VIDEO IN THE CLASSROOM

The expansion of the various video resources available on the Internet has opened several doors for teachers and learning experiences for students. The possibilities range from students and teachers broadcasting information available for others to learn from to students and teachers using the video resources available on several student friendly sources such as Teacher Tube, Videojug, and Google Video. With educational videos at the edge of your finger tips, countless hours of searching the local video store or library for new resources is over.

One video link that I will definitely utilize in my classroom is the 50 States video. My students love to learn acronyms and rhymes to learn new materials, and with the amount of states that we have in the U.S. viewing the 50 States video would be a fun and exciting tool for my students to use in guiding them in learning the 50 States. As an educator knowing this video was linked from the Teacher Tube site I trust and respect that only appropriate videos can be viewed from my students if they develop further inquiries from this site.

Overall the implementation of video in the classroom is an essential new tool that teachers can easily access to extend the learning environment.

TWEETS

Oh TWEETS can be so sweet, when you have time to be in continuous contact with your computer and the followers. The Tweets that I followed were fun to read because they were from colleagues of mine that were discussing questions about upcoming Graduate classes. I feel that having students develop Tweeter accounts would be an excellent resource to encourage conversation and communication in a method that is appealing and comfortable. Guiding and modeling for students how to read the Tweets would be essential to ensuring they are reading all Tweets that pertain to the content of the conversation. For example having students make Tweets while reading independently would be a fantastic application of a new tool. Finding Tweeters who are authors of favorite books and inviting them to follow our conversations would be such a powerful learning experience for the students, author, and teacher. Tweets can be a great resources for keeping students, teachers, parents, and a community connected if properly instructed and practiced.

Twitter

I recently read Clive Thompson review on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense in the Wired Magazine. It was interesting to read how Thompson describes the negative reputation that Twitter has obtained by non-users or infrequent users. Personally during my first viewing of Twitter it seemed like a memory of my first experiences with IM. When I was trying to read the transcripts of other Twitter’s I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Thompson writes how “It's practically collectivist — you're creating a shared understanding larger than yourself” which is created through multiple conversations less than 140 characters in a message.

Twitter can be used in the classroom to promote conversations in various specific content curriculums. Opening the communication doors for students to write new understandings, questions, inquiries, and findings would ideal on Twitter. Providing a safe and welcoming environment for students, teachers, parents, and experts to send messages that are clear and precise to the followers would be an excellent teaching tool. This could also serve as a formative assessment for educators to assess student’s strengths and areas of development.

Another implication for Twitter is developing collaborative projects. In an Education Week’s article Educators Test the Limits of Twitter Microblogging Tool, George Mayo developed an ongoing development of a book for his 8th grade class. I feel this would be an excellent implication for Twitter. Using Twitter as a resource for students to jointly write a story or document would promote collaboration and teamwork. In the article Mayo’s students had students from all over the world writing the story, even China! This is defiantly an implication for Twitter that I will try with my class!

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2008/06/24/01twitter_web.h02.html
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson

RSS Feeds

A RSS Feed is an excellent tool for educators and students to access various resources. Using Bloglines I can review my feeds easily and look for information that I am interested in versus spending countless hours scanning through my favorites on my computer. Through joining Bloglines I came across the Two Writing Teachers blog that is dedicated to education professionals sharing new research and experiences with instructing writing. The blog is very friendly and can be easily navigated to find numerous resources. As a new teacher it's difficult at times to know what method is most effective in teaching various learners writing skills. Knowing that I am a life long learning I feel through this blog's resources, research, discussions, testimonials, links, and trouble shooting I feel that my writing instruction can grow. If you are looking for a new avenue or would like to join our conversation check it out! http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/