"Amazing digital scrapbooks for student creativity, imagination, and self-expression.
Combine images, videos, text, and more
Manage students, classes, and projects
Collaborate, share, download & print
Astoundingly easy to use"
"n Project Based Learning (PBL), students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. While allowing for some degree of student "voice and choice," rigorous projects are carefully planned, managed, and assessed to help students learn key academic content, practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication & critical thinking), and..."
"Digital Bytes teaches teens digital citizenship through student-directed, media-rich activities that tackle real-world dilemmas. Teens learn from the experiences of their peers then create collaborative projects that voice their ideas for making smart, safe choices online."
"Bringing together students, teachers, researchers, policy-makers, educational professionals, and other community members, the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation is a center for fostering collaborations to improve education."
Think of Stixy as your online bulletin board. Create as many Stixyboards as you like, one for each project. Use Stixy to easily organize and share:
* Your family's schedule
* Projects at work
* An upcoming holiday with your friends
* Your photos from your last bike trip
* Or share a file or two with a friend
Only you set the limitations for how you want to use Stixy.
Mash your ideas and media together with friends in a dynamic whiteboard wiki. Using photos, videos, and other web content you can instantly create brainstorms, presentations, scrapbooks, and enjoy an interactive chat with more than 50 friends.
Welcome! ClassChatter offers free blogging and web tools for teachers at all levels of education. Our first goal is to provide a safe haven for teachers and students on the web. You will find a secure and private environment, free of any advertising directed at your students. We hope that you will discover useful tools that will help move your students more rapidly into 21st century communications and collaboration!
Glogster EDU is your original educational resource for innovative and interactive learning. Glogster EDU was conceived to imaginatively, productively, and collaboratively respond to the dynamic educational landscape and exceed the needs of today's educators and learners. We value the participation of educators and strive to assimilate their contributions to Glogster EDU, Glogster EDU is yours! Educators from all over the world are integrating Glogster EDU's resourceful platform to make traditional learning more dynamic, more interactive and more in tune with learners today. Most importantly Glogster EDU is FUN for teachers and learners alike!
"the tools of learning have changed, as have the tools of collaboration, of distribution, of creation, and if our schools do not teach these - and much more - help our students to understand how they must manipulate these tools for their purposes - and the world's - nothing else we do in school really matters, because our students will not be able to effectively work with what they know."
School is one of the few times when they can get together with their friends and they use every unscheduled moment to socialize - passing time, when the teacher's back is turned, lunch, bathroom breaks, etc. They are desperately craving an opportunity to connect with their friends; not surprisingly, their use of anything that enables socialization while at school is deeply desired.
informal social learning
This drive to connect provides a unique opportunity for school teachers: Incredibly high levels of student motivation paired with a predefined fluency with electronic communication tools.
One tool that can help educators to do just that is Voicethread.
Known as a “group audio blog,” Voicethread allows users to record text and audio comments about uploaded images.
Voicethread is Asynchronous:
Voicethread is Engaging:
Begin by carefully selecting a topic that will promote conversation and debate between students—and that can be conveyed through images currently available to you.
don’t be afraid to disagree with something
Initial comments should be somewhere between 1 and 3 sentences long.
As a teacher, this will be a challenge. The brief intro is what makes the difference between presentation and social education dialogue.
The best Voicethreads are truly interactive—with users listening and responding to one another.
They come to the conversation with an open mind, willing to reconsider their own positions—and willing to challenge the notions of others.
carefully script out short opening comments for each image that include a question for viewers to consider.
help other listeners know what it is that has caught your attention.
finish your comment with a question that other listeners can reply to. Questions help to keep digital conversations going!
To be an active Voicethreader, start by carefully working your way through a presentation. While viewing pictures and listening to the comments that have been added by other users, you should:
Gather Facts: Jot down things that are interesting and new to you
Make Connections: Relate and compare things you are viewing and hearing to things that you already know.
Ask Questions: What about the comments and presentation is confusing to you? What don’t you understand? How will you find the answer? Remember that there will ALWAYS be questions in an active thinker’s mind!
Give Opinions: Make judgments about what you are viewing and hearing. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Like? Dislike? Do you support or oppose anything that you have heard or seen? Why?
Use the following sentence starters to shape your thoughts and comments while viewing or participating in Voicethread presentations. Comments based on these kinds of statements make Voicethreads interactive and engaging.
This reminds me of…
This is similar to…
I wonder…
I realized…
I noticed…
You can relate this to…
I’d like to know…
I’m surprised that…
If I were ________, I would ______________
If __________ then ___________
Although it seems…
I’m not sure that…
These student suggestions are the missing link I was looking for to successfully incorporate into my classroom.
Just be sure to disagree agreeably
Assessing Voicethread Participation
Essentially mirroring the reflective aspects of Konrad Glogowski's system for pushing reflective blogging, I've decided to ask my students the following four questions while we're working with a new Voicethread:
To craft careful answers, they must truly consider the comments of others---an essential skill for promoting collaborative versus competitive dialogue---and compare those comments against their own beliefs and preconceived notions.
Competitive dialogue motivates the students, but collaborative dialogue is the life skill they need to learn.
Voicethread Handouts
Voicethread Do's and Don'ts
Citing Images
Voicethread allows users to upload documents to their strands of conversation as well. That means that users can create a "Works Cited" page in a word processing application and upload it at the end of their Voicethread presentations.
Detailed guide to creating/using/evaluating VoiceThread in the classroom. There are great examples and guides to download. The question prompts for students to consider when replying are simple, yet perfect.