As the first decade of the 21st century comes to end and blogs, wikis, and podcasts have become more mainstream, it is important that educators step back to see how we, as professionals, are best using these tools to serve our students’ learning needs. If these modern technologies are going to be sustained in contemporary pedagogy, it is time that we “kick it up a notch” and tie these tools to both a higher theme and to learning theories. In other words, rather than using technology for technology’s sake, we need to rest on a new 21st-century foundation of teaching, learning, and assessment theory. Through a screencast, webcam, and Power Point video, “Googlios” offers not simply a “how to” but a “why to;” it introduces a model of how one educator has come to understand and organize these tools to support a 21st-century constructivist and connectivist approach to “bridge the divide” in educating our digital natives. More specifically, this presentation will shed light on a model that demonstrates relationships between emerging tools and learning theories and between Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), and ePortfolios. By using Google Sites as a main dashboard that “mashes up” multiple Google Apps like Blogger, Youtube, Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Docs, and iGoogle into an ePortfolio, students can build and organize their own Personal Learning Environment (PLE) simultaneously with “building bridges” through their Personal Learning Network (PLN)–all while supporting e-portfolio authentic assessment. One last word of caution: “Googlios: A 21st-Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, and Assessment” seeks to ignite an educational renaissance.
