Flickring

Our network manager has blocked all photo sharing sites. We can only use Picasa for our own photo management. I love all the creative ways teachers have come up with to use photos to enhance the teaching process.

I thought Flickr was very easy to use. I'll be making a case to unblock it with our netork manager.

One way I might use photosharing in my class is with my lessons on China. I could have students comment on pictures that depict their team's area they created a wiki about, "a photo field trip" to go along with their research. This will address NETS-S communication and collaboration.

New Literacies

Educators face many challenges in making sure students have the literacies they'll need to be productive in the 21st century. Keeping up with technology is certainly a major challenge; making learning fun and meaningful while using technology; and showing how necessary tools are in acquiring skills that are essential to be productive.

Will Richardson points out that "more and more content will be user generated". Educators will need to teach students to be editors as well as readers. Critical reading will become an even more important skill. Curriculum will gravitate toward teaching how to manage the amount of information made available to students. Collaboration will become the standard, requiring educators to put additional focus on teaching students to "work with others and be accepting and open to opposing views".

More Web 2.0 Tools

I think I'm most sold on wikis. I'm definitely going to create a wiki for my grade 4 students. The focus with be their China unit. I'll give each class a separate category to pursue. I like the way wikis allow students to add information, but also to work together to create the best possible entries. That's true collaboration. It also teaches students to work together and be respectful of their peers.

Podcasting

This was too much work for the product. I found myself writing a little tutorial for myself as the ones I found online as well as the online user guide for podbean to be inaccurate. I've used other tools that are way easier to deal with and offer other aspects to the tool that my students can get something out of (voicethread). Maybe I'll think about using a podcast when during my poetry unit as I found a site I kind of liked, but as far as having the students create their own, I'll pass. This tool could address NETS-S #6 tech operations and concepts.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

social bookmarking with delicious

I found the visual effects helpful as I'm one to feel overwhelmed with too much information being presented on my screen at one time.  Here's the link to my delicious bookmarks: 
http://www.delicious.com/tina_wehner

I could use a social bookmarking site in my classroom quite often.  Many of my lessons include having the students go to a specific site and "find" information on a topic, ie, 3rd graders finding information about the state of Massachusetts.  As an extended activity, I could have them find a few other sites on the web that contained some other interesting information about Mass, for example, chief industries.  This would meet the NETS-S standard 4. Critical thinking, problem solving and decision making.

RSS

Ok, this was a bit of a challenge. I used google.com reader as my aggregator.  I found this took a bit of time to set up but it's a pretty cool tool.  I had to search for how to set up an RSS feed on my blog but eventually got it going.  It looks pretty good.  I could use this in my classroom when I'm doing a unit on the Iditarod.  We have many lessons including math(mean,median,mode), ELA (poetry), etc. I think it'd be fun to track information on the Iditarod over the 10-15 days that this event occurs.  the students would love it.  It fits NET-S 4-Critical thinking, problem solving standard.

Wiki

I was kind of sold on blogs until I began reading about wikis.  Blogs seem easier to implement, but we'll see.  I can also see how each has it's own strength.  Blogs allows for chronological journaling and commenting on posts.  While wikis seem truly collaborative.  Users being allowed to edit entries really puts a whole different spin on the teaching process.  I expect students will feel so much more empowered when actually changing (or negotiating with others to change) existing work.  I'll have to play around more with pbwiki as I tried twice to create an account.  I waited for the email confirmation that never came so just proceeded as if I did, and got in ok.    I'm thinking of creating a Grade 4 wiki called "China Unit Study Guide".  I might break it into 3 or 4 pages? and let each class control 1 page.  I really like that you're forcing us to reference the NETS-S.  I now have it posted beside my monitor and it's really training me to refer to it as I teach my 'regular' classes.  The standard my idea references is digital citizenship as the lesson will support collaboration, learning and productivity.

First Entry

I have previously created a blog with my students - my blog, their communal entries.  So far, at the end of each class, I choose one or two students to write in the class blog.  the entire class joins in as we chronicle the lesson of the day and what they got out of it.  That alone is a good exercise in recapping the lesson.  Putting  it in writing by them is additional good practice.  Lastly, I put it on my web page for all to see and comment on.  (not many comments so far).  The greatest challenge to teachers is getting them to sit in a room after school for an hour or so and showing them how to do it.  I want to do another blog, this time with my Great Books group of 4th graders and pose an interpretive question on our reading and have them all comment on the post.  This lesson will meet the NETS-S standard #1 creativity and innovation because students will apply existing knowledge of the book to generate new ideas.