Aly's Absurdly Excessive Tech Usage / Cool Ways to Incorporate Technology in the Classroom

After a week of tracking my technology use, I realized that my use of technology is ridiculously more excessive than what I’d expected it to be. The following are some of the data I ended up with:

-I usually checked my email 6 or 7 times a day, not counting the times I’d just left my Gmail up.

-I used my Ipod everyday—usually for around 30 minutes—and usually when running, washing the dishes or walking to early morning classes. I usually listened to one of several podcasts I subscribe to.  

-TV was the one area I didn’t feel embarrassed about my excessive use in. I only watched one movie in the week (“Slumdog Millionaire”—what a great movie…).

-I use my cell phone almost all day long, and receive between 25 and 40 texts daily [mostly from my mom or dad... lame, I know :)].

-In looking at my history on my computer, I had lots of various websites I looked at frequently: Facebook, FoxNews, a church website, several electronic databases on the USU library website (Early American Imprints), various blogs (including UtahBrideBlog, which I’m semi-addicted to), a wiki created to share ideas about teaching various Young Adult Literature titles,  YouTube videos, Pandora, Google Spreadsheets to track my running, Google Docs to help my dad edit a Kindle book he’s submitting, Blackboard and Canvas, Thesaurus.com, Google Maps, pumpkin carving ideas, Skype, Sparknotes (…), recipe sites, Wunderground, Wells Fargo, Wikipedia, and various others.

A week of recognizing both how much technology is part of my day-to-day life and yet how little I really know about what great, educational stuff is out there definitely increased my motivation to use and teach technology in my future classroom. I think an English classroom is an ideal setting for incorporating cool technology into the classroom. Here are some random ideas I found or thought-up:

-Have my students use Prezi (especially if they are already very familiar with PowerPoint, which is likely) to create unit presentations

-Have students use Audacity to create podcasts in which they discuss impressions of a class service project they participated in

-Create a WebQuest for students to go through when being introduced to a new unit topic—for instance, if a Shakespeare play is about to be taught, create one which has students complete several tasks that require them to do background research on various relevant topics

-Have students use Wikispaces to write their own “create your own adventure” stories (like this one… so cool! https://thecavesofmull.wikispaces.com/)

- Use Wimba (which is sort of an “educational Skype”) teaching students who aren’t all able to be in the classroom at the same time. Students have the option to type, speak or make video responses to the teacher, and the teacher can present slideshows while lecturing… very cool

-Have students use Pinterest to create visual journals of quotes, images, artwork, and videos, or to collaborate with one another on group projects

-Have students use Facebook to check out the pages of potential presidential candidates and critically analyze what kinds of photos, status updates and events they choose to include and why

-Encourage students to use GoogleDocs when doing group research papers

Side note: As I was thinking about technology use this week, I found a really interesting podcast called "The Social Hour" that basically has weekly (I think…), hour-or-so-long discussions about new kinds of social technology coming out, current debates being had over different kinds of social media, etc. Thought perhaps it would be a good podcast to listen to every once in a while in order to keep up on new, awesome social media that could be incorporated into my classroom.