Choosing a Web Tool For the Learning Task

Choosing the appropriate digital tool for the learning task is important, but to be honest, I sometimes choose a tool because I am interested in it and want to see if it can work in a learning context.  It may be putting the cart before the horse, but if a particular tool is a motivation for the students and for me, why not create a lesson to fit the tool, rather than limiting yourself to only finding tools that fit lessons?

One example of this would be what I have done with audio editing tools. Back when I was teaching high school, there wasn’t much in the way of online tools for digital editing, but I had an Apple Mac with Garageband, which I used to teach my technical theatre students about editing music and sound effects for theatre productions.  The program was so successful that I had students who weren’t even in my class wanting to come use it on their lunch break to record their own rap compositions.  These were kids who had no interest in my class (or almost any class for that matter) but this piece of technology had hooked them.  

Nowadays, I would use a Web 2.0 tool like Audacity to accomplish the same thing. I would also want to steer them toward some sort of webcasting situation, perhaps using the webcast or audio weblog as a way for students to  critique literature assignments or debate with others on which character was their favorite and why.  In a creative writing class, I would want to introduce the students to spoken word poetry and have them recite their poetry for webcasting. This would motivate them by giving them an audience to express themselves.  I think that could be very empowering and much better than having the teacher be the only one who reads what they write.