So Much More Than Just Bookmarking

When I would hear the term social bookmarking I would simply think, just a way to save some of my favorite sites on my computer and have easy access to them at a later date.  What was missing from my basic definition of the term was the social aspect of social bookmarking.  I never realized how much bookmarking can become a shared community of favorite topics and interests until I explored two social bookmarking tools for my LAI technologies course, Diggo and Scoop.it.  Diggo is an excellent way to not only save some of your favorite and important sites, but to organize them through the use of tags.  The purpose of a tag is to allow you to search out only the sites you saved that are tagged with that specific key word; for example esl.  Diggo also offers many other extra features such as being able to highlight specific parts of articles and use electronic sticky notes which allows you to write and take notes anywhere on a web page.  Scoop.it is much like diggo as it allows you to save your favorite sites and articles, however diggo allows you to organize your interest sites by topic.  So all you have to do is click on the topic of the articles you would like to share or read and it will take you to all of the articles you saved under that topic.  Both of these websites allow you to follow other users who post articles and topics of personal interest, however scoop.it gives suggestions for related articles.  I thought it was

easier to learn how to use diggo than scoop.it, however once I got the hang of scoop.it I figured I would probably get more use out of that site.  I like how scoop.it allows me to organize sites and interests based on topic.  I feel being able to use social bookmarking sites is essential in today's technological world, especially the teaching world.  Teachers can find so many educational tools and successful teaching methods by searching the internet and we need a way to organize, save and share all of the important information we collect for our own personal teaching. Both diggo and scoop.it are two ways to successfully do all of those things and more.

Educational Paradigms and Technology

For this post I viewed two very informative videos on teaching in today's educational system.  The first video that I viewed was RSA-Animate: Changing Educational Paradigms and the second was classroom of tomorrow.  I really enjoyed both of these videos, not only were they unique and engaging but they were very informative both in their own ways.

The first video, RSA-Changing Educational Paradigms really made me think about how todays educational system has become so obsessed with teaching to the test that it is actually effecting the health and well-being of the children who are subjected to this approach to teaching.  I have always been weary about labeling children, especially with learning/behavioral disorders in which the solution involves medications/treatments.  This video makes an excellent point that so many children today are being labelled with ADHD, almost as if administrators and educators use this diagnoses as a means of medicating children in order to make them focus and calm them down, in order to meet their objectives and make reaching the teaching standards easier.  I also strongly agree with the point this video makes on divergent thinking.  Students today are being taught, because of the educational standards currently set in place, that there is only one answer to questions and problems and in order to succeed in school they have to accept and remember that one answer.  Divergent thinking on the other hand, teaches that there could be many possible answers to one question and lots of possible ways of interpreting a question.  This is the educational paradigm that is emphasized in this video.

The second video, Classroom of Tomorrow, was a very interesting musically narrated video that shows how technology has infiltrated today's classrooms.  While a lot of the technological tools displayed in this video seemed very convenient and great to facilitate learning, this video gave me the feel that technology has also made learning in the classroom very impersonal. Everyone in the video, including teachers were constantly looking down at their devices and not at anyone around them.  I agree that using technology in todays classroom is almost essential and does facilitate learning to a degree, but I also feel that using technology should not interfere with classroom pedagogy or with communication among classmates and group work; all very important aspects of learning and classroom dynamics.

Both of these videos really made me stop and think about how I will teach my classroom; the types of technology I will use and the types of lessons that I feel will most benefit my students in the long run.  I highly recommend current and future teachers to view both of these videos.

vs.

I never realized the potential of blogging, and its educational benefits until I started taking LAI 590: Technologies in the L2 Classroom.  I have never used a blog before but just using it a couple times I can already see how it can be beneficial for my professional development as an educator and for the learning development for my ESL students. I  learned a lot from the articles I read this past week, "Blogging in Language Learning" by Rita Zeinstejer and "Seven Reasons Teachers Should Blog" by Steve Wheeler.
I cannot wait to use blogging as a means to educate myself on ways to becoming a  more effective and efficient teacher in the L2 classroom.  Now that I am becoming more familiar with the blogging community I see myself  searching for blogs that give advice on teaching ESL and that provide links to different sites and learning tools for my students.  I would love to read and comment on current ESL teacher's blogs and learn from their teaching experiences.  Once I am teaching I think I will definitely use blogs as a way of posting assignments and lesson plans for my students and as a way to allow my students to get to know me and their classmates on a more personal level.  I feel that in order to be comfortable in the ESL classroom, where cultures are so diverse, it is essential to give students the opportunity to get to know each other in other environments outside of the classroom; I feel forming an online blogging community will meet that need.  According to Zeinstejer, blogs can do all these things and more.
Upon reading and learning about blogs this past week I realized that they meet a lot if not all of the NYS Learning Standards for All Subjects including English as a Second Language.  In the specific field of ESL two of the main standards blogs meet are:  Language for information and understanding, in which through blogging students will acquire, interpret, apply and transmit information for content area learning and personal use; and language for social interaction.
NYS learning standards/ESL