Edublogs Weekly Review: Student-centered learning and collaboration using technology

One of the most powerful and revolutionary aspects of many technologies being used in classrooms today revolve around the fact that they facilitate student-centered learning and collaboration.

Perhaps summarized best in this week’s post from the Education Vision Leadership blog, the move to student initiated learning, while natural, is not an easy progression. Traditional methodologies, school systems, and curricula requirements are all hurdles that educators are striving to jump over each day.

Collaboration among students is a central component of building a student-centered classroom. The integration of many tech tools into teaching and learning practices are certainly changing and improving the way we collaborate.

Google Docs is one of the most widely used collaborative tools and it was the topic of this week’s Edublogs Live Webinar. The recording of the Elluminate session can be found here.

Here are a few recent blog posts that discuss different collaboration tools in the classroom (all of which can be embedded into a blog):

1. Sewing up class discussions with VoiceThread – USM Library Blog
2. Wallwisher and the Christchurch Earthquake – ICT Teaching and Learning
3. Scribblar.com – The Education Technology Blog
4. Glogster – Two Writing Teachers

Top edutweets from the week:

“Assessing a Teacher’s Value” NY Times, includes pieces from Linda Darling-Hammond & @DianeRavitch http://nyti.ms/cVeHthTue Sep 07 03:58:59 via Seesmic twhirlLarry Ferlazzo Larryferlazzo The Education Crisis in Two Minutes: http://ow.ly/2BV9RThu Sep 09 21:00:16 via HootSuiteRE:FORM SCHOOL NYC ReFormSchoolNYC Just asked my teacher if I could write my public admin blog comparing the episode of Family Guy I saw Monday to local gvn’t. She said yes :)Wed Sep 08 16:52:15 via webKristin Gehringer kg_is_me

Featured Edublog of the Week

Lauren’s Blog and Abbey’s Blog Two incredible student blogs! Find more student blogs and register now for the Student Blogging Challenge!

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Summing it up

We think that there is no better tool than a blog to act as a “home base” for all of the different collaborative tools out there.  Not to mention the built in commenting, sharing, and collaborative tools of a blog itself.

What other tools do you use for student collaboration that was left off our list? Do you have any links to share with others of your students’ work?