Resources

2006-05-16T01:23:54-04:00

Many resources are listed in the earlier posts and in the websites and blogroll on the right. A few more miscellaneous sources are:

Daring to Enter the Blogosphere
Electronic portfolios
EPN: Education Podcast Network
HigherEdBlogCon (a recent online conference that has archives of excellent screencast presentations on web technology in higher education, although much is applicable to K-12)
Keeping up with the Web
Free essential software for the PC user

And I highly recommend Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, which I used as a resource for this presentation.

podcasting

2006-05-16T01:05:36-04:00

Podcasting has great potential for ELL students. They can listen to lectures, or to themselves as they prepare to make a presentation. They can create podcasts for class projects and blogs.

Flickr

2006-05-16T00:53:55-04:00

Flickr is an online tool for publishing and sharing photos. It is only limited by our imagination. James Tubb, a 6th grade math teacher, posts photos related to math topics in his blog 7th Grade Math.

Social bookmarking

2006-05-16T00:45:51-04:00

Social bookmarking allows people to share the sites that they have come across and found interesting, another way to promote collaboration in the classroom. Two popular tools for social bookmarking are Furl and del.icio.us.The main difference between the two, according to Will Richardson, is, "Whereas Furl is about saving content, del.icio.us is all about sharing links in as easy a way as possible." Jim Wenzloff has a guide for using Furl (pdf).

RSS feeds

2006-05-16T00:33:39-04:00

RSS feeds are like subscribing to a newspaper: it comes to you. Except with RSS, the content on the blog or other website that you subscribe to comes to you instead of you going to each website. A great online reader is Bloglines.

How to use it?

Subscribe to all of your students' blogs
Create search feeds for news (via Google Newsor Yahoo News) and what other blogs are writing

Wikis

2006-05-16T00:15:27-04:00

Wikis are much like blogs, except anyone can edit or add material, as in the case of Wikipedia, making them great tools for collaborative writing or group projects. They're also good for letting students see others' work, so a ready supply of models is always at hand.

Paul Allison has created a wiki, High School Online Collaborative Writing, on which the students at East Side Community School write on a tremendous variety of topics. Paul has his own blog where he writes about Weblogs & Wikis & Feeds.

Two free wiki hosts are wikispaces and pbwiki.

Getting started with blogs

2006-05-16T00:18:07-04:00

Getting started with blogs is easy, and there are a variety of free blogging hosts:

Blogger is one of the oldest and easiest to set up and publish on. In just 3 easy steps, you're ready to begin publishing. In using blogs, either for students or for yourself, it's helpful to read other established blogging educators, such as in the blogroll on this blog. And Darren Rowse of Problogger has a good tutorial "Blogging for Beginners."

Blogs

2006-05-15T23:43:28-04:00

Blogs, or weblogs, are websites that are easy to publish to without a knowledge of programming code. They promote interaction and the sharing of ideas among participants. For students, as they read and respond to classmates and others outside the class, they develop critical thinking skills and gain a sense of authorship and ownership, thus bringing student interests into the learning equation.

One of my students, for example, took on a Japanese identity with the name Setsuna at her blog. She often used pictures and wrote about things Japanese, such as geishas:

Geishas are one of the things i'm interesting, to those of us raised in jeans and T-shirts, the world of geisha (or geiko in Kyoto)- with their elaborated hairstyles, white-painted skin, and heavy silk kimonos- is almost incomprehensible.

"Geisha must train themselves in various traditional arts such as classical dancing, playing the Shamisen, and several styles of singing in the hanamachi (geisha community.)"

Blogs can also promote interaction between students and others outside the class. Will Richardson's class corresponded with Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees and wrote a study guide for the book.

Teachers can use blogs to enhance student discussion and understanding. Darren Kuropatwa, a math teacher, uses his blog Pre-Cal 40S as an "interactive log for students and parents." Anne Davis created The Write Weblog for fifth graders to write about and discuss current events.