Podcasting

Podcasting is an excellent new tool that introduces multimedia publishing through video, photo, and audio devises. Podcast Pickle offers podcasts and videocasts to a wide community of viewers. You can watch podcasts that are about various topics including comedy, social studies, sports, books, music, art, science, and many more. Pickle offers a clear search criterion that assists you in easily locating podcasts that you are looking for. After you view a podcast you can view another or you can subscribe to receive every episode. If you subscribe to a post the new episodes will automatically download to your iPod, or mp3 player as become available. You can also produce your own podcast about your interests and share.

Podcasting would be an excellent resource in the classroom to use as an assessment. After a science chapter has been covered about weather students could make a podcast about the weather forecast. In social studies students could do a news report during a time period in US history being learned. Students could do oral history interviews and broadcast their information to share and learn from each other about their interviews information.

Students frequently construct their learning and understanding through doing. Developing podcasts that demonstrate students levels of comprehension in content areas would be an excellent method of assessment. In addition students are able to learn from each others podcasts, which is motivation, interest driven, and current to their needs as learners.

Lastly, the information that is available through Podcasting introduces several teaching resources that can be implemented for instruction. I was easily able to find a podcast about the United States regions, Physical Science, and character education which are all current curriculum that is being instructed in my class. Knowing the endless and fresh information that is available through Podcasting encourages me as a teacher to take risks to show podcasts, critique their information, and have students produce their own podcasts.

Once again, a Web 2.0 resource is encouraging communication, collaboration, networking, and interaction.

Global Cooperation

Epals is a free online learning experience that can be easily accessed for students, teachers, and parents all over the world. Epal stands by its reputation for fostering collaborative learning experiences through community, connections, and solutions. When joining this global education driven network, you are instantly engaged in collaborative efforts to foster online learning from fellow teachers, students, administrators, and parents from over 200 countries. The connections that are established between the various environments that students can learn are endless with Epals. Providing a safe solution with a worry free online experience is essential to the success of Epals and its members.

The vision of TakingITglobal to develop culturally aware, self-determined, and risk taking learners is clearly demonstrated throughout their site. Currently hosting 237,556 members, throughout 1,038 school districts, in over 261 countries TakingITglobal is providing numerous resources, collaboration, communication through networks, technology solutions, educational content & tools, and facilitated learning experiences to the education world. This site has clearly been developed to foster the new literacy tools available with new technology to maintain engaging, meaningful, and realistic learning opportunities for students.

TakingITglobal and Epals would both be excellent resources to implement in the classroom. Epals safety devices would appeal to districts demands on internet safety for students. Using this site to connect to students across the world on collaborative research or writing assignments would foster global and culturally awareness. Part of the 3rd grade NYS Social Studies standards includes learning about different cultures and countries around the world. What better way then to meet a student at the same age/grade level and communicate through Epal. TakingITglobal would be an excellent resource for upper elementary, middle, and high school students. Working to promote self-determined learners who reach out to their community and others around the world to solve problems is an excellent lesson that all valued members in our community need to learn. This site offers several valuable tools, networks, and guidance for students tackling this goal.

Shelfari is an outstanding resource for students to use during a global cooperation project. As a member of Shelfari you can make a list of books that you have either read or would like to read and display them on your shelf. Students are able to view other Shelfari member’s reviews of books; in addition students are able to write a review on books they’ve read. Finding students that have common interests and motivation to read can foster online collaboration, learning experiences, communication, global cooperation, and a community of readers.

Global cooperation can be accomplished through Shelfari by having students collaborate with students from other schools, states, and countries to learn new content information. Social Studies and Science content could be labeled on a shelf and as students read books that help them learn further about the content they can add the book to the shelf. Establishing a community of learners through Shelfari, students from all over the world would be able to add valuable books, reviews, and resources to develop a global cooperation project.

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/

DELICIOUS

I recently subscribed to del.icio.us and I am amazed at the possibilities through this resource. Finding a useful resource for teaching can be difficult at times. Through my delicious account I can bookmark web sites that are ideal for instructional and professional learning and easily retrieve the site from any computer. My students will be embarking soon on a research project and I look forward to integrating this new tool to assist them in their journey. Check it out http://delicious.com/kclunie