I chose to read a different blog for this assignment. The blog that caught my attention is called "Always Learning" by Kim Cofino. What captured my attention is that she has been teaching overseas at international schools for her entire professional career. In her "About Me" section, she explains that Web 2.0 tools allowed her to overcome some of the isolation that many international school teachers feel. Kim used the Web 2.0 tools to communicate, collaborate, and connect with others to expand her personal learning network. She shares several suggestions for other teachers who may be interested in expanding their own personal learning network. These suggestions include: joining a social network with a focus, attending free online conferences, and blogging.
The site also has a "Projects" page where Kim provides short descriptions of projects she helped implement. Some of the projects include digital storytelling, podcasts, blogs, and wiki sites. I was initially excited because I noticed that Kim had provided links to student samples. However, many of the links are not currently functioning. The most recent posted projects were from the 2009-2010 school year, so the links probably need to be updated. This brings me to one of the other things that struck me about the website, and that is how old some of the articles are. As we've learned about digital storytelling and podcasts and blogging in the classroom, I thought these are tools that have only recently been introduced into the academic environment. It does seem like teachers are still learning how to integrate them. So to see that some schools began implementing these kinds of tools seven years ago was definitely a surprise to me. However, I also found it interesting that the majority of Kim's post were made between 2006 and 2010. It looks like she's only made five posts in 2015. So it seems like much of the information and tools that she talked about way back in 2008 are still being used today, which is somewhat comforting to me!
No comments:
Post a Comment