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suzanne ondrus

Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations - ReadWriteWeb - 1 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...ia_in_africa_part_2_mobile.php

mobile_phones africa social_networking mobile

shared by suzanne ondrus on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • social media technology conference PICNIC2008
  • conference featured prolific social entrepreneurs and technology developers from around the world who offered insight into various projects from the African continent.
  • Africa is unique in that it seems to have bypassed the same era of community infrastructure building that has occurred in developed nations around the world.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • most of the technologies that currently permeate Africa aren't terrestrial. There are very few telephone lines, but mobile penetration is higher than any other region in the world.
  • Instead, internet connectivity is distributed nearly entirely by satellite.
  • The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere."
    • suzanne ondrus
      suzanne ondrus on 29 Apr 10
       
      The word "developers" could also be "capitalists." Again, I don't see why cell phones are so expensive in Benin & Burkina Faso!!
  • Perhaps this thought is what motivated Google to invest in O3B Networks earlier this month. O3B Networks is an ambitious attempt to bring three billion people in the developing world (mainly in parts of Asia and Africa) online by launching sixteen inexpensive, low-orbit satellites. The potential benefits for Google are obvious. This is three billion new internet users, who will more than likely use Google to search, and who will potentially click-through Adsense links and use other Google products. An indicator that Google may be anticipating as much is their move into Africa last year. They've since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya with plans to eventually operate out of all sub-Saharan African countries.
  • At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4% Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country. Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers. In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.
  • Micro-payments and Mobile Banking
  • Mobile News Reporting
Barbara Lindsey

Oscar Wilde Special Part II - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

youtube findingfiltering analytics Deutsch Buchrezension

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
Barbara Lindsey

YouTube - AlArabiya's Channel - 0 views

www.youtube.com/alarabiya

youtube iraq googlemoderator vote leaders

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 26 Sep 10
     
    With the drawdown of U.S. troops and a still-unformed government, the future of Iraq holds many question marks. What are your questions for Iraqi leaders about the future of the country?
Barbara Lindsey

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration - 0 views

www.capetowndeclaration.org/faq

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 21 Mar 08 - Cached
  • The Internet provides a platform for collaborative learning and knowledge creation across long distances, which is central to the long term promise of open education. It also offers a channel for the creation and distribution of knowledge from a diversity of places and cultures around the world, and not just from major publishing centres like New York, London, and Paris.
  • we believe that open education and open educational resources are very much compatible with the business of commercial publishing. The Declaration clearly states that the open education movement should "...engage entrepreneurs and publishers who are developing innovative business models that are both open and financially sustainable."
  • here is likely to be some upheaval in formal educational systems as teachers and students engage in the new pedagogies that are enabled by openness. There might also be concerns that some of the deeper goals of the open education movement could backfire. For example, instead of enhancing locally relevant educational practices and rewarding those with regional expertise, it is possible that a flood of foreign-produced open educational resources will actually undermine the capacity for regional expertise to form or thrive.
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  • First, this is not actually a philanthropic endeavor in the classic sense of "donating" something to those with less. Instead, the open education movement promotes conditions for self-empowerment, and one of the central premises of the movement focuses on the freedom to be educated in the manner of one's choosing. Second, the permissions granted in defining an open educational resource explicitly enable the localization and adaptation of materials to be more locally appropriate. Every person should have the right to be educated in his/her native language, and in a manner that is most suitable to the personal and cultural contexts in which they reside. Third, we have good reason to believe that the contributions to the global open educational enterprise from those in resource-limited settings are at least as valuable as contributions from anyone else. While we have much to do to enable truly equitably participation among all of the citizens of the globe, there is widespread agreement that the ultimate goal is some type of open educational network, not a unidirectional pipeline.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Mar 08
       
      Key component of a critical pedagogical approach.
  • educational resources commissioned and paid for directly by the public sector should be released as open educational resources. This ensures that the taxpayers who financed these resources can benefit from them fully. Of course, this principle cannot extend to resources paid for indirectly with public funds, such as materials written by professors at public universities. The Declaration does strongly encourage these professors and institutions to make all of their resources open. However, in the end, this is their choice.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Mar 08
       
