What It All Means, Ch. 10, p. 147

Ch.10, meaning. p. 147

The overall intent of this book is to aid educators in understanding the shifts in the paradigm of teaching.  Teachers need to become aware that all information is transferred to the web globally to connect knowledge together.  Teachers must become literate in publishing, editing, and managing information available online, and be able to connect to others.  We no longer will be dependant on texts or develop traditional student-teacher relationships.  We will be accessing open-source learning.  The idea is that everyone will be creating and sharing knowledge using multimedia. Learning will be collaborative.

Our teaching will veer away from being an all-knowing lecturer to becoming a guide to a wider conversation.  Teachers will be using wikis, blogs, web sites, discussion groups, etc., to advance content.  Students will need to be able to locate these sources (and many others) to interpret the material in their own way.  We will ask student to produce work that is to be shared, added to and refined by others.  Students will find that their work is meaningful, not just produce something to be thrown away at the end of the semester.  They will demonstrate mastery of material by the work that they are able to contribute to the growing body of knowledge; not by taking a test. This is a very tall order.

This book was a real eye-opener for me.  When I finished it, I realized how far I have to go and how much I have to learn.  I can easily see how useful these tools will be in my classroom, but I am always concerned about safety and the diminished emphasis on using your own brain power.  I believe my students would find any of these tools invaluable to helping them master the content in my classroom, however.

Social Networks, Ch. 9, p. 131

Social Networks, Ch. 9,p. 131

Social networking is a way to, once again, connect and learn with others about things we really care about.  These relationships can be friendship-based or interest-based.  For educational purposes, teachers should explore interest-based connections.  It is extremely important to teach about digital citizenship, safety, and information literacy.  Sharing or modeling our own experiences will let kids know what the expectations are and what roles they can assume.

Facebook use by teachers is usually in the form of private groups.  Classes exchange information, write on each other's walls, answer questions and create a shared space of material for courses.  The teacher sets the transparency level.  A couple of examples were mentioned such as the Unquiet Library - a public facebook site.  This site combines a number of integrated components on the web.

Ning is a free social networking site around specific topics.  It is self-contained so teachers have administrative control over who can access the site.  Students can test their writing skills for a dedicated audience and members can comment.  Class portfolios are a typical outgrowth.  Navigation can be confusing because of the wide array of elements available (the author emphasizes not to click add Apps!).  Google ads appear until you can prove this is for educational use.  An interesting comment was provided on the St. Joe H2o site (http://tinyurl/ldgwkb).  There is "no longer a one-way relationship with the text, or a two-way relationship with a teacher; now it is a hub of communication that connects the best parts of the past with the growing future of our program."  I think this is true for the entire read/write web.

Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, and Live Streaming, Ch. 8, p. 111

Ch.8  Podcasting, Videos, etc.

Podcasting, screencasting and videos are examples of multimedia that the internet has made consumable to a wide audience.  It is inexpensive to download and save video files because of cheap RAM, hard drive disk space.  It is more efficient and enjoyable to use. It is personalized for your particular interests; and it is time-shifted because it is available when you want to listen or watch it.  And, it is much easier to create and consume multimedia, not just text and images.

Podcasting consists of creating and distributing web radio.  You need a digital audio recorder that can create an MP3 file, space on a server to host the file, a blog, and something to say.  It is best to use some kind of microphone device and it is important that you try it out first before teaching students to do it.  You need to publish before a digital audio recording becomes a podcast.

Video publishing is simply YouTube or TeacherTube.  You need a digital video camera with external input for microphones. It takes time to get professional looking results.  A story board should be created.  Careful editing helps, too. I believe my student would be thrilled to make a movie and post it on the web.

 Screencasting is a way of narrating videos or text.  The author includes John Udell's screencast about heavy metal logos as an example, (http://tinyurl/ydp2sf).  This tool may be a good way to provide assistance to struggling students.  I would create a screencast with step-by-step instructions on a problem then I would embed it in a class wiki.

This is the essence of the read/write web - create and share what you and your class creates with others.  You add these contributions to the larger database of learning. 

Fun With Flikr, Ch. 7

Fun With Flickr , Ch. 7, p. 101

Flikr is another example of social software where contributors share, interact and learn from each other, in this case pictorially.  From an educational standpoint, images of daily events, videos, and highlights could be posted.  These could be shared with parents, community and colleagues.  Examples of these images might include field trips, speakers, visitors, special projects, and celebrating the good work students do every day.

