move fast! they are - or will be - offering ad-free Vokis to educators to start the new school year. Sign-up here if you're interested - they'll notify you when it's ready.
Ooohhhh, just found out that "ad-free" means you have to pay a "small" fee - don't know how much it is yet. I'll report back.
How would you want your work with computers or other digital media to be evaluated as part of your job performance? Does your school currently take this into account?
Description - from the website
"VoiceThread can be used to teach Chinese in a high school setting. Students have to repeat the words and then make sentences with the new vocabulary. They record themselves and they have to be creative. I show the end project in the class and the students love it!"
It's getting close to that time of year when teachers and students will be returning to school for the fall semester. The great thing about the start of a new school year is that it brings new resolutions for both teachers and students.
If you're looking for a school or classroom for your students to partner with, there's no place like the World Wide Web. "People need to get out there and form an online presence," says high school French teacher Toni Theisen. There are online communities everywhere just waiting to be blasted with your callout for a sister classroom.
"Over the past academic year, my students and I have been experimenting with the use of a number of web based applications (often known as Web 2.0 tools). My aim has been to enhance our schemes of work by providing our students with new and exciting learning opportunities.
In my opinion, using technology effectively has clear benefits for both teaching and learning and can help to improve motivation by engaging pupils in activities which, perhaps, step out of their ordinary school experience and which show them that it is possible to teach and learn about a subject using tools similar to those they use daily outside school. In other words, we have tried to use the types of tools with which they are often already familiar.
I have written about each of these individual tools in separate posts, but I thought it would be useful to list the ten most used internet applications on one post. As ever, I aim to provide, not only a list of the web applications we have used, but also examples of practice which you may wish to follow or, indeed, improve upon.
Therefore, each of the entries below has links leading to lesson plans which have incorporated the tools as well as working examples of students' work where appropriate. Without further ado, and in alphabetical order, my ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers are:"
Good example of how an educator used twitter to chat with an author. Also detailed her proposal to admin to override the twitter block. Great if your school blocks twitter.
I wonder how she did this? I think this would be of high interest for my world geography teachers. Would certainly add a new dimension to reporting out on current events in different parts of the world.
Teachers and librarians are finding Twitter’s great for research, too. Karen Burns, a librarian at Gig Harbor High School in Washington state, created a Twitter search widget for current events in Africa to help ninth graders with their research projects.
I think my school has one or two class sets of iTouches...
Otherwise, it would be more likely that in a University class more students would have thier own iWhatevers to use...
I just logged into my twitter page, put the hash tag into the search and watched the tweets load onto the page. If you like twitterdeck check out wiffiti.com
We don't "parse" verbs in Spanish... I don't really know what that is... conjugate? We also don't do much translating... I wonder how a person could use this idea in a more communicative way?
It could be like a waterfall of tweets...
hablar
hablo
hablas
habla
hablamos
hablais
hablan.
Teacher calls out the verb and tense and each student (or student group) tweets in the collection of conjugations (parses??).
This is so cool! I know it would keep my students more engaged and focused on what could potentially be boring grammatical exercises. I do not currently use an on-line notebook and want to use Google docs more often. Lots to think about!
I liked how the teacher videotaped the skype conversation with a flipcam in order to replay it for her students. Then, they could focus on parts of the conversation in more detail.
I like the idea of the flipcam as well. I also like how she manages to have those kids skype, which is a difficult tasks to do. This is a very good example on how a whole group can skype with another located in another part of the world.
At our school there is a phenomenal social studies teacher who uses Skype to talk to students in the Middle East. I would love to chat with students from Mexico or another Spanish speaking country, but am unsure about how to get started. Does anyone have any tips about how to find a partner school and set up interaction? I think this is essentially part of 'ePals'. Does anyone use this? Share your experiences, please, if you have!
Have you ever read an NMC Horizon Report and thought, "I want to start implementing these technologies and learning approaches at my school...but where to begin?" Produced by the New Media Consortium (NMC), the Report details emerging technologies likely to have a significant impact on teaching and learning around the globe. The Toolkit is geared toward education leaders who wish to learn more about and further the dialogue on the emerging technologies identified in the Report and their potential to re-imagine K-12 education.
If you are considering using electronic portfolios with your students - here is a review of software available for a school. You might also want to consider LinguaFolio, and just plain wikis as other alternatives.
"You've got every device under the sun in front of you. Now what apps are you going to use? Here are the apps or app categories that I recommend you test for your school. There are lots of apps, and these are just my opinion based on what I've used with my students or successfully tested."
I discovered this post from an earlier carlatech class when searching "German" in our group, and I thought it was worth bringing to our group's attention. The site offers hundreds of songs in many languages. Would make for a fun Friday reward activity.
Excellent resource. Three levels, Karaoke and Expert options seem fun. What is really interesting is ability for instructor to customize their own activities.
anyone try the karaoke? or, is there another karaoke site? i have a student trip to Mexico City coming up and my wouldn't that be a fabulous fundraiser!
I don't have personal knowledge of these courses, but I've heard from others that they are good. OLC is one of the main organizations for post-secondary information about teaching online. See if your school has a membership that you can take advantage of for conferences and workshops.