A mish mash of the last day in ETAD802

I am taking a short break from blogging just to take a bit of a holiday but I didn't want to forget a few resources left to our ETAD802 class on our last Elluminate session.  So I thought that I would use this blog post to put these up.

This is an excellent short video on Interactive Flip books from http://www.flipsnack.com/   Flip books allow you to turn a PDF document into an interactive flip book that you can embed and share on the web.  As always on this blog, it is a free software.  They look like such an easy way to make notes, presentations, or portfolios a bit more interactive and look professional.  I can't wait to try them this semester just as a better way to display my notes online!

Here are links to others reviews about flip books:
http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/FlipSnack
http://mrsebiology.weebly.com/sample-flipsnacks.html

Great slide show on the basics of APA style.







 

One more... This is an excellent short video on plagiarism called You Quote It, You Note It!  with some great examples on quoting and paraphrasing from the Acadia University, Vaughan Memorial Library. 

Wikis in the Classroom

 As I have been taking my 802 Foundations of Educational Technology I have become more aware of social media tools and how they can be used in the classroom.  In particular I have been interested in using Wikis in the classroom.  I have started a few wikis but never finished them and I have yet to use them in the classroom.  After taking the 802 class I have been inspired to look further into using Wikis to enhance learning in my online classes.  In the 802 class we have been using our class Wiki as a place to summarize our weekly discussions where each week a different group is in charge of posting the summary.  There are also chapter summaries and resources that have been posted by the professor but the one thing that I use the most from the Wiki is for looking at other students work.  I can click on the Wiki and see the students work from previous years as well as from this year.  This helps me to know that I am on track and gives me inspiration for my work as well.

As I think about how I might use Wikis in my classroom I do need to be aware of which tools are going to save me time and which ones are going to be time consuming.  It is not that I mind putting in the time for tasks that will enhance learning but I find that many times, especially in online learning, there are many tasks that just eat up time by having to click and open documents or student's work pages.  I have already mentioned that in my previous posts that our school division uses Moodle to deliver their distance learning courses.  This leads me to wonder what the role is for using Moodle, Blogs, and Wikis in the classroom.  Are these tools redundant?


Moodle has a gradebook which is the main reason for using it.  If students are collaborating on Wiki I will still have to enter in a grade in Moodle.  I have to say that I have not done a lot of group work or collaboration in Moodle which seems to be the clear advantage to using Wikis, with their ability to allow students to share and collaborate so easily.  It would be a great place to put unit and topic summaries that the students could build and work on together.

So I suppose the way to use Moodle, Wikis, and Blogs would be in combination.  The Moodle server would be used as a more private and intimate setting for students to check their grades and to have more personal discussions in the discussion board where students can feel safe and know that their comments are not being made public for all to see.  Whereas the Wiki would be a great place to collaborate and share work among the class, and the Blogs could be used for individual work and achievement. 

Some things to consider when using Wikis in the classroom:

• Make sure that you sign up for the free K-12 wiki space as it is add free and will give you a few more options in the privacy settings where you can set the Wiki up so that only members can view and edit pages.
• Make sure that you have your privacy setting set up so that only the members of the site can edit and make changes.  You wouldn't want anyone anywhere to be able to make changes on your site.
• As always with social media, make sure the students are aware of how to be good digital citizens on the Wiki.  Here is a sample of a Student/Parent Blog/Wiki Contract

 I didn't want to post this Wiki review before I had fully finished a Wiki of my own, so here it is, my very first completed Wiki about the Importance of Hair from a First Nations Perspective.  I originally developed this for my Cosmetology 20 students and for my ETAD 879 class but the Wiki is much more than that as it explains how residential schools devastated First Nations people by making them cut their hair.  I hope you enjoy it!

 http://hair-importance.wikispaces.com/

Resources:

 I really loved this Venn diagram from Viki Davis:

 

Viki Davis talks about how she uses Wikis in the classroom.
50 ways to use Wikis in the classroom.

Voice Thread

Voicethread is one of the easiest tools that I have used so far.  Voicethread is a tool where one can upload a picture or a video and then others can add comments through either a voice recording, a telephone recording, a webcam recording, or through text.   The telephone recording was the most unique to me since it would allow students who don't have a microphone on their computer still participate in the conversation.  The program just ask you to put in the phone number that you will be recording from and then the program phones that number and prompts you to leave you comment.  The sound quality is still very clear and it was easy to listen, delete, or save.  The other neat option is the Doodler where the people leaving comments can draw on the picture while leaving their comment, highlighting the important parts of the picture or slide during their comments.


Some uses for Voicethread:

• Sharing poems, art work, and presentations.  Students can then comment on others works as well.  
• Audio discussion where the teacher poses a question and then has the students respond.  
• Students could complete an exam orally.  The teacher could pose questions on different slides and have the student leave a reply for each question.  
• This could be a great tool for those students who are shy and don't participate well in face to face discussions.  
• Import video and have a discussion about the content.

Here is a link to 26 uses for Voicethread in the classroom.

Voicethread also provides a number of examples of projects in the classroom.

In my online psychology 20 class I have my students complete a learning styles inventory where I have the students determine which learning styles suit them the best.  It is with the auditory learning styles that I seem to offer the least in my courses.  The auditory learners are the ones who have the most trouble figuring out how they can choose auditory options that will help them with their learning.

