Today’s students learn in an educational system that is
working to develop key skills that will make students marketable and productive
citizens in an ever increasingly digital world.
The basics of the 3R’s of generations past have been replaced with
standards and benchmarks that cover every subject a student studies at every
grade level in their educational career.
Technology has not been left out of this mix. Students now are expected to master skills,
such as, communication, collaboration and digital publishing which are all part
of a set of national technology standards called the National Educational TechnologyStandards for Students (NETS-S) (NETS for Students 2007, 2007) . These important skills can be practiced and
honed in our classrooms thanks to a number of educational web 2.0 tools now
available to teachers all over the world.
Communication
has changed in today’s classroom.
Historically, classrooms included students who waited for a question
from the teacher and then students raised their hand (or didn’t) to answer the
question. Teachers in those days heard
from only a small fraction of what their class was thinking about. Students today live in a world swamped with
communication in all types of formats.
Teachers today can support the NETS-S standards by using web 2.0 tools
like Edmodo and Padlet to give students another way to respond to
questions. Both of these digital tools
are great examples of educational back channels, or using technology to provide
a voice to students without interrupting class or after the school day has
ended (Holland, 2014) . Edmodo (About Edmodo, 2014) is a platform that
has the look of a social media website, but really is a technology tool for
teachers to deliver information and questions to students and provides a
delivery method for students to respond back to the teacher and his or her
classmates. Padlet (Padlet, 2014) , is another web 2.0 tool that teachers
have found useful as a communication tool for students. This virtual “board” allows a student to pin
messages on it about topics being discussed in class, etc.
Collaboration
is another NETS-S skill being supported through web 2.0 tools. More than ever before, students can
collaborate in real time without even being in the same building. Two excellent tools for this include the nonlinear
presentation tool, Prezi and a free resource from Google, called Google
Docs. Student’s ability to collaborate
from afar is something that they will apply in a real world career type of
setting so acquiring these skills in school is an advantage. Prezi has an environment where students can
work on their parts of a presentation in real time with classmates and bring
the presentation all into one (Prezi, 2014) . Google docs is a more open resource when it
comes to sharing. These tools range from
word processing and spreadsheets to digital presentations and drawing
applications all of which allow students to creatively collaborate using the
tool that best fit their needs.
Publishing
is a NETS-S skill that is not new to education, but publishing has become far
easier in the digital world. Web tools
like Google Blogger and Wikispaces now allow students to author their own
content and allow for a place to publish their content to share with the
world. The idea that anyone in the world
could read your authored work creates a very different writing approach than
writing something that only your teacher will likely see for grading
purposes. Students are more likely to put
more effort into their writing when being published for the entire world vs.
just their teacher and classmates.
Allowing students to publish themselves using a blog or a website is a
great way to refine the writing process and incorporate student to student
editing.
These resources
and numerous other web 2.0 tools are available for teachers to integrate into
the topics of study. Most of these tools
are generic enough that they could apply across grade levels, content areas,
etc. The NETS-S standards were written
to support all K-12 teachers, but more importantly to support students in
acquiring the skills necessary to be a critical part of our society and culture
well after their K-12 education has come to an end.
References:
About Edmodo. (2014). Retrieved June
7, 2014, from Edmodo: https://www.edmodo.com/about?language=en
NETS for Students 2007. (2007).
Retrieved June 7, 2014, from www.ISTE.org:
http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007
Padlet.
(2014). Retrieved June 7, 2014, from Padlet: http://www.padlet.com
Prezi.
(2014). Retrieved June 7, 2014, from Prezi: http://www.prezi.com
Holland, B. (2014, May 21). The
Backchannel: Giving Every Student a Voice in the Blended Mobile Classroom. Retrieved
June 3, 2014, from Edutopia:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/backchannel-student-voice-blended-classroom-beth-holland
