I thought that today's training was especially interesting since I hadn't had the chance to use many of the tools that we learned about aside from the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. I do think that Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites can be very useful in a school setting, but I'm not counting on the teachers and school administrators being especially receptive to them initially. From my experience working in schools, a lot of people have a pretty narrow view of how students can use social networking, which is basically that students will just go on MySpace and post inappropriate things. I think that at least at first, getting teachers to start blogs would be received more enthusiastically.
I think that the open source software that we looked at (and open source software in general) is something that teachers will be really excited to use themselves and to have their students use. I know that teachers are always looking for new things that will keep students' attention and that they have to be pretty creative due to budget constraints, so it's a pretty perfect situation to be using open source software. I also think that the software we used to make tutorials was really easy to use and is something that will be really beneficial for me to use rather than having to give the same presentation/tutorial a bunch of times to different teachers. It's also good for the teachers to have a tutorial file to refer to since it will allow them to pause it, rewind, and generally follow along at their own speed.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteI think you're definitely right in regards to social networking in the classroom. It really offers a lot of creative possibilities to teachers and students, but the possible risks make it a difficult tool for schools to embrace. Moving slowly into social networking through the use of a blog is a great idea. The more engaged you can get teachers in available technologies, the more open they will be to trying new technologies in the future.