Instructional Technology Ponderings

Okay, I have done it. Not sure what I am doing yet but that has not stopped me in the past. I going to try something new called Twitter. Yes, I have opened a Twitter account. I see possiblities for this tool in education  and I think it is time to give it a try.  Twitter is like a microblog. A way in which people can communicate, share ideas, and take notes in 180 words or less.

I am going to try this new tool in my summer Information Literacy course to encourage students to collaborate by sending tweets to one another about course topics, to organize ideas, highlight references or resources, and most importantly to reflect. My goal, to get my students to begin connecting with the content. I will let you know how this turns out.

 By the way, I can be found at http://twitter.com/teresacoffman

 Want to learn more about Twitter, Educause has outlined seven things you should know about Twitter. 

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7027.pdf

Imagine a pen that takes notes, records audio, and stores all of this data for later retrieval. Well, here it is Livescribe’s smartpen. This pen is a mini computer that stores data and then allows users to gain access to the information through a couple of different avenues.

Let’s take an example of a student. A student takes notes of their teachers lectures and stores this information in their ‘paper’ notebooks. If a student is using this pen, the information is stored both  in the paper notebook and in the pen itself. A students can write notes and record the lecture in the pen at the same time. When students later review their notes they can click on a specific word with the smartpen to listen to what the teacher said at that very point in the lecture. Wow.

Students can also connect this smartpen to a computer and transfer data in order to back it up and even search for words within their notes.

This is a technology tool that has a lot of potential for student learning.