Edutopia Top 10 Tips for Teaching with New Media- Reaction

I really liked Tip #3 that called for “finding your experts”.  I know we have talked about teaching as a profession of life long learning, and learning from our students, just as they learn from us.  The field of technology is likely an area where we will always be able to learn something from our students.  We are from a generation that knows the birth of social networking, youtube, and texting.  However, I am finding that technology is already beginning to move faster than I am and many high school aged students are on sites I have never even heard of.  I hope to be able to learn from my students and incorporate new technologies or websites that they discover on their own.  Using surveymonkey, or a survey through google docs like we learned in this class, is a great tool to not only find out the technical knowledge of your students (and what you can learn from them) but to also learn some of their personal interests.  Learning about students as individuals, getting to know what they really care about- what motivates them, and ways to help them be successful in their academics before they begin the school year is another way to use these survey tools.

Tip #7 talks about using google docs as a teacher.  I didn’t realize that there were specific functions that you could use as a teacher.  I have only ever worked in goggle docs for group projects, but it seems like it would also be a good use of technology for students to keep organized, always be able to access their work anywhere there is internet, and as a convenient tool for me as a teacher to monitor progress.  Overall, I think google docs has more uses, tools, and potential than I had thought and is certainly something I will use in my classroom.