Instructional Technology Ponderings

I am happy with this first phase of the Wikibook project. Each student in the online Information Literacy course participated by researching, writing, ultimately conveying this new found information in an interactive and visual manner. Not to mention, each student learned how to work with wikibooks itself, within a relatively short period of time. This activity provided good experience on many levels but definitely it highlighted information literacy skills in our digital age. Future classes will work on this book by adding to it and ensuring that the content is relevant, accurate, and timely.

What a good and interesting experience.

Students in the Instructional Technologies course I am teaching this summer are creating some good projects and organizing them into a Web portfolio. They are using googlepages for their portfolio and I must say that this tool only gets better and better. I thought I would share a few of the student portfolios (this is a large class) with you. If you like them, post a comment onto their blog to let them know. They will like that.

http://dnnwallace.googlepages.com/home

http://garyleeclay.googlepages.com/home2

http://wardlawmt.googlepages.com/teachingphilosophy

http://ronellerapp.googlepages.com/home

http://sophfronia83.googlepages.com/home

http://pnjbaier.googlepages.com/home

http://hfulkerson.googlepages.com/home

Here is an activity that students in one of my Education classes participated in last week and posted on their personal UMW blogs. I asked students to reflect and explore critical thinking and the use of technology in education. The overarching goal of the activity was to analyze critical thinking and apply it to the classroom using technology as a tool to promote its use.

A student’s personal reflection is provided in the following URL - http://dkuykendall.umwblogs.org/2008/02/17/critical-thinking-and-technology/

Some good insights and analysis are provided by the student on his blog, suggesting that student reflections through a Weblog are a positive way to encourage thought and deeper reflection than might otherwise be garnered in the traditional classroom setting. From this initial blog comment, other students will comment and build on the discussion, thereby promoting collaboration and dare I say, critical thinking, through this technology tool.

Feel free to comment to this student’s blog posting.