The two sessions this morning were all about technology and how to use it not only in the classroom but for your own personal use, which was nice to discover. Polleverywhere.com is a neat resource Alan had to share this morning and something I would like to use in the classroom. My only reservation is that we do have a pretty strict cellphone policy so that would need to be addressed first.
(Pictured above: Carol Schwalbe, Associate Professor at Cronkite School of Journalism, delivering social media session to Reynolds Institute participants)
Some of my favorite resources were Prezi, Channel One News, and Google Docs. After the session, I went on Google Docs and set up a site for my school email and played around with some of the templates and calendars available; very user friendly and well organized.
Carol Schwalbe, Associate Professor here at The Cronkite School opened the world of social media, specifically Twitter. I never knew this whole Twitter vocabulary existed until today and I thought it was neat to know and talk about.
What I enjoyed most from Schwalbe's session was really the discussion of WHY we blog. I never seriously considered that blogging really can improve writing and editing skills, use of html code, commenting and collaboration and most importantly, audience interaction.
Knowing your audience and finding your voice is possible through blogging; something I have been trying to get my students to find for years! Blogging would be great practice AND real world applicable.
So many teachers, young and old, tend to brush social media under the rug and pretend it does not exist but it is here and if teachers fail to recognize the emergence of social media, they will inevitably lose the engagement of their students and worse, do a disservice to their students who need to learn real world writing skills and communication outlets.
Alyssa Carnley
Harrison High School
Kennesaw, GA
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