This evening (Sept. 26th)
we had a guest lecturer from Skyline High School, IT specialist Peter
Pasque. 100% of the students at Skyline, Mr. Pasque informed the
Secondary MAC cohort, use e-portfolios. In addition to learning how to use
Google docs, every student also learns how to create a Google site. I was
really encouraged to learn how the students used technology when working
together on “their collaborative projects.” This is an important, although
often overlooked, component of education – it helps to bolster students’
social-emotional learning. While some parts of his lecture was laced with
technical jargon (think of “high quality RSS feeds”), there was a lot of
information about how to better connect with a generation of students who are
“Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction” to quote from The New York Times
(published: November 21, 2010). “All of this is to help our students stay
organized,” concluded Pasque, who continues to teach his students some
much-needed 21st century skills through state-of-the-art technology
such as Google Apps. As far as my own pedagogical practice is concerned, I would like to
learn more about this sort of “digital information” as I, too, look to the
future, both personally and professionally.
Have you gotten to see your students work on any collaborative projects at your placement? We have had a handful of group activities and students are always encouraged to work with a partner on homework problems, but I have yet to see the students have to work for more than half an hour as a group on any given project. It will be interesting to see if we have any math projects.
ReplyDeleteYou know what RSS feeds are, even if you are unfamiliar with the letters. If you have gone to a news website and there is a list of recently published articles, that list was probably generated using an RSS feed. If you have ever used iTunes to look for Podcasts, most of that information comes from an RSS feed. An RSS feed is just a way to get updated information about serialized posts. So, the main page on for you blog is a lot like an RSS feed in that you create each of these posts and the main page automatically sorts them and displays the newest one at the time.