Video 2: Googlios: A 21st – Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, & Assessment

Just finished watching the video  Googlios: A 21st – Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, & Assessment by G. Alex Ambrose on the K-12 Online Conference site.  The video talked about the evolution of teaching and learning through the tools that we have come to become more familiar with through this course The 3C’s of 21st Century Teaching and Learning. At this point in our own education I was not as overwhelmed by the technology involved, as the author focused on the free tools available through Google, and that in itself is a major accomplishment!  Rather, the challenge that I now am facing is the implementation and integration of these tools and resources with the curriculum and daily activities.

The author introduces the topic with an overview of the changing learning environments, and describes the Digital Landscape as we as teachers, especially ‘more seasoned’ teachers, are finding ourselves.  Our students today in the middle school have never known a non-digital world, and thus are considered ‘digital natives’ and are students using technology as a first language, coined DFLs. Many of us teachers, with the initiative to learn and become more familiar with the tools, are termed DSLs, or digital as a second language, or ‘digital immigrants’.  I find this characterization interesting as I do often find that what I am learning is indeed a second language, and only with practice and immersion am I getting for comfortable and working toward ‘fluent’.

The main topic of the video is the use of the Google tools to enable students to create their own learning and education portfolios, the ‘Googlio’.  With the use of the many tools of Google students can now create their own folios, digitally, and use them to chronicle their education progress through a topic, a term or even a school career.  The thought of students using these online tools to save their work is an interesting concept, and goes well beyond the milk crates and folders we now have in our classrooms.  There is no question that the technology exists…the real challenge for us DSL teachers is to become confident in ourselves to begin to use these tools. This particular course has certainly enabled me to explore more and more resources, and as I continue to find additional instruments, I need to focus on a select few and begin to develop an implementation plan in the classroom.

We are familiar with the term the Personal Learning Network (PLN), and the author discusses extensions to that line of thought with the categories Personal Learning Environment and Personal Knowledge Network.  The textbooks, folders, and notebooks that have been standards in a classroom are evolving into the many online tools and resources that are included in the graphic below.  As educators we have been introduced to many of these tools. Developing a plan to integrate a subset of these into the classroom is becoming the major goal of the next few years of my own career.

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