Technology in the Classroom


  

Collaborative Student Blogs    Individual Student Blogs    Class Wikis    Discussion Boards

 

I strongly believe in the importance of integrating technology into the classroom. As an educator, I think it's important to take advantage of available technology and use it to better the quality of instruction and help meet the needs of individuals who learn in different ways.

 

During my teaching appointments at UC San Diego, I experimented with various technological tools; wiki's, classroom discussion boards, individual student blogs, and collaborative student blogs. I have found that these on-line supplements increase student engagement and facilitate students taking a more active role in their learning. While using these tools as supplements to my sections, I noticed that I became less of a dispenser of information. Instead, the students and myself were able to co-create an on-line community where we gathered and shared information about the class, our expectations and goals, ourselves, and personal connections we were making to the course material.

 

Particularly in the areas of academic writing, student blogs served the purpose of creating a space in which students were able to experiment with informal and creative writing, a space void of the pressures of writing an academic paper. They were then able to carry the skills they honed during our blogging exercises over to their more formal writing assignments, building a bridge from their creative writing to the their academic writing.

 

One of my main goals as an educator is to continue to research and experiment in this area. I strongly believe that these technological tools provide more opportunities for sharing, feedback, reflection, and revision, as well as enable students to represent knowledge in more contemporary, unique, and meaningful ways. Below are some examples from my sections at UC San Diego: