Webby WebQuests

My latest blog post is all about WebQuests... I believe it's relevant to this class because it's a good way to include digital media in a specific inquiry-based learning experience. Check it out...

Webby WebQuests

Sunday March 8-14 Lesson 2

Sunday March 8-14 Lesson 2

This week March 8-14: ‘Feedburner’, ‘Add This’ and ‘RSS Feeds’

We will subscribe to a number of other blogs and ‘feeds,’ and allow others to follow and subscribe to our sites.

What are RSS feeds? I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.

Activities: to sign up for RSS feeds, making blogrolls and for this week's specific readings have been mailed to your columbia email accounts. Postings to these questions are due by Thursday morning March 12 so we can use them in our conversation March 12 evening. Please adhere to deadlines.


1. For this week, questions to respond to are based on some of the questions that come up with respect to creating blogrolls and using RSS feeds. How do they work and what are the benefits of adding them to my site? How can i use them as a classroom resource and to my blog's best advantage? Reply to this question after engaging in the readings and signing up for them.


2. Question 2 comes from classmate Brownie (http://djb44tc.blogspot.com/) who is posing his based on increasing student collaboration in the teaching of Music. Suggestions and responses to his questions and comments posted on his very thoughtful blog should be posted here as a reply:

how can we help one another to envision "collaboration with students to develop a model for online communication and reflection that gives students a more active role in the direction of daily rehearsals."



(please note, the following week March 15-21 there will be no formal lecture/activity for spring break though you may continue to post here and to your blogs)

TC Digital Media Blog

Teachers College Digital Media in the Classroom MSTU5814.001

A broadened spectrum of digital learning technologies brings along new possibilities for education across cultural boundaries.

If social networking spaces such as facebook, Second Life, G-Chat, IM, Twitter, and YouTube, alongside handheld devices, cell phones, text messaging, email and voice mail -- have become an integral part of the lives of young people looking for new ways to engage in online digital sociability, how can education tap into that collective? New studies on Internet and social media tools reveal their affinity for mobile, untethered and social opportunities for interaction and cite their current uses to communicate, gather and share information.

Our first week's questions to respond to, from your own experience and the readings provided:

Mark Prensky writing in Digital Natives, Digital Narratives articles comments on students as opposed to those teaching them:
"Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."

— 1. How can we re-envision the educational potential which exists in the burgeoning number of social networks – the new media of interconnectedness? What role, if any do they play in education?

— 2. What has been the wider social, educational, cultural, and political impact of these new media for inter-connectedness?

We will experiment with social networking tools and learn to locate specific audiences in order to critically experience and discuss the possibilities and limitations for personal use and within an educational setting.

Short post on ‘Why Social Networks are good for the kids:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/24/why-social-networks-are-good-for-the-kids/


Final Assignment:

Students are being asked to

1. Join a blogging network such as blogger, set up a blogsite and post your thoughts and experiences there. Students are required to post a minimum of three posts per week on your personal/professional blog.

2. You will receive an invitation to join this blog. Discussions will be shared on this site and students are required to post responses to questions (provided by the instructors) here.

All one-credit students will complete a project or design a blogsite describing a plan for incorporating digital media and/or social media into school curriculum. The setting for the project might be the school the student actually teaches in, or a hypothetical school situation and you may use your blog site to create and promote this assignment. These descriptions should be informed by readings and class discussions, and should provide a rationale for using media in the classroom, a description of the media to be used, and a discussion of how these media would fit into a school setting. Projects will be due after the workshop date of April 25th, on Sunday May 3rd by midnight.