I don't know that I have a clear idea for my final project at this moment, but definitely a few initial thoughts. I originally wanted to create a blogging projects where my students would post responses to a piece of literature and then follow and respond to a classmates blog. At this time blogger is not available at my school, however they are creating a school Moodle site. I think that will be a great place to start.
After reading the assignments this week, I am interested in how my students can use all of these new tools to do research. They do a research paper in 8th grade and are required to use internet sources. We talk about a more valid source being a source that is .edu or .gov. Also, a source that has an author and copyright date, etc. I have always warned them against wikipedia because others can add to it and therefore it may not be as reliable. I am beginning to realize that there may be formal sources and collaborative sources that come together in the research process of the 21st century.
I would like to explore the possibility of my students using Delicious or Diigo and tagging to collaborate their research, however I feel that I need to understand how to do this effectively myself before I can teach them how to do this. I did set up a Google Reader, Delicious, and Diigo account and I started adding a few RSS feeds to my Google Reader. I agree with others that sifting through all the information to find what is relevant will be a challenge and could be very time consuming.
Other tools that seem natural to use in the research process are note taking, clustering ideas, and outlining tools. I would like to explore these tools further to see how to incorporate them into a research project.
As far as my our research habits, I am guilty of Google for quick searches and the university library system for formal projects. I do tend to feel that what I find online is more unreliable than what I find at the library. This is an area that I hope to become more familiar with as this course continues.
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I appreicate your willingness to incorporate these ideas into your classroom. I understand the 'tread lightly' approach until you feel more comfortable; I feel the same way. Inspiration is a really handy tool that my students took to really quickly, so I think other clustering programs could be a good place to start.
ReplyDeleteCollaborative research is a difficult concept for me right now because 'group work' usually turns into 1 person leading, others following kind of work. In a system where everyone is invested and actually contributing, I think it sounds great. For those who 'ride along' it seems unfair since others are doing the work. Maybe that's a shallow way of looking at it, but finding a balance would benefit our students overall, so I guess I should just let it go :)
You have good ideas and the interest to make it work; it'll happen.