Voice Thread

Classroom Conversations Beyond the Walls in School

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in my first Voice Thread. What is Voice Thread you ask? Well, Voice Thread is a web tool that allows someone to post audio, text, image, or video files then invite others to reply with comments. Voice Thread then allows the people commenting to upload their thoughts in written, audio, or visual formats. What a great way to differentiate for responses!

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I can see this being used with students to facilitate conversations outside of the classroom and school day with their peers and other people around the world. Conversations could range from reading responses, predictions for science experiments, discussions regarding problem solving, or analyzing primary sources in social studies. The possibilities are endless.

Another opportunity for using Voice Thread is allow teachers to share ideas. For example, teachers could share ideas how Voice Thread or other web tools are used with their students.

I have only one disappointment with Voice Thread, and it's not the tool I'm disappointed with. Students must be 13 years of age and have their parents sign them up. I realize it is a privacy issue to keep our students safe. But, our intermediate school consists of 5th and 6th graders, which fall into the 10 to 12 year old age category. This makes this tool a little more difficult to use, but Voice Thread is still viable option I will use to facilitate student and teacher conversations.

Voice Thread offers class, school, or district subscriptions. These subscriptions offer students and teachers a private educational community to share and communicate not only with their school, but nationally and globally.

Imagine If...

Imagine if students had the opportunity to have conversations and share information via Voice Thread with students from different countries they are studying in social studies. I wonder what kind of connections they would make?

Podcasting and the Classroom

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What is a Podcast?

A podcast is an audio or video recording created to share information with the world. The true power of the podcast unfolds through podcasting, the ability for readers to subscribe through RSS news feeds. RSS feeds deliver podcasts instantly to a subscriber's computer or mobile device, just like a magazine subscription is delivered to a mailbox. Apple's iTunes provides some great tips for finding, playing, and managing podcasts.

Why Podcasting?

In the classroom, the podcast can become a powerful tool for teachers and students. Podcasts provide an excellent way for teachers to deliver instruction with text, audio, and visual support. Podcasting also provides an avenue for teachers to connect with their students' families. It also provides an easy way for teachers to share ideas with the education community. Student podcasts are a great option for projects. Podcasts also provide a digital collection of a student's work that can be shared with the student's family, teachers, and other students.

Where to Start?

This week our Emerging Instructional Technologies class at UNI was given the opportunity to wander through iTunes in search of podcasts relevant to our everyday lives. There are an overwhelming amount of podcasts available in iTunes. My focus this week was locating podcast related to education and technology that would provide current ideas in practice I could apply to my classroom. As I clicked around and listened to a variety of different podcasts, I quickly discovered my preference for video podcasts, or vodcasts. While many audio podcasts were really interesting and provided lots of great information, keeping my attention without a visual element was a challenge. I'm sure I would feel differently if I had a long commute. Podcasts and vodcasts that were set up as conversations between two or more people were also much more entertaining.

Here are a few podcasts I subscribed to this week:

Learning with Technology Weekly

Created by the TILDE Netcast Network, this podcast provides great resources for the classroom, and how to use them in the classroom, along with student examples. Watching Episode 31: Drive-By Digital Storytelling was really interesting, they discussed tools we are currently using in our Emerging Instructional Technologies class through UNI. This podcast consisted of three educators discussing how their students use tools such as Myna, Voice Thread, Audioboo, Animoto, WeVideo, and MindMeister for digital storytelling. They also discussed Google Drive, Google Drive's Terms of Service, and how to link many web apps to Google Drive. Although this webcast was long, it kept my attention with the video format and content that was directly relevant to my classroom with an abundance of resources. The only suggestion I would have for this vodcast would be to break it up into shorter episodes.

C12 - Tool of the Week

In this podcast, also available in enhanced podcast, Christopher Dawson and Richard Byrne discuss two research tools Flash Card Flash and TalkMiner. Flash Card Flash is a custom search engine for flash cards services. It's useful for finding flash cards to help learn basic ideas, work with vocabulary, or study for exams. When looking for an additional support for students this would be a great resource. The research tool TalkMiner searches inside video lessons in their database to quickly locate content. Searching for video content to use in the classroom can be really time consuming. This tool allows teachers to easily locate information that could be used in the classroom without having to go entirely through each video. Each of these tools are a great resource for the classroom. In their podcasts, they introduce tools, discuss the benefits, and describe how the tools could be used in the classroom with students. This conversation about technology tools for the classroom was engaging and purposeful. The length of this podcast was excellent. They took enough time to cover the topic, but it wasn't so long that I lost interest. The visuals in the podcast also helped to make the podcast more personal and appealing.

MacMost Now

These vodcasts provide information, tips, and tutorials for the Mac, iPhone, and iPod. This is something I am interested in personally and professionally. The format of the video was really interesting, the presenter was pictured in the upper right hand corner of the screen as the video showed what was being demonstrated. As I was watching the vodcasts, I realized this would be a great resource to use with the students and the teachers I work with. Our schools use Macs and the Google Suite, so tutorials such as RSS Feeds with Google Reader and Google Drive would be a great resource. With new episodes being posted every few days, the information provided is always current, which isn't always the case with some podcasts I found this week. Because the vodcasts were short, to the point, and easy to follow, they will be easy to keep up with.

Imagine if...

