For the last four months I have been maintaining a wiki on www.wikispaces.com. Some of you may be saying what's a wiki? I know the term was new to me when I first heard it but it is now part of my daily vocabulary. A wiki is an awesome way to integrate technology into the classroom. It provides numerous opportunities for students to colloborate both in and out of school as well as to easily share information with their teachers and ask questions when school is not in session. A wiki can make "getting together" to work on a group project as simple as waking up and grabbing your computer...work with your group from bed, at the kitchen table, heck even from the bathroom. Click the video below, which I created using Jing, for a brief intro on what a wiki is and how to create your own. I will be posting more tutorial videos on how to manage and edit wikis in the days to come. Stop limiting learning to the classroom and get on board...over 230,000 educators already have!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Do More Than Type...Use Your Voice!
One of my tech savvy professors recently introduced me to voicethread and I was completely blown away by the project. The video below will explain all the meat and bones of how voicethread works, it's pretty simple by the way. What I found to be most exciting was the ability to have online critiques of art work for art teachers, story telling sessions for reading and language arts teachers, online group discussions, etc. CLICK HERE to visit voicethread and check out some of the projects that have already been done using the program. Search by your content area or interests to see the opportunities for use in your own classroom.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Google Gets Real...Time.
Mr. Byrne, from freetech4teachers.com posted the latest on Google's new real-time search options as part of an update to their current search. Google real-time will collect feed from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and a variety of other places.
21st Century Students
Another video from Youtube highlighting the educational needs and preferences of today's young students.
Remember, as educators, we should be preparing students for their future not our past.
Remember, as educators, we should be preparing students for their future not our past.
Tasty Tags on Delicious
For those of you who have not already joined Delicious (www.delicious.com) and experienced all of its convenience...I highly recommend you do so. Users may argue over which aspects of Delicious are the most beneficial but few can argue over how useful it is to be able to access your most visited websites from any computer, anywhere, and at any time. Delicious allows it's users to save links to the site rather than to your personal computers and whichever internet host you use. Aside from not having to worry about losing this information, you no longer need to worry about crowding your browsers and toolbars with tons of bookmarks. Another great feature is that you can tag your findings under categories that later become "bundles" that allow you to easily find information related to that topic rather that scrolling through a list of hundreds of links. Not only is Delicious great because of these features but it may also be one of the best ways to search for quality information. Unlike Google and other search engines, the sites linked in the Delicious community have already been viewed by users. Now this isn't to say that some people don't save links to false or misleading information but it sure beats scavenging through dozens of pages of results on Google where you are sure to stumble upon numerous sites that are outdated, no longer exist, or contain more opinion based information. To make the search engine feature even more useful, users are able to join the networks of other users whose links have proven to be of good, reliable quality.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Did You Know?
Many of you may have already seen this video or any of the earlier versions of it but I decided to include it anyway. I thought it would serve as a nice introduction as to why it is so important as educators, parents, students, and most importantly as "life-long learners" that we embrace technology and find beneficial ways to utilize the new information and tools that have become available to us.
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