      Wow! Wonder how many critical pedagogists would embrace this idea.
  • resources should be licensed to facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone
  • many of the participants advocated for inclusion of language that indicates that the license should ideally impose no legal constraints other than a requirement by the creator for appropriate attribution or the sharing of derivative works. This degree of openness represents the 'gold standard' in open educational resource licensing. However, it is also recognized that some authors and publishers may wish to disallow commercial uses (non-commercial). Resources licensed with this additional restriction are still open educational resources, but do come with risks and costs.
  • we suggest that you use one of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses, for several reasons: The licenses have human-readable deeds, which is (generally) easier for people to understand.The licenses have a computer-readable component which enables search and filtering by license status, an increasingly important consideration in an era of exploding online content.The licenses have been ported to many countries around the world, with more being added every year, which guarantees their worldwide application and enforcement.The licenses are already the most frequently used licenses for open educational resources, which will make it easier for users to learn about their rights, as well as use the materials in interesting ways.
  • Open educational resources licensed using CC-BY have no restrictions on use beyond attribution for the original creator. Open educational resources licensed using CC-BY-SA also require attribution, but have the additional restriction of requiring that the derived material be licensed in the same manner as the original(s), thus ensuring their continued availability as open educational resources.
  • n most cases, the NC term is likely to have undesired repercussions for your work. If you are thinking of restricting commercial activity, ask yourself the following questions: What is the goal of doing so? Is it that the creators wish to make money from their contributions? Is this likely? Is it assumed that all for-profit activity is somehow inimical to education? What are the costs of restricting commercial use of open educational resources and do you wish to incur them? For example, is it your goal to forbid a for-profit publisher in a developing country from printing copies of your materials and distributing them there?
  • If an author's primary purpose in creating open educational resources is for it to be used as widely, freely, and creatively as possible, then using CC-BY is the better choice
  • CC-BY allows for a variety of motivations, including the possibility of commercial success, to drive users to adapt and re-purpose their materials.
  • f an author's primary purpose in creating open educational resources is for that material to never leave the educational commons, such as it is, then you may want to apply the SA term. In this case, the possibilities for viable commercial derivatives, though not disallowed, are diminished, and so users motivated to adapt materials for that purpose are unlikely to participate. In addition, open educational resources licensed with an SA term are only interoperable with other SA materials, which seriously limits their capacity for re-mixing.
  • There are two key points we would ask you to consider prior to applying the ND term. First, are you willing to prevent all of the wonderful ways in which your work might be improved upon just for the sake of preventing a few derivatives that you would consider inferior? It is worth remembering that it is the granting of freedoms to share, reprint, translate, combine, or adapt that makes open educational resources educationally different from those that can merely be read online for free.
  • you must remember that digital resources are not consumable goods, in the sense that they can be shared infinitely without any loss of value for the original. As such, if inferior derivatives are created, those creations have done nothing to diminish the quality of your original work, which will remain available for others to use or improve upon as they wish.
  • there is absolutely no restriction on use of public domain materials. In addition to being able to freely use such materials, you are free to adapt public domain materials and then license the derivative works in any way you choose, including standard all-rights-reserved copyright. You have to apply an open license if you want your contribution to add to the pool of open educational resources.
Barbara Lindsey

The Tempered Radical: New Opportunities to Connect and Create. . . - 1 views

teacherleaders.typepad.com/...new-opportuniti.html

beyondwebct

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 30 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Our students will buy and sell from countries across the world and work for international companies. They will manage employees from other cultures, work with people from different continents in joint ventures and solve global problems such as AIDS and avian flu together.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Aug 08
       
