Networkingn and Telecommunication in Education – Week 3
This week we explored a variety of different technologies and technology tools that can be use to enhance our classrooms. Each student in the class then created a prezi presentation (through prezi.com) with information about the technologies we explored. Watching each person’s presentation was a great way to learn a little bit about technologies that I didn’t choose to research myself, as well as a way to familiarize myself a bit more with the capabilities of the prezi site. The creation of my own presentation was slow going and a bit of a challenge for me. At times the site seemed less than user-friendly and in the end I posted my presentation with a couple of formatting issues that I just could not figure out how to fix. My unclear window for this week is how can I best use prezi as an effective and valuable tool in my classroom? At this point, with my limited experience, the process was a little time consuming and difficult to get the end results I was looking for for me to see myself using it.
Of the technologies I explored this week, the one I find most interesting are PLEs or personalized learning environments. These are actually systems of technologies created by the students to cater to their own personal learning styles and interests. (Johnson, Adams & Haywood, 2011, p. 30) The tools necessary for creating a PLE are already available, easy to access, free to use and do not require any special skills. Other benefits of PLEs include the fact that they give students control of their own education, catering to how students learn, and they can be merged with digital portfolios as a record of the students learning and meeting standards. This technology would also be particularly valuable for adapting the classroom to accommodate learners with special needs through the use of assistive technologies. ( Smaldino, Lowther & Russell, 2008, p. 338) I am pretty much sold on the benefits of PLEs, so the only question I have is how can I most effectively start the implement process for PLEs in my classroom?
References:
Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Haywood, K., (2011). The NMC Horizon Report:
2011 K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Smaldino, S. E., Lowther, D. L., & Russell, J. D. (2008). Instructional technology and media for learning. Prentice Hall.
