Curation Tools

I definitely have a renewed outlook on all three of the main curation tools we've been looking at over the past two days. Here are my thoughts on each: 

Twitter  - This is at least the fourth education-themed tech class where Twitter has been a topic. I've had a Twitter account for several years now, but have never got into the practice of using it. One thing that I appreciated about this course that was absent from the others (or maybe I wasn't listening closely enough) was the emphasis on using Twitter as a search tool for information. Using hash tags to help isolate useful information gives meaning to a tool that I have primarily viewed as a social distraction. Will I use it more? I'm not sure, but at least now I feel that I have better reason to.

Diigo - While I've been aware of Diigo, I have been reluctant to use it in the past because I was already set-up and had a community established in a similar program called Delicious. I decided to give Diigo a shot because I had stopped using my Delicious account, and really never used it for more than a dumping site for cool-stuff that I'd like to share/explore more "someday", but never had. I hope that I have better luck in this new format. I have a lot of cool things in there - many of which I've certainly forgotten about at this point. I hope with the ease of access in Diigo, I'll be able to unearth some of those gems. 

Feedly - Again, this reminds me of my old iGoogle account which I haven't used in years. I was happy that Mike encouraged us to look at personal interests as well as professional. I've always tried to keep the two separate in the past and I wind up with too many things to manage, so I wind up not using any of it. Hopefully, having everything in one spot will not only be a more efficient use of my time, but I'll be more likely to access all this great info.

Project idea

I'm thinking of centering my project around the use of Edmodo in my classroom next year. Just in my brief research today, I've discovered a myriad of uses offered by the program. Some initial uses I'm planning to use this tool for are: entrance /exit slips, surveys, quizzes, and sharing video.

For my project, I would like to have Edmodo groups set up for each of my classes and be using it regularly in a variety of ways in my classroom (is that a specific enough goal?).

I am planning to work on this on my own, possibly sharing it with the seventh grade team when the school year begins.

TED Talk Reflection

TED Talk Reflection

In Geoffrey Canada's TED Talk, There's an Educational Cliff we are Walking Off Right Now, Mr. Canada talks about how we are failing schools because we are following a business model in which we have not been changing even though we know that things aren't working.

I would argue that we are changing. While these things might not be as evident in inner-city schools, things like standards-based grading and the entire elementary math curriculum is very different from my experience as a student. These changes are also two of the biggest areas of complaint from parents how fear this change that is unfamiliar to them. So, while the population is screaming for change, it is very difficult because change is also resisted.

Some areas that our group talked about in terms of failing our students were finding time to address needs of all students - including: challenging more independent learners, the need to do more to engage all students in a lesson, providing an isolationist learning model (math class/ english class/ science class, etc.) when the world is not isolated.

Some solutions we discussed were using student mini-lesson models, using outside or online resources for feedback, and making students more in charge of their learning through choice.