Last semester one of my students and I talked through some ways that knowing they were an auditory learner would help them with their online class.  We came to the conclusion that I needed to create more auditory options.  I have struggled with this since I am not an auditory learner myself.  I would much rather read information than listen to a podcast about it.  As such I have very little podcast material in my courses.  Even though I am not an auditory learner I do learn well from conversations.  This is where Voicethread comes in.  What a great opportunity to include more audio materials and allow the students to engage in a conversation.  Being able to say something outloud, at least for me, allows me to understand it or absorb the material on a different level.  I would assume that it would be the same for my students.

If you do want students to be able to add slides to the initial Voicethread then you may want to create a classroom Voicethread account and then create multiple users for each student, otherwise you will have to invite each student to the Voicethread and then change their editing options so that they have the same permissions as the creator.  You may also want to check off who can view and comment on the Voicethread, but as long as you don't have the link available for all to see in a google search then the privacy settings should be sufficient.  

Here is a great Voicethread created by elementary students about bullying:

Using Blogs in the classroom

 

I realize that the title of my blog is online games/tools to enhance learning but the more I dive into tools and games to enhance learning the more I am drawn away from the games to enhance learning.  Each game site that I have started reviewing has just left me feeling flat, like I was reviewing a filler for the classroom.  The type of educational game sites that I was reviewing may have been o.k. for reviewing a concept you already knew but they didn't seem to hold a candle to what some of the social tools could do to really showcase a students learning and ability.  As such I have moved away from looking at games to enhance learning at least the type of games I was looking at.  If anyone has a great online game site that will do more than just quick factual recall then please add a comment and I will look into it.

For now I will look at the use of Blogs in the classroom, specifically with Blogger.  I have only started using blogs in my masters courses and I am finding them to be a great tool as a replacement or enhancement to a discussion board.  In my school we use Moodle to deliver our online courses.  It is not that I dislike Moodle, but I find the layout to be very institutional and it takes a lot of time to click back and forth throughout each students assignments, there is a lot of wasted time clicking from one item to another.  This is where I see blogs coming into play.  If I have each student create their own blog and then post their assignments to their one blog, I would be avoiding having to click on multiple assignment tabs to mark and comment on students assignments.  So this is purely from a selfish point of view, but I see Blogs as saving me time in marking student assignments.

Another benefit of using Blogs in the classroom is that the students could show others their work.  Their learning wouldn't have to be such a private entity.  I am concerned; however,  about privacy issues:  What if a 'creeper' happens to come upon my students blog and then leave inappropriate comments on their blog?  Would a student share a personal reflection as deeply if they knew the post was public?

Which is where, as a first time user of blogs in the classroom, there would have to be a lot of information on how to use social media effectively:

• Don't put your e-mail address on your blog to avoid creepers and spam.
• Don't put full names or pieces of identity that might give information about yourself or others that would be available to the public.
• For a class blog have the students set the privacy setting so that the blog is not available to anyone on the web.  This would depend on your school's policy and what you were using the blog for.  If a student was creating a blog to get out information to the public on a certain topic then perhaps the privacy could be set to public.  Whereas if a student were posting personal reflections on a particular topic then having more privacy settings would be better.
• Make sure that parents are aware of the social media that is being used.

 Benefits of using Blogs in the classroom:

• Having a class blog lead by the teacher will allow students and parents to keep up with homework and what is going on in the class.
• Providing the students the opportunity to write and reflect on their thoughts will improve their writing skills.
• Students can see improvement in their work through out the year.
• Provides an opportunity to create a portfolio of their work.
• Provides an opportunity for students to see each others work and comment to other students as well.
• The students or teacher could invite family members to the students site to post comments for the students as a way to give positive reinforcement for their learning.  

I have noticed from reading other teachers uses of Blogs that they are using them much like a discussion board.  For my school I am not sure this is what I would use them for since discussion posts can be a bit more personal in nature and the LMS system that we use, Moodle, would provide a more intimate setting for discussions.

Some setting that may help teachers when using Blogger in the classrooom:

Under the comments tab:

• Who can comment?
  Teachers can change this so that only members of the blog can comment.  This does limit the global learning that can occur through blogs but may be useful for privacy issues.
• Comment moderation?
  Clicking Always will allow the author of the blog to review and approve all comments before they are published.  Reviewing and approving posts can be done through e-mail or directly from the Blogger post.

Under the Email and Mobile tab:

• A teacher could add up to 10 e-mail addresses to people to let them know when new posts are created.  This is limited to 10 so if you have a small class then you could send each student an e-mail each time you create a new post.

Under the Permissions tab:

• You can add up to 100 Blog Authors.  This would be handy for creating a class blog so that you could have each student be able to create a full post rather than just posting a comment.
• The Blog Readers section will allow you to select anyone, only people you choose, or only blog authors.  Choosing only blog authors will ensure a private blog just for use in the classroom and using the 'only people I choose' button would allow others, such as parents, to be able to view the blog site.

Resources:

Here is a link to a study called Lessons Learned from Blogging with Elementary and University Students    It provides a wonderful summary of what can happen when 5th graders blog including all of the 5th graders blogs.

Excellent Blogger Agreement. This site also has great tips for how to use blogs in the classroom.

Blogs in Education.