Digital Badge F

Communicating is so important, and knowing how to do it through technology in this time period is basically mandatory. I enjoyed the topic on teachers and students communicating with technology. Towards the end of my high school career teachers started sending out reminder text messages to us about tests and projects, and it seemed weird that they were texting us but it was definitely a life saver. If I had a question about the project that I forgot all about, emailing the teacher was so easy and quick. Another way we communicated that was suggested in the book was through blogs, which was nice because my English teacher would post what we did each day on the blog so that if someone was sick they could easily catch up from home. It really made me feel like our teachers were helping us and encouraging us to succeed, which was important because I know so many people who felt like their teachers were against them and wanting them to fail their whole time in high school.

Going further into the realm of communication, I want to touch on the different types, which was cool to read about in chapter 8. Synchronous communication is immediate interaction, in real time. This includes texting, phone calls, or instant messaging. I really like this source of communication, especially for students and parents, because it is sent directly to the person, which is almost a guarantee that they saw it and received the information. This is not the case with asynchronous communication, where there is a delay in time and really no guarantee that the audience you're sending it to saw it unless they reply. This includes emailing, blogs, or discussions. I know that with blogs it's hard unless you're subscribed to it, because it's very easy to just forget to check it and then miss a homework assignment.

My third concept is about engaging students. The text book had a lot of good suggestions on how to continue to engage students outside of the classroom, after school. Some of the suggestions were; posting lesson plans, lecture notes, discussion questions, practice worksheets, ideas for further study, and student written materials. I think that the last one could be really cute with a younger classroom, like elementary school. The teacher could scan the students work as they grade it and upload it to the blog for the parent to see, and then give it all back at the end of the year to see how their child progressed throughout the school year. Another thought I had was using Google forms to ask parents questions, and I made an example one. I can't figure out how to embed the form to this blog post, so here is the link. Having all of the parent's emails in can be a good way to remind them that a new survey was posted on the blog, and to respond to it to help making their child's education more effective. I'm definitely going to be using Google forms for my class!



Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.