11.5 things - Thing #2

I like Wordle much better than Wordsift. The resulting pictures are much more interesting and you can manipulate them in more creative ways. I can see using Wordle as a hook to get the students to pick out the most important concepts in a new unit and as a way for the students to present their vocabulary definitions more creatively. I do like the fact that the WordSift words become hot links but I think that is not worth the lack of creativity.

Glogster is very beautiful. I could never be that creative/professional on my own. I want to try to summarize a unit or concept with Glogster on my own and then have the students do some as well. It also seems like a great way to introduce the procedures for a science lab. I think it would be great to have the students turn in an online poster. I wonder how much it costs to print them?

VoiceThread is fun. I want to post some pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and have a discussion about what the students are seeing. I need to explore how easy it is to set everything up. Also fun for talking about family pictures, as seen in the demo.

Animoto seems really awesome. I want to learn more about sharing videos and what level of access we already have at school. I know some teachers have used them with the students already and the work is really excellent.

I'd like to see more of Voki but I couldn't get a good connection to watch the featured teacher video.

Bookr is really easy to use and to publish. I don't like the fact that you can only put one picture on a page or the fact that your book is automatically shared with everyone. Students could use Bookr instead of PowerPoint or KeyNote or PhotoStory. But I like that you can do other things with those tools in addition to photobooks. Bookr seems pretty limited.

11.5 things 2010 - Thing #1

The connected student video

Resources to look at: Google scholar, iTunes U

Teacher's role: Learning architect, modeler, learning concierge, network sherpa, connected learning incubator, synthesizer, change agent

Activities: guidance when student is stuck, how to communicate properly and ask for help from experts, vet a resource, how to turn a web search into a scavenger hunt, get excited when they find that pearl of content, organize the mountains of information.

I love this video!! I think this is the way school should really be conducted. Students in charge of their own learning with caring adults pointing them in the right direction. A few big questions for me - is this appropriate for middle schoolers? (I think so) How do I make this happen in middle school? How do I grade what they have learned? (certainly not w/ a standardized test!).

I do think that librarians can play the role of the 'teacher' in this video. Any adult who has a significant presence in a student's life should be playing this role.