The Human Filter-Moving Students Beyond Google

How do people decide what to tag or share? I tag items that have personal meaning but they need to be useful, relevant, thought-provoking or maybe just entertaining. Are my tagged items better than a Google Search? I would hope. Does columnist Jay Mathew's Washington Post article on Senior Project come up in a Google Search? Not in the first two pages. How about a useful mindmap of Twitter tools? Nope. A nice list of analogies used for AP Psych review? Nope. A great video demonstrating how an MRI works? Ok, Google got that one if I search "how does an MRI work?"

In the past month, out of the hundreds of posts, sites, links, tweets, updates, and emails I've decided to tag 16 links. I've become a human filter for anyone who is interested in Psychology, Senior Projects, Technology, and Education.

I've tagged 5 sites that are specific to my course or professional duties (psychology and Senior Project). These include an anatomy review site, an analogies review worksheet, a video on how an MRI machine works and two articles about Senior Project.

I tagged 4 sites about hardware/software which include a mini-projector device, a tool to provide audio to slides using your cell phone, a concept map of Twitter tools and a list of ways to use a flip video camera in the classroom.

I tagged 3 sites about general educational issues that include using Google Apps for Education, leadership needed to push 1-1 computing in our schools, and creating electronic portfolios for students k-12.

Finally, I've tagged 4 random sites that reflect some personal interest that include NPR's coverage of the SXSW Music Festival, a photography portfolio, a crime tracking tool using Google Maps, and an online application to present at an educational technology conference.

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Social Media in the Classroom

I know it's been awhile since my last post. Forgive me, while I focused on starting the school year and trying to overhaul how I organize my classroom. Now that we are a couple of weeks into the year, I would like to share how I am trying to use blogs in my classroom. The biggest change I've made this year is to get all my students blogging about psychology. I am using Blogger and getting students to sign up for their own accounts was fairly easy. Their first assignment was to respond to a series of articles and blog posts about memory. Where did I get the list of articles and blog posts? Well, I went through my Google Reader and Delicious tags for memory and easily came up with a list of recent research and applications of memory research. The second post was to respond to online video clips about memory. These happen to be from The Brain and The Mind series. This saves class time and with a blog response I know that everyone is interacting with the video, not just passively gazing at the screen in class. I am also asking my students to label or tag all of their entries. I learned from Chris Dede (Harvard) how tags develop a shared language among a community of learners. It forces my students to create a mental model of relationships that should match the content in the course . Here is one example of what one of my students have been writing about so far. My next step will be to have students differentiate their posts so it will become more meaningful for students to comment on other blogs. I might venture into video blogging as well...stay tuned!