New Software

NBC News offers teachers access to video archives online

http://www.hotchalk.com 

 “Google Sky” turns computersinto telescopes

http://earth.google.com  ~ to see the sky

New technology-based curriculum teach language arts—and critical thinking

http://www.sraonline.com/  

NGA, Scholastic team up to get kidsinterested in STEM fields

http://www.youinnovate21.net

In support of its “Innovation America” initiative, the National Governors Association (NGA) has launched a web site aimed at getting middle school students excited about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), with the goal of inspiring and preparing them tobecome 21st-century innovators. “We must prepare students of today to become the innovative leaders of tomorrow,” said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who developed and leads NGA’s Innovation America program.“This web site will bring science, technology, engineering, and math to life for children, which—in turn—will give them the tools to become innovators.” The site, which is the result of a collaboration between NGA and global children’s publisher Scholastic Inc., features standards-based content, interactive games, a career simulator, and activities designed to encourage students to pursue STEMfields and careers. The site’s content is pulled from the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Science in Boston, and other institutions.

Learn more about geography

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html  ~  You can see volcanoes, earthquakes, etc… around the world. It is very interactive and fun to use.

Starting Learning Communities at my school

Now that I have found so much information from all of us exploring all the magnificent tools that are available in the WWW, the next step is to act upon it and start building learning communities in my school.

How I see that happening is by doing the following:

• Organize a blog or a site that lists all the tools, a short description and samples of its applicability.
• Observe teacher and meet with them to see what their needs are.
• According to their needs, I will expose them to some tools (according to their readiness) and as I see them getting used to the tools, I will start releasing more tools that will be relevant to them.
• I will start creating small solutions for different departments.
• I will try too get teachers on board with blogs per department, so they could start sharing their ideas and concerns.
• I will try to get teachers on board with Google docs for lesson planning and unit planning.
• I will have workshops where teachers will start working with these tools.
• I will have teachers creating a newsletter with a blog, to receive feedback from parents and students.
• Some teachers could use hotchalk.com to post assignments, videos, photos, etc.
• I could show teachers on how to record different lessons that could be use when they are absent or post them for students to review what they covered in class.

Hotchalk or a blog page could be the center of all the tools students or other teachers could start from.

Some practical ways to help teachers starting using these tools:

Hotchalk ~ Could be used as course manager

Blog ~ Could be used as an announcements page.

Jing ~ Could be use to create little tutorials and lessons for a substitute or review lessons.

Delicious ~ To post important links for the course

Skype ~ To call parents (long distance call) . They could record the conversation with the permission of the parents (liability issue).

Wikis ~ Collaborating with other teachers

Flikr ~ Class photos

Google calendar ~ class events

TeacherTube ~  Educational videos

Then, when teachers feel comfortable then they could start using these tools more with students

Google docs ~ Group project

Bloglines vs. Course blogs ~ Students’ journals, etc

Skype ~ Role-play, case scenarios, support, etc

We could use the educational videos to introduce them to different concepts and have them available for them to access them.

Ok…I will continue later (I am brain dead)

Edublogs

This is a good list from one member of the class.

The Edublogs resource cited the following as some of their uses:

1. Post materials and resources
2. Host online discussions
3. Create a class publication
4. Replace your newsletter
5. Get your students blogging
6. Share your lesson plans
7. Integrate multimedia of all descriptions
8. Organise, organise, organise
9. Get feedback
10. Create a fully functional website

How do we encourage/support/facilitate/reward participation and collaboration in an online learning community?

How do we encourage/support/facilitate/reward participation and collaboration in an online learning community?

• Provide immediate feedback.
• React on time just like you did to keep everybody alive in this course.
• Provide support, just like your are giving you email, answering blogs, and giving students your phone number.
• Promoting an online learning community so everyone will help everybody else.
• Offering differentiated instruction (different activities, tools, etc)
• Bringing people back to focus on the main goal of the course.
• Understanding the different levels of technology of every learner in the course.
• Clarifying and reminding the course/teachers expectations once in a while.
• Rewarding students for their level of support that they provide to other members of the course or the online learning community.

Online Learning

What are the factors that influence success and satisfaction in Online learning?

• Immediate and constructive feedback
• Clear expectations
• Clear assignments
• Support from the teacher and class member
• Enough interactive tools to support and get support from the online learning community
• Provide differentiated instruction
• Use a variety of activities to keep the interest of the learner

Pamela and Skype

I tried the recording software Pamela and it is very useful. I could use this software to do the following:

• Interview Spanish people, and play the recording as a class activity.
• Interview the participants for my thesis.
• Record a conversation and give the change to someone else to listen to it after the fact.
  Pamela (Recording Software)

Skype

 I have used skype to communicate with my country. Last year, I skyped my parents to another computer and called a cousin from USA. So my computer was the bridge between my parents (Colombia) and my cousin (USA).

I created a skypecast for October 27th. I could see now how using a skypecast could be easier to communicate with the students. This tools could be great to teach and practice languages.

I tried to get to some skypecast, but sometimes the communications started to cut-off.

I could see Skypecast good for the following:

• Getting support
• Giving support
• Have a role-play
• Have a debate
• Answer questions about a project
• Network with classmates

Ideas for Online Learning

This blog I will use it to get more ideas to apply to my thesis about Online Learning. I will post here:

• Journals
• Ideas
• Links to other good websites

Good video – What is a blog?

Essay Ideas

 Find a list of tools that I could use for my essay.

I will focus on interactive tools to teach WordProcessing 30S at the high school level. Some excellent tools are in the following link:

online links

I also found a good book that could be used to spice up the course:

Bozarth, J. (2005). E-learning solutions on a shoestring.

San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

I will also use the JING sofware to create weekly announcements for the class.

Right now I’m thinking about either using Blackboard or another tool…or maybe using a combination of several tools. I just want to make sure that students learn the content and learn how to use some of these web tools as well.

Something that I would like to incorporate to the course are google docs, wiki, and blogs. To do it the new way like shown in the videos.

• Google Docs
• Wikis in Plain English

• Social Bookmarking in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English