Introduction
Learners
The learners for my course will include either upper level high school students, college students, or teachers seeking professional development. This aspect greatly depends on where I end up teaching and whether the course ends up being blended or completely online. For upper level high school students and college students the course will take several weeks to complete, say a 14 to 16 week semester long course. It the course is for teachers seeking professional development it may cover just the very basics of introduction to web 2.0 and social media uses in the classroom and cover fours weeks or two full days of staff development. I do not have a current teaching assignment so I want to leave this course a little bit open so as to be flexible and to meet the needs of the populations I will be serving through my course on Introduction to Social Media Literacies.
Authentic Assessment
This course will be authentic assessment based. Students will have wide variety in choice of activities and those activities will have applications to the real world. I was following a twitter discussion on #edchat today and found that many teachers believe that students know and understand how to use web 2.0 tools and the various forms of social media, but research pointed out that only 7% of high school students have even used twitter. Steve Anderson @web20classroom wrote, "Digital tools won't help support "creation" if kids aren't creating new knowledge. Regurgitation of info won't cut it. Tech isn't always the answer. Often its never the answer. Just a tool to use to do something." This data helped me to realize that we as teachers can not assume that our students come to us with all the digital literacy skills that the lame stream media and some in research, especially the digital native activists, purport them to have.
As teachers it is our role to help learners to understand digital tools that can help them solve real world problems. And for assessment to be authentic it needs to include contexts in which learners are using the knowledge in real-life situations. Engaging with experts through the use of social media can help to make learning more meaningful and authentic to learners. I know that as I interact with my peers in educational technology and digital information fluency that I am making connections to learning that I am passionate about and getting feedback on my ideas from leaders in social media literacies.
There has been a lot of chatter this week about self directed student learning. If we achieve self directed learning, then we will have achieved true authentic assessment.
The learners for my course will include either upper level high school students, college students, or teachers seeking professional development. This aspect greatly depends on where I end up teaching and whether the course ends up being blended or completely online. For upper level high school students and college students the course will take several weeks to complete, say a 14 to 16 week semester long course. It the course is for teachers seeking professional development it may cover just the very basics of introduction to web 2.0 and social media uses in the classroom and cover fours weeks or two full days of staff development. I do not have a current teaching assignment so I want to leave this course a little bit open so as to be flexible and to meet the needs of the populations I will be serving through my course on Introduction to Social Media Literacies.
Authentic Assessment
This course will be authentic assessment based. Students will have wide variety in choice of activities and those activities will have applications to the real world. I was following a twitter discussion on #edchat today and found that many teachers believe that students know and understand how to use web 2.0 tools and the various forms of social media, but research pointed out that only 7% of high school students have even used twitter. Steve Anderson @web20classroom wrote, "Digital tools won't help support "creation" if kids aren't creating new knowledge. Regurgitation of info won't cut it. Tech isn't always the answer. Often its never the answer. Just a tool to use to do something." This data helped me to realize that we as teachers can not assume that our students come to us with all the digital literacy skills that the lame stream media and some in research, especially the digital native activists, purport them to have.
As teachers it is our role to help learners to understand digital tools that can help them solve real world problems. And for assessment to be authentic it needs to include contexts in which learners are using the knowledge in real-life situations. Engaging with experts through the use of social media can help to make learning more meaningful and authentic to learners. I know that as I interact with my peers in educational technology and digital information fluency that I am making connections to learning that I am passionate about and getting feedback on my ideas from leaders in social media literacies.
There has been a lot of chatter this week about self directed student learning. If we achieve self directed learning, then we will have achieved true authentic assessment.