K12 Learning 2.0 Course

Thing 16

PART 1: Use the Grazr widget below to sample a few (by no means representative of all that’s out there!) educational podcasts. As you explore these podcasts and search for a few of your own (Part 2), begin thinking about ways you could use existing podcasts to supplement your classroom or professional teaching/learning.

First of all, I could learn new methods to use to teach traditional concepts. Secondly, they could be used as clips in the classroom, for the students, as well. However, I could see it being time consuming to find podcasts and match them up to the curriculum. Downfall here is not visual, so podcasts would need to be used as supplements to lessons. Perhaps as an introduction while taking care of classroom tasks (attendance, turning in assignments, etc.) the first 5 minutes of a class period.

Using new ideas on the smartboard, for example, a jeopardy game. It actually keeps the score for the groups in the classroom! Other teacher’s shared lessons, basic math lessons and some have had video as well. Even free podcasts from major universities, Stanford, MIT, Berkley, etc.

Part 2:  Find and subscribe to a podcast. Light: 

I subscribed to a podcast called The Math Factor. I subscribed to it in my Google Reader. It is a podcast on mathematics, logic, and puzzles by Chaim Goodman-Strauss and Kyle Kellams that airs weekly on KUAF 91.3 in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Stretch:  I also then subscribed to the podcast Math Factor via iTunes, as well.

This Web 2.0 course has been an eye opener to new and advanced technological tools for me, personally. Yes, the world is certainly changing in respect to technology for all of us whether we are the digital teacher, the digital user, or the digital learner. Teachers must address this change and shift in teaching and learning so that everyone can become more efficient at information sharing, facilitating creativity, collaborating, social networking, and the use of folksonomy.  I believe that modeling appropriate use of these tools in the classroom is the best way to show students to be effective and responsible users.

I would have to say the two web tools that I learned to use that have been, or will be, the most valuable for me as a person and educator are creating web pages and Pageflakes. In the web tools section, I discovered Weebly as a neat tool for creating web pages. I would consider this my best discovery since I have already created a website for my daughter in her quest for an athletic scholarship that will be viewed by interested coaches. I had to be proficient in YouTube, as well as embedding videos, photos, and documents in order to complete this task. I also really enjoyed learning about Pageflakes. I am a very organized person and Pageflakes seems to be the perfect tool to organize and help students discover and use the web.  

I thoroughly enjoyed this course and have learned a ton….and all “Hands-on!” Thanks!

Ning is a really neat site. Seemed like the same thing as Facebook and MySpace, which I am familiar with since I have two teenagers living in my house. Building social networks around school topics or projects could make a sense of community and interaction for students. Using these social networks in school appropriately is a good model for what students should be doing on these social networks when they are not in school.  I did really enjoy the Ning in Education site. These sites can be a way for students to stay connected academically. If we are to simply ignore or block all this type of technology at school we would not be teaching the appropriate use of these tools. We need to be teaching students the skills to help them be responsible and make these type of environments safe.

I found some neat resources while perusing Ning. One blog by William Peterson was about creating, sharing, and grading quizzes in Google Docs. I didn’t realize that one could have things automatically graded in Google Docs. I found another neat website called Funnelbrain that also allows for collaboration of students as they can create flashcards, quizzes, and study teams with text, video, pictures, and voice recordings. The site will automatically monitor progress and keep students on pace.

As always, I found some incredible stuff in my Google Reader and was on there much longer than I should have been. I really liked the idea of Wiki Races in the classroom found in The New Trier Library blog on 1/19/2010. Next, I learned how to disappear on Facebook, Twitter, and the internet in general. And finally, Readability will make my life (and my reading) easier.

I found Pageflakes easy to use and get used to. I was able to easily enter RSS feeds and flakes. Pageflakes could be used for students in the classroom. Every computer could have a start page for your students. These start pages could include search engines, information feeds, and links to other on-line services used in the your classroom such as a dictionary, etc. Each student in the class could then can participate in this the digital world by creating their own page on the class Pageflake. Topics and themes for their page could be left up to that individual student. This would perhaps develop a routine for the students to look for and explore new resources. My pagecast can be located here.

