Podcasting, an early impression

I am not completely sure how I feel about podcasting. I don't really like it, but I do see potential and possibility in the application of a podcast. Maybe if I break down my feeling it will help me to come to some sort of feeling either way.

Pro Podcasting	Anti Podcasting
Ease of access from mobile devices Portable with out requiring a data connection Can be heard while doing other things Easily and quickly shared Requires a lot of design thought Creating podcasts requires DEAPR creating using multiple forms of literacy	Limited to audio only Just one form of literacy Requires a lot of work to sound right Information has to be delivered through a single sense Time can be wasted trying to "get it right" Nothing to distract from your voice Content can not be seen

After thinking about these and jotting them down, I am still not convinced either way. I am starting to lean more pro, but I need to see them in action to get a better feel and comfort utilizing podcasts in an elementary classroom.

Kidblog Day 2

Today was fun and draining in the blog world. I continued my 3rd grade I/E students. They were able to quickly get back in and navigate to the same post as yesterday. I had them commenting on my comments to them, so each student had a sub post attached to the main post. They refined their thinking and gave more explanation today. It was successful.

I also started the 5th grade project, we got off to a rocky start. We couldn't get into a lab so we grabbed the ipads and started the process. It was rocky, more rocky than the 3rd graders from the day before. Partly because I was working with 3 times as many 5th graders then 3rd, and partly because the group of 3rd graders were in an extension period and were more focused. The 5th graders had just come back from recess and were not focused. I had the same screen as they did on the board but they couldn't navigate the app well. 6 told me they didn't have it on their screens, even though it was in the very center of their screens. This was a good learning experience for this project. Next time we will start on the computer when the screens show where to go better.

KidBlog Day 1

The group of 5th graders I set up to work inside kidblog has not been able to get started. So far I have only gotten 1 permission slip back. However, I have had more success with a group of 3rd graders that I set accounts up for today. The group of students I took for an intervention/extension block this afternoon where online playing BigBrainz on the computers. BigBrainz is designed to help the students gain and retain math fluency with multiplication, division, and addition subtraction. It is really a great game for the students to play. It is really fun.

As the kids played the game, I set up the accounts in Kidblog and posted a blog post that I wanted them to respond to.

"Welcome to kidblog. This is an experiment to get you thinking about math in a different way. I want you to post a comment to this post. On the first line I want you to answer this question 9 x 9 =.Press Enter one time and explain how you answered this question. You can’t show your work so I want you to talk about your work. What steps and strategies did you use to solve the problem."

They had just finished playing the multiplication component of BigBrainz so I wanted to see if they were able to relate the skills learned to a different problem. It is important to note the this is only their second session with the game so none of them had reached the 9 facts yet. It was an interesting experiment. 3 of the 14 students correctly answered the question but only 2 of those students was able to write out the strategy they used. I responded back to each student with specific feed back about what they wrote. It was quite interesting to see them switch gears to from doing math to explaining math. Even with the time issue caused by it being the first time any of them had heard of the program or commenting online I think it was a successful experiment with mixing literacy forms. The 3rd graders really enjoyed it. Now to get the 5th grade classroom rolling. We are going to attempt a different introduction strategy in the next day or two.

Wiki Wiki What?

Wiki, walka , wikipedia, what?

What is a wiki?

As I have learned from Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for the Classrooms a wiki is a quick and easy web authoring tool that allows for peer review and correction.

As far as the classroom goes, wikis are an awesome yet underused learning tool. I have known what a wiki is for several years. Various wikis have helped me to solve lots of problems, I had even attempted to incorporate a wiki into my teaching once. It didn't work. I had never used the tool from the content creator side. So I didn't understand how to use it. This was before the the wysiwyg input method and I didn't have the time to learn how to use it. So I left it alone and didn't think about the classroom potentials until we started talking about it in ITIS.

And now.

Wow, it is amazing how far the technology has come in. Since we stated creating our ITSopedia page I have created 4 new wiki pages for a variety of goals. One will be used in a unit I will be teaching to a class of 2nd and 3rd grade students. We will be using it as the share  part of the unit. It will function like a destination report from a travel agency. However, unlike a journal, a wiki can function like an affinity space as more ideas arise and new thoughts develop the plans can be modified and adjusted to match the vision of the team and they can happen individually or with in the group.  With the added benefit of saving all the edits so they can be reviewed or reverted as needed. I don't know how it will go yet, but I am excited to try it! I am also thinking about how I can use the free wiki tools that are not filtered by our district filters to all students to have their own space to create and develop thoughts and projects. A research wiki would be a whole lot more interesting the view then a PowerPoint show, and they would get more valuable skills building a wiki site.

First impression of Blogging

My first thoughts at using a blog. I am not a great writer, in fact I am not a good writer. This has turned me off to the concept of blogging for a long time.

I have had a social media presence online with services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ for a few years now, but I have not put myself out there in terms of delivering much content. I have mostly been a consumer of content.

As I have started investigating the use of Weblogs I have become intrigued as to the possibilities that exist for use in the classroom. The biggest thing that has stood out to me is the concept of reading more then you write. In order to be able to write well you need to read.  This sounds like DEAPR to me, Design, Encode, Assemble, Publish, and Refine. We have to develop an idea encode our thoughts into writing in order to assemble a coherent message that can be published and then revised.  You can't do that unless you able to digest and decode writings produced by others.  You need an example. By blogging we are doing this while working on improving literacy in written text, digital text, and possibly other medias like graphics, video, even oral. The possibilities are quite amazing yet extremely frightening.

This has caught my attention, along with the other obvious benefits like thoughtful analysis, synthesis of ideas, and purposeful writing. I searched online for possible school friendly blog hosting sites that were not blocked by district filters. Oddly enough Tumblr was not blocked, which was unexpected . I did eventually stumble across kidblog.com and set up a teacher account. I plan to set up a demo class and have found a teacher that is willing to allow me to give some of their students an opportunity to experience analytically thinking and purposeful writing in a weblog environment. It makes sense to me to attempt this experiment while we are working on it in class so that I can use the collective ideas of our cohort. I am excited about this possibility, even though I have some worry about how many of teachers will react to this suggestion. I will periodically report on how the experiment goes.