Dahabo's Story

Check out this paper for an intriguing story of how the use of digital images brought one girl out of her shell in the LA classroom.

Your first Assignment

Each member of this class is to create a personal blog for this course. I will also post content to this blog. You will be responsible for both commenting on postings I have made on this blog AND make postings of your own on your own blog site. A blog is like an online journal, here you can share your trials and tribulations as you embark on this "teaching" experience. And of course you success stories as well. Follow these instructions to create your own blog. Once you have created your blog, please reply to this posting with the web address for your blog. I will "follow" all of your blogs and you should sign up to follow your classmate's blogs as well. Following a blog will allow you to see your peer's blogs and any new postings they have made. Your personal blogs are to be used to both answer any questions I may ask and to converse with your peers about our GPP class. Please remember that all content will be available to be read by both myself and your peers and as such should be professional and anonymous at all times. Please have your blogs created, personalized and ready for my viewing by the end of the week. Happy blogging!!!

Some useful lists

10 ways a teacher can incorporate digital photos

1. Field trip ...I am trying to think of some different ones...thought I would leave that in though:)
   2. Junior teachers - as a welcoming of a new class....
   3. Kindergarten teachers - of each student to paste to their desk.....personalize cubbies, coat hooks....
   4. Home ec - process photos of a recipe
   5. Personal photos of kids w/ alergies...special IEP's...special need
   6. English class - creating story boards
   7. Caught being good - at lunch or recess
   8. Physed - proper technique of exercises
   9. Staff room - posted photos of suspended students (I often have no idea who these kids are...)
   10. ............
   

   
    

   10 ways a student can use digital photos
   

2. 1. Field trip
   2. Art Class - to create magazine cover shots
   3. Drama - to create a photo journal that "tells a story w/out saying a word"
   4. Math - find examples of shapes, lines (parallel, perpendicular) angles in nature
   5. Science Experiments - method, process photos
   6. Junior grades - collages of topics being studied....trees...insects
   7. English - create your own book cover...take a photo that represents the book being studied and create a new book cover of the novel)
   8. Junior grades - show and tell..."send in" a digital photo of a family trip or something interesting and talk about it to the class.
   9. Before and after shots for a tech project......
   10. sports and Society class - interviews..sporting events
   

   
    

3. 10 Ways a special needs student can use digital photos
   1.I taught a girl with acute short term memory loss, she carried a camera with her to take pictures of her day...every day. She took pictures of me (almost daily, I wrote the word MATH on the board and the room number and my name.....she did this for every teacher and most "friends" so she could review before school the next day adn hopefully remember who was who....).
   
   2. Create vocabulary pictures in early grades
   
   3. To create a digital reference of a school event or field trip to help students remember the important parts so they can properly recall/write about it when they get back to school.
   
   4. Use pictures to enhance story telling of children on autism spectrum
   
   5. Early math - take photos to represent simple mathematical concepts 2 red apples and 2 green apples make 4 apples.....take a photo of the child with the apples and holding a copy of the math sentence as well..Students to review concept at home.
   
   6. For students who suffer from anxiety or do not have age appropriate social skills, they could be in charge of taking the photos of the event (dance) so they are not forced to participate, but are also not noticeable absent.
   
   7. Young students can take photos of their day so they can tell their parents about it when they get home....(they have a way of referencing the questions...what did you do today...)
   
   8.
   9.
   10. I am still working on these:)

Great Ideas for Integrating Digital Imagery

Check this site out. There are some really neat links to sites like this one that make videos from still digital photos....

enjoy,
Billie

Digital Audio Recording and its Applications in the Foreign Language Classroom

Great Resource for Second Language Teachers: Check out this link for great ideas (both student and teacher centered) to incorporate digital audio in foreign language classrooms!

iPods...friend or foe?

Our school has banned all MP3 players. I have often thought that this was a bit "much" but never had much to back up my feelings....until now:)
Bare with me.....this is a circuitous route to my point.....
I was talking with my sister - in-law (who is also a teacher) today about purchasing a "white noise| machine to help my toddler sleep through my infants cries...sad I know! Anyhow, she went on to tell me how many years ago she used "white noise" to help a child diagnosed with ADD in her classroom. She got a FM/AM radio cassette player and found a station that didn't come in. The student was allowed to listen to the static, with headphones on while doing work. She went on to tell what a dramatic difference it made for all the students in her class.
This case got me thinking about the ongoing squabble we have with today's students and iPods and MP3 players. A few years ago students in my school were permitted iPods while working in class but could not "use" them during tests or assessments. Many students complained bitterly that they had gotten used to listening to their music and were sooo distracted at test time they found it impossible to do their best on their assessment.
Today students are listening to digital audio more than ever, but we have banned the use of these devises at our school as many teachers see them only as disrupting,
Perhaps we should mention that today's learners have grown up plugged in, a contrast to the silent kitchen table i did my homework at every evening. Many students need this "noise" to be able to focus.

