Mrs. King’s Blog

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I’m just beginning to explore the potential of blogs, media-sharing services and other social software which can be used to empower students and create exciting new learning opportunities. Blogging not only removes the technical barriers to writing and publishing online - but the ‘journal’ format encourages students to keep a record of their thinking over time. Blogs also facilitate critical feedback, by letting readers add comments - which could come from teachers, peers or a broader audience. Podcasting has become a popular technology in education, in part because it provides a way of pushing educational content to learners. For example, photo-sharing site Flickr provides a valuable resource for students and educators looking for images for use in presentations, learning materials or coursework. The tagging of images makes it much easier to find relevant content. Students can also use Flickr to publish their digital photography to a wider audience. Similar to blogging, the commenting function on Flickr allows for critical feedback. A lesser-known feature of Flickr, the ability to add hot-spot annotations to an image, also has possibilities in education. With these new strategies and techniques in my tool box, I plan to broaden my curriculum and make learning fun.

The classroom of the Read/Write Web is dramatically transforming how I view teaching. One the of the biggest shifts I need to make is to regard teaching as more than lecture. It’s necessary that I consider teaching as having a converstation with an audience beyond the classroom. When my students are given the opportunity to express and publish their understanding to the world, they will learn that their ideas can make a difference in the world. I see my curriculum going beyond content in the classroom. Instructional conversation is based on assumptions that are fundamentally different from those of traditional lessons. Teachers who use it incorporate equality, responsiveness and the assumption that the student has something to say beyond the known answers in the head of the adult.  This type of conversation reveals the knowledge, skills, and values of the student. Through the use of technology, “learners can become active participants in designing their own learning” (Richardson pg. 129). Instead of repeatedly assigning and assessing, I will be able to reduce the distance between myself and my students by constructing lessons from common understanding of each others’ experience and ideas and make teaching a warm, interpersonal and collaborative activity.

Digitial cameras, photo cameras and video recorders have opened many opportunities for amateurs to post pictures on the web that are of high enough  quality. There are many ways to publish photos and images on the web easily and cheaply. Educators can allow students to have fun with flickr, a site that enables amateurs to share photos, interact with comments and celebrate learning in a visual manner. I created an account at flickr.com to involve my students in sharing our photographed events of learning and specials projects. Outside activities, group speakers, special projects and photos of the class  can be celebrated online. I plan to use flicker to provide visual word problems, encourage writing prompts, create Power Point resentation with reflection about certain mathematical images and so much more. Flickr provides the user with option of allowing the public to view the pictures or limiting viewing to friends and family. I have selected the latter at this time in order to protect my 7th grade students from inappropriate material. I plan to teach my students appropriate use of the site and share my expectations of how they should use the information encountered. A great application of flickr is Geobloggers. This site clusters together all photos tagged with a particular latitude and logitude onto a Google Map. Students could view a map of links to every photo that’s been posted from any community.

The definition of delicious is highly pleasing to the senses.  Bookmarking services are very pleasing to those who want researching to be made simple. Social bookmarking is a method for internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the internet with the help of metadata. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine. Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks. Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotaion, and groups or other social network features. I have recently started using the the bookmarking service called del.icio.us which has allowed me to keep track of new information and save links to web pages that I want to remember and/or share.�

Real Simple Syndication is an innovative way to create venues for research. It allows readers to subscribe to weblogs without acutally visiting them. Imagine software that automatically checks feeds that you subscribe to and being able to view all the content from those sites in one place.  Research is efficiently handled by allowing the feed collector (aggregator) find published information. I looked into Bloglines.com as an aggreagator to collect my RSS feeds. This simple syndications solves the problem of those who frequently use the web. It creates the opportunity to stayed informed with up to date with information that is pertinent to individuals needs. Information from personal sites that you are interested in are feed into one area. I welcome the easy access and time saving opportunities that RSS has to offer. No longer do we have to rely on the taxonomy of professionals. We now use folksonomy, which is the idea that in working with your community of researchers, new tagging systems will emerge and become accepted that will allow us all to participate in the process.

Wikis make it easy for students to collaborate both inside and outside of the classroom. They are made to process simply and quickly. Editing a wiki is as easy as modifying a word document. There are so many ways to use a wiki in the classroom. Teachers can create an online text of their curriculum, students can build their own class Wikipedia, they can share powerpoint presentations and so much more. I used Peanut Butter wiki http://pbwiki.com/  to create a place for my students to share their ideas and reflect on their learning. Our math wiki can be found at http://gking.pbwiki.com  My students have been working with ratios and rates for the past few weeks. We’ve had students races to determine feet per second, watched film clips to determine the miles per hour of planes in speedtraps & ships in the water. They also looked through ads to identify unit prices and compare best buys, then created posters to demonstrate understanding of rates. Prior to their final assesment I invited my students to share how they use rates, ask questions and reflect on their learning. They were excited to be given the opportunity to publish their thoughts and read the comments of their peers. The wiki has opened the door for my students of all levels of understanding to collaborate. http://http://www.everythingdi.net/di/di.htm

I believe that weblogs are important for classrom learning. Maintaining a blog will expand the curriculum, strategies and tools that students need to impact their education. I would like to use my blog to record assignments, record relevant class links, encourage student collaboration and reflection. It is pertinent that students be given the opportunity to read exemplar material and recognize valid information. Searching through the web is a process that needs to be taught. http://http://www.blogbar.org/

Weblogs are easily created, convenient to update and authors may publish instantly from any internet connection. They provide students with an audience far beyond the walls of the classroom. Students  have the opportunity to publish their ideas, converse with others and make reflections every day. Blogs engage readers in developing knew ideas, asking questions and posting links to their research. In essence, blogs are a collaborative space, as readers contribute to the writing and learning process. Research shows that that blogs also promote critical and analogical thinking, increase exposure to quality information, promote reflection and interaction and is a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive and associational thinking. Weblogs allow teachers to differentiate instruction to meet student needs. Teachers may post assignments for various ability groups in the classroom. Links may be made available for the groups by clusters allowing students to have information at their fingertips from any internet connection. Parents may also be included in the ability to access class materials. Weblogs also create digital files to archive student or group work. A paperless portfolio creates great opportunities  for students to reflect on their work, share with others and organize  information. Blogging may be an excellent motivator for students to be serious about their posted work. The potential that the audience will go beyond the classroom places more responsibility the students.