My YouTube findings were interesting, to say the least. You really do have to watch your time when going on that website! My two content-related videos from YouTube were both on different ways to factor trinomials in algebra. Each video was informative and took a unique approach to this algebraic task. Found were the Bottoms Up technique and the Box Technique. My how-to video from YouTube is an interesting one on how to make ducktape flip-flops. Another video I found amusingly interesting was a video on folding a shirt in two seconds. Next, I went to TeacherTube and looked around for videos on the subject of factoring trinomials, as well, to see the differences in the two websites. What I found was that on TeacherTube, one is more likely to find full lessons (20+ minutes long), whereas on YouTube, most instruction was a short (less than 5 minute) blip. On TeacherTube there are a lot of ads that take extra time to pull up when accessing the website. There are video ads, as well, if you do not log in as a member. Another unique quality of TeacherTube is that you are likely to find documents, as well as video and audio files. I was therefore able to find worksheets to go along with the full length lessons. This would be helpful to teachers.

My initial experience with Google Docs was good. I was able to figure out pretty much everything on my own. One idea for professional and/or classroom learning use of Google Docs would be to create tests. Teachers could collaborate and add test questions to one another’s tests. Students could create questions for a test and other student could add to that, as well. Another classroom use could be peer editing. Students could edit each others papers. Students could also work on group projects on Google Docs, even if it is a powerpoint type project. The group can participate and add to/edit the project and the teacher will be able to tell who has been participating. This would work with collaborating on homework assignments, as well, for those students having access at home. While researching and learning about Google Docs, I came across a wonderful application using math and maps. It is called Maths Maps. You can check it out here.

My first podcast, Tips for Taking the SAT for the First Time. ENJOY!

Sandi’s First Podcast!

Podcasts:  what neat information right at our fingertips (or ears)! Whereas I have not previously used podcasts, I previewed most of them in the Grazr. These ranged from podcasts about mathematics, sciences, to podcasts about art and how-to’s as well as podcasts created by 2^nd graders (cute!). I then searched Education Podcast Network, Learn out Loud, Skip the Tuitin: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World, and Learning in Hand. In these, I found many podcasts that could be used in the classroom. 

First of all, one could learn new methods to teach traditional concepts from podcasts. Secondly, podcasts could be used as instructional clips in the classroom for students. However, I could see it being time consuming for the teacher to find podcasts and match them to the curriculum. The downfall here could be that the lesson clips used in the classroom from most podcasts would not be visual, so they would need to be used as supplements to lessons. Perhaps podcasts could be used as an introduction while taking care of classroom tasks (attendance, turning in assignments, etc.) the first 5 minutes of a class period.

Some of the neatest or most useful podcasts I came across use new ideas on the smartboard, for example, a jeopardy game that actually keeps the score for the teams of students in the classroom! I did find some teacher shared lessons that have video instructions as well as audio. I even viewed free podcasts from major universities such as Stanford, MIT, Berkley, and many others.

In conclusion, I also subscribed to Dansmathcast video podcast in my Google Reader and Mathmutation and Math 1050: College Algebra podcasts through iTunes.

I completed the regular task and the stretch task for Thing 15. I discovered that Delicious is a way of social bookmarking. It allows one to create lists of “favorites” and add notes to them, as well as “tag” them with keywords to make searching and sharing easier (some people -even your students- may be doing similar research or have interests such as you). Social bookmarking seems to have become a way to store, organize, search, and manage webpages on the internet, as sometimes this can become overwhelming. You also have the ability to use other people’s lists that you find interesting or useful. I also learned that an advantage of using Delicious over your “favorites” on your computer is that they will travel with you. Since it is web based, you can retrieve your Delicious “favorites” from anywhere you have computer access.

I initially found Delicious very easy to use and the tags helpful to pull up other webpages on the same topics. In education, social bookmarking can be a tool used for students and teachers to make research and sharing easier.  

 You can view my Delicious link.