Digital tech pedagogy

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1	Digital Tool	Pedagogical Uses	Learning Curve	Pros	Cons	Start by . . .
2	Blogs	Blogs can be used as daily journals, research journals for regular updating of research progress, a dialogue space for pairs or groups of students to debate. Blogs can also be used as final presentation spaces. Students can use blogs in order to share finished writing, images, films, and audio. See the student group example of "Pens Without Caps" in the eReader. Blogs can also be "themed" or given personas. Student writers can be encouraged to adopt a particular rhetorical stance when writing.	Easy to learn and maintain.	Can be used as a whole course site, for groups, or for individuals. Can showcase multiple modes of writing, including images, words, film, and sound.	If students use these blogs as a form of "public writing," they often will not see immediate feedback from other readers. You can discuss how to gain attention for their particular blog by joining conversations and inviting readers to read. You may also need to regularly prompt students to maintain their blog, especially if it is meant to be a regular journal.	Consider creating a class blog to which everyone contributes. All students can update or respond each week.
3	Twitter	Twitter requires writers to boil down their thoughts and messages to 140 characters. Writers must be economical and thoughtful about their writing. When students are researching in the field, they can summarize the essence of their daily research into this small space. Groups may also choose to communicate with one another through Twitter when they have good ideas. Twitter is mostly an "idea kernel" space. Students can use it to remind themselves of something to check out or discuss later. Whole courses might also have one Twitter hashtag that they share, or individual groups/students doing research might choose to follow certain worldwide conversations happening in any moment. Have students follow the "trending" hashtags, or search those Tweets for examples of earlier conversations going on.	Easy to learn and maintain. Need to set up a Twitter account.	Can be used for writing ideas down, for sharing ideas with your students (by using a shared hashtag), or for researching worldwide opinions and news/events.	If Tweets are sporadic at best (from students, from groups, from the class, from teachers), then students may stop checking the Twitter feed altogether.	Have students research, analyze, and discuss conversations about contemporary events and news from worldwide Twitter feeds. If this is successful, you might consider how you want to incorporate the writing of tweets into another course.
4	iMovie/Movie Maker	Students can create semester-long projects in iMovie (or Moviemaker for PCs), or they can create short video pieces as part of larger projects. iMovie can be used to edit video or to narrate a series of photos/images. If students have a series of images only (no film), they can add any kind of audio in order to tell a story in a relatively professional way. Movies also allow C&C instructors to discuss fundamental rhetorical concepts, such as audience, purpose, exigence, word choice, audio, voice, evidence, and visual rhetoric.	Must learn the software, which can take at least a full day of class.	Once you learn how to use it, iMovie can be used to create interesting video updates of research progress. Students can show images of their work, screenshots, clips of audio and video, or share quotes through on-screen text. They can upload everything to Youtube. Makes watching research updates (and even essays) a bit more fun.	iMovie takes up quite a bit of hard drive space if editing video, which can present problems if students are editing in University computers. If you plan to do a large iMovie project, talk with the WRD intern to discuss a strategy. iMovie also requires access to Macs.	Start with a small iMovie component, rather than a major project. Have student groups create a 30-second advertisement or parody. Or ask students to create a movie using images and audio only, which takes up much less space than video editing.
5	Wikis	Students can create a wiki around a specific topic in order to provide a mini-Wikipedia. (Ex: Wiki Lexington, Famous Kentucky women wiki, etc.) A course can also use a class wiki. If each student starts with her or his own link, daily writing reflections can link off one another in a blooming web. This kind of linking and reflection can encourage students to make connections among thoughts and ideas.	Must learn the wiki protocol, which can take about one full class. Most online wikis are fairly straight-forward, though. Once you learn the buttons, it's very easy.	Can be a really fun project to create a mini-Wikipedia of a given subject. Leave lots of time to really add to it. Wikis can encourage some experimental writing and group work.	Not flashy or necessary "multimedia" friendly. Designed pretty much for written text.	Experiment with building a course theme and asking students to regularly contribute writing to the wiki. Make sure they link off one-another's entries (much like Wikipedia does).
6	Google Maps	Students can create annotated maps of any number of places (localized to neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, etc.). Could be used to create maps and annotation of places the students are reading about, researching about, etc.	Takes at least one or two full classes to learn the basics of Google Maps. Instructors will need to set up a very well-planned tutorial for "hands on" practice.	Can create a fun map of "pop-up" annotations and potentially very creative maps.	A somewhat steeper learning curve means that instructors must build in enough time for tutorial and support. Make it a large component of the course, if you use it.	Experiment with making a single annotated map to which the whole class contributes. The instructor may initially "take the lead" on tech support. Once instructors feel comfortable with the program, they can turn the work over to individual students or groups.
7	Flickr/Instagram	Students can use online image sharing sites in order to keep track of digital images that they take. If students "subscribe" to one another's feeds in Instagram, they can see the images their group members or classmates are taking.	Easy to learn. Must have access to smartphone.	Can share images instantly for research or project purposes.	Instagram is limited in the way that it's shared, so it wouldn't help students to create an online essay.	If you don't want to use Twitter for sharing images with a hashtag, consider using Instagram for this purpose.
8	Garage Band / Audacity	Students can create audio essays or podcasts with this free software. Students can benefit from creating audio versions (revised for the changed medium) from their written essays. Whole groups can create short audio programs around a single topic (in the model of This American Life or This I Believe). This shift in media allows instructors to discuss rhetorical decisions involved in various media (text vs. audio).	Easy to learn. Audacity is free and able to work with any platform. Tutorial with students takes at least a full day. Garageband is only available on Macs.	Audio essays and podcasts allows for interesting multimedia pieces that can include music, sound clips, experiments with sounds and background noises, etc. Not much hard drive space is taken up, so sound files can be transported easily.	Need access to digital recorder or smartphone.	Try having students do a shortened audio version of a written text that they do for class. Ask them to make it "listener friendly," which would include attention to rhythm, pacing, voice, added sounds for depth, music, etc.
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