Group items tagged

its primary feature, "circles," allows you to nest your contacts into different groups with Google suggesting "friends," "family," "acquaintances" and a twitter-style "following."

The question isn’t just academic. When related to education I think it really has some significance. Of course we have all the data driven, test score driven administrative tom follery. I’m not going to discuss this silly stuff. If you can’t see that emperor has no clothes, well, then dream on….. No, I want to look at how teachers make decisions in their own classroom. Are we like Apple, generals and experts that know and with our charts, handouts, videos, textbooks – steering the ship of students? Or are we listening to students and letting them take hold of the wheel and allowing them to steer the ship?

Of course, most teachers will say that they are the later, they are googlites, they listen to their students. This is the mantra of modern education. However, me thinks this is only cosmetic. Look deeper and almost all teachers are governing their class as “experts”. We truly don’t go down to the level of students or listen to them. We all say that we “listen” and are “data informed” but when push comes to shove – I believe we teach as we were taught. We perpetuate a worn and bedraggled and very much irrelevant orthodoxy. All the while propping up and rationalizing our methods, our job, by saying we are listening to the students, we are listening to the data. However, the facts are out there for

all to see.

How can we use it for language learning?

You’ll find students learn more, are more motivated and their writing improves faster when they’re allowed to write posts.  And the best way to get them started is by writing posts on the class blog.