Beyond the Basics

No one could have ever predicted the recent revolutionary outburst of educational technology and certainly nothing in the HigherEd curriculum could have prepared us all to the new sharing, networking and collaborating realities.

These past few years had indeed been a true revelation.  For most of those educators that hadn’t taken the time to go beyond the Microsoft Office Suite, loyal to Web 1.0 frame and Education 1.0 principles where personal computers were  just for web browsing and word/excel/email necessities, they found themselves soon forced to follow the generations Z and generation C high speed connection channels.

It’s true that teaching the old masters new tips and tricks can become a time consuming and arduous task especially when alongside with professional and family obligations.

However, after having already mastered the basics, a careful preselection of the right apps and delivery methods for your target audience’s learning needs is a good start to finding your way through the edtech maze.

LiveBinders for teachers could be a good place to begin with.

There are also a lot of exceptional educational blogs out there that provide listings of Web 2.0 tools and online/offline applications along with their administrators’ professional opinions and evaluations that a teacher/learning enhancement advisor/personal learning facilitator can highly benefit from, some of my own favourites being The Innovative Educator, A Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet,CristinaSkyBox and Free Technology for Teachers.

The Edubloggers directory, the Edublog awards, the Immersive Education Initiative and  CODiE awards can undoubtedly give you an idea of what is currently available in the edreform, edtech, transforming instructional design and practice areas.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with student connecting and collaborating tools,(Livebinders-twiddla), take mlearning seriously because it’s here to stay, subscribe to edtech magazines and organisations, never miss an opportunity to take part in workshops and seminars, stay tuned to scivee, youTube channels for the latest videocasts in your fields and

keep on following , connecting, integrating!!!