Writing Across the Curriculum

Such experiences may point the way to how personal learning environments will evolve in the future. The PLE will not be one application running on the desktop or in a web browser. Rather, it will be multiple applications running on may different devices. It is also important to understand that learners will use different devices in different contexts and for different purposes. The PLE will be based on networks of people with whom learners interact, they may adapt a particular tool for communication and interaction in a particular context but then cease to sue that tool when that context has passed. In previous projects linked to mobile learning we have tended to focus on how to transmit standardised learning materials and applications to different platforms and devices. The PLE will be comprised of not only all the software tools, applications and services we use for learning but the different devices we use to communicate and share knowledge.

A new feature currently in calendar labs adds the ability to attach a Google Doc to a calendar event. This makes using Google Calendar for lesson planning a powerful tool. After create a lesson or unit, you can share your calendar and relevant documents with other teachers in your building or district, fostering collaboration.

I suggest it is possible to ask your students to write more, as long as you adapt your grading style

But you can also use informal, non-graded assignments to allow students to show themselves what they’ve taken in from lectures, discussion, and readings, especially at a point where they may not have fully mastered the material.

Rather than putting comments on paper after paper, you can teach course concepts and writing by featuring one or two exemplary papers.

This has expanded into the idea of a social presence where one is able to be seen as a real person in a virtual environment

For a while, it’s been okay to be less than an expert in social media. It’s time to get on board. Regardless of your age, your survival in the workplace depends on your intimate knowledge of social media.

The reasons for this are myriads. Social media has profoundly changed a company’s public face. And with game-changing implications for sales, human resources, public relations, marketing and customer service, virtually nobody is left out of the matrix that touches social media.

Georgia State University students who don’t want to yell their questions from the back of a cavernous lecture hall now have another option: They can send text messages to their professor, who reads the queries from an overhead screen.

Text-messaged questions, McDonald said, are compiled on a class web page—known as a wiki—where other students can answer the questions. “It creates a knowledge base, and a knowledge base has real power,” he said. “And students love to show how smart they are.”