Goal #2: Technology
What technology do you hope to use this year and what are your expectations?
I just learned about converting documents to speech. I think I will make audio versions of all of our Humanities texts to share with students.
I also want to make our Humanities packets into interactive iBooks with links and visuals. We can incorporate our Keynotes directly into the iBook for students to access as they read. It can become an all encompassing textbook. The problem with this, of course, is that we continue to evolve our presentations and texts throughout the year, so making one all encompassing iBook would require us to constantly update it. I am not sure how difficult this will be.
Anytime I consider a project like this, I have to think about the law of diminishing returns. What is the value in vs. the value out? What would students get from having audio versions and a snazzy digital iBook instead of packets?
Most of my students prefer print packets to the online versions anyway.
I am also experimenting with Google Classroom. This is going to replace Blackboard, I’m certain, and so I am working on using it with one small class right now. At semester, I will probably move all of my classes to it once I see how it works. I would like to see everything integrated into one space. Right now, we ask our students to log in to so many different things from class to class, teacher to teacher, it has to confuse them to no end.
l really want to apply the Thoreau mantra to my technological life, “simplify, simplify, simplify,” but it seems that each new thing we add only complicates, complicates, complicates.