RSS

Second Life and Education

5:36 PM |

As I have been playing with Second Life over the past month I have thought of many different ways to bring this into my classroom.  First my thinking was using the rich culture worlds and students can role play in Egypt, Nazi Germany, Mexico and I even went swimming with sharks.  So much can be done with this but, there are so many barriers that make it difficult to break through.  


Ross Perkins, Ph.D is an instructional designer and has designed many of the educational sites for Second Life.  He states that although this is a terrific tool, many teachers still are using the same old teaching techniques but, in SL.  If it can be
 done in Real Life (RL) then why do it in SL?  For instance; meeting in a community room in SL as avatars and using a white board as an instructor lectures.  Yes, innovative in the fact that it is in SL but not unique.  Where SL has it's benefits is g
oing to places that students can't go. Some great sites that educators can visit and provide a virtual trip to hist
orical and educational sites.


Teleport to Astrono
my Planetarium: 



Live and experience Native American lands @ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Native%20Lands%20East/212/34/23











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Posted by Allison

Podcasting in the Classroom

1:13 PM | Labels: , ,



WHAT IS PODCASTING?
 It is a relatively new form of communication.  Merging or "Mashing" Blogging and radio together.  The difference is that anyone can do it!  You don't 
have to have a radio studio, radio show or even a radio to share or listen to a podcast. Podcasting can be listened to with any computer or MP3 device such as an ipod.  


Listeners are notified through their RSS feed that new content is available. After you have downloaded the podcast to your device you can then listen or even watch it at anytime.  

Anyone with a simple computer and a microphone can be a podcaster.  

Podcasting can contain other media elements such as audio, video, images, PDF or other.

Students, teachers, administrators, classrooms, administrators and more are podcasting on a regular basis.  

So what can a teacher do with podcasts? 
Grammar Girl: Daily Grammar tips such as:  Starting a sentence with "however", the difference between who and whom, collective nouns and so much more!  This would be great with a high school Language Arts class.  This can be a podcast that can be used in a station or center for remedial help.

Writing Fix: A website dedicated to inspiring students to be better writers.  One of the key pieces of this site is teaching with ipods.  Rob Stone shares his lessons using podcasting and ipods.

Willowdale:  A great site to see how elementary students and teachers are using podcasting.

Storynory: A great site filled with podcasts rich with storytellers!  New fiction, fairy tales, myths, historical fiction and more!  Students listen to rich storytellers using their talent to create a dynamic oral story. This pod and many more can be found on itunes as a free subscription.  
                                                     

Sample uses of podcasts in the Classroom:

Weekly News Broadcasts:  Local or school current events, lunch menu and assignments.  Have students produce these broadcasts for parent communication.

Document a Field Trip:   Students can report and document on a field trip recently taken

Book Talk: Students read literature and instead of writing a summary about students give a podcast on the book.

Record lecture or class discussion: Record discussion so students absent may listen at home.

Fluency Lesson: Students practice reading aloud a book a few levels below.  After significant practice students read aloud the picture book into recording and submit it to itunes.  Share the digital book to lover level grades or even the local children's hospital.


Free software and news feed for podcasting:
Garageband (MAC)







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Posted by Allison

RSS FEEDS -THE NEW PAPERBOY

5:15 PM |


Remember when the paperboy would throw the newspaper on your driveway once in the morning and again in the afternoon? That was how we got the latest news of the day. Now we are inundated with news, news on the cell phone, news on the computer at work, news on the computer at home, news on all more than 20 Cable channels. News, News everywhere. So now we are blasted with news everywhere and it is difficult to filter what is important to us.

RSS feeds is the new sophisticated paper boy. Not only does he deliver the information to you directly but, he delivers the news the news you want and filters out the rest.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and the news aggregator is the program you download to read the RSS feeds. Meg Ormiston describes it as "the News Aggregator is the television set and the RSS feeds are the channels you can select".


The news aggregators are sites you can download for free such as www.feedreader.com.  Once you have that whenever you are on a news site, blog or journal site you can then click on the RSS feed and it will send all new updated information straight to you.  See it is our own personal sophisticated paperboy.

