Professional Development CEP 815 Script An important feature of the 21st century is the prevalence of technology in education. As a teacher striving to address students’ different needs, you have to consider the main learning strategies such as independence, self-pacing, and online access. If you’re thinking about a place to post assignments for students, another for students to submit their assignments, and a practical way to monitor students’ progress, then you need to become familiar with Google sites, Edublogs, and NetviBes. (In each case, show a pic of Web, Blog and Netvibes) Google sites allows you to organize your assignments into folders and subfolders so students can access them easily. This will allow students to access the material from anywhere and adopt the pacing that suits them best. They don’t have to attend a face-to-face lesson or worry about not assimilating things from the first time. Edublogs allows students to submit their assignments by publishing their work online. Their work will be accessible to anyone who logs on to their blog. The teacher can then visit any student’s blog and post a comment online. Students can also post comments to their peers, which gives the activity a finer educational touch. Edublogs are customizable, adding a personal feel to an otherwise dry online space. Students can choose from a wide variety of themes, …. They can add their own picture so viewers can identify them, … And they can do much more to personalize their blog. The question remains: How are you going to keep track of students’ work? That is, how will you know who submitted their work and when? Your solution is NetVibes. NetVibes is a feed aggregator that alerts you whenever students publish their work. All you need to do is add your students’ blog address to your NetVibes page. When students publish their work, you’ll be alerted by a number displayed on their blog bar showing how many new entries have been published. If you have different classes, you can set a color for each class for easy tracking.
Created by: Jean-Claude Aura
Date: May 2010
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Professional Development CEP 815 With Google sites, Edublogs, and NetVibes, you’ve formed a complete circle that will not only allow you to cater for the students’ multiple needs, but will also make your life as a teacher much easier. Join us on our next workshop to learn more about these 3 educational tools. Hope to see you there.
Created by: Jean-Claude Aura
Date: May 2010
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