If you have a few minutes please see the link below this outlines some of the benefits of having iPods available to your spec education students.
www.brighthub.com/education/special/articles/62763.aspx

Creating Digital Audio....how to..

Check out this slideshow. It shows how to record sound add effects, delete unwanted noise and finally publish.



Enjoy,

Billie

YACKPACK

All this talk of podcasting has me searching the web for useful tools. Finally I have come across a sight. YACKPACK is set up for classrooms to communicate (across the board, province, country or globe) with one another. It also gives teachers an audio tool that you can quickly offer feedback on assignments or progress reports that are confidential to the students. This would save my poor husband from writing page long reports for his 4U English students.

Some Great Podcasting Resource Sites for Educators

• Digg- Most Popular Podcasts: Education
  
• Guides and Tutorials.com - Podcasting in Education
  
• Podcasts & Blogging- Great Idea for a Podcast in an Online Class
  
• Poducate Me
  
• A Story for Bedtime Kiddiecast
  
• ChildrensBookRadio.com
  
• Podictionary.com
  
• Storynory
  
• Interesting Things for ESL Students
  
• podcastsinenglish.com
  
• NPR Podcast Directory
  
• Open Culture- Guide to Smart Media
  
• Digital Podcast
  
• Education Podcast Network
  
• China 232- A Fun Way to Learn English
  
• About.com:Podcasting
  
• Apple.com- Podcasting in Education
  
• Audacity
  

Podcasting and Math

So, I have spent most of the week touring the internet looking for some useful lesson ideas for integrating podcasts in maths based lessons. I certainly see some value at having a link on your webpage or class blog to a newsfeed summarizing what you are doing in class each day. It would take very little effort for a teacher to do a quick 3 minute blurb at the end of each lesson regarding the specific content, what students should have taken from the lesson, where students can expect the lesson to head the next day and of course and HW or CW they are responsible for. From an assessment standpoint I can also see assigning students or groups of students to be responsible for effectively communicating a weeks' worth of content. Students would be assigned a week early on in the year and they would have would have to publish and post their summary of the course content covered during their applicable week. As it is always a struggle to find new and creative ways to assess a student's math communication grade I think that this would be a great new way to gather valuable assessment information about what your students actually know.

There are a few good math podcast that offer quick 3-5 minute fun audio. Fun facts, neat mathspariments that you can do quickly and just quirky info. This kind of podcasts could be of value for a teacher to use to "grab" a class at the start of the lesson. In our day (and i often still do this) many lessons were started with the nifty math cartoon on the overhead, the podcast could be used in the same way to settle the students focus.

Finally, I have also found a few (very few) quality math teaching and summary podcasts such as DANSMATHCAST (http://www.dansmath.com/pages/po). This podcast effectively showcases a textbook chapter and then offers some summary problems at the end. Dan's is one of the few podcasts that are actually made with the intent of the audience being an audio learner. I have found a "google" (hee hee) of sights that are just recordings of lecture based classes. I am not sure who these would be useful for besides perhaps a student in the class that wanted to review something form the class. The background noises for these podcasts are horrible and often if there is a class question you cannot hear the question, which makes it difficult to understand the answer.

I am still struggling to come up with ideas for straight podcast, I would have no problem if we were talking about video podcasts or screencasting but I think we are to stick to straight audio content. Hopefully the start of the new week will bring a fresh perspective on this assignment.

Toddlers and Story Telling

My two year old son starts many of our car conversations with "tell me a story" or "tell a once upon a time". These are such important times for us. My husband and I have been telling stories to my son since he was a newborn (before actuallyJ) and he has the most amazing listening skills. He loves to cuddle and enjoy quiet time with mom and dad with either a good book or a good made up story. The listens so intently that days or weeks later he will ask me to tell him the same story, that I have no memory of. These are some of my most precious memories of my family time over the past few years, and I really think this "quite time" that we all share several times daily has helped to build the strong bond that we have. Recently though, I have tried to convince my son to tell me a story. He always says that he doesn't know how and then asks me to continue. Well finally we began this morning with a small story from my 27month old son. It was a short story that involved a horse, cow and a parade. I was soo proud. His story had a beginning a middle and an end, this is more than many middle school children do. It made me realize the power of the podcast. There are so many children in schools today that lack that time with their parents that maybe don't know what it is like to hear a good story. Now I am not for a moment suggesting that a story told on a podcast listened to on a set of headphones can replace quiet time with a parent. But perhaps some quiet time in a classroom, sitting in a bean bag chair in the corner can bread a love of storytelling for a child that otherwise wouldn't have that opportunity.

Podcasts at School

As with most technologies, it is not hard to see how podcasts might be beneficial in education. One way to see the use of education related podcasts is to visit the Education Podcasts Network. There is a large directory of educators who are doing personal podcasts, as well as suggested classroom uses broken down by both subject and grade level.