by Janice Florent
It’s important for students to find their voice in eLearning. Students need the ability to recognize their own beliefs, practice articulating them in a variety of forms, and then find the confidence and the platform to express them.
There is no one-size-fits-all technology solution for students to express themselves and interact with the world. In a Edutopia blog post, Terry Heick writes,
You can indeed insist that all students blog because, from your perspective, it sounds justifiable and beneficial, but if the goal is to help students find their own voice, they will need choices.
Terry goes on to suggest some possible web tools that would allow students to find their voice. Those web tools are:
Word Press or Blogger – These tools can help students establish their own digital space to meet the world.
Storify or Storehouse – These tools allow you to collect media bits and pieces from across the web, and to socialize them (that is, to shape them into a unique form of expression through social media.)
Podcasting or VoiceThread – These tools allow students to express themselves verbally around an idea important to them.
YouTube Channels - Students can create review channels, perform music, humorously remix existing content, act, create documentaries, and an unlimited number of other possibilities.
For more information, you can read Terry’s blog post 4 Technologies to Help Students Find Their Voice in Your Classroom.
Also, check out Bart Everson’s blog post 50 Web Tools for other web tools that may be used to help students find their voice and my Blackboard tip on how to integrate web 2.0 tools in your course.