      As language educators, if we don't make use of thes networked environments we are guilty of malfeasance.
  • But what I've grown to realize is that very few people have really embraced the changing nature of a tomorrow that remains poorly defined. We know that the Internet today is far more powerful than ever before---and have heard about companies that are capitalizing on these changes---but we haven't figured out what that means for us. We're jazzed to have access to information and geeked by interactive content providers, but our digital experiences remain somewhat self-centered.
  • the new National Educational Technology Standards for Students being developed by the International Society for Technology in Education. These standards reflect an increased need to teach children how to use the Internet in new and different ways. Perhaps the most challenging---and important standard---for educators to embrace will this one:Communication and Collaboration: Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: A. Interact, collaborate and publish with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. B. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. C. Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. D. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.Does that sound like the digital work being done in your classroom, school, district or state?!
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  • Together with the Center for International Understanding, North Carolina in the World is developing partnerships based on digital collaboration between schools in North Carolina and nations ranging from China to Mexico. Teachers and students in partnering schools are learning to use Web 2.0 tools like web-conferencing and wikis to connect kids across continents. Not only do these efforts help to build a general knowledge of other countries in our children, they are providing concrete opportunities to use technology in new ways.
Barbara Lindsey

Beyond Campus Boundaries ePortfolio Transforms into 'Cultural Application' -- Campus Te... - 0 views

campustechnology.com/...into-cultural-application.aspx

eportfolio portfolio higher ed campustech

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • 08/09/05
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10
       
      It's five years hence--do you see any evidence of large-scale portfolio adoption at your institution?
  • It’s a cultural application
  • ePortfolios
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  • What’s happening with universities in this knowledge age is that the boundaries between the university and the rest of the world have pretty much dissolved. We are now a learning culture, or a knowledge culture.
  • It’s something that whole countries are offering to their citizens to store things related to their work, over a career or over the time when they are developing their career.
  • what’s driving the market in the US is assessment management.
  • universities—especially schools of education around the country—are rushing to implement ePortfolio systems so that they can do the kind of reporting the accrediting agencies are asking for.
  • The big market is going to be everyone having an ePortfolio, whether they are in college or not in college
  • Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10
     
    2005 interview w/Trent Batson, who talks about ePortfolio use in U.S. institutions of higher ed.
Barbara Lindsey

Futurelab - Resources - Publications, reports & articles - Web articles - From Shetland... - 0 views

www.futurelab.org.uk/...Web-Article1032

student assessment global

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 26 Feb 10
     
    Students around the world looking at assessment in various countries.
Barbara Lindsey

Happy Data Privacy Day! - Digits - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...happy-data-privacy-day

privacy data internet day

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 02 Mar 10
     
    January 28 is Data Privacy Day in the U.S., Canada and 27 European countries. Designed to make people aware of issues related to data privacy.
Barbara Lindsey

2010 Horizon Report » The Horizon Project - 0 views

wp.nmc.org/...horizon-project

HorizonReport horizonproject

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 28 Jan 10 - Cached
  • ongoing series of conversations and dialogs with hundreds of technology professionals, campus technologists, faculty leaders from colleges and universities, and representatives of leading corporations from more than two dozen countries. In each of the past six years, these conversations have resulted in the publication each January of a report focused on emerging technologies relevant to higher education.
  • When the cycle starts, little is known, or even can be known, about the appropriateness or efficacy of many of the emerging technologies for these purposes, as the Horizon Project expressly focuses on technologies not currently in widespread use in academe. In a typical year, 75 or more of these technologies may be identified for further investigation; for the 2010 report, more than 110 were considered
  • By engaging a wide community of interested parties, and diligently searching the Internet and other sources, enough information is gathered early in the process to allow the members of the Advisory Board to form an understanding of how each of the discovered technologies might be in use in settings outside of academe, to develop a sense of the potential the technology may have for higher education settings, and to envision applications of the technology for teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. The findings are discussed in a variety of settings — with faculty, industry experts, campus technologists, and of course, the Horizon Advisory Board. Of particular interest to the Advisory Board every year is finding educational applications for these technologies that may not be intuitive or obvious.
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  • ncreasingly the Horizon Project is a global effort. Each year at least a third of the members of the advisory board represent countries outside of North America.
  • Each Horizon Report is produced over a period of just a few months so that the information is timely and relevant.
Barbara Lindsey

