As most educators now know, using technology can increase student engagement in your classroom – but how can utilizing these tools in your classroom put students in charge of their learning? There are so many free tools available over the Internet that can be utilized in the classroom to empower students, and selecting the right tools will be dependent upon what tools your students are interested in, and what your goals are for particular lessons.

The great thing about using online tools is that everybody’s voice is the same volume, which creates the feeling that all ideas are equal. This can inspire students to share openly. Students may be more active in online forums because they feel more comfortable using them. They might make some students to share and actively participate in discussions that they may not take part in if it were an in-person discussion. These tools are the tools that students use outside of the classroom, so why not find a way to use those same tools in teaching?

Blogs and wikis are both great tools you can use to empower students. These tools are great because they are collaborative and students get the chance to have their voice heard. In one of my classes we use both blogs and wikis. We have small groups, and each one of the group members had to create our own blog. Each week we have a big idea question we have to write about on our blog, then we visit each one of our group members blogs and comment on what they posted. Our class wiki is created with the idea that students will reference the resource throughout the course. To build the wiki each student is responsible for finding five resources on a particular subject and citing the resource as well as summarizing information from the resource. Both tools have proved to be very beneficial from a learner’s perspective.

I recently had the opportunity to travel up to our Salt Lake City offices to see the production studio. I had heard stories about how impressive our blue screen was, but really I had no idea just how big it really was. I have heard that our production studio has the largest blue screen in the Salt Lake Valley, and I can see why. I was only there for a short time, but it is quite the experience in our studio and I actually got to do a little bit of filming.

It is a full studio with all of the cameras lights and expected equipment. The Salt Lake Production team was great and made me feel very comfortable. The filming went smoothly and was a lot of fun, hopefully it turns out okay and they don’t have to do too much editing. You will have to stay tuned to see which course I am making a cameo in!

Okay, so I have an update on my certification journey. I am at a stand still and need to get moving back in the direction of certification. My semester for grad school started, and that coupled with working here at LearnKey full-time have stalled my certification efforts.

That said, certification is still something that is very important to me and it is still something that I am going to achieve. I need to quit making excuses! It is easy to make excuses when you set a goal and somehow you are not accomplishing things as fast as you thought you would. It’s like the ten… okay maybe 20 pounds we all say we will lose after New Year’s, and then the next year rolls around and that pesky ten pounds is still there, plus five extra.

Certification is something I see value in, so I am resolving to work on it this weekend, even if I just spend 15 minutes in the LearnKey Word 2010 training. Just the other day, I heard a story about a woman who had applied for a job and out of the stack of applicants she was chosen because she had a Microsoft Office certification that set her apart from the rest of the applicants. In a tough job market, certification can differentiate you from all of the other people looking. It is stories like these that motivate me to continue on in my certification journey!

Edit from Colin: In light of this recent news about Allacyn’s certification journey, I assure you, we’ve given her a sigh and a stern look of disappointment, and there might have been a sad face thrown in there too. I’ve also given her a deadline of October 4th to update us on her progress, so keep an eye out for that coming up soon!