Social Bookmarking is real fun!

Social bookmarking is a fantastic way to check your favorite websites from any computer. I think having a delicious site set-up with educational websites for students can really help get the students engaged from at home into. I put on my delicious account compass learning, study island and math websites with games. I really like how the delicious site sets up and organizes your bookmarker automatically by tags. I think setting up one is a great relationship builder with students looking at having good clean fun from home or in class. Many of our students pollute their mind with only music or celebrity websites. These sites are a poor portrayal of what life is all about. If each teacher came up with educational sites on their delicious account the resources will be very rich for our students. Teachers can also learn from one another and keep up on the latest research in education and technology. I really think that administrators should look at Professional Developments set-up for teachers using all the social linking on the internet. I am very surprised by how many teachers in our building use Facebook. Sometimes our teachers use Facebook as an outlet or a place to gather ideas. Social bookmarking might be an easier form of less complaining and more ideas of what to do. I also really think parents might enjoy reading links to articles on the latest research of teaching. Many parents tell me they want their students more engaged when they get home in doing academics and I think that this might help with that problem. I really think that social bookmarking can hold tremendous value in linking teachers, administrators and parents together. I think by setting up a Professional Development on social bookmarking schools can decide how they would like to develop a plan to implement bookmarking on their website or as individual teachers.
Technology is always evolving and it shouldn’t shock me that the definition of incorporating technology into the classroom has gone through several transformations/modifications. I like the definition of instructional technology
“Instructional technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of process and resources for learning.” Pg 1
The wheel is a good visual of the 5 areas of study being connected or having a relationship. Technology is now much more hands on for our kids to create, explore, design and develop projects/ideas on the computer. There was a time where technology was only able to support students to watch or listen. Now students are able to learn and display knowledge from programs on the internet. This Summer I was able to teach my students using an accelerated virtual math course from Michigan State University. The kids had several labs they were able to explore while learning about proofs, theorems, and math concepts. The individual pacing was wonderful for a summer program. The definition of technology created at the beginning of 2006
“Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” pg 1
This definition does a great job of explaining clearly that teachers are facilitators of the knowledge used in technology. Like any area of teaching the students should be engaged in exploring and an inquiry based learning model. Students should not be told how to use the technology but rather be able to use their creativity. I think one good thing that is missing from this definition is the teacher being listed as the center of technology. Instead the student should be driving the technology. One bad thing that is missing from this definition is using technology as a social network or collaborating with peers. I don’t think the definition clearly says anything about learning by connecting ideas with one another. That is the only thing I would add because of the Web 2.0 era we live in.