My “educational technology” watch list at Technorati has been turning up a lot of new pre-service teacher blogs from Concordia University. I naively presumed this was Concordia University in Orange County, where my wife got her credential, so I left a comment on one of the blogs asking the student if she would put me in touch with the professor. Lynne Wolter, her professor, later contacted me via IM and set me straight… and shared some of the innovative things she is doing with her students:
Mark, I’m at Concordia Portland, OR. As the only full time ed tech professor in the College of Education, I am free to create and implement my own curriculum. I teach both undergrad and graduate ed tech courses and all of my students are required to establish an education blog…. I believe it is extremely important for teachers and student teachers to experience these technologies in a context that is meaningful to them.
You can follow some of what she is doing at these links she provided me:
CU-Online is an ed tech news and resources blog for PK-12 teachers, student teachers, and teacher educators. http://cuonline.blog-city.com
An example of my undergraduate course blog is http://www.edu333.blog-city.com
An example of a graduate course blog is http://www.edtechblog.blog-city.com/
I also created a course blog for master teachers focused on the introduction of electronic portfolios http://www.e-portfolios.blog-city.com
And check out this testimonial for blogging!
I have totally abandoned our university course management system, WebCT. I now use instructional blogging and am experimenting with instruction podcasting.
Some other bits of our chat are worth passing on as well:
They believe they are taking a cutting edge course and appreciate the “buzz” they can generate about using these technologies.
Only a few students have come to the course already blogging and they prefer MySpace
I talk to them informally about the differences in communication tools. Formal letter, memo, email, IM, Chat, web site, social networking/blogging and more formal professional blogging.
I am continually thankful for the connections blogging, and in this case commenting, has helped me make… even when I’m a bit confused.
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