Teaching Strategies Blog

Facilitating Discussion with Technology

How Can Technology Unite a Class?

In this week's video, Featured Educator Kathleen Riebe, a sixth-grade teacher at Pleasant Green Elementary in Salt Lake City, Utah, uses technology to help her students connect with each other. She presents a standard lesson about punctuation, but what sets it apart is how she gets students to talk and think about the rules in question. As her students quiz themselves on usage rules, she invites them to look at their peers' answers and discuss how and why they answered the way they did. With wimba software, students join a virtual conversation with each other through which they explore the reasons behind the grammatical conventions.

If you have ever wondered if you can use technology to facilitate educational discussions, this is the video for you!

Social Media as Relationship-Builder

If you want a relatively fast and easy way to see how technology can build a sense of community, read this article by Mark Brumley, who blogs about educational technology. His entire blog is full of good ideas for the technology-shy and the technology-obsessed. Here, he suggests assigning a reading, and then using some free social media tools to generate a class discussion around it. TodaysMeet and TypeWith.Me are two such tools; alternately, you can let students text each other.

Also, check out his post on role-playing with social media. What a great way to help history lessons come alive for your students! In this article, Mark explains a strategy whereby students have an online meet-up while they are in character, and discuss upcoming battles (the Alamo, for example). You may find that students who are reluctant to talk in class are witty and ardent  texters.

What's Your Take on Cell Phones in Class?

In this week's video, teacher Kathleen Riebe demonstrates an effective, intelligent way to use technology in order to facilitate rich class discussion and collaboration. The technology has a defined purpose within the scope of the lesson and becomes a tool to deliver the curriculum.

Clearly, technology has a place in today's classroom. But to what extent? And how much is too much? Is there such a thing? Educational blogger Brian Bennett discusses the general fear of cell phones in the classroom that many educators feel in this blog entry. He reacts to an article in the online Boston Globe which reports that a lawmaker in Rhode Island wants to ban cell phones in schools. Brian says:

"The problem isn’t the phone, which is what the legislators and teachers are focusing on. The problem is that teachers aren’t challenging students with relevant, meaningful instruction and students are bored with school."

Does this ring true to you? Should we ban cell phones from school? CAN we even ban them? Or should we react as Brian suggests: embrace their usage and find a way to make them an asset instead of a distraction?

Use Technology to Extend Your Students' World

When one of my literature professors wheeled a phone and a big high-tech-looking box in to class one day, I knew I was in for something special. We, as a class, had just enjoyed a lively discussion about a great book and, as a bonus, our professor called the author RIGHT THERE from our class. This was a big deal in the pre-Skype days! The author was great--funny, charming, happy to answer our questions. He even gave a few students advice on their own writing projects. But what I most remember from that day is how great it was to have a professor who was willing to go to all that trouble to significantly enhance our classroom experience.

Of course, all this is much more easily accomplished these days with Skype. As the blogger "Northern Art Teacher" discovered, mobile communication technology allowed her somewhat remote north-western Ontario class to have a rich educational experience with an employee from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (read the blog post here).

How do you use technology to enhance your teaching experiences? If you are new to the subject, what is one easy way you think you can bring it into your classroom? What motivates you to give it a try?