BP12_2010063_One Minute Message #2

BP11_2010063_Comment #2

Please see my comment on Ken's Blog here. GREAT tool called Skitch.

BP10_2010063_Comment #1

Please see the link here to Dickson's PLE Blog! A great video about a tool called Mindmeister.

BP9_2010063_Web 2.0 T3 - PodBean

This week, I was looking for something I could use specifically in my Radio and Television classroom. I have been searching for a good tool to allow my students to upload podcasts they have made for two reasons. One, it allows them to publish the work they do in class to have real-world application, and two allows me to have access to grade their work at any time from any place. As I was searching around, I found several podcasting hosting services, but most of them were quite tedious to register for, and weren’t very user friendly. I was still not quite satisfied in my search, and then I ran across “PodBean.com” Not only does this tool give you the ability to upload audio files, but it also gives you your own customizable Blog-style page to publish your podcasts to. One thing I’ve noticed is that kids love to customize their own spaces. Every time I look around, the students are always changing the desktop background to suit their environment. This type of “Blog-casting” will enable students to fully customize the look and feel of their page and also give them the unique opportunity to be published to the web, which automatically includes value in what they produce. I always say, if they value it themselves, you don’t have to teach them anything!

BP8_2010062_One Minute Message #1

BP7_2010062_Comment 2

Here's another cool tool called Glogster at my friend Kristi's blog.

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While looking at another classmate's blog, I ran across this cool comic-strip web 2.0 tool he found.. Check it out!

BP5_2010062_Web 2.0 T2 - Edublogs

A huge part of making my Action Research Project a success is using a web-based platform for sharing lesson ideas and collaborating and communicating using a blog. During my search, I found EduBlogs, which seems to be the best fit for educational purposes. Depending on how complex you’d like to make a blog, the service is free for most educational uses and provides a safe environment for teachers and also students to host blogs and post to others. I’ve also checked the website out on my school district server to be sure they hadn’t blocked it! (very important step!)

It is very similar to this service (Blogger), and has a nice, streamlined interface and look to it with a few more added options of managing posts and users and things like that. I’m not quite sure how I will integrate this just yet, but I’m experimenting with an account and taking it from there. My hope is to let teachers join the blog community and make them users to the blog so they can post and upload things as well. I’m going with the route of having myself or a team of teachers manage the blog and maybe having a featured article or so first to see how it works out. The good part about this service is that it is educationally oriented, so even if someone drifts off to another blog, they will still be in a safe environment, and maybe learn something else while there!

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Edutopia

I've been using Edutopia both as a blog and as a magazine resource for years to influence my teaching and to assist others in their classrooms. It is one of the smartest and well-designed sites I've seen that really create out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to 21st century educational ideals and practical uses for arts integration and new ways of thinking and teaching. The slogan - "What Works in Education."

NPR Topics: Arts & Life

NPR is one of my top daily sources to start class with. Often I will hear a story driving in my car over the weekend, and then pull it up the following week to use as a class starter. It also keeps me connected to the living world, and I think its important for my students to do that as well, and not be kept in the history of things, but the present as well.

NPR Topics: Movies

Continuing on the NPR path, since I teach a Film study course, I often will look at this movie blog that NPR does that often will have really neat stories on old films, new films or just the nostalgia in general. They really take a all-around approach to film study and I use it quite often.

Strategies for Arts Integration

I just came upon this site and thought it would be useful for two reasons. First, my ultimate career goal is to become an Arts Integration specialist, and share with other teachers how easy and fulfilling it is to integrate and infuse arts into their classrooms. Secondly, part of my Action Research is to actually create a blog similar to this one for my district, and since it is hosted by Scholastic, I look forward to what is posted here.

Teaching Music in the 21st Century

I've started out my career as a music teacher, and still continue my music studies at my church as an employed music assistant. I also just was hired part time at another school in my district to get back into the field of music education to start a chorus program in a high school setting. I've been kind of out of the loop for the last three years, so this will help me to catch up to what's going on!

BP3_2010061_Web 2.0 T1- Evernote

As I was lurking around for cool new Web 2.0 tools, I came across an interesting interactive program called Evernote. After downloading and playing with it a bit, my mind started racing as to how useful this program could be just while in school! The basic premise of Evernote is to give you the ability to catalogue anything you come across, whether it be on the web, notes you take, or even pictures. There have been countless times while doing research for a project, or planning a lesson that I can’t seem to find certain material I had seen before that I want to refer back to. This program keeps everything you tag and – get this – allows you to search through it, even words that appear in photographs. At first, I didn’t believe that it would find words in photos, but then I took a picture of a poster in my office, and then searched for words that appeared in it. I was shocked when it not only found the picture, but highlighted the word I was searching for!

As I started to think about how one could use this in a classroom, all kinds of possibilities arose. One course I teach is a Radio/TV Production class where students learn about radio and television journalism, entertainment and experience the media industry first hand by producing their own program. At the end of each semester they have to turn in a portfolio blog that lists everything they’ve been a part of, accomplished and researched. This program would be an outstanding tool to help keep all of their notes, photos and websites together when they’re making their portfolio to turn in. It also helps to remind them what they’ve done!

I can think of so many ways to use this as an educator as well – lesson planning files for all of your classes, professional development, leadership roles and many others!

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The blogosphere as it is now called is something I’m already quite familiar with. My journey that ended up using it for education started on a personal level. My first needs for a blog began with a way to catalogue my experiences while traveling in Scotland and England – you can read them here, if you get too curious.

After my return, and during the course of my own learning experiences and epiphanies in my own life, I started using blogging as a way to keep track of all my thoughts and to reflect back on how I had evolved or changed since my posts. I had never really even thought about others reading what I had written. However, it soon became something friends looked forward to reading, and something I enjoyed writing. I then created a second blog entitled Lucid Recall where I wrote in detail all of my dreams I had. It became somewhat of a digital scrapbook of my mind and was a spiritual and self-awareness tool that had opened its doors to me.

Now, as an educator I use blogging with my students, and am currently in process of making it an integral part of my action research in my graduate level program. Blogging is not something that is easily accepted or welcomed with open arms though. As one school superintendent stated in his experience “... the lies, distortions, and mean spiritedness of some—were not worth my time or worthy of this district.” (Carr, 2006) Although it creates a wonderful opportunity for personal reflection and growth as it had for me, professionals in education might be cautious to give an open forum for public opinion, because as I always say, no one has an opinion until they are given a chance to have one.

As with any new emerging technological tool, especially dealing with social media and its ever changing, fast-paced developments, rules are not even written yet to govern how modern society deals with the etiquette of such things. Should the educational industry be cautious and wait for rules? If so we might be a bit behind in our strategies for 21^st century learners – oh wait we already are. There are so many positive opportunities that can arise from blogging, whether used by an educational professional or a student like organizing class discussion, used as a portfolio assessment (as I do in my class), give students legitimate opportunities to participate, create student ownership, among many many others. (Skiba, 2005) We are currently being immersed in new social media outlets daily, a way for humans to express themselves. Instead of being cautious of the rules of what we shouldn’t expose to our students, we should be careful not to leave them or ourselves out of it.

References

Skiba, D. (2005). People of the Year: Bloggers. Nursing Education Perspectives, 26(1), 52-53. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Carr, N. (2006). To Blog Or Not to Blog. American School Board Journal, 193(11), 46-47. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

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