Experiencing Group

Over the past few weeks, my Tech For Teaching and Learning class was split up into groups and assigned a research project. We were to use online resources to prepare a presentation about the 21st century education-related topic of our choosing. It was filled with every bit as much edge-of-your-seat excitement as it sounds like it was.

In all seriousness, I think this was a productive project that helped familiarize me with some important technological resources. Google Drive, the mechanism through which our groups collaborated outside the classroom, allows documents to be remotely accessed and edited by all designated group members, even at the same time. This is equivalent to being able to reach into the classroom from home with a super-long arm, working pencil-and-paper with three others who are doing the same, while also being able to see what everyone is doing. It's a radical technology that blurs the boundaries of the classroom - does it really even hae a beginning and end anymore? Fascinating stuff!

not quite, but close.

The content we researched dealt further with the use of technology as a facilitator of education  in the social studies classroom. Our research yielded many intriguing results, and I learned about a number of free online resources that are tailored for classroom use, including Google Earth For Educators, free content provided by the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress, and Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics. This information will surely help me once I'm in the field, although by then I'm sure there will be even more useful and advanced technology to keep up with. It's important that I (and every other teacher) can stay on top of their game and ride the exponential curve of technological advancement in a way that can benefit students without becoming overbearing, useless, or obsolete.

The group experience itself was positive, for the most part. By collaborating, we were able to focus our individual research on narrow areas in such a way that our combined product contained great detail rather than simple overview. I feel that sometimes it was tough to coordinate group activity - to an extent, lack of face-to-face interaction seems to reduce personal accountability, leading to some sub-assignments falling through the cracks - but in general, online collaboration seems like a positive idea and a great new convenience. The "confererence room" is no longer confined in 4 walls - it is global and unlimited!