Global Cooperation
The emphasis we are seeing developing our curriculum to incorporate technology is ringing in the ears of all educators. Although what we feel when “in the trenches” is that are technology offered by our schools is not adequate. I am beginning to think we are just unfamiliar with the explosion of tools that is available with the simple availability of the Internet. Global cooperation sites are fascinating tools that teachers of all disciplines can use to create memorable experiences for their students. The days of bringing your students next store to work with another grade or teacher is over as the availability of global cooperation is just a click away.
The two tools I explored are The Global Schoolhouse and Epals. These two sites have many similarities but they both offer distinct opportunities as well. The Global schoolhouse is a very innovative site which offers the user a platform to collaborate with teachers the world over on educational projects in a myriad of different topics. These projects are teacher created and led, and they can dictate participants’ criteria topic areas and curriculum. The site also offers many useful applications in a number of curriculum areas. For example there are travel wequests, “Letters to Santa” a writing application and even educational competitions. One of the most reknown competitions is called the “CyberFair”. The web site explains that CyberFair, “is an award-winning authentic learning program used by schools and youth organizations around the world. Youth conduct research and publish their findings on the Web. Recognition is given to the best projects in each of eight categories.” What an amazing opportunity specifically for schools with a small population in which competition is non-existent.
The second tool Epals is a site where students can share their learning with other children across the coutry. Students can ask homework questions specific to a culture or regio, or simply get an opinion from another student. The site offers safe and secure tools such as e-mail and blogging. Teachers can also collaborate on a number of pre-determined topics. Lessons and projects are posted to the site and teachers can create a collaborative group and seek out a teacher to work on the projects. These two sites are similar in that they promote collaboration and provide teachers with a platform to do so. They are different in the structure and content. While Global Schoolhouse seems to provide many more resources such as games and competitions, Epals provides the user with the ability to have students make personal connections through e-mail and blogging.
If I were to develop a project I think it would be interesting to create a classroom bookshelf with another classroom on Shelfari. Students from both classrooms could add books to the shelf, write reviews and join discussion boards talking about the books. As a child I loved to read and would have loved to have the opportunity to share in an online book discussion with children in another country.

Web 2.0 or BUST!

My exploration into the world of Web 2.0 has been so much fun.  With each new tool I find I have at least a hundred new ideas, for both my high school classroom and my college pre-service teachers.  The videos I selected represent information I would (and for one of the videos, have) use in my college courses.  The first video is a tutorial for a free program offered by Microsoft called PhotoStory.  It is a program that helps you to create digital stories for any area of your life.  I shared this program with my grad class and required them to create social stories for their classroom to help their students learn a social skill.  (check one of them out here).  The tutorial showed the students step-by step directions to create their own social story.

The second video I chose was a video entitled "Why should we let our children blog?".  The internet is in the midst of a revolution of collaboration and information sharing.  One of my goals with my grad students is to help them to see not only the value of the web in their teaching and student learning, but the effectiveness and practicality of its use. I plan to share this with my students to stress these facts with them.  It does a really nice job of showing them why blogging is so effective and necessary.  

I am sure I will continue to post videos as I found the teachertube.com website to be a very cool site with a tone of resources.  What impresses me most is the ability of teachers to have an open forum to share, collaborate and reflect and grow together.  Web 2.0 or BUST!!

Well That Settles That...

I left to quickly check out my twitter and see if it had all of the interesting elements that all of the blog posts talked about and an hour later I had to remind myself that I sill had a ton of work to do and that it is 1:45 in the am…so what I found first was a posted url to: Evan Williams: How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses.  In this video Evan Williams talks about all of the interesting ways Twitter users have expanded the value and usefulness of an originally social idea.  Check it out….very cool, and quick to watch.  I also followed multiple links to different web sites and answered two polls.  So I confirm that twitter is much more than “what am I doing right now…”  As a matter of fact, knowing that my followees could choose to not follow me, and wanting to be accepted in the group (ha ha) I decided to post an interesting url myself…OH no…another addicting web application…J

Getting to the Bottom

Twitter…What is it? How is it used?  How is it useful?  Over the course of my investigation into the answers to these questions I learned so much more.  In this blog post I am going to take you along on my journey, my adventure through blog posts, web articles and comments on Twitter.  The good, the bad…and the u…well I guess there were only a few ugly I saw, but I won’t share those with you…nobody likes ugly.

            The first post I read was an article entitled, More on Academic Twittering: Breaking Down the Classroom Walls.  This article commented on the change in the social culture of schools and how some people believe that social communities on the web overlap with learning communities.  They mention that it is only natural to incorporate these into the learning of college students.  Although the article did not comment on how exactly Twitter could be used, it focused on why it should be incorporated.  The author cited some opposition to this idea by explaining that many college students find this an invasion of their personal space.  This brings up a very important point.  How can we incorporate these into schools and institutes of higher education in ways in which privacy is preserved? 

            From this article I moved on to a blog post, Been There, Tweeted That.  In this post the author expressed their frustration with Twitter stating that they, “gave it a try” but just couldn’t justify the benefit when compared to the time.  Although this post did not further my understanding of how to use Twitter in the classroom a comment posted by a fellow reader and Twitter user really helped when she wrote that, “ twitter is an awesome tool to ask for help, get others attention to student Web 2.0 creations, share great URL's, blog posts, and more. I think you missed the concept of following LOTS - build your network, build your profile, share and post frequently, but also to update who you are following and remove those you don't like."  AH HA!  Asking for help, sharing urls…okay now I am getting the picture now…I was seriously concerned as I was doubtful of the usefulness of Twitter in the classroom.  From my understanding people were simply stating what they were doing.  But my new understanding was that they actually had information to share and were doing so….but how do you weed out all of the, “I am going to bed right now” tweets.

            My understanding was further aided by the next blog post, #Gr8t Tweets .  In this article the author tells us of a new wiki page where Twitterbugs can go and post their favorite Tweets.  He calls it , “deli.ci.ous for Twitter”.  Using this wiki you can streamline who you follow to discard irrelevant or too frequent tweets.

            Okay…useful posts, streamlined follower list…and now to bring it all together is the last post I read, which I found the most informative. Twitter? It’s What You Make It, the name says it all.  This article explained not only all of the lingo that is associated with Twitter, ie. Tweet, @username etc., but he explains how it can be used to research, share information, ask questions, or simply poll.

            Keeping all of this information in mind,  I need to ask myself how I can see it used in education?  In my role as a high school teacher I would have to say that it would be most useful as a collaboration tool between teachers.  Teachers often comment that they feel so isolated in their classroom and there is just not enough time to collaborate.  If each teacher shared one comment every day, think of how much information sharing is possible. Many teachers attend interesting conferences and take courses independently and the information is limited to that one person.

It terms of the use of Twitter in higher education professors could have students follow them and they could share references and materials through tweets throughout the semester.  It would be so much faster than the typical “forwarded” messages that clog up e-mail accounts.

So what is next…I am off to my twitter to see who is tweeting today…and what they are tweeting about….it may be time for some judicious decisions…who to follow and who can tell someone else about their bagel…with cream cheese…