Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Journal Articles
Webinars
Teacher Collaboration
- Webinars have been used by businesses for a while, and now more schools are getting involved.
- Changes traditional educational system which has been: very little teacher/student interaction, focused on memory based skills more than analytical, lecture based, not much flexibility for learning styles, not as much access for information other than book
- In today's world students need a facilitator as well as an instructor, and they are well versed in using technology (sometimes better than teachers)
- There is a gap in the content and methods of feeding students knowledge and what value it is to students with the increasing flow of information
- The improvement on technology has revolutionized training techniques by bringing more diversity and interaction including: Multi-medai aids, computer aided instruction, E-mentoring and E-learning, video conferencing, brainstorming and case studies, simulations, and webinars
- A webinar allows two-way communication to get the audience involved by discussing and sharing ideas with each other and experts that they would not normally get to interact with.
- It's capabilities include: presenters sharing their desktops and applications, chat windows, session recording, and surveys to see what the audience needs
- The benefits include: collaboration, multiple speakers, greater audience access, little location dependency, interactive capabilities, offline learning (archived), material to download, and feedback
- Problems: Not everyone has the hardware, restricted audience involvement, cost, limited modes of multi-media usage
- Personal use: I have participated in three webinars and found them very useful. I have yet to find one I can do with my students since our school does not necessarily have the proper equipment. It was fun interacting with other teachers from around the U.S., and I was able to share the info with my colleagues.
Teacher Collaboration
- This was about teacher collaboration through a networked community: Learning in Networked Communities which develops and launches collaborative technology in science rooms
- Some collaboration problems were: there was organizational chaos of teaching, different teaching styles, different cultural norms, absence of common beliefs enough time to plan
- Organization of school mattered: how the space is arranged, how content and students are organized in grade levels, and how much time is allotted to tasks
- The technology allowed new forms of collaboration over time and place and broke down the barriers that don't allow it to happen
- Teachers were able to create parallel curriculum across schools and integrated tasks, schedules, grading, deadlines, and benchmarks
- The collaborating was done synchronous and asynchronous and students' group activities had video conference meetings and then they chatted and emailed while making notebooks
- Problems: hard to coordinate schedules between classrooms, instructional practices were very different, teachers needed a lot of face-to-face collaborating, after school time and plan periods needed to be used to help kids get projects done.
- Teachers really needed to rely on collaborating with each other to create a successful project
- Two teachers could have seen two different groups working and not assessed them fairly since one group could have done all the work but the other took credit
- Personal thoughts: When it comes to collaborating remotely, there is a whole different way of teaching involved. Many more variables have to be considered like time, money, and and how we communicate. Teachers are used to being in control of their environments and delivering information, so it is very difficult to get used to monitoring something online. It is nice to see a work in progress and give feedback along the way like if students make a wiki. Remote collaboration is also difficult because of the scheduling. For example...I have looked into many different remote collaboration opportunities, but I would not be able to let every class participate since I teach six classes a day.
Midwest Middle Level Conference Session Websites
http://livebinders.com/
http://www.voki.com
http://voicethread.com
http://classic.globe.gov/
- A "3-ring binder for the web”
- View other people’s binders
- Organize them neatly and easily
- Present them with pride
- Collect your resources
- Personal use: I have found tons of great information in binders that other people have posted to help me with lesson plans, or just teaching tips in general. So many great technology finds to help expand your horizons, and to teach you how to use the tools. I thought about using it to organize the technology tools presented in this class.
http://www.voki.com
- Lesson plan database (coming soon)
- Teacher’s corner for discussions and tips (coming soon)
- Create your own avatar to motivate students to participate, collaborate creatively, and personalize relationships
- Can use them for blogging, etc.
- Personal use: I have made avatars for introducing units on Blackboard, to share directions on how to find things on Blackboard, and on the blog feature. Kids would rather listen to my avatar than me, and they like to create their own and send them to each other.
http://voicethread.com
- Group conversations are collected and shared in one place
- Collaborative slide show that can have images, documents, and videos
- People can leave comments using voice, text, audio files, or videos
- Share your voice thread with friends, students, parents, or colleagues
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
- Free Technology for Teachers is a blog written by Richard Byrne and read by a daily audience of more than 25,000 subscribers.
- It has everything from teacher lesson ideas relating to technology, free resources, and it makes it easy for teachers from all over to communicate with each other and share ideas.
- Personal use: I have participated in blogs on this site, and downloaded lots of free materials. There is tons of sharing of information from teachers from all over, and lots of tutorials for almost everything technology.
http://classic.globe.gov/
- Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment
- Allows teachers, students, scientists, and parents to collaborate and on inquiry based investigations to collect data about our environment.
- It can then be shared with others all over the world to create a huge database.
- Personal use: I have not used this site personally since it is an 8th grade topic, but I did share it with our 8th grade teachers who will hopefully find a lesson to connect with other students around the world.
Webinar Information
Introduction to Edmodo
- Sign up for free school and district features…cater to educators
- Can share all kinds of documents and can edit and share lots of lessons
- Can talk with a whole class, part of a class, or individuals so lots of diversity
- You can grade in Edmodo by making assignments available to students
- It is mobile so you can get it on your phone to follow
- Professional development groups to share resources and connect within the community of Edmodo
- Links to your community of educators are very easy to use...click on teacher’s name
- Under Edmodo Community to request friends
- Entire districts and have access to their own group
- Can connect to individual teachers and send messages
- Create a class and students have an account
- Personal Use: I have been using this with other science teachers to share resources at Westside Middle.
Wiki's in the Classroom
- Collaboration is a skill and kids need to learn it
- Can do at any time--whatever works for the individual
- Can be a final product as a result of the process
- Peer review can become important to them and get them more serious about their contribution
- One person edits at a time
- Students can’t be possessive…it is shared and they need to learn what, when, and how to edit other people's work
- Quick, collaborative, can be monitored by the teacher, ever changing products
- All users are equal contributors, asynchronous, geographical limitations lessened
- Can be used to create a reference library for students or teachers
- One computer or many…it still works
- Digital natives (students) have an easy time with it, writing skills enhanced, community developed
- Of practice, on-demand learning
- Problems: privacy/security, competition for page access, personal attachment to content
- And peer editing, unstructured in a way, content cloning, need internet connection
- Personal Use: Students in my science class that tested out of the scientific method unit did an experiment on their own, then put the lab write-up together on a Wiki space through Blackboard
Twitter in the Classroom by BrainPOP
- Microblogging tool 140 characters at a time.
- Can do as a whole group or on their own time
- Can reference individual students or talk to class in general
- Parents can get connected and follow what is going on in the class
- Stream you can follow about topics you are interested in
- Express ideas, what they are learning, builds writing fluency, helps bilingual students
- Helps with grammar practice, computer skills are important to learn and use
- Easily collaborate with other classrooms, record classroom events and share with other classrooms and the global connection
- Survey other classrooms, summarize what is being learned, post happenings (assignments), content connections, post pics and videos of learning
- You can control what is seen and shared and can give students feedback
- Personal Use: Since Twitter is blocked here at school, I did use the blog function on Blackboard to have students discuss the characteristics of living things with another teacher's students
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