Discussing the Importance of the Tool Before Teaching the Tool Itself
How will WordPress help my career? This is the question I many times encounter when telling
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These responses taught me that I was taking much for granted.
What I have learned is that I should make sure I thoroughly introduce the tool first and only once my students have a proper understanding of the usefulness of a given tool, I should go to the hands-on assignment.
For instance, if you want your students to make a podcast, you should first make sure they understand what the practical use of podcasts is. If they study marketing, communication, or business, then you should talk about the importance of podcasts as a marketing tool. If they study journalism, you should make sure your students understand how through podcasts, they could showcase they work and actually start a journalistic career there and then through the publication of audio programs, commentaries, interviews, etc.
A good video tutorial explaining the use of some basic and free online tools including article-marketing, forum-marketing, and video-marketing is “Where Can You Advertise Your Business For Free on the Internet-The Top 3 Ways” by Jared Wiener. A “Case Study: Blogging Works Even For A Gunsmith” is a video discussing the importance of WordPress as a marketing tool by Bill Seaver of MicroExplosion Media.
To sum up, make sure your students understand how a tool can help them accomplish what they want to accomplish or what the exact practical potential of that tool is. Only once your students thoroughly understand this, you should introduce them to the tool itself.
