Group items tagged

An interesting look at an "objective" method of assessing student work. Rather than looking at the Web 2.0 tool, this looks at the level of Bloom achieved and the amount of time spent.

Glog used to plan the research process

Community of educators building 500 Voicethreads for Grades K-7

Ben Miller, a teacher at the University of New South Wales, wanted his students to build learning materials for his course. He decided a wiki was the best platform to capture the group's work over the semester. Ben chose to create his wiki on UNSW's Wikispaces Private Label site as it gave his students a university-branded environment for their academic work. Students loved the wiki and after several weeks, were building most of the content for the site - summarizing theories on free speech, arguing their viewpoints, and highlighting censorship cases that they wanted to further explore. The final product was a rich body of knowledge that helped the students prepare for their end-of-year exam. We encourage you to check out this wiki and listen to Ben's discussion about his wiki project.

Katie Heissenbuttel created this wiki for her fourth grade classroom. Over the past year, Katie has enjoyed watching her students' discussions develop. Initially, students only answered Katie's questions on the wiki but they soon began to comment and respond to their peers' postings. As you visit the wiki, you'll find student podcasts covering recent news events and individual pages showcasing each student's work. Katie's students are always excited to share their latest projects with their parents and parents really love the page of upcoming homework assignments. It's a great example of how a wiki can transform learning into a community process.

This article talks about how using social networking tools with current events allows students to see multiple perspectives.

Terrific site from NOVA, as always. Great introduction to Darwin and Evolution and good place to start a project.

I agree with Charles. I have seen this site before, it is a fantastic resource to learn about Darwin and Evolution and is a great resource for projects. Another great site is http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/. It has resources for students and teachers.

An interesting article about persevering when implementing group work into your classroom. A good reminder that the teacher and students can struggle with collaboration and that at times adjustments must be made.

A good article that describes many of the potential pitfalls with PBL's. I personally try to use them as a tool in class. It made me think about how to use Web 2.0 tools with PBL's in the future. Andrew's last point was a great reminder as well.

Here is another useful resource for planning and successful integration of technology in the classroom.

This site gave a quick tutorial on how to use Adobe Presenter 8. It seemed like an easy video and voice tool to use. It reminded me of a you tube video and it was a little like animoto. It was hard to tell with the brief overview. This presentation tool could lead to some real creativty for use in projects at school. I read a lot of articles while I was in newsstand icnluding: Tech in the Classroom: Earbud yo-yo, and Social Learning networks promote student engagement, global awareness, but I thought the Adobe Presenter was the most creative.

This article emphasizes how PBL can be effective, and help students think critically and not just memorize the facts. According to the article, PBL is not just for gifted students, and can help all students, at every learning level, achieve higher order thinking skills.

This site has a plethora of rubrics for assessing the new technology-based projects we will encounter in our classroom. It provides links to rubrics for podcasts, wikis, blogs, websites, voice threads, and more. It's a great resource when planning a rubric for your own classroom projects.

As more schools go paperless, moving from the paper portfolio to a digital or e-portfolio requires careful planning. This article lists several questions which can be used for planning, along with brief descriptions of suggested tools or platform, some of which are free, and a list of links to them.

Simplicity and Organized--important in blogs and concept maps. Great way to spark and then keep interest.

PhotoStory ideas for educators

This article puts forth the premise that if student transgressions with technology are handled early on with an open school, parent, and student communication loop - then there will be a decreased likelihood of a major transgression later on in life.

After reading the article and as a parent myself. I tend to disagree with this article. Students learn by reading, seeing and applying. It's great to be book smart, but you need to know how to apply the smarts. I love my classes and the project based learning. I think that's all I do the majority of the day. It's great to be a teacher and facilitator at the same time. All students are different.

An excellent piece on the relationship between Web 2.0 and the development of high-order thinking skills. The article describes a project by EDC to train teacher-trainers in Indonesia via Web 2.0 tools. The article describes in very concrete detail how specific Web 2.0 tools promote thinking skills in the upper realm of Bloom's Taxonomy. The article includes a useful chart linking applications like Diigo and Voicethread to the specific skills they promote. It also explains why Web 2.0 tools are more conducive to higher-order thinking than less interactive Web 1.0 tools.

threading and tagging

Have you ever thought, "Gosh, I wish I had time to learn more about Flickr, wikis, or (enter your Web 2.0 tool here)?" Well, this is your chance to take the time to focus on your personal and professional development around Web 2.0 tools. It's fun to explore these tools and figure out ways to use them in the library, with your personal Web sites, or in other ways.

I will give Zoho a look. We use google docs at my school now. Each staff member and student was given an account with the same extension. With so many sites to choose from it takes time to see which ones you lke. Google docs seems to show up in many articles.

Zoho Writer looks interesting as you need to be invited to participate. Google Docs are used extensively within our school, though I only used them for our NGY Ning project last year. We also use Google Docs for attendance in our after school programs.

This article introduces a contest which promotes reading and media skills that began in 2008. It is sponsored by major publishers such as Simon and Schuster and Scholastic and 5 regional libraries, The contest is for students in grades 1-6. The students need to create a storytube on a book they have read. It is important to point out that teachers are not replacing a written report or are using this to enhance the report. I reviewed some of the winners and it is so great to see kids excited about what they read and using technology so easily. With students creating video media at such an early age and being so comfortable doing it only leads me to believe that when these students reach high school the work that they will create will be fantastic.

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now! By Jennifer Pinkowski -- School Library Journal, 07/09/2008 Funny accents, strange wigs, and spoiler-free plot summaries are the common elements in the winning videos made by contestants in StoryTubes, a new contest for kids that promotes reading-and new media skills-by capitalizing on the popularity of YouTube.

This link explains how libraries are using the power and popularity of YouTube to promote learning, literacy, creativity and technology. StoryTube is a great project idea that uses the power of the contest as a wonderful motivator.