The wiki page creation went smoothly and I found that wikispaces was easier to set up at the beginning, but that both sites worked well when that first portion was completed. I can see how this might be used to post assignments and messages to parents. The fact that WIKIs are changeable might be problematic, but taking time to alert parents that this site is intended as a convenience not as an official accounting of homework and that there is a history kept in the site might solve any concern about that. I can see how this might also help me to post a Wiki for people in my building to give them new reading strategies and communicate about reading in general to encourage more teachers to participate in the coaching process that I provide and started this past year.
The Powerpoint project is the one that intrigues me the most. I took an instructional media course back in 1984 before all of this technology was developed. At the time, we did video production with cameras. I ended up doing a news broadcast for our production, adding curricular information pertaining to our unit in social studies. What I really wanted to do at the time was an animated film, but I could not do that without starting and stopping the camera and repositioning props. It was a cumbersome process way-back then. The flip book would allow me to do this and I plan to work in something about the parts of speech in some way to reinforce a concept that is hard for my students to grasp. We have so much more available and our resources are user-friendly compared to 23 years ago. Oh, the things I might be able to do...!
The article on cell phones was also enlightening. Despite the fact that students can not use cell phones according to district policy limits their use in the classroom, but since most students do have phones they could do that part of the assignment at home and know how to use the technology and learn through the interviewing process, followed up with writing extensions to go along with the audio. Again, another fun and novel way to have students process information.
1 comment:
Hi Mary
As mentioned in the Syncing With the iKids article, it is important to create digitally literate 21st citizens. I believe part of that is to educate them on ways to use their social technology toys (such as MySpace, cell phones, blogs, wikis...etc) as learning tools. Part of that is teaching them about the tool itself (such as wikipedia) and being a safe and responsible user. There is a very easy way to turn your PPT animation into a QuickTime video which is even more like a pixar animation! I will show you this option on Friday. I wish we had more class time and more time between classes to really play with all these tools!
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