2010 Horizon Report » One Year or Less: Mobile Computing - 0 views

wp.nmc.org/...mobile-computing

HorizonReport mobiles

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 28 Jan 10 - Cached
  • In the developed world, mobile computing has become an indispensable part of day-to-day life in the workforce, and a key driver is the increasing ease and speed with which it is possible to access the Internet from virtually anywhere in the world via the ever-expanding cellular network.
  • The mobile market today has nearly 4 billion subscribers, more than two-thirds of whom live in developing countries.
  • These mobile computing tools have become accepted aids in daily life, giving us on-the-go access to tools for business, video/audio capture and basic editing, sensing and measurement, geolocation, social networking, personal productivity, references, just-in-time learning — indeed, virtually anything that can be done on a desktop.
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  • For many people all over the world, but especially in developing countries, mobiles are increasingly the access point not only for common tools and communications, but also for information of all kinds, training materials, and more.
  • At Franklin & Marshall College, sixteen faculty in the year-long mLearning Pilot Project are using iPod Touches to explore ways mobile computing can be used in teaching, learning, and research in disciplines like history, psychology, religious studies, world languages, government, classics, and more.
  • students noted increased time spent accessing course materials as well as higher levels of collaboration with classmates.
  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Mobile Tours http://www.sfmoma.org/events/1556
Barbara Lindsey

About « CrisisCommons - 0 views

crisiscommons.org/about

crisis help volunteers internet finding filtering

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 25 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 25 Feb 11
     
    CrisisCamp is a global network of hybrid barcamp/hackathon events which bring together people and communities who innovate crisis response and global development through technology tools, expertise and problem solving. Since 2009, CrisisCamp volunteers have created crisis response and learning events in over 10 countries with volunteers of all backgrounds who collaborate in an open environment to aggregate crisis data, develop prototype tools and train people on how to use technology tools and problem solving to aid in crisis response and global development.
Barbara Lindsey

YouTube - Build Your Query - 1 views

www.google.com/...buildQuery

youtube culture demographics country videos analysis finding filtering

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Barbara Lindsey on 09 Dec 11
     
    via @gaugler
Barbara Lindsey

ASCD Express 5.18 - Cell Phones Allow Anytime Learning - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...518-varlas.aspx

mobiles mobile Kolb ascd

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 10 Jun 10 - Cached
  • She is currently writing a book tentatively titled Cases for Using Students' Cell Phones in Education: A Practical Guide to Using Cell Phones in K–12 Schools, which looks at 11 U.S. and 5 international case studies of teachers integrating students' own cell phones into instruction.
  • One of Larry Cuban's (Teachers and Machines, Oversold and Underused) theories about why ed technology often fails in schools is that we use this top-down approach where administrators or tech coordinators introduce the technologies to the teachers, and they in turn try to introduce and teach it to the students. It's a very foreign concept for the students, as well as the teachers. And often what happens is maybe a handful of teachers end up using this very expensive technology, and students don't have any access to it outside of school. Cuban recommends a much more bottom-up approach to ed technology. Rather than making specialized software and hardware just for school learning, students and society introduce the technologies that schools should be integrating into learning.
  • People who know the history of ed technology know that it hasn't been that successful, long-term, with sustaining learning because it's often attached to a tool that students don't have access to outside of school.
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  • For many schools, the hardest part is making it acceptable to turn to technologies that aren't traditionally used in schools. It's a culture that has to be cultivated at the school itself. In the book I'm working on now, many of the teachers in the case studies I discuss approached their administrators with something they'd been using with success outside of school, and their administrators were open to trying it out within school. Kipp Rogers at Passages Middle School in Newport News, Va., has done a phenomenal job modeling that approach and valuing not only his teachers, but also his students, who are involved in planning, as well.
  • Q: From what you've seen in the field, what's the most interesting instructional use of mobile devices happening now? Keren-Kolb: Definitely what's going on in Australia. Teachers are using QR (two-dimensional bar codes) for activities and learning. In the United States, about 60 percent of the phones can do this, but in most other countries, it's almost universal. So, in some Australian schools, this means [that] students come in on the first day of class and their entire syllabus is on a bar code they scan directly into their phone—same thing with some books and homework assignments. They'll scan a code for their homework, and it'll link to video tutorials and activities. So, moving away from textbooks and moving toward paperless learning that's much more interactive. I think that's exciting—how much information you can attach to that little bar code, and use it to extend learning.
  • When students can use whatever tools are around them, obviously, testing changes. It's not just about a right or wrong answer—it's about inquiry, collaboration, and the higher-order thinking skills we want students to do.
Barbara Lindsey

