On Friday afternoons, I used to put kids on the computers because they had been asking me all week and I finally gave in. I had about 4 or 5 websites that they would explore, none of which were very good. Now... with all this embeddable media, class blogs and wikis, students are on the computers all week long. Given a little Friday afternoon freedom, they willingly visit our blog, wiki or website to read and comment on each other's writing, revisit a video clip related to our reading or listen to each other's poetry. They are literally creating and exploring their own online content, in fourth grade!
Along that line of thinking, I am experimenting with VoiceThread. This is one of those resources I keep hearing about over and over again from different educators, here's Dave's post on the Global Learners Blog). I have been exploring and thinking of ways I can use this in my classroom because it is just so cool. Is that a good enough reason??
I think it is a great collaborative tool. It gives students the opportunity to contribute with text, voice and image through a webcam... lots of different choices. It is also great for all of my students to bring their "voice" to a single image or idea. We talk a lot about how we are all different learners, some of us learn quickly, others slower. This would bring out the idea that we can all have a different, and correct, idea for a single image. I like this one below that has different kids exploring the meaning of a piece of Norman Rockwell art. There is also a good demo of kids commenting on a Venn diagram comparing the heart to the skeleton.
Embeddable as well? Cool! I could post it on the blog and kids could review a concept at their convenience... on Friday afternoon.
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