d course i am looking to bring more project based learning in. I am looking to utilize web 2.0 tools. The students who take this course will meet one period a day for half of the school year.
I am considering creating projects that will utilize one or more of the following tools:
a. a digitial story on a global or controversial issue.
b. Scratch - As an intro to programming
c. A Hyperlinking Narrative
d. social bookmarking
e. Rss feeds and feed aggregators
F. Collaboration using wiki's.
G. Podcasting & Audacity
h. Creating google earth tours
i. Webpage Design
j. Internet Safety, Information Literacy
I would love to here about your experiences, project ideas or current curriculum.…
that are not disruptive, meaning that they aren't replacing a commercial product. This is a good way to get open source introduced to both your tech staff and your teachers. A great example of this is Audacity for helping teachers do podcasts. For older students, introduce Freemind for building mind maps. If you don't have a learning management system, install a Moodle server and get some folks to work with Moodle. Find teachers that will pilot stuff and then let it grow from there. Once you have some apps running then you can think about introducing apps that are disruptive, like OpenOffice. Trust me, it is much easier adding new apps than replacing old apps with open source. We are just finishing a roll out of OpenOffice and it has had its share of ups and downs. The other thing that helps is getting folks to look at the glass as being half full instead of half empty. Just my two cents.
Randy Orwin…
still seems to be an impression out there that netbooks are only made for cloud computing. They do work great for web-based applications but they can handle much more. Today's models are so much more powerful than the first editions..your know, the ones with a really small solid state drive. We run a full image including Windows 7 and Microsoft Office. We even edit audio with Audacity. We just tell the students to have only one or two applications open at a time. If we are editing movies, we only have Movie Maker open.
Hope this helps...
Mark
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meister, but there are others as well)
- Interactive Whiteboard (if you can't afford one, the Wiimote Whiteboard is only $55)
- Student wikis (I like wikispaces)
- Prezis for presentations
In terms of music software, I really like UJAM,but I've also used Audacity and Garageband.
Katy Scott
Stretch Your Digital Dollar
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ns, videos or explanations. (You have been generous in helping--thanks)
Today a couple of my 6th grade girls had finished their research assignments and I was furiously helping others post assignments to our project website-- I turned and said to the girls -- "the computer guy downloaded Audacity, go figure out how to do podcasts---there is a new wireless mic in the blue box under the counter."
I went back to my work with other students--in less than 15 minutes I heard "We're done, Mrs. B. we've figured it out!!" I smiled at my co-teacher--and listened as the girls across the room were recording their first podcast and making plans our big project.
I would have spent hours stewing and fussing and making sure I knew every in and out before I plugged in the mic, they just went for it. What a joy!…
nts record themselves explaining their topics in a podcast. That way I can display the posters in the hallway, and other students would be able to listen to their classmate's explanations on their MP3 players.My challenges are these:1. I need a recommendation for a podcasting host 2. I would like to record one podcast with multiple tracks so that I can label each poster with a track number (poster one corresponds to track one in the podcast.) I subscribe to a few DJ podcasts and each new song in a mix is a new track so I know this is possible. How do I do this? I have Audacity and garageband at my disposal.thanks - my kids are super excited - I appreciate any help you can give me.mrg …
er, choose a "segment" or "Story" for the podcast, then they begin their research and start writing their part for the podcast.
Topics I allow the kids to use in our podcasts include 1 minute book reviews, Weekly School Sports Updates, an interview with an administrator or teacher, editorials (Should we adopt school uniforms?), Fashion Tips, Video Game Reviews, CD Reviews, Movie Reviews, etc.
The podcasts give my students a voice, and an audience for their voice. They know these podcasts will be posted on my webpage and can be heard by anyone in the community. This isn't just some short paper that ONLY their teacher is going to read, grade, and return. They work so hard on writing their part, practicing the delivery, and the actual recording because they want to sound good for the general public in our community or any students who may listen to it.
I normally give them a full class period to get their story together and we take turns recording them as a class the next day. I find it easier if we record the project all together instead of trying to piece together multiple recordings from multiple computers. If students do not have their story ready, then we do not wait on them and they will not be on that podcast. The thing is, THEY WANT TO BE ON THE PODCAST. Most of the time, they will get their work done.
Also, you will find that if you are doing Podcasts for the first time, you will have some students who have never heard themselves on video or audio before. I have about 4 sixth graders per class that have never heard themselves off of a recorded video or audio before (I know that is crazy to believe). You will have students who notice how they read their stories, and you can even improve their reading skills or at least allow your students to see/hear what they need to work on!
We use the free download of Audacity for our audio recordings. I even created a "How To" guide for Audacity to help you set it up for podcasting and even edit your recordings. You can check it out here!
http://classoftech.blogspot.com/…
nce of an 18 week course. I am in my 8th Year of teaching this class and I have my complete curriculum aligned to the NETs Standards which have been adopted in Indiana. Here is a link to the NETs Standards for Students!
In 18 Weeks, here is a very basic overview of what we do and what we cover:
Touch Typing
Microsoft Word Basics (We do several creative writing Journals, we write Diamantes and dress them up, and type several research papers for Language Arts and Social Studies).
PowerPoint Basics (We create Historical Figure Presentations and Internet Browsing Vocab Presentations)
Excel Basics (We create a Solar System Discovery Spreadsheet with 3 graphs showing the Planets' Distance From the Sun, Our Weight on Each Planet (Excel Formulas do the math for us), and our Age on each planet (again, with Excel Formulas doing our math).
Then we create our Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentations in Google Docs so they can do them in Google Docs and Microsoft Office.
Internet Safety (We create Anti Cyberbullying Comic Books and Internet Safety Posters on GlogsterEDU, we devote half of a class, one day a week, to Internet Safety Discussions).
Internet Searching and Boolean Searching Discussions and Strategies (to help my students learn how to be effective researches of online information).
We create Podcasts in Audacity in small groups of 5 covering a variety of topics students can choose from.
We write school related Rap Songs and Record them in Audacity as part of a Rap It Up project where the students create fictional rap groups and plan a full summer tour, creating T-Shirts, planning a route in Mapquest, Creating Logos in Logomaker, creating presentations about the Cities we are visiting,
We find out what our Ecological Footprint is and create Brochures in Publisher for our Community to share tips on how to make our community "Greener."
And much more!!
Hopefully these will give you a few ideas to run with!!
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lots of treasured memories and comments about their Dad. We also got a webkinz pet and joined the kinzexchange blog where we took photos our our pet, and posted a descriptor on a shared blog with other countries, mainly Canada and USA. Students looked after Patch, our virtual pet, in his virtual world. This year, they have started their own individual blogs, but it is very early days with that, but students love having ownership of their own blog and seeing it online. We have also joined in on some global projects, through www.projectsbyjen.ning.com which have been a great success. Means we have connected with others on a global level in relatively simple projects. We have also joined the www.ms1001tales.wikispaces.com and www.es1001tales.wikispaces.com where students write a story that is evaluated, commented upon and assessed by students in another country. Our grade 6 (11 and 12 year olds) have produced podcasts, using audacity and they are stored online and attached to our classroom blogs…