http://www.teachers.tv/

Fantastic site for educators http://www.teachers.tv/

If you are not yet aware of Teachers TV online then I highly recommend this as a place where you can find information for personal professional development, resources for using in your classroom and an online community where you can seek answers and offers solutions to questions posed by other educators.

I have created a voicethread to explain why the site appeals to me:

Fotobabble re Jacqui Sharp

Instantly ideas spring to mind for literacy for this site Fotobabble. Another great link from the Web 2.0 in Education blog which would be very useful for many things in the classroom. It is somewhere in between voicethread and vocaroo as it allows you to upload a photo but not more than one. So it appears to me that it would be useful for children to use a self-reflection tool that could be embedded into their ePortfolio. There could be a photo of their work or of them creating their piece of work combined with their thoughts - challenges, triumphs, next steps. Whereas with voicethread the teacher would also be able to comment this would not be possible with fotobabbly, however, the comments could be added via post comments in a blog etc.

I think the part that would be appealing to many of my colleagues is the ease with which the embed code can be obtained and then the fotobabble can be transferred into a class blog/ePortfolio etc which is sometimes the tricky part for people to manage.

eLearning Support in Classes

I Have been very busy for the past 2 days supporting teachers and children in their classrooms.  I am encouraging the teachers to plan independent work for their classes so they are available to work together with me and co-teach to develop their own skills and confidence using Kid Pix, Voicethread and the easi-speak microphone which are our focuses for this Term.  It has worked well in most rooms especially where the class Digikidz could be used to support.

Here is a voicethread created by room 4:

It is very similar to the voicethread rooms 11 and 4 made last week during book week with support from myself and Mrs P:

It is interesting how many teachers say repeatedly that they struggle to complete projects that have been started.  I suggest choosing a group, not the whole class, planning the project in parts e.g drawing the picture in Kid Pix the first day, scripting the story and recording it the next day.  Not introducing anything else for that group until the project is completed.  Although sometimes you do need to have a catch up morning to stay completely organised!

I have just wandered through the shared teaching area in Pod 1 and been so excited to see the teacher I worked with this morning continuing on using the skills she learned with other children in her class.  Then in Pod 2 I saw another colleague using Kid Pix in the same way as was demonstrated to her in her in-class support session yesterday.  It is just as rewarding seeing your colleagues achieve success as it is the children!  I am so proud of my team!

Voicethread

Thanks to Di's Blog for this link http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/ I have worked with several colleagues this Term interested in voicethread and looking for purposeful ways to use this web 2.0 tool in their classrooms.

Thanks to voicethread for this presentation on web 2.0 tools which has some good ideas:




Thanks also to The Fischbowl blog for building on my thinking further about how to best support my colleagues with this helpful link about which tools could be used for what which is sometimes all teachers need to get their creatives ideas flowing! http://sites.google.com/site/ahslearningecology/tools

Using Voicethread!

Well yesterday and today I used voicethread , linked to our current inquiry,with my class for the first time and found it excellent! The first time I did it I got a bit flustered because I hadn't set up all the children's identities so I did all the comments under mine! Today I had another go and managed to switch identities to give different children a chance to record their ideas under their own identity with a picture they chose themselves! It was very exciting but the children definately need some more practise. Some of them are getting the hang of speaking loudly but they are all speaking very quickly so it's difficult to understand them. I think they need more practise with presenting their oral sentences too. Not quite sure how I can get round this with Year 0/1 as I tried scribing for them and getting them to read their idea but unfortunately many are not confident readers so this isn't an option. And they come up with great ideas during the practise but then can't recall it for the recorded version! Perhaps I should just record each attempt and delete the ones that are no good?! Any ideas anyone!

Here are our first attempts! I highly recommend giving this a go it's a powerful and simple tool that can be adapted to many different purposes.