EDCI 5825 Blogpost #3

• What is the right balance between giving students freedom to explore the Web for research and providing them with structure and guidance?
It is important to let students learn how to do their own research and find information on their own. However, this autonomy needs to be assisted with some training to develop the necessary skills to determine a quality source of information from one that is a little more on the questionable side. As November points out, NARA is a great resource for students looking for primary source material and they even provide guidelines for students to use to aid them in determining the validity of the source. With some practice, students can become quite adept at determining the quality of content on their own, but this is a skill that needs to be developed before they start scouring the depths of the internet for information.
• What is the role of the teacher in helping students to make meaning of primary source material?
The teacher should act as a guide for the student. Once the task is explained and assigned, the teacher should let the student first try and discover what they can own their own. The teacher can then help guide the students analysis of the materials they found to determine if what they found is credible, relevant, and enough. As November pointed out, sometimes letting a student fail at finding the information they are seeking is just as important if not more so than just telling them how to search. If students are struggling to find materials, the teacher can help the student re-evaluate their search methods and parameters by looking at their topic from a different perspective to see if they can find more information from another point of view.
• How can teachers use Podcasting and/or multimedia tools to promote collaborative learning?
As Richardson pointed out, teachers can use podcasts to record important point in their lecture which can then be posted and referenced by students at a later time if necessary. Podcasts can also be used by students to create self reflections on assignments which can then be posted and given to the teacher for review. Video recording can also be used in a similar way capturing the day’s lesson for review by students at a later date. Another powerful tool that Richardson pointed out was Flickr. Flickr is a website for hosting photos and can be quite a versatile tool if used correctly. It can be used by the individual student or classroom to create a photo journal for all activities and adventures or it can be used as a photo database that students can reference for a variety of projects that they may be assigned. Flickr also allows users to provide more details about photos through the use of tagging and annotations. All of these tools lend themselves to be used in a collaborative effort between the teacher and student, between students, or the world at large. All of these technologies allow the users to post material to either the public domain or to a more private setting of a smaller classroom community. The uses for all these technologies only seems limited by one’s own imagination.