Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Tools I Use - Part 1

After presenting at our iSITs boot camp yesterday, I realized that although I was presenting about educational philosophy change and a change of pedagogy, my audience was caught up in the tools. I maintain that it is not the tool that will increase student learning, but the way you use it and the way you use your f2f time with students.
With that said, this is will be the first of a series of posts on the "cool tools" that I use and how I use them.
1. Edmodo is the most powerful student to teacher tool I use. As a high school ELA teacher, I find it a much more effective way to gather information and assignments, share feedback and resources and incorporate any out-of-school activities we have.  For instance, doing a group research with a class in another country.
2. Twitter is my most powerful professional development tool. This is where my professional learning network (pln) is located. The people I follow and the people who follow me help support me in my professional growth and I am able to continue that growth any day at any time. I also find some of my coolest tools via twitter.
3. Delicious is my organized chaotic resource cupboard. I use delicious to save videos, resources, images and many other "things". I also use this as a powerful search tool and when looking for specific topics that I know members of my pln are interested in, I search there accounts to find what usually turns out to be "the best stuff".
Stay tuned for more to come.