Flickr is free up to a maximum of 500 images per month.  It will be deleted after 90 days of inactivity  All editing must be done before uploading (you can use http://picnik.com to edit.)  Pictures are easily organized into albums and slideshows. You can limit access to "Family and friends" so you have control over privacy to a certain extent.  Pictures can be annotated by the teacher or, alternatively, the teacher can ask students to annotate what they see.  An online discussion can be started by adding comments to any photo.  These comments can be tracked easily with an RSS feed. 

Images can be used to connect with people from around the world.  Photos can be tagged (to connect with other people's photos that have the same or similar tags.)  A teacher can create presentations and slide shows, create virtual field trips, document school work, and, as always, teach about social software. Another interesting possibility that I would use is connecting to http://googlemaps.com and/or http://gooogleearth.com.  The class can paste their own images to various places on these maps.  This would put a "name to a face" and give students a geographical connection to the content.

The Social Web, Ch.6

The Social Web, Ch. 6 p. 85 

The author referred to the social web as a "collaborative construction of knowledge",( p. 85, Blogs, Wikis, Podscasts).  All information is shared and created collaboratively, a new construct of learning.  This social web is where we have many "friends" that we connect to,  but, just as importantly, these friends have other friends who can connect to us.  We all share ideas and resources to conduct research.

Twitter micro blogging is an example of a network of friends  This network makes us become part of a larger community.  Tweeting combines personal and professional relationships. The author believes that we become smarter using this community and suggests inntertwitter.com as an example.  My personal feeling is that we become smarter at finding additional resources for research through other people. 

In the academic community, tweeting is used currently as another method of communication with parents.  Daily notices, links to student work, presentations and relevant web tools are posted.  Tweeting on cell phones can be used to get instant feedback to an assessment question.  Tweeting is also used as a public notebook.  The caveat is that only 140 characters can be used in one tweet.

Social bookmarking services are another way to read and connect with what other people read.  Delicious and Diigo are specifically reviewed.  Diigo gives us the  ability to annotate and highlight information and can be used for work and personal use simultaneously. I believe this site would be a more useful tool for research purposes because of these capabilities. Delicious is a Google product that features ease of use in order to tag, share and save relevant websites. 

RSS, Ch. 5

Ch. 5:  RSS, The New Killer App for Educators p. 71-83

The chapter, RSS, is basically about creating a way to find and assimilate a lot of information quickly and efficiently.  RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, but one could interpret it as simply scan and synthesize.( www.whatisrss.com).   An RSS feed is an aggregator or compiler that feeds updated information to a page or location that you have created.  You can perform research quickly about specific topics by having the RSS feed search the web for you and feed new info onto your page to read.

The chapter goes on to explain the specifics of setting up an RSS feed.  You create a mailbox on an aggregator like Google Reader, for example; go to the sites that you like and subscribe to them by clicking on the RSS icon, then add the subscriptions to your aggregator account.  Google Reader (the aggregator) will feed new info from those sites to your mailbox.  Now you can read from just one site and save time.  You can star topics to read later, too.  Of course, you need to organize your info by creating folders and tagging specific topics of interest; and you need to be sure the sites are actually quality reads. 

I can use this for a class research project. I would embed an RSS feed into blogs and posts I have created for the class to provide quick, continually updated material for research purposes. I am also pleased about using an RSS feed to quickly read anything the students have posted in one place. In that manner, I could dipstick how students are progressing in their research. I believe that this would be a very useful web tool for me.

Wikis, Ch. 4

Wikis, Ch. 4 

A wiki is a web site where anyone can post anything and anyone can edit it.  This chapter gives the specific details on how to create a wiki.  Several examples of teachers using wikis as classroom tools were included.  The teachers and students posted content, interviews, presentations and references.  Blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos were linked in.  The wikis were collaborative pieces that started in the classroom and spread outward.

Initially I was quite excited about this web tool.  As a math teacher, it could be a great way to help students and for student to help each other.  They wouldn't have to be so dependant on me.  I found this great site (7math.wikispaces.com/).   However, I found that the formatting of a wiki is a continual struggle .  I tried entering tables fore example; some worked well, other were scrambled.  I found it relatively easy to post pictures, gadgets and videos; but my larger concern is the difficulty of posting formulas or step-by-step help without it being scrambled.  I will continue to work with this, however, because I think the students could overcome these obstacles.