like a dialogue with Socrates, see a dynamic speaker like Randy Pausch, or hear a lecture from Dewey, Brookfield or Leamnson (for the academic education overachievers). The sky's the limit; a unique experience, but one which is weighted within educational objectives and learners needs, not a holiday from teaching.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lastly I can think of the ultimate career day, where children could interview scholars, businessmen (Gates and Jobs), nurses and space explorers, the President, the Pope-Rabbi-Imam, a fashion designer, a Tinker-tailor-candlestick maker. The idea of an interactive dialogue of unique personalities not usually accessible to students can push the boundaries.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I feel like it is becoming a little bit of a cliche, but I will utilize the lesser mentioned of the social networking resources--Twitter. This could be an interesting tool for the classroom where students and teachers could post resources and suggest "users' that they can follow that could become helpful to provoking discussion in the classroom. For example, if a teacher is discussing current issues in the world, he/she could suggest students to follow CNN, FOXNews, or other news feeds to keep students up to date. Not to mention they could also post links to articles on there as well. The best thing about it is that it will be in one huge feed for each of the students to access and read about in one scroll. They also can message each other on any questions they have. The database of information on Twitter too may be a little less daunting than other websites or even Facebook because of the word limit to each of the statuses. If a student is interested in a particular news item, they can further use the internet to research the topic--adding more skills for the student. This allows learning and application to extend outside the classroom, but still be amongst their classmates online and also bring out curiosity for the class meetings to follow. As quoted in the "How to use Social Networking" article by Fran Smith, "Let's not call it social networking. Let's call it academic networking".

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. Experiments
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The students can also experiment about many topics with a smartboard, for example the use of smartboard to make simulations in design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The same thing could be used to teach children about physics, as in this link http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/magic_pen

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this kind of task the teacher can give a prompt to the students, and from this the students can experiment with the webpage, and understand the topics based on their own process of experiment with the webpage. This kind of webpage can be used to practice and learn based in a trial and error strategy.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Moreover, this task can be used to teach about physics and at the same time to teach about experimental process without a lecture. Instead of that, the students can understand the process by their own experience because every time they are improving their strategies, and in that way their comprehension, of course with the support of the teacher in the process. This type of learning, experiential, supports Leamnson's active and interactive theories (repitition) which ultimately supports "thinking" becoming a habit.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5. Cross-cultural experience in the classroom
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A dynamic, cross-cultural experience introduces the notion of foreign culture, language, art and science. Virtual tours, literature discussions and participation in project sites are ways of exposing children and adults to unique and region specific specialties. For example, the virtual tour of the Louvre in Paris including externally placed Webcam of the approaching street can get the feel of a grand tour experience. The internet offers art, architecture, literature, books, historic landmarks, famous and infamous sites with a ringside seat into geographic areas a student might not ever have the opportunity to visit. Ever the pragmatist though... there is nothing like being in the room with countless invaluable art work pieces and see the Mona Lisa... Even though she's small and unassuming you can savor the trip to Paris, attempt French language, and use all the senses to appreciate this dynamic painting. Likewise, you can see the Rosetta Stone on video, but you can "see" the stone in the British Museum in the dark and hushed atmosphere where millions of people have proceeded you. International class projects and social networking are the epitome of old-fashioned penpals; but there's something about receiving a letter in the mail, slicing open the envelope, feeling the stationary and reading the sentiment. It's all relative and we need to put it in context.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">6. Using Curriculum Based Web Tools
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Many educators are unaware that so many supplemental components to curriculum programs are available on the web. These particular components can not only enhance learning but can also promote further student engagement, along with motivate students to want to learn more about content. [|Houghton Mifflin] has some great resources for teachers that can take students on field trips, allow them to participate in vocabulary lessons, learn more about authors, along with provides other technology based activites, such as writing an e-mail to content that you have learned. This is something that could very easily be implemented as a whole class lesson or something that individual students can participate with on a computer at school or even at home. This is also a component that can be used during before school or after school as students are waiting to go home. It is certainly a great for for students to stay engaged and motivated to learn. Another resource to enhance spelling is this online website: [|Spelling]/(is there an intentional reason the work Spelling is itself misspelled?)

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Further thoughts:
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In all, there are many ways to further student learning through the use of on-line educational technology. As teachers and other educational faculty continue familiarizing themselves with these tools, students will be able to more readily merge their tech-laden personal lives with their academic lives, creating a much stronger relationship with school and furthering their own ability to find, create, and share information with others. Teachers will need to address and foster the unique skills, strategies and insights (Leu, 2004) that students will need to use tp be successful navigating the world of new literacies, but first they will need to learn them themselves.

=<span style="display: block; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**Common Concepts:** = New technologies allow a number of learning affordances. Across our posts, it looked like we were excited about the potential for new tech to facilitate the following -
 * a sense of ownership and authorship from the students
 * increased collaboration and cooperation, with opportunity for shared experiences
 * differentiated instruction
 * simulation
 * experimentation and trial and error learning
 * increased engagement with curriculum