R/D3

Cindy Thelen
D/B3

Social bookmarking is new for me, but I found it very easy to set up. I imported all my ‘favorites’ to the site. Now I just need to find a way of organizing them. On my own computer I just click on favorites and can open up a file for one topic. I haven’t figured out how to do that in social book marking. As you can tell, I am ‘technology challenged’, but I am really trying to understand, learn, and apply technology to my classroom. Some things, like blogging are user-friendly and other things take me more time. I find it easier to learn something when someone shows me.

I think there are many benefits to social bookmarking. Social bookmarking would be a way for an administrator to communicate with staff and refer them to professional development or educational sites. An administrator could assign a particular site for teachers to look at before a teacher’s meeting. If the administrator wanted the staff to learn about WebQuest he could bookmark zunal.com and let them read up about it. That way, the staff would be familiar with the subject at hand and be ready to discuss what they’ve learned with the group.

Parents would enjoy social bookmarking because they could find teacher-approved web sites for homework assignments.

The two most important applications to me would be sharing with other teachers and students. I can only imagine the time that can be saved for either scenario. Many times I’ve looked up a specific topic on the web and have had to go to numerous sites before finding one that has the information I need. With social bookmarking I will be able to share my favorites with other history/geography/music teachers and they can do likewise. Students will be spared the wasted time searching for great websites, too. Perhaps the best thing about social bookmarking is I can find my favorite websites on any computer! I don’t have a laptop so there have been several occasions when I’ve been at school and thought, “Where was that site again”?

In terms of our reading assignment, I thought I could give a good definition of instructional design and technology, but there is obviously a lot more to it! I liked the conciseness of the AECT definition on page six (from 2006). The one the authors used was beneficial for elaborating about the topic, but was a bit cumbersome for me. The AECT definition states what I am looking for in my two EDT classes: opportunities to learn about bringing technology into the classroom and ‘facilitating learning and improving performance’. I hope to be able to incorporate technology in my classes for my benefit as well as my students. To oversimplify, technology should help me teach and should help them learn.

Finding and using educational technology that is both sound and imaginative is the job of each teacher. Using that technology to truly enhance learning is the goal.