Amazing blogs

It is amazing how teacher education programs across the globe are making a pedagogical shift in response to the changing needs of education in the 21st century. Imagine lecturers who are not even assigned or qualified to teach the "technology in education" course are now required to infuse new technologies as part of the course modality. Research has consistently shown that 'stand alone' courses such as technology in education do not adequately prepare student teachers to effectively use technology in their classroom practice. So here I am.

In this Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum course that i am teaching this summer, student teachers are to expected to identify strategies for using technology to enhance content area literacy instruction. Rather than creating their personal blogs, students were encouraged to retrieve the blog they had maintained in their technology in education course. I used the work they had done to discuss possible ways that they can incorporate blogs in content area instruction. It was enlightening to see that students had already embedded videos that focused on relevant content they are expected to teach.

I also introduced them to another web 2.0 tool- the web quest. They looked at a few, however they need to continue their search to identify appropriate existing web quests that they can adapt/use in their lessons. Here is one web quest they found quite illuminating and appropriate (left).