It's the Final Countdown!

Duh nuh nuh nuh. Duh nuh dun dun. "They're illusions, Michael."

For this final post, I am supposed to pick the most useful technology I have learned this semester. I chose two. No, three.

I believe I have mentioned this before, but I feel that blogging is such as fantastic tool for the classroom. It allows students to access information about the class from the comforts of their own home. This provides opportunities for those who slough legitimately miss class to catch up on assignments, or see the lecture information they might have missed. Students also have the opportunity to leave comments or ask questions of the teacher after school hours.

For my media project, I made a couple of dubious podcasts designed to help introduce a couple of units. I believe podcasting is another great way to get information to students in a nontraditional manner. It also allows them to listen to the information at their leisure. Perhaps there is one student who just cannot fall asleep without listening to the honey-kissed voice of Mr. Vance drone on about colonial relations in sweet, dulcet tones. . .or it could just be a way to provide extra information without taking time out of your lecture. I would be interested in improving the format I attempted for my media project, utilizing podcasts to introduce units and prepare students for the day/week's discussion.

I also found Prezi to be a really fun presentation tool. Powerpoints have a tendency to be stale, and--let's admit it--most of us are pretty bad at designing slides. Mine typically end up looking like graphic designer farts. Prezi makes it fairly simple to design an engaging aid to your presentation or discussion. It's free for students and educators, so give it a look! Unless this site disappears into internet limbo (Myspace? Friendster? Anyone? Bueller?), I will probably choose this tool over Powerpoint to prepare my lectures. It is not, however, without its limits. But explore the site and see if it will work for you.

Technology just has a way of making things interesting. Would you rather read a textbook chapter or listen to a podcast? Geocaching and virtual tours seem infinitely more fun than those pull-down maps that always roll back up on unsuspecting substitutes. Students can become more active in learning by using these technologies. If I learn a great new technology, why not get students to use it? Why can't they make podcasts, too? Assign them a topic, and let them have at it. That would make it easier on me, as a teacher. I would much rather listen to a podcast than grade a paper.