It is difficult to work out when a
technology is mainstream and no longer emerging. As a working definitions if people on your
staff have not heard of the term (s), if
they have heard of it and don’t know what it is it is and if they don’t know
how to use it then it is an emerging technology for your school – even if it is
mainstream elsewhere. This is unlikely
to be the case if you keep up-to-date. There are a few ELTs to consider using.
1.
Blogging
Blogs are like online journals with
posts that date based, archived and enable a degree of interaction though the
use of comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. You can either use blogs to search
information using blog search engines and manage the updates using software
such as Bloglines. There can be individual blogs and group blogs and the content
is determined by the writer. Accordingly
they can be official blogs of organizations or be developed and used for the
teaching and learning of certain topics in a variety of subject areas. They are in the public domain and for their
use in schools they can be developed internally through the school’s network
protected by the firewall. It is up to
you if you want to create your own blog,
2.
Integrated learning modules
Open source software has enabled
the development of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and content management
systems such a Moodle which have to capacity for forums, instant messaging, and
online submission of work and the marking of such work. There is a lot of potential to assist
teachers with the management of their own work by using such a system. These will require a greater involvement of
the technical support of your school such as the network manager in order to
get such a system operational and stream lined for teaching and learning.
3.
Wikis
A lot of people have heard of
Wikipedia and increasingly students and teachers are aware that you can create
you own and use them for teaching and learning.
A wiki can be set up where groups of students can add information on a
topic and different students writing their own chapter. Here is a capacity for
everyone to edit and add to other students work with different levels of
permissions. There is wiki software that
you get your network manager to install or you can make use of numerous public
wikis such as wikispaces.com.
4. Podcasting
The use of audio files is not new
but with the development of digital recorders, ipods and mp3 players it has
become easier to create, stream and listen to audio files. Podcasts are actually the broadcasting of
audio files using software supported by RSS feeds. When the audios have been made they are
broadcasted by RSS feeds. Often a web page is associated with the podcasts and
you can get them manually. Students can use
these audio files for revision, part of project work and integrated into units
of work. There is some more technical
work to do to convert the Wave files from digital recorder to mp3 and get them
to a suitable size to use them on the internet.
5. Online photo galleries
These galleries are often used if
you want to integrate all your blog online.
Photos on blogs need to be on the internet as well. You can have private or public galleries in
internet based storage such as Flickr.
With the addition of automatically generated scrip you can also have a
little gallery on our webpage or blog.
His would be very useful for adding an extra dimension to web pages
constructed by students. Also galleries
can be use to share photos.
6. Enhancements for Browsers
Increasingly web browsers are
adding functionality for their users.
Del.icio.us is a programme which enables you to store your Favourites
online and then access them from what ever computer rather than having them
stored on a dedicated computer. The
value of this is in students being about to move around different computers and
have access to their Bookmarks/Favourites. Then there are all the additional Plug
Ins that add functionality to your browser
