This is one of those situations in which we will not be starting at what might be a logical beginning. We are beginning at the beginning "a very good place to start" and "in the middle" simultaneously. The logical beginning for us involves a description of online technology use in K12 settings and a consideration of how this environment is changing. I also believe it is essential to establish a background perspective on student learning to establish a way to think about the consequences of learning experiences we expect of students. I think it important to get beyond "here is another cool tool teachers could use" mentality!
I am also asking you to develop some tool skills before we consider the educational applications of similar tools in the K12 environment. The idea with these particular tools is that the tools provide a common approach for us to externalize thoughts on the topics we cover (a blog), for following online resources that change frequently (e.g., blogs), and for organizing and keeping an archive of resources encountered as the course proceeds (social bookmarking).
Reading Assignment (book): Chapter 1 in Grabe and Grabe.
Reading assignment (online):
Take a look at the ISTE standards for students (take the ISTE link from my Intro) and coaches. Standards are also provided for administrators.
Technology and Today's Learners - read the entries in the section with this title (there are several entries - this is our attempt to provide a current picture of use in schools and the changes that seem to be occurring
One note about what I expect regarding the online content I have written and assign. Some of this content consists of several online "pages". When I ask you to read the content accessed by a link I want you to read all of the pages that make up that content. This requirement does not include links embedded within the comment, but only the links to additional material that appear at the bottom of a page. The links within my content typically involve connections to material written by other writers. If I want you to read material written by other writers, I will link to this content from these "lesson" pages.
The first tasks I would like you to accomplish is to set up a blog (if you do not already have one). I would suggest Blogger (Google tutorial) if you are not presently involved in this type of activity. You might also consider Weebly or WordPress (Note that this page offers a way both to create a free blog and other more powerful, but paid sites). Tumblr has also cleaned up its act and is easy to use. What others, especially students, experience when using a given blog platform should always be a concern. You control what is on your blog, but others may decide to explore the platform you use and using a free platform kind of encourages this exploration.
I assume you have some background with blogs and blogging. We have some older content on blogs in our description of the Participatory web. This site differentiates tools and tactics in order to discuss the general properties of a given tool (the blog) and the educational applications (the tactics). This content is not mandatory at this point, but may be helpful to some.
You will eventually be expected to a) demonstrate you have an active blog and are adding posts during the duration of the course (related to this course if appropriate, but I will accept any educationally relevant post). When you are underway with your blog, I will request a link to be shared with your colleagues. I will share later projects in a similar manner. Blogging and the use of RSS (next unit) are introduced early in this course because the combination offers a way to share personally authored information during the course.
I will share a Google doc with you containing the address for the blogs you sent me last week. This is how you will acquire these blog you need to locate to add the blogs to your RSS reader. The reason I needed your gmail address was so I could send the link for this Google doc to you. We will cover sharing Google docs in Unit 4, but should be able to figure out how to use the link sent to you to get the information you need.
Note change: I have changed my mind regarding the way I will create the blog list. I will use the gmail addresses you have provided to share the Google doc and you can then add your blog address to this list. This will give you the opportunity to explore collaborative editing of a Google doc.