Cell phone novels come of age › Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion - 0 views

www.japantoday.com/...cell-phone-novels-come-of-age

mobile cellphones japan novels

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 16 Aug 10 - Cached
  • “Teenage girls began messaging with pagers in the early ’90s,” says Mizuko Ito, a research scientist who studies cell phone use among Japanese youth. “Because of this, Japan was the first country to have widespread mobile communications, even before mobile phones became affordable and popular.” Ito sees in the rise of cell phone novels a high degree of media and gadget literacy, a cultural willingness to experiment with new technologies, and a desire for private space and intimate communication.
  • The way it works is this: novels are posted by members of cell phone community sites to be downloaded for free and read on other cell phones. Reading often takes place in crowded trains during long commutes. The works are published in 70-word installments, or abbreviated chapters that are the ideal length to be read between shorter train stops. This means that, despite small cell phone screens, lots of white space is left for ease of reading. Multiple short lines of compressed sentences, mostly composed of fragmentary dialogue, are strung together with lots of cell phone-only symbols. The resulting works are emotional, fast-paced and highly visual, with an impact not unlike manga.
  • Following Starts, other publishers like Goma and Asuki Media Works moved in to cherry pick cell phone novel sites online and put out the next big hit. The number of cell phone novels in print began skyrocketing in 2006, when 22 books hit the shelves; the following year, there were 98. Even a no-name author with a cell phone novel publishing deal enjoyed a first run of between 50,000 and 100,000 copies.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Indeed, cell phone novels do not go through the editorial selection process; they first become popular with readers and then are published based on their ability to please a crowd. This rawness is at once their appeal and a major hurdle keeping the emergent genre from maturing.
Barbara Lindsey

14. Case Study: Latin America « - 0 views

twitter09.wordpress.com/...case-study-latin-america

twitter latinamerica casestudy

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 22 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Honduras was not the only example of how Twitter is been used to change the fate of politics. On July 5, 2009, Mexico had its legislative elections and a hashtag -#votonulo-[Figure 5] was created. The purpose was to request that Mexicans vote “NO VOTE”. According the CNN en Español this made a difference on the way that Mexican people voted that day.  About 6% of the Mexican population voted “NO VOTE” in a country with a population of more than 109M this means about 6.5M. In metropolitan areas like Mexico City with almost 20M people [12] and Guadalajara with almost 5M people [11] the “NO VOTE” reached 11% (2.7M). This event has never happened in Mexico before, according to CNN en Español, Twitter played an important role in it. [13,14]
  • Mobil technology has reached critical mass in Latin America, therefore, this may facilitates the growth of Twitter in this part of the world, as its platform can be access by text message. For example, Argentina has a mobile penetration of 98.7%, followed by Chile which has an 80.4% and Mexico and Brazil with over 70%. [3]
  • It is important to know that in Latin America the first exposure to internet comes from the mobile technology
  • Barbara Lindsey on 22 Aug 10
     
