Recently Jane Hart has extended an interesting professional development challenge. Make a resolution to find out how to use 10 new tools this year and write a monthly blog post describing one's experiences with the tools.Though I have been a persistent dillettante of her Top 100 Tools for Learning Lists for the past six years, this semester I have a unique opportunity (and a block of dedicated time) to focus on mastery of a subset of these tools. Hence, I accept and welcome the "challenge!" Thanks for the 'incentive", Jane!
Over the next 15 weeks six of my students and I will be working on a project to create a "virtual European immersion cultural experience course." Among the resources we will be drawing upon are
- Jane Hart's Social Learning Handbook (and selective updated material I shall master as a function of my joining the Top 100 Tools Club)
- Susan Manning and Kevin E. Johnson's The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching
- Laurence Peters' Global Education: Using Technology to Bring the World to Your Students
- Michelle Pacansky-Brock's Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies and
- Deltina Hay's A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web
The broad categories of tools I hope to master with my students are
- a social bookmarking tool (either delicious or diigo)
- a discussion forum tool (either ning or google groups, or voicethread)
- a Voice Over Internet Protocol (most likely Skype)
- A blogging tool (I currently use Typepad—because Jane H. used to!) but I am becoming disenchanted with it and am considering switching to WordPress.
- wikis (most likely wikispaces)
- a microbloggiong tool (either twitter or edmodo or BOTH)
- a webconferencing tool (possibly dimdim)
- a survey tool (probably surveymonkey)
- a screencasting tool (probably Camtasia or Screenflow or Screencast-o-matic or Jing)
- webpage creation (probably Weebly)
Ambitious? Yes. Overly ambitious —time will tell but I am blessed with an unusually talented group of students with whom I have worked for years and who each have received a brand new Ipad to support their creation of this new course.
We welcome feedback and ideas.