Thing 18: Podcasting with Evoca

It was easy to use Evoca to record my podcast.  I use Audacity with my students, but I like the convenience of Evoca (the files are online and can be accessed anywhere).  I like the idea of people having an opportunity to comment on podcasts.  This creates a community feel. 

I plan to practice my “reporter voice” more, so I will be as great at podcasting as my students are!  Check out my podcast!

Thing 17: Podcasting

I enjoyed listening to several podcasts from Radio WillowWeb. I also listened to some selections from Our City Podcast. These podcasts gave me some great ideas for how to further develop podcasting in the classroom. My students listened to several of these podcasts as well. They were impressed with having several “reporters” within one podcast, as well as the use of music within the podcasts. This is something they are very interested in exploring before the end of the school year.

After listening to quite a few podcasts, I was really struck by the variety of podcasts available. I think that I will continue to explore what is out there, so I can find some more favorites.

The word “podcast” is greeted with cheers in my classroom. I started experimenting with podcasts a few months ago. Starting in January, we have a star student each week. As part of the star student’s duties, he/she must create a podcast to tell about what we are learning and share exciting details about our week. I use a podcast template that my students helped me to create. Each student fills in the template to create a news report. In addition, my students have posted podcasts of their class council speeches. After electing our class council, the officers met to discuss some of their ideas. Before meeting, they insisted that there should be a podcast of the meeting to give the class (and parents) a glimpse into their discussion. I was so proud of their desire to use a podcast as a forum for sharing their ideas.

Podcasting has created some unique opportunities for my students. They are very aware of the fact that they are writing for a large audience, and they put forth their best efforts when thinking about what to include in their star student podcasts. Because they read the scripts they have written aloud, they have taken care in editing their work for clarity. There have been many occasions when our star student will say, “I can’t read this word that I wrote here. I must have spelled it wrong.” My students have really gained insight into writing as a form of communication, rather than just as an assignment. They also rehearse reading their scripts, and gain valuable reading fluency practice. By podcasting class council meetings, it is obvious that our students are remarkable communicators and leaders. I was impressed by their thinking and their ability to see value in each child’s ideas.

Podcasting has given my class a sense of accomplishment and a desire to share more of our classroom with the world. They are already discussing new ideas. They want to “spice up” our weekly podcasts with music. They also want our future star students to give the podcasts a “news report” feel to them. The end of the year is fast approaching, but you would never know that from listening to their excitement about podcasting book clubs, class meetings, and poetry readings. Their enthusiasm is boundless!

Thing 16: 43 Things

I checked out 43 Things, and I see how this could be a great goal-setting site. The people posting their goals probably feel more accountable after making their goals public, and I thought the “cheers” were really neat! It must feel great to have so many people cheering you on. I’m not sure that this site would be something that I would use.

I do the idea of the site, though: posting a list of goals and providing updates on your progress. My students do this with their portfolios. Each quarter, they fill out a personal report card and set goals for the next quarter. At the end of each quarter, I meet with them to have a “conference.” They talk about their previous goals and how they have progressed. They also discuss the grades they have given themselves on the report card.

It might be fun to post three class goals on our blog at the beginning of each quarter and have the students provide feedback on how we’re doing. This would create a team mentality. If some students show an interest in posting their personal goals, they could post them (along with updates on their progress) to get “cheers” from parents, teachers, and classmates.

While I’m not sure that the 43 Things site is for me, it did give me some great ideas to use in the classroom!

Thing 15: LibraryThing – Where Books Meet Web 2.0

I signed up for LibraryThing right away, and I love it. I added a book, and I got see the average rating and lots of other information about the book. I also found a discussion where the book was mentioned and posted a comment. I rated the book as well. I think I’ll save writing a review for next time.

The suggester was really neat! I got lots of suggestions for other children’s books I might like, based on the book I entered. The unsuggester was funny. It was pretty much dead-on about the books I wouldn’t want to read! I looked at the groups and noticed that a sixth grade class had set up a group. What a great idea! They were telling about books they would love to have if they were stranded on a desert island.

Several teachers I know have mentioned wanting to have a book club for teachers after school, but this site would allow teachers to participate when they had a few moments. . . rather than having a set time after school when we all have so much to do! I love to read, so this site would provide me with lots of book recommendations. I can find great books for relaxation reading at the beach and books that might be fun to read with my students.

I am looking forward to doing some more exploring on LibraryThing!

Thing 14: Delicious is sweet!

I love Delicious! Where have I been? Why haven’t I used this before now?

