The Beauty of Google Docs

Google Docs is an amazing resource tool for educators and students. It has the following advantages:

• Creation of documents, spreadsheets and presentations online without installing these programs on one's computer.
• One document is being updated therefore dispensing with numerous email attachments.
• Sharing and collaboration is made easier with one document.
• Control over who accesses the documents.
• Keeping track of each alteration of the document is made easy

This facility is ideal for group projects where for example students can work on creating a magazine or a school newsletter and can edit the documents under the supervision of the teacher. Thus the students will enhance their wrting skills and participate in collaborative learning. This is one way that the promised laptops to Form One students can be used productively.

Using Blogs to Teach Standard English

I was impressed by the use of blogs to help learn foreign languages, especially Spanish and French. The article "Adventures in the Blogosphere: from blog readers to blog writers” focussed on a year long project involving using blogs to help students learn German and French. Of course, the same project can be done with learners of Spanish in this nation. Students were able to practise communication in the language thus strengthening their writing, reading and grammar skills. They were also able to learn about another culture and ignite a friendship online. Additionally, they realized that although their nationalities were different, they still had some things in common. The project mentioned in the article can also be used in Trinidad and Tobago to help our nation's children learn Standard English since for most speakers of this country, Standard English is their second language, Creole being the first. Indeed, our children need to strengthen themselves in Standard English and blogging provides an opportunity for them to do so. They would have more practice reading and writing Standard English and thus become more familiar with grammatical structures in the language.

Graphic Organizers

The use of graphic organizers is an excellent way of presenting information. It is a great asset to the struggling reader who is overwhelmed by too much text but is more comfortable with a diagram which gives him or her a better understanding of what is being taught. It is also a great way of summarizing a lesson topic or any information that needs to be condensed. In addition, it caters for the visual learner who will benefit more from those pictorial representations. More so, Webspiration makes the creation of graphic organizers awesome because in addition to being user friendly, it provides a variety of template concept maps, which make the creation of the graphic organizers so simple.

TPACK: Keeping Us on Track

Hofer & Harris in the article "Instructional Planning Activity Types as Vehicles for Curriculum-based TPACK Development" has helped to put in perspective the integration of technology in education. Undoubtedly, it is important to keep abreast with technology and use it to enhance learning. However, as the authors have highlighted, the focus should be on the curriculum content and learning abilities of the students instead of the technology. I believe that this article is very timely and important because at no time must the educator become carried away with technology at the expense of the students' learning. The learning activity types are a great resource to educators as they seek to integrate technology with education.

Technology to Support Writing

According to Bunton & Barbetta writing is a very complex process whereby students are faced with the mechanics of writing, as well as, organization of ideas and content material. Fortunately, for educators there are technologies to support writing especially in the cases of struggling readers and writers. The technologies available are as follows:

• Digitized-text: adaptation of text digitally, for example, writing a letter using MS word
• Text-to-Speech (TTS): written text changed to spoken audio
• Word prediction: a software predicts words to be typed based on frequency of use and content (similar to predictive text on cell phones)
  
• Electronic reference: built in encyclopedia, thesaurus and dictionary
• Cognitive organizational: tools for the prewriting process
• Speech recognition: spoken words are translated to text or spoken words are used to control the computer and software
• Alternate writing: the use of alternate keyboards (e.g. keyboards with large letters) and portable word processors.

Digital Storytelling

The combination of storytelling with technology is innovative and awesome, and a great resource to educators for effective teaching and learning to take place. I was happy to learn the following from the article: "The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling" by Robin that characterize digital storytelling:

• Stories are only a few minutes long
• Author's point of view must be stated
  
• A Dramatic Question is to be answered at the end of the story
  
• Presentation of serious matters that touch us personally and powerfully
• Music or sound to support the storyline
• Sufficient information to tell the story (no overload of the viewer)
  
• Pace of the story (quickly or slowly)
• Creation by educators or students

Furthermore, as educators digital storytelling helps to promote narrative and informative writing. The use of digital storytelling is recommended as an attention grabber at the beginning of a lesson. Most importantly, the students via digital storytelling learn "Twenty-first Century Literacy":

• Digital Literacy
• Global Literacy
• Technology Literacy
• Visual Literacy
• Information Literacy

However, there is the need for students, according to Ohler in "The World of Digital Storytelling" to focus on making their stories powerful instead of focussing on the technology. This important idea is also expressed in the article: "Instructional Planning Activity Types as Vehicles for Curriculum-Based TPACK Development" by Hofer and Harris.

Photo story 3, Microsoft Word & PowerPoint

I was totally blown away by the use of Photo story 3 to do digital storytelling. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to learn about this marvellous type of technology that can enhance learning. I love the use of print, effects, music and voice recording involved in digital storytelling. Moreover, digital storytelling is a powerful and practical tool that can be used in our nation's school, after all, Microsoft Photo story3 is available for free. In addition, according to Robin, simple technologies like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint can also be used for digital storytelling. This is truly an ingenious and interesting approach to Creative Writing. When doing my digital storytelling I was giggling like a teenager so I can well imagine how the students will be captivated by this technology.