Blogs on Technology Integration

"I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The new film adaptation of The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio might move teens to fall in love with the story of the book, but it won't make them better readers of the novel. Long before the film was announced, I've been using simple technology tools to help my eleventh graders become curious critics analyzing the text patterns Fitzgerald employs.

I'm a big fan of remix and mashup culture. I love the idea of taking one thing and adding new meaning by combining it with another; or of using tech tools in unexpected ways to build a new hybrid creation -- practices like this have a role to play in digital literacy. I think remixes and mashups can be particularly engaging tools for teaching and learning, so I was delighted when I discovered the work of John D. Boswell, a.k.a melodysheep, the creator of Symphony of Science, a project that remixes science lectures and content into music videos, made using the often over-used and much-blighted audio tool Auto-Tune.

This year, I admitted a hard truth to myself. I wasn't having my students write enough. In an attempt to follow Kelly Gallagher’s advice that students should write more than we can assess, I decided to have them blog weekly.

Children in the 21st century experience media in ways that are vastly different from any previous generation. Social networking, user-created content and video games provide a level of interactivity that was unthinkable a generation ago. As a result, educators are rethinking educational practices that have long been taken for granted. Many have come to the conclusion that the answers they're looking for lie in making video game design a central part of the curriculum.