“Words
do not have to be published in books or magazines to be both powerful and
impactful (Fryer, 2011).” The second chapter of Playing with Media: simple
ideas for powerful sharing, was packed full
of ways to better integrate digital writing platforms into curriculum and why.
As a future educator I found all of this information not only useful but also
exciting! Two platforms that the chapter focused on and that I am going to
reflect on primarily were class blogs and cloud computing.
Fryer
defines a blog as a digital newspaper. With blogs, articles (posts) are
archived and can be accessed far into the future. Each post is stamped with a
date and put into the blogs archive. This feature of a blog in particular
appears to work better in a classroom setting rather than just a website
because posts and blog activity can be accessed easily no matter how old they
are. Fryer encourages the use of a class blog also because, “a blog can provide
the fastest way to interactively share rich media”, allows the teacher to
moderate the content on the page, and can control how “public” the blog is and
who can access it (Fryer, 2011). Blogs are also classroom friendly spaces
because they are relatively easy to use. Fryer mentioned many sites to use for
a class blog but strongly encouraged the use of Posterous.com, which is a free
program, easy to set-up, and easy to use. Fryer highlighted the importance of
the ethic of minimal clicks which is the idea that the more clicks a site or
digital platform requires often “scares away” novice learners, and that the
simpler the program the better. “I am on a continuing quest for tools which
support the ethic of minimal clicks and Posterous definitely fits that bill
(Fryer 2011).” Posterous is a great way to create a class blog because it
allows pictures and video and other digital forms to be posted to it, anyone
can post to it, anyone can comment and the teacher can moderate all of things
making sure only appropriate content is published to the blog. Fryer also
discusses the use of googlereader, wikispaces, and other learning management
systems to use as a way to share class wide material.
Towards
the end of the chapter, Fryer discusses the use of cloud computing. Many
blogging systems use the technique of cloud computing, like Blogger.com (Fryer,
2011). Personally I am a big fan of cloud computing, whether in a blog form or
just for personal documents. Whether it’s though iCloud, box.com or dropbox,
using a cloud to store your documents has proven to be a successful and secure
way to manage your documents.
All
of the resources mentioned in this chapter appear to be very useful in a
classroom setting! Safe, secure, and effective tools to share information
digitally!
References
Fryer, Wesley A. (2011). Playing with Media: simple ideas
for powerful sharing.
Creativity
Learning, LLC publication. 21-36.
No comments:
Post a Comment