Wikis

Anything I want to know about anything is on the Web in a wiki. I’ve found wikis on role playing, knitting, furniture, giraffes and of course education…

This collaborative, editable by anyone Web 2.0 software is a good way for teachers to engage students. Students can share their work with a real audience for a purpose beyond the classroom. Groups of students can take ownership of pages. They can work together beyond the classroom even if they can’t get together physically. Students and teachers can work together from all over the world. There are so many benefits to creating a wiki and being a part of one. All the tech standards can be taught through wikis, any subject in school can be a part of a wiki.

Wikis:
•editable
•collaborative
•easy to use
•fun
•creative
•free

As a teacher I can guide my students towards all kinds of Web 2.0 tools with wikis being one of them that we are currently using in class. The wiki lends itself very well to the classroom. I can have my students use it for all subjects we cover, it is a place where we put our class agenda, all the homework is listed. Students can learn how to do so many things through a wiki. The main thing for me as an educator is that it fits my teaching style, it fits the students learning styles and we have lots of fun learning what the wiki can do and what it can’t!

Podcasting

Looking at podcasting has been a very interesting experience. I’ve had to wade through many different sites to find ones that I can use in class. I find that I get off track fairly regularly as I enjoy listening to many different podcasts and what they have to offer not only my class but for me personally.

We’ve used Audacity to create a short enhanced podcast and will be using GarageBand to create podcasts also. Both programs have been fairly easy for my students to use, though GarageBand is more fun!

Podcasts:
•are easy and fun to create.
•are found everywhere.
•are made by everyone, all ages.
•can be downloaded.
•can be listened to at anytime.

Like many tools on the Web, podcasts are abundant and available for me as an educator. They are easy to find but must be sifted through and listened to before using in the classroom. There is so much out there in the world of podcasting and I’ve only touched the surface. I look forward to the day when more of my students have MP3 players to be able to use this resource even more!


Podcasts for educators, schools and colleges:
The first site I looked at, besides some of the ones everyone else has mentioned, was a site from the UK. I used a podcast once in my class from England. The kids loved listening to someone else's English. This was a good find for me. This site has all kinds of podcasts from different schools in the UK, from elementary to college level. There are also links to resources and to how-tos on creating podcasts.

Smithsonian Global Sound Podcasts
One of my interests is exposing my students to music from around the world. The Smithsonian has a collection of podcasts or rather vodcasts as they include video and a short interview. I might use this as a start to our morning to get the kids focused and ready for the day as something different than the regular morning work.

The third place I went to was a site recommended last week on the NASA Website. My next science unit will be on astronomy so it was a good place for me to look for some new things to add to the curriculum. There are a variety of topics and I'd link it on our class Wiki for the students to use.

I think that podcasts have their place in a classroom just as textbooks and other resources! My goal would be to use more of them in my class and integrate them into what I do already.

Using Wordle for Fun!

Here is my very short How-to Create a Wordle for a fun way to present a spelling list.

Wordle is a fun way to share a list of words with the world or just your class. It is an online tool that allows one to input words or text into a box and then click create and a Wordle, a picture using the words is created. Common words are taken out, this works in other languages too. I tried a Hebrew Wordle. The first time I used it in class, I created a spelling list for my students.

Wordle allows you options:
•Language: take out common words, use all caps or all lowercase
•Font: a huge variety of fonts
•Layout: vertical, horizontal or any which way for the text
•Color: choose from preset colors or create your own

*It is easy to use.
*Wordle is creative.
*It gives students a fun way to practice their spelling.

I took a paragraph and put that in, Wordle left out the more common English words leaving the main ideas basically. It is fast and fun to use. There are options on saving, do a screen shot and make a jpeg or save it to the gallery for the world to see. I would not use it to make a list of my student due to privacy issues.

Anyone can use it, and the gallery is open for all to peruse, be careful of the lists, some are not G-rated! I'm using it for a vocabulary review for a number of subjects.

I've found this quite valuable for our class and for me as it is so easy to use.

Below is the Wordle that came out when I pasted the paragraph above:

Reflecting on Web 2.0 tools...

There are so many applications available out that I find I can spend hours digging through them and trying them out. But in the end only one or two become really useful. I will come back to them later, I have no doubt. This is what happened with Wikispaces. I learned about Wikis awhile ago and only the past few months have I got our class Wiki to a place that it is usable for the students and me.

I came upon one that I think might be good, Class Marker, an online quiz maker. It is free and fairly easy to use but I won't know how useful it is until I have students try it out. Back to setting up user names, passwords and getting them out to the students.

One of the tools I have been using more and more is, Google's Notebook. After I download the Firefox add-on, the Notebook shows up in the lower right corner of my screen, always accessible for me to take notes, add links, pictures, whatever I need. I can also share it with others so we can collaborate on projects.

This past week I've truly tried to find new tools to use but I find myself looking and trying them out and bookmarking them. Maybe a month or two down the road I'll come back to them like I did with the Wiki. There is so much to choose from that it can get to be too much, how to choose, what to choose...

Links in my Toolbox

Collaboration/Sharing
http://delicious.com/mdoore
http://www.secondlife.com
http://voicethread.com

Communication
http://ed632blogfolio.blogspot.com/ My blog for EdTech 632
http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Mem/ My travel blog that I started when my son and I drove from OK to AK the summer of 2007.
http://akclassroom.wikispaces.com/
http://www.doppelme.com/ With DoppelMe you can create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web.
http://www.edmodo.com Edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.
http://clionet.ning.com/ This is a Ning that I belong to, it is a good example of how one can be set up.
http://www.skype.com
http://www.myplick.com/ Myplick is a free service that lets you share, embed and discover presentations and slide shows online.
http://www.voki.com/ Talking avatars!

Online activities for students
www.classtools.net Classtools.net provides free, customizable flash templates to embed into blogs, Wikis and Websites.

Posting, publishing
http://www.flickr.com/
iWeb

Production
Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
GarageBand
https://docs.google.com/
iMovie
http://www.jingproject.com/
http://www.mixbook.com/ Mixbook was started with the idea that friends should be able to create books together.
SingleFramer http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28460 It allows you to capture individual frames from a DV camera or built in camera on computer, either manually or automatically (time-lapse).
http://skitch.com/ see it, say it, share it
http://www.teachertube.com
http://zamzar.com/ free online file conversion

Sources for finding Software
http://www.versiontracker.com

Storage
.mac account

Teacher Tools
http://classtools.net/main_area/template_loader.php?timer An interactive timer that you can set the time to and have music play while it counts down!

From other teachers:
www.sketchup.google.com need to download and install, can't with managed laptops
www.worldle.net
www.mrpicassohead.com
carrotrevolution.com/rotoball
redstudio.moma.org/interactives/remix
scratch.mit.edu

My toolbox, just for fun!