Back to School with New Media

Looking for suggestions to share with new teachers...Which Web 2.0 tools do you typically introduce to students during the first weeks of school? Any new ones planned for this year? Please share both the tool and the instructional purpose you hope to achieve with it. Thanks for your ideas!

Tags: back_to_school, web2.0

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Permalink Reply by mary maloney on July 29, 2009 at 4:41pm

I want to create a unit with a focus on digital citizenship. I am looking for web sites that have video clips on the subject. U Tube is blocked at my school and I have not found much on teacher tube. My goal is to have students watch videos on the digital citizenship topic and respond to questions posed in a conference. I want students to eventually create a video or podcast on the topic. Does anyone know what sites might have some good videos to use or know of any particular videos that are appropriate for jr. high students? Thanks, Mary

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Permalink Reply by Suzie Boss on July 29, 2009 at 6:33pm

Hi Mary,
Here are a couple ideas:
Have you checked out the Digital Generation content on Edutopia? (http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-content-library) One of the students profiled in a video--Virginia (http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-profile-virginia)--has participated in the Digiteen project, which focused on digital citizenship. You'll find more resources, including embedded videos, at Digiteen wiki: http://digiteen.wikispaces.com/
I'm curious to hear what resources others suggest.
--Suzie

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Permalink Reply by Louise on July 30, 2009 at 4:37am

Here's a few ways to get around Youtube blocks.Some of this info was sent to me via another network group,

'For those of you who have YouTube blocked at school - you need Smart Notebook 10 at home, find a video on Youtube, and convert it through this free website - www.zamzar.com. It will automatically convert it for you. Then you just save the file on your hard drive and then link it to whatever you're making on Notebook."

OR

1.Go to: www.youtube. com

2.Locate the desired video.

3.Play a part of the video to make sure it is working.

Loading KickYouTube:
1.Move your mouse into your browsers address (URL) window.

2.Insert the word “kick” in front of “youtube” in the URL.

3.Press the Enter key on your keyboard.
4.When the page reloads you will see
Saving (Downloading) the Video

1.Click to select the desired format and then click the “Go” button at the right side of the bar.

Note – I downloaded Quick Time Player from the apple.com website and saved as a MP4
2.KickYouTube will take a little time to process. When it is finished, the green “Go” button will change to a blue download button.

3.Right-click (Win) or Control-click (Mac) the blue download button and choose “Save link as” or “Save Target as” or something similar.

4.This will open a window that will allow you to save the video to the desired location on your computer.

5.Once the video is saved, double-click to open it. It should open and play in QuickTime,

OR

If you use Mozilla Firefox as a browser you can get a handy little add on called download helper which will allow you to attach Youtube videos to Notebook files. Here is a tutorial that explains it,
Louise.

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Permalink Reply by Suzie Boss on July 30, 2009 at 8:27am

Thanks for these useful tips. So, in addition to downloading clips from YouTube, what other new media might new teachers want to consider using this school year? Which tools are good to introduce early in the year? Any great tools for building a classroom community, for instance? Thanks for sharing ideas, everyone!

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Reed on July 31, 2009 at 8:06am

Have you tried schooltube?

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Permalink Reply by Isabelle Allende on July 31, 2009 at 1:15pm

Hi Mary

There is a web 2.0 application about to launch 2nd week of August. The name-uSync.
You can upload videos, movies, all sort of rich media and play it on the media player they have implemented. Kids and teachers can engage in blogging, send attachments
through messaging, create projects, publish those projects for the rest of the community (school) to view, add events to the school calendar, and what is really amazing about it, it is within the safety of their own school.

Their website will be up soon, I can send you their link once I get it.
You should look into it. I think it is what you are looking for (at least I can't wait to use it).

Cheers,

Isabelle

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Permalink Reply by Kristen Swanson on July 30, 2009 at 1:11pm

www.taggalaxy.com LOVE THIS SITE

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Permalink Reply by Suzie Boss on July 30, 2009 at 7:25pm

Thanks, Kristen. I'm a fan, also. How do you use Tag Galaxy with students?

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Permalink Reply by Rosamar Garcia on July 30, 2009 at 6:18pm

Hi Suzie,
I am a fan of Voicethread because it's easy to upload images and has great "share-a-bility". Our kids (grade 4/5) draft and edit their stories during writers' workshop then publish these by uploading their illustrations and narrating the story on Voicethread. We have also used Voicethread successfully with our beginning readers and special needs students by offering adult support in scribing the stories. Kids are eager to share their writing with family, especially those members who live in another province, state or country. By setting the permissions, friends (or anyone) can comment... a terrific motivator for young writers!
http://voicethread.com/#home

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Permalink Reply by Suzie Boss on July 30, 2009 at 7:28pm

Great ideas, Rosamar. Voicethread has such great potential for encouraging writers, organizing stories, connecting to visuals, etc.And you've got me thinking about "share-a-bility" now!