I recently found a blog post from a teacher who was experimenting with Edmodo and Weebly. The teacher was trying to find the best way to organize her lessons and ways that she could use her websites to get student feedback on lessons and activities. She allowed for comments so other teachers could give her feedback on what they use and how it works in the classroom. I thought it was wonderful networking and many teachers expressed how they found inspiration from other teachers and how they would use those ideas in their classrooms as well.
The ways in which the teacher described using the websites definitely corresponds with the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers in the fact that this particular teacher was striving to engage in professional growth and leadership by trying to improve her professionalism and organization through these sites. She demonstrated this by allowing comments to be open on her blog enabling other teachers to give their feedback to help make her decision on what site she wanted to use to improve her classroom.
However, this article does not correspond with the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers in the fact that she wasn't using these sites to facilitate and inspire student learning. By using these just for student feedback, she isn't really giving students the ability to use technology in a creative way. The students are essentially being prompted to write about one thing, making the use of this technology a "closed task", restricting student creativity.
The ways in which the teacher described using the websites definitely corresponds with the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers in the fact that this particular teacher was striving to engage in professional growth and leadership by trying to improve her professionalism and organization through these sites. She demonstrated this by allowing comments to be open on her blog enabling other teachers to give their feedback to help make her decision on what site she wanted to use to improve her classroom.
However, this article does not correspond with the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers in the fact that she wasn't using these sites to facilitate and inspire student learning. By using these just for student feedback, she isn't really giving students the ability to use technology in a creative way. The students are essentially being prompted to write about one thing, making the use of this technology a "closed task", restricting student creativity.