Mrs. Lostumbo's Classroom : Assignment 3.2 - Blog Discussion of Technology Applications

Different Ways to use Social Media as technological tools for learning in your Classroom

Type of Learning: Aside from the fact that Instagram is a great tool for teachers to share classroom experiences with parents, it is also a great opportunity for students to showcase their own work. In social studies for example, they could analyze the life of a historic figure and create an Instagram account from that person's perspective. They could post things that he or she would have posted if the time period was occurring present day.

Type of Learning Experience: This creates a hands-on approach to research where the students are creating their own project and presenting it to their peers in a way that allows for creativity and allows for the possibility of real-life experiences.

Type of Learning: Blend space is a place where educators can put all of the important resources for a unit or group of lessons in one place. This allows students access to all different types of resources that better fit their needs. A key aspect of this is that the possibilities for differentiation are endless. You could create spaces for different groupings of students; you could also label each resource with different types of learning styles so students can access the resources that better fit their style of learning.

Type of Learning Experience:The other opportunity for blend space is that students could create their own space to share with their peers. Maybe instead of a unit test, the students have to create a blend space with at least 6 different resources of varying types. The blend spaces could then be used as study tools for other students as a place for students to showcase their knowledge of not only the content but the technology standards as well.

Type of Learning: Story bird is a place where educators can go to find books that are already created and ready to read to their students. BUT story bird is also a place where students can go to create their own stories. They can work with a topic, type up and edit the text on each page and then add images and share with their peers. I do a project in my unit on Ancient Africa where students write an ancient African Folk tale and have to use certain elements of Ancient African culture to make their stories authentic. This tool is an amazing way to give students some freedom in how they want their story to be designed, what they want it to look like and how they want to share their knowledge of Ancient Africa (or whatever topic you choose) with the class.

Type of Learning Experience: By participating in this learning experience, students are gaining a knowledge of the material in a much more authentic way by literally creating a story that meets the standards they are needing to reach. As mentioned previously, there are so many other ways to show assessment or goals reached than standardized testing. Story bird allows students to create a story that teaches students about the content rather than simply stating information and having students regurgitate back.

Type of Learning: Quizlet can be used as a simple study strategy where students are memorizing and practicing vocabulary terms and facts. It could also be used in competition mode where students are competing against their peers. A cool way I'd like to use it is to create a quizlet where the questions/answers are open-ended and up for argument. I would make it so that the students that are competing for the points have to argue there reasoning and prove why their answer is correct. It gives that competitive edge that so many students crave and it makes them really think about their responses.

Type of Learning Experience: By having students argue their responses and explain their reasoning, they are also self-evaluating and evaluating the responses of their peers. They have to use previous knowledge and past experience to prove why their answers are correct and how that connects to a real world situation.

Mrs. Lostumbo's Classroom