Evidence of Network Participation

My participation in this class took various forms. I learned from classmates through discussions in class. I also followed the blogs of several classmates. I have included a screencast of my replies to classmates.  Mike Carlin let me know that my podcast was not working properly and here is a screen capture of those comments. I also participated in the video discussion board seen in the screenshot below.

K-12 Wiki Lesson or Project

The K-12 wiki spaces was new to me at the start of this class. I have used this resource several times to find engaging technology lessons.I really liked the seventh grade Create Your Own Rocks activity. I chose to post my artifact excel spreadsheet and artifact analysis file.

Podcast

I am not used to listening to my own voice recording. My students love hearing their own voices, over and over and over again. The idea that the entire world could listen to me...yikes! A global audience to my 13-year old girls is exciting, engaging and motivating. I guess it is Immigrant vs. Native but I am totally on board with them, scary as it is. Podcasting could be used by students to share what they have done in school with parents. Podcasts could be placed on the school's website and students could take turns throughout the year sharing what they are doing in each subject.  In the science classroom, podcasting could be used to share observations, experimental results, or analysis. I could even see my students doing a podcast of a debate which focuses on some bio-ethical issue such as designer babies. Podcasting could also be used to "go back in time" and stand witness to some historical event as a reporter. During my unit on Earthquakes, my students create earthquake resistant buildings to test on our shake table. They could create a podcast that includes each step in the engineering process, beginning with problem identification and moving through design, testing, and redesign. The podcasts could be shared with other classes, students at other schools, structural engineers, parents, or anybody.

Here is my sample podcast.

Screencast

I used to believe that my students knew more about technology than I ever would. I now realize they only know more about social networking than I do. That being said, I think the best way to learn technology is by doing it and then trying to share it/teach it to somebody else. In the classroom, I would incorporate screencasts as a way for students to demonstrate how to use any of the Web 2.0 tools. I would first introduce several applications such as Skype, Animoto, Googledocs, Picasa, or Goanimate. Students could pair up and learn about one of the applications and then create a screencast demonstrating how that application may be used. It would be beneficial to store all the student-made screencasts and use that library of knowledge for all students, especially the younger grades. I prefer Screencast-O-Matic because it allows for clearer views of the web pages.

Here is a sample of my screencast showing how to access the Laurel homework page.