In this workshop, we will cover the following topics:
Voicethread- Check out this wonderful resource from Colette Cassinelli. A special thanks to Wes Fryer’s blog for sharing this wiki (and tons of other great resources). I’d also like to thank the Langwitches blog for sharing digital storytelling directions for various Web 2.0 tools.
Kidspiration 3 – new great features for searching for graphics, built in dictionary & thesaurus, and math manipulatives
Students have been working on podcasts over the last couple of months. Two “Blogs” were created to share these completed products. Students did extensive research on the Internet as well as tin the library. I have shared the link to the first podcast before. It is http://rogem6a.edublogs.org/ . A new feature was added. One student used Voicethread to conduct an interview with a teacher in another district. The interesting thing is that the student and the teacher never met or spoke to each other live. Difficulties with schedules made it impossible to conduct a traditional interview. So, thanks to the help of a wonderful educator and skilled technician, we were able to email questions to the teacher and obtain audio clips of the responses. We recorded the student’s questions then recorded the teacher’s answers. The direct link to the interview is: http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=136299
A second group created a series of podcasts using Audacity and Photo story. To embed the link to the video podcast, we uploaded the Photo story files to Teacher Tube, since You Tube is often blocked in our district. The link to their site is: http://rogem6b@edublogs.org .
Our Technology Action Team meeting will be discussing a variety of topics this month:
Tech Updates
* We have begun a few blogging projects recently. We will review our current blogs hosted by Edublog Campus. There are three main blogs projects happening right now. The first is Writer’s Notebook, a blog that will contain staff and student experiences with this literacy strategy. The second is a project being done with fourth and fifth grade teachers across the district. The fifth grade teachers are responding to the novels they are reading in lit circles using blogs and Voicethread. Two fourth grade teachers will begin a project responding to the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. The third project involves students creating podcasts and embedding them in their class blogs. Finally, we are looking to create an additional blog about mathematics which will contain sample problems and solutions to various math problems using Voicethread. This will be modeled after a project called Mathcast, by the makers of Math Playground.
* Voicethread was recently purchased by our district. It is a wonderful collaborative tool that allows several people to comment on a document saved on the Internet. We have been embedding voicethreads in our blogs and using them as stand alone resources.
* Galloway recently purchased licenses to upgrade toKidspiration 3. This new version has several additional features including a built in dictionary and Thesaurus, a math fiew that contains wonderful manipulatives, and a searchable graphics library.
Tech Standards Status
* We will review our scope and sequence to see where we are in meeting the technology standards.
* We will reinforce that all lessons need to be saved in the proper folder on our shared X drive (GT Common) and catalogued in our database.
Next Steps
* We will continue to discuss assessment of the technology standards. We will focus on how we will implement the NJTAP-In rubric in 8th grade and how we will continue to store student work related to assessment of the tech standards.
I am going to attempt my first blogging project with students. I will be working with a wonderful 5th grade teacher. Our goal is to have the kids blog about the books they are reading. Each group will read a different book. As they read each chapter, students will assume different roles and respond accordingly. Two of the roles, the illustrator and the literary luminary will respond using Voicethread. The other two, the connector and the discussion director, will write a more traditional blog post. Students will change roles after each chapter.
The students will be rotated through the 5 computers in their room as follows:
In my Web 2.0 workshop, the participants moved through stations using various software/web sites. As part of the station, they posted their ideas on how to use the software in their classrooms. Their ideas on using Voicethread are listed below:
1. Providing examples for students to reference in order to perform mathematical operations. ex- converting fractions from mixed numbers to improper fractions
2. Paired with united streaming, this could be useful to match each video more closely with the curriculum.
3. Have students experiment to get comfortable with more advanced features.
4. Make a station and /or use as review
5. This could be used with our Young Authors Project. Students create short books that are illustarted. The students could read their work and show off their books. It could also be used as part of a poetry unit where students would write and illustrate poetry and read it to an audience.
6. Good for modeling how to proofread.
7. Good for modeling thought processes and logical thinking (Math/Problem Solving)
This is a sample of a Voicethread:
If you'd like to learn how to embed a Voicethread into edublogs, check out this You Tube Video:
On Friday, Feb 15th, I will be presenting a workshop that will introduce teachers in my district to some Web 2.0 tools. I wanted to start out with some links to existing software that would be easy to integrate into our existing curriculum. I will review Podcasting using Audacity & Photostory hosted on an Edublogs blog, Voicethread, and Google Earth. I also provided links to some image and audio sites as well as some Internet safety and copyright resources.
I keep hearing about a great tool for collaboration called Voicethread. I’ve read about it on several blogs and heard about it on one of the Ed Tech Talk podcasts. This site allows you to upload documents (image, pdf file, powerpoints, videos, etc) and then multiple people can comment on what they see. The comments can be recorded or can be written. There is a doodling feature that allows you to draw on the document to “highlight” the area you are speaking about. It seems really easy to use. This version is free.
A relatively new site has been created especially for educators for a fee. This version allows students to have unique logons without having to supply an email address.
The following examples show the potential of what is possible with this product.
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Staff Development, Web 2.0 | Tagged: del.icio.us, Kidspiration 3, training, voicethread | 
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Posted by napolib
