Communication Tools- March 9th Lecture

In this lecture we learned about Communication tools and how we can use them in the classroom. We first discuess the different ways that we as people can communicate. There is one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. An example of one-to-one commuincation would be a phone call, it is one person talking to one other person. One-to-many is like a teacher leacturing to a classroom of students. Many-to-many is the most difficult and can be confusing, but an example would be like a chat room, where many people can add thier thoughts at any time. There are also two other, different, types of communication; asynchoronous and synchronous. Asynchornous means that the people are communicating and different times; for example sending an email is asynchronous communictaion. The person recieving the information does not have to be present when the other person sends the information. On the other hand synchronous communication is when people are thier at the same time. This is like a chat room, or a phone call. YOu have to be present to recieve the information.

Having a way for students to communicate with each other and with you as a teacher is very important. There are many technological resources that can be used to enhance this idea. You need to decide what works best for you, maybe set up a wiki, or have a seperate email just for school. Yack Pack, is also a interesting technology that allows students to actually speack to each other and leave messages. Also when dealing with communication tools it is important to make sure that they are safe for the students to use and outside people can not get into them.

Production Tools- Lecture on March 2nd

In class this week we learned a little about production tools and how you can use them in the classroom. Production means the form of learning whereby students create a product or concrete artifact that is the focus of learning. Examples of production tools would be storymercials, digitial storybooks, powerpoint presentations, brochures, comic strips or things like webpages and digital scrapbooks. There are so many different option and many ways to explore technology while using a production tool. The four different tasks that you complete with production tools are Narratives, Persuasive, Infromative, and Environmental or Participatory. Overall you pick a tool and task and use them to create a product to explain what you have learned in a creative way. The only set back is that the students need to learn how to use the technolgy and they need to not get caught up in the technology and not actually learn the content. In the end the learning is the most improtant part not the technology used. But these tools can be very useful in keeping the student attention and motiviation high, as long as a fun way to have a lesson and project.