RSS FOR TEACHERS:
As a teacher you are on all different sites researching lesson plans, methodologies as well as fun ideas.  So many different sites to choose from and my bookmarks are getting to long to even remember what and why I liked them. Using RSS feeds allows you to quickly look at the feeds for the day to see if anything new and interesting has changed.  If you like what you see you can quickly click on the link and it will then go to the site for full review. 



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Posted by Allison

This is the Twitter song, really cute!

9:08 PM |

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Posted by Allison

Weekly Video Blog

12:50 AM | Labels: , , ,

This weeks Video Blog... Enjoy!







Want to add some comments in the video? Check out this link to add your Web 2.0 flair!

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Posted by Allison

"So What are you Doing?" Twitter and Education

6:34 PM |


A year ago very few people had ever heard of Twitter let alone twittering, tweets, tweetpics, etc.  However more than 22 million people a day not only know what a twitter is but, they do it too!  Twitter or microblogging is a form of digital communication that sends short messages to friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone else who wants to know what you are doing or thinking.  The catch to this form of microblogging is to keep the characters under 140 characters.  Short and simple or Keep it sweet and simple. Is this a social media Fad?  Will this be here today and gone tomorrow?  


In order to understand why everyone is getting on this "band wagon" or at least why educators and teachers find it appealing,  you need to understand what are some of the benefits.

  1. It is attractive to newer teachers who are in search of mentors and support.  By following educators tweets you can keep up with trends, find resources and good ideas. (NEA)
  2. In a lonely classroom teachers find comfort in educational friendships as well as learning from each other what is working and what is not working.
  3. Inside the classroom teachers can review lesson plans and remind students what homework assignments are due.
  4. Teachers can tweet a provocative question and students can tweet back the answers via cell phone or computer.
  5. Teachers are using twitter as an innovative way to share a creative story.  Each student shares a small piece of the story.
  6. Twitter quick and easy, not labor intensive or frightening for students who don't like to write.  In otherwords... NO ESSAY! 

  • Together we are better
  • Global or local.. your choice
  • Self Awareness and Reflection 
  • Ideas, workshop and sounding board
  • Time sensitive
  • Immediate newsroom in a fast paced world
  • Immediate quick professional development
  • Communicate, communicate, communicate
  • Your students are doing it... why not have them learn something with it!

Wondering what to tweet about?  Here are some suggestions from Carol Coopers blog:

  • Who or what has your attention?
  • Need an opinion ?
  • Tweet about other people's blogs, tweets
  • Make it useful.. give advice, show pictures (at twitpic.com), great ideas and websites
Educators are finding more and more benefits to using Twitter in the classroom.  Some educators are finding that "chatting" about learning activities do not just end in the classroom but, with Twitter then continue throughout the day in their home lives as well. This also is another way of extending the classroom community. 

Tracking a word, Twitter has the ability to track a word and find all postings about this word.  This was apparent when recently Iran came under the headlines of the news when an eruption of civil content broke out in the country.  When news media couldn't get out Twitter could. By tracking a word such as Iran anyone could track people living in Iran and first hand get accounts of what was happening.  

Instant Feedback:  Because Twitter is instant, it allows for instant feedback.  A teacher can provide a quick instant tweet sharing a positive feedback or information needed for an assignment.

As I have posted here many different ways to use Twitter in education I think I am saving my very favorite for last; Metacognition:

Thinking about our thinking process is a powerful learning tool and sometimes very difficult to teach and explain.  Twitter is a fun and motivating application that allows for metacognition on a easy level.  Twitter can allow users to be brief and to the point while reflecting.  As an educator we can reflect about what we are learning through professional development and ask students to post a quick reflection about what they are thinking about in regards to a learning activity or reading.



Thanks for the tweet pic!

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Posted by Allison

TWOODLE- YEP twitter AND google

7:29 PM | Labels: , , ,

Want to search google and twitter at the same time?

check out:

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Posted by Allison
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