Introductions

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 17, 2007 at 6:41pm

Hi Richard, so around this time of the year, I like to have fun with my students. For my 6th graders the pressure is off, it may not be very educational, but I let them choose a subject and what they want to do with it. Some build websites about their hobbies, interests or favorite whatever, some create presentations on topics close to their hearts, others experiment with applications and tools for no other reason except the desire to learn how to use them. This is a time when they can put into practice everything they have learned and often teach me a thing or two.
My 4th grades are reaching the end of a semester long program called "From book to animated movie" Again this is the fun part of the program where they create a short animated movie based on the book of their choice.
In the 5th grade we are building a website about a local landmark, the kids are excited that their website will be published on the internet.

Now for obstacles, I would say that teaching young children, rules out using some of the tools I would have liked to integrate in next year's program -
But for me the biggest obstacle is my school's policy for integrating technology. Which basically is No Integration! Instead of working together with the homeroom teachers, to integrate technology into their curriculum in the places it would be most suitable, natural and effective, I work alone, computers are not a part of the students daily school experience, rather a seperate entity. As such instead of being seen as a vital part of the classroom curriculum, my lesson is seen by many to be expendable. So my plan for next year is to get the school to change policy, to get the teachers into the computer lab together with the sudents and to integrate computers into their curriculum.

Permalink Reply by Lisa Parisi on May 19, 2007 at 6:33am

Hi Richard. Since the spring break, we (I teach in a collaborative fifth grade classroom - reg ed and spec ed teacher) have introduced blogging to the students. Classblogmeister is the site we we found had the lowest learning curve for us. The students took to it quickly and have been showing us some things they've learned. They have already started making friends with another fifth grade class we met on the site. The teacher and I have been in contact and are planning a collaboration next year - maybe creating a wiki on a research project.

My district is pretty open to letting us do what we want. We were part of the Planet Earth webinar with Discovery Channel, we have websites that the children put info on, we just completed a podcasting conference with David Warlick and uploaded our first official podcast on our site (although we had already created simple audio files and uploaded them).

Our biggest obstacle is blocked sites. But even this is changing. For example, while we can't get into sites like YouTube or TeacherTube, we can now view embedded videos in the classroom. So that works for us.

We are also slowed down by the amount of editing that needs to be done before any student work gets uploaded or added to the blog site. We keep hoping our clustrmap will show them that many other people are viewing the sites and they should watch spelling but...

http://herricks.org/webpages/spcollaborative/
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=88116

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 22, 2007 at 4:49pm

Hi Lisa, I visited your websites (so now Israel is marked by a red dot on the clustrmaps). What fantastic work your students are doing on the blogs.

Permalink Reply by Richard on May 19, 2007 at 4:32pm

I'm just beginning the journey to web2.0. I'd heard of blogs before, though I generally avoid them. I hadn't heard of them used in the classroom until just a few weeks ago when I discovered this site and a few others. I've been doing a lot of reading, but don't have much firsthand experience, especially with students.

I've seen a lot of mention of podcasting with kids. I really don't get this one. I assume that podcasts can only be heard on ipods and other mp3 players. Are these really common among your students? How do folks use podcasts in the classroom? I teach in a lower income rural school and, while a few kids have mp3 players, they are not very common.
Personally, I can't imagine that there would be much interest in folks listening to podcasts. There is one that I listen to, but it's focus is newly produced music. So it really lends itself to listening. I have no interest in listening to someone talk on my mp3 player, so I can't imagine that kids would either. Set me straight?

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 22, 2007 at 5:02pm

Hi Richard, while I haven't yet used podcasts with my students, I intend to next year. In one of the schools I teach at, the 6th graders produce a weekly radio program. This is broadcast live during the morning break. However this means their only audience are their friends in school. Creating a podcast of their program would enable their parents, families and friends to listen and comment. It would also enable them to reflect and improve over the weeks.

Last year I came accross a podcast page belonging to a HighSchool class, I was very impressed with some of the work there http://mrscaldwell0.podomatic.com/

Podcasts can be listened to on your computer as well as ipods and other players. There are many websites where you can upload and publish your podcasts for others to listen to straight from the page.

Permalink Reply by Elise Mueller on May 20, 2007 at 3:34pm

Hi Richard,
Thanks for starting this group. I teach 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade literacy and technology. My students love blogging and my 5th graders are very involved with our wiki page. I have 10 computers in my portable (crowded place!) and expect 6 laptops to begin next year. Podcasting and videos are two areas my students would like to explore. Connecting with other classrooms is a priority for me and it looks like I may have stumbled on a group of other 5th grade teachers planning a wiki project for next year that my class can work with too, which is very exciting.

