While Google Reader is going the way of the dodo, social readers like Pulse and Flipboard continue to surge in popularity because they’re attractive, accessible across devices, and make it easy to skim large amounts of information at once.
Extracting data from the internet is like trying to listen to the subtle melody of a Korn song. Tools like twitter, facebook, and Flipboard can act as a kind of volume control (if you’ll allow a mixed metaphor) so that you can hear what you want, when you want.
Google+ is the awkward social media thing from the search engine giant that everybody’s heard of but few are unsure exactly what to make of. It never took hold like facebook, but what has? And even facebook has to reinvent itself constantly to stay relevant (if not annoy users).
So what’s the big deal for educators? Cloud-based communities that can be as open or closed as you want them, available on any smartphone or mobile device.
You can share documents, publish videos, socialize project-based learning artifacts, communicate with colleagues, send messages, participate in threaded discussions, and interact with families and community members in a social media setting. And the best part? You can make groups open or closed, giving you control over the transparency of data and interaction.
By far the most consistently underrated digital learning tool we see, YouTube Channels have evolved YouTube from a steaming cesspool of mixed garbage, to a serious distribution tool for any kind of content—academic or not. So much so that important academic ideas such as the flipped classroom, blended learning, and the Khan Academy are literally based around its distribution model.
The formula is simple.
People love videos, so YouTube allows people to consume billions and billions of videos every single day.
While many of these are of cats trying to shake tape off of their paws, many of them are not. And by allowing anyone—from niche experts to general educators—to create channels of their own to curate and share digital media content, it’s probably the tool with the single greatest potential to transform the learning in your classroom.
As whimsical or substantive as the content you find (like apps),for film, video, or music, and dead simple to use, YouTube is capable of enabling self-directed learning, academic direct instruction, full-on test preparation (if that’s your thing), or authentic project-based learning, and absolutely deserves a spot in any 21st century teacher’s classroom.
While MOOCs haven’t yet found significant traction in K-12 public education, iTunesU has quietly operated under your nose for years now offering quality course materials for every possible content area. And being that it is part of the Apple and iTunes ecology, it gives you—and students—direct access to a sleeping giant in edtech: podcasts.
Why Every 21st Century Teacher Should Be Able To Use It
Whether you use it for a flipped classroom, blended learning environment, for project-based learning, or to personalized learning for struggling or gifted learners, it is essentially an online course catalogue of diverse academic content. While it may be more complex than turning a student loose on iTunesU, properly implemented the education materials found here are simply too good to ignore.