    How Twitter is used in Latin America
Barbara Lindsey

Schools starting to allow use of digital devices - 0 views

www.azcentral.com/...llphones-school-classroom.html

schools mobile digital

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • "We want them to start modeling what they're going to see when they get out of here," said Lee, who envisions someday replacing students' print planners with online calendars. Most of all, he wants to cultivate what he calls good digital citizenship.
  • Drawing inspiration from fake Twitter accounts that parody celebrities or historical figures, Haines has had his students tweet as characters from George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
  • There is little data on how many school districts across the country have policies allowing the use of cellphones and other digital devices in class. A 2009 U.S. Department of Education survey shows only 4 percent of public-school teachers say a handheld device is available in the classroom every day.
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  • "Everybody in the technology end of schools are talking about not so much loosening the reins as opening the opportunities for students," she said. "That's the world they live in - not in a classroom, in rows, with books in front of them."
  • "All the conversation, even at the grad-school level, is 'Put away your phones,' " said Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of digital media at Columbia University. "If I was a teacher, and as a parent, I would be concerned. Forty kids, all pulling out their cellphones - that's a total recipe for disaster."
  • "If you stopped and waited for every unknown to be solved, you'd never get anything done," he said.
  • "If a student is cheating, it's the same punishment as if they were using handwritten notes to cheat. If a student is using a cellphone to make threats, it's the same punishment as if they were making verbal threats," Ross said. "Cellphones didn't invent any of (those) things."
  • forcing students to pretend their phones don't exist when they enter school creates an "unrealistic environment" for children.
Barbara Lindsey

Mapping Our Worlds « Beyond WebCT: Integrating Social Networking Tools Into L... - 0 views

beyondwebct.wordpress.com/...mapping-our-worlds-2

mapping webct

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 15 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • practically contributing to the session
  • her community of practice extended beyond her Chinese classroom to encompass foreign language learners in general of the same age but different countries of origin.
  • I think one does not only have to have a certain level of know-how, but also a level of pedagogical training
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Web 2.0 is that the classroom environment isn’t restricted to just the classroom. The in-classroom students have access to “classmates” from all over the world, and out-of-classroom students have access to those resources traditionally reserved for in-classroom students.
  • students/participants were able to contribute materials and access materials contributed by others, all at once. She was able to share very specific information about HOW to create those communities, and that’s a wonderful bit of information for those of us just starting out.
  • It really felt that everyone could learn something from one another. One thing I would criticize, however, was that it seemed to take 20-30 minutes for them to start on the topic. There was plenty of ideas for discussion, but no time left at the end of the session due to the organizational part that took so long.
Barbara Lindsey

High Tech Ideas for Low Tech Classrooms: VoiceThread - Teaching Village - 0 views

www.teachingvillage.org/...ow-tech-classrooms-voicethread

voicethread elementary esl Glastonbury sakamoto beyondpowerpoint

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 23 Oct 10 - Cached
  • How can we take high tech tools and make them work in low tech classrooms?
  • Students in my kids’ class are learning the alphabet. After learning each set of
  • etters, they enjoy making “human” letters.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • This year, I’ve taken pictures in class and then uploaded the pictures to VoiceThread. I record their words for each letter sound using Audacity (another free tool that allows you to record and edit audio on your computer) and a microphone attached to my laptop. At home, I add their recorded voices to the alphabet book.
  • students’ book. I can export a video of our book, with comments, to bring back into class so we can listen to the additions and see how the book has grown. When we reach the letter Z, I’ll burn the book onto CDs for each of my students, so they’ll have a personal copy of their project.
  • anyone can add words or comments to my
  • Because VoiceThread is collaborative,
  • 1-Because of a generous network of teachers on Twitter, my students have a chance to hear English spoken in a lot of different accents, by people who speak English as a first language and by people for whom English is an additional language.
  • 2-They’re learning about countries as we see where our comments come from. 3-They have an invaluable connection with a group of students in New Jersey, who are also learning their letters and sounds, thanks to the efforts of Kim George. My students are mighty impressed with how many words Kim’s students know for each letter! (In fact, you may want to fast forward through a few of the alphabet letters when you check out the project–it has really grown since our first letters!)
  • 4-Since the book is web-based, other classes around the world can “read” our book and it can continue to grow.
  • 1-It gave my students a clear, real reason to use English. It also gave them a real audience to write for. They had something to show for their hard work, something they could share with their friends and grandchildren. 2-My students have a chance to interact with other students through comments. I embedded their project on My Corner of the World (my student blog). While they haven’t yet mastered the art of responding to comments (a few are still figuring out where they might find their email addresses ), they do enjoy reading comments from others. 3-Since it’s web-based, I can share a link with the parents of my young learners class, and they can read the book at home. In fact, anyone around the world can read the book.
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