"I'm currently teaching first year university students and require them to blog. There are many benefits for having them blog but I've found it to be one of the greatest ways I've been able to get into the thinking and process of my their learning. Asking them to describe their learning and thought process provides me with insight not only to appreciate their efforts but to inform my instruction and decide on what further supports I can provide to take them to the next level. This technology remains a powerful way for learners to reflect and share their thinking on a variety of endeavors. As much as teachers and schools say that process is as important as product, this often is more lip service than practice. Process takes time and talking about learning can be tiresome. The transparency of blogs make this a shared experience that no doubt can provide all students a greater opportunity to learn from each other. The advent of blogs in schools often is deployed as a way to bring technology into schools. That's the wrong reason. I recently read this quote on Doug Johnson's blog:
At a conference last week, Mark Weston from Dell computing stated that asking the question, "Does technology improve student learning?" is the wrong question. The question should be, "Does technology support the practices that improve student learning?"
"Use our comic builder to draw your own comics, caption photos, take webcam pictures and add speech balloons. Read, rate, and comment on comics made by people from all around the world."
"This is a really nice tool for adding questions to YouTube videos. It removes ads and tracks student progress. The interface is really slick." -- Kevin Smith
"One feature of Google spreadsheets is there is a function called ImportRange that allows you to pull data out of one sheet and into another. This can be really useful, if for example you have a spreadsheet that you are using to collaborate with others, and then somewhere along the line you want another person to be able to see some of the data in the sheet but not all of it. e.g. if you are using this to track student grades, you could have a master sheet that you and other tutors can see all of, you could then create a separate sheet for each student, and pull through only the data that refers to them (you then share that sheet with the student) and they have a live constantly updating record of what they have achieved etc."
YouTube Blog: Opening up a world of educational content with YouTube for Schools. A great article introducing this new feature from YouTube. I am SOOOOO glad my district's network has unblocked this!