I had so much fun tagging those sites, and I kept thinking how great this will be to use with other teachers. We can all tag sites for a particular topic and share them easily without emailing so many links. Parents could also join in on the fun and see sites that were tagged as great math games, etc. I was also thinking about how fun this would be to use to share links with my friends. We often share websites and tell each other about great places to order things from…how cool would it be to share all of that in Delicious? I have grown to despise my “favorites” list. It is full of stuff…great stuff…but it is not organized. It also isn’t accessible from other computers. Hooray for Delicious!

I experimented with adding a subscription. I am still looking through what comes up to see how I can best use that. I also added someone to my network, and I created some tag bundles. This made everything much more organized, and that made me happy. I tagged sites as I was working on things for school, and I tagged a lot more of them than I realized. I love the fact that so many people are involved in organizing such a vast array of knowledge.

This idea of people coming together to make the internet more manageable reminds me of a game called Phetch that a friend told me about. You play against people anywhere in the world, and you describe (create tags) for images. The other person tries to find that image by using your tags as clues. These tags are used to create descriptive captions for images. When a visually impaired person visits a website using a screen reader, the image caption is read as well. I thought that was really cool! People playing a game are actually making information more accessible to others…

Thing 13: Exploring Tools

I explored several tools this week, but I am going to focus mainly on ToonDoo in this post.  I used ToonDoo to create a “teaser” for a story my students read early in the school year.  It is on my wiki!    I teach my students to do book talks at the beginning of the year, and one skill they learn is to create a teaser for a book they have read.  The teaser tells just enough to get other students interested in reading a book for themselves.  I think ToonDoo would be a fun way to present a book teaser!  My students would really enjoy choosing the characters and setting, as well as writing the dialogue.  They wouldn’t even realize that they are doing work!  Students may also enjoy taking turns creating cartoons for our class newsletters.  I’m excited to think about other possibilities for using this tool.

On a side note…Skype is a tool that I have enjoyed using with my students.  We Skyped with a school in Venezuela this year.  We are hoping to Skype with some people in South Africa as part of our country study for field day (our field day is Olympic-themed, with each class studying a country and making a connection there).  We also hope to Skype with at least one author this year.

Thing 12: I attended a “21st Century” Conference (in my PJ’s)

I attended two online conferences.  The first was “Learn to Blog:  Blog to Learn” by Anne Davis. The presentation was a short introduction to Blogmeister.  By clicking her links, I found a web quest to aid teachers in introducing blogs.  I thought this was a neat idea!  I visited some class blogs to get an idea of what other teachers and students are doing.  There is a lot more to explore, so I plan to visit her site again in the future and peruse the different links.             

I also attended on online conference session entitled “Using Web 2.0 Tools in a Grade One Classroom” by Kathy Cassidy.  She is a first grade teacher from Canada.  I was impressed by all of the Web 2.0 tools she has integrated into her classroom.  Her students have “Blog Buddies” in New Zealand, and their partnership has encouraged her students to research New Zealand.  It is so exciting to see children take ownership of their learning and seek out information in that way.  She also mentioned that she uses her blog to communicate with parents.  I plan to expand my blog next year to include a section for parents to ask questions, blog, and communicate.  I like the fact that she mentioned that parents who travel frequently are able to maintain a connection to the classroom.  I have found that this is an amazing benefit of our classroom blog.  The children feel that their parents are involved in their learning, and the parents feel connected to our classroom, even when they are far away.  Kathy also shared her experiences with wikis in the classroom.  She admitted that some wikis take off and others fizzle out.  She mentioned that she had to create several wikis and place students in teams to work on them because only one person at a time may work on the wiki.  I wonder if this is still the case, as this conference is several years old.  It seems that Kathy has had the same experience with web 2.0 tools that I have:  the children are so motivated to learn and share their ideas.  Isn’t this what it’s all about? 

Thing 11: Create a Slideshow

I made a slideshow to go along with The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (By Kate DiCamillo). This a novel that our third graders read, and it has so many great elements that can be explored through photographs. This was so much fun. I even found a song that kind of went along with the story.

Check out my Edward Tulane story slideshow at:  http://k12l20sandbox.wikispaces.com/SeaNymph 

Thing 10: Photosharing with Flickr

Jellyfish Photo by 顔なし

I had so much fun browsing all of the great photos in Flickr.  It is easy to get lost in all of the great images!  I decided to look up jellyfish.  They are so pretty when I’m not sharing the beach with them.  I had a hard time choosing a favorite from the photos I found, but this one made the final cut.  I look forward to using images like these with my students.  They can be used as writing prompts, photos in reports, prompts for listing adjectives or adverbs… The possibilities are endless!