My largest obstacle is my IT department and the filters they put in place; although the real, and larger, obstacle is probably communication. There is no direct communication between classroom teachers and the IT department. They block things and then the few teachers using the new tool plead our case. Getting new tools approved takes a long time. For example I requested Photostory in October and it was finally installed this month. The same was true of our keyboarding program although it was requested in September! Unless we have administrators in the central office willing to back new technologies for classroom teachers I don't see the situation changing any time soon. So, I just plug away and do what I can with the tools I have access to, keeping my fingers crossed that these tools won't be blocked.

I find the youth of our students is an obstacle, with the exception of keyboarding skills which take time to develop in 3rd graders! Some of my 5th graders come to school with better video and audio editing skills than I have. I agree with Lisa that editing and proofreading skills in written work does slow us down. Perhaps student skills in these areas will improve as the amount of collaboration between classrooms increases.

Finally, I am always looking for grants that will fund hardware for my classroom. Samsung has a great one out there http://www.hopeforeducation.com/hopeforeducation/index.html Only 100 words, which can be written by students. :) Great end of the year writing assignment!

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 22, 2007 at 5:25pm

I also find that editing and proofreading is timeconsuming. I'm thinking that a possible solution may be by utilizing a document sharing program, like Google docs(there are a few other similar services on the web). Students would write their original draft in Google docs, share that draft with their peers who would be responsible for proofreading and suggesting ways to improve the document. Students would share their work with teacher only when both they and their "editors" deemed it ready for publishing.

Permalink Reply by Carolyn on May 20, 2007 at 5:03pm

Hi,
I work as a Media Specialist at a K - 6 school which is getting PK in the fall. As the school year ends I try to have fun my my students. I'm trying to introduce my younger students ( K - 2) to fairy tales by having them listen to fairy tales online . I'm not sure what I am doing with the older students yet.

My biggest obstacles are the lack of computers in the media center and the fact that I see the students in K - 3 every other week. Right now, I only have one computers the students can use but I hope to have 4 more come fall. In the fall I plan to use blogs and wiki's with the students. I'm not sure how though. So far I plan to have them to book reviews in one of those formats.

I am new to the 2.0 world so I haven't worked out all of the bugs yet. I have my work cut out for me this summer.

Permalink Reply by Richard on May 20, 2007 at 6:24pm

Hi sperts09,
I'm new to 2.0 as well. I'm also hoping to get into blogging and possibly wikiing this summer. I hope to have kids working on a couple of projects next year, but (like Elise) may have to work on keyboarding for a while first. I have 4 PCs in my room, but 2 are so old and slow that I don't have kids use them to get on-line. But, I do have my kids every day. We also have a lab, but it is booked all but about an hour per week for standardized testing prep. So, we are in similar boats. Hope we can help each other with this along with help from the others in this group. I think this could be a really wonderful experience.
Richard

Permalink Reply by Jill on October 24, 2007 at 4:41pm

Hi,
My students read Cinderella stories from all around the world. What web sites are good to listen to fairy tales online?
Thanks-

Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on May 21, 2007 at 4:20am

Hi everyone

My sixth graders are in the midst of creating digital science picture books. We use Powerpoint but try to move the tech beyond presentation aspects. Our audience is first through fourth graders but we will be sharing with other middle school/upper elementary students through a blog project that I am overseeing, too. Their job was to create a "journey story" that teaches a scientific principle. Some are doing bridge construction stories, some are doing journeys into cells, some are working on escaping from volcanoes, etc. No clip art is allowed! And we are working to embed audio and video into the books, too.

It's an interesting process to talk to them about how the use of tech is different in creating a book than from paper (animation, audio, reader interaction, etc). When done, I will try to share the final books with people here.

For now, you can view the one that I created as a sample, as I have been writing and putting together my book, and talking about my process, each day with students:


The Flight of the Little Piece of Yeast

We have one laptop cart for our entire school, so it is a struggle to find enough time for them to do their work and I have had to strong-arm the cart for a good week to 10 days. Luckily, most of our teachers are doing their own year-end projects that don't require the computers (is that good or bad? Not sure). But access and time are issues.

Kevin

Permalink Reply by Meagan on May 21, 2007 at 1:24pm

Hello,
I am so excited to find this group. I teach in a computer lab setting in a k-5 building. I see the students two times a week for 30minute sessions. The biggest challenge I find is the time to get started on projects and then to finish projects in a timely manner. This year has been spent teaching the students to use the website that goes with our new reading adoption. Next year, I want to teach more web 2.0 tools to help my students see learning as more relevent to them. We have a high poverty rate and the neighborhood is not exactly safe. We will have some new teachers in the fall and I will hopefully have more time to help teachers with project-based learning in their classrooms. I am looking forward to learning from each of you and setting sail on new projects in August.
Meagan