Imagine if teacher's professional development days provided time to find and share podcasts for professional learning and use in the classroom. How could that impact the integration of technology in the classroom and student achievement?

Strength in Numbers

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Distributed Learning Communities

This week I was able to experience first hand the power of a Distributed Learning Community (DLC) working on our projects for classes I'm taking through the University of Northern Iowa. As our team worked together to complete two different projects, we were able to experience first hand what Dr. Christopher Dede explains in his two part article in T.H.E. Journal. (Article Part I), (Article Part II) as an inquiry based approach where the independent knowledge and learning of the individuals is shared with one another to advance the collective group. To accomplish this it is critical that the four characteristics of a DLC are met.

The 4 characteristics of a Distributed Learning Community

• Diversity of Expertise
• Clearly Defined and Shared Objective to Advance the Collective Knowledge
• Emphasis on Learning How to Learn
• Mechanisms for Sharing What is Learned

This is definitely a change in thinking for our self centered, move ahead of each other society. We have been taught to work hard to reach your goals. These are individual goals, not collective. In school it can quickly become a competition. Is that truly what we was for our children?

Currently, the majority of our classrooms are a place our children go to receive and act on information individually and in groups. Occasionally, they have the opportunity to explore a topic with someone outside of their classroom. It is a segmented approach to learning.

This year Prairie High School introduced an new option to our high school students. It is a project based learning program they've titled Global Generation or G2. This is one example of how we are beginning to more examples of moving to collaborative learning.

In order for DLCs to become a common place experience for our students, educators must experience them to realize the impact they can have on our student's individual and collective success. Professional learning days would be an option for introducing the concept, but in order for it to be effective and applied to the classrooms, educators need to participate in a DLC themselves. This past week drove that reality home for me. Learn by doing makes much more of an impact. I now better understand how the expertise and focus of our team members can facilitate and support collective advancement, and at a more rapid and effective pace than had it been an individual project.

As a cohort how can we advance this type of thinking. By starting conversations, sharing what we are doing in our DLC, and building DLCs within our schools. Next year we're planning on using Edmodo in our Library/Technology encore class. Edmodo is a social network for students and teachers. Now I'm thinking that this will also be a great facilitator for a DLC for the teachers in not only our school, but entire district.

Imagine...

Imagine if all of our teachers had the opportunity to experience and belong to a Distributive Learning Community as dynamic as ours. How quickly would our education system change? Imagine how this shared vision, diversity of expertise, and the ability to share our learning could impact the future for our students.


Image source:
Scott Maxwell. "Working Together Teamwork Puzzle Concept". 16 December 2007. Flickr. Lumaxart's photostream. 21 May 2012. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/2137737248/sizes/m/in/photostream/>

Ready, Set, Blog!

A New Adventure

On May 8th, I began a new adventure in my education by attending my first Adobe Connect class through the University of Northern Iowa toward my Masters in Instructional Technology. The last two weeks have been an awesome, collaborative, and active learning experience. Learn by doing! My classes have provided the opportunity to reflect on myself as an educator and stretch my thinking of what technology in education could be.

Photo taken to represent the word designer.

One of the first assignments was to decide on two words to describe myself, take a photo portraying those words, post them in a Google Presentation, followed by viewing and commenting on fellow cohort's photographs. Coming up with two words to describe yourself and representing those words visually was definitely a challenge. The photographs provided a unique way to introduce ourselves to each other.

After several days of deliberation and consulting family and friends, the words I chose to describe myself as an individual and educator were designer and guide.

Photo taken to represent the word guide.

I chose the word designer, because it represents two different aspects of my life. It describes how I approach the planning and delivery of learning experiences for my students. Design is also fitting due to my first degree and career were in graphic design.

The word guide demonstrates my approach with students. I view myself as a guide on the side, providing tools, support, guidance, and the occasional cheer leading session for my students. The word guide also fits with my technology role in our school. My position is to facilitate and support the integration of technology into the everyday content of the classrooms.

Next year, I want to start our fifth grade students at Prairie Creek with this assignment, or something very similar to it. We have students coming in from four different elementary buildings, so there are many new friends to make. This assignment would provide a great opportunity for students to learn about each other and what they have in common. It would also challenge them to represent themselves and their ideas visually.

Blogging - Learning by Doing

Writing blogs is a new endeavor for me. Over the past few years I have browsed through a variety of blogs ranging from professional, personal interest, and blogs of family members. Occasionally, I would even write a comment. However, I never felt the inclination to actually create one. For the most part, my experience in blogging has been as an observer, not a participant. One conversation in class last week introduced blogging as a community activity where ideas are shared and conversations started. That shed a new light on my blogging experience. So today, I begin to actively engage in the conversation.

This process began by looking through the blogs I had subscribed to in Google Reader. It was interesting to see that all of the blogs I subscribed to were related to either education, technology, or family. So I chose three to focus on this week. The first blog is written by Craig Barnum, our Director of Technology, at College Community School District. His blog TechHawks is about Prairie's Digital Learning Initiative and how 1 to 1 computing will play a role in that initiative. In this blog he provides information to staff, students, parents, and the community about the progress of moving to 1 to 1 computing, problem based learning design, as well as providing general technology tips and instructions. The second blog Free Technology for Teachers is written by Richard Byrne. His blog provides a great resource for using technology in the classroom as well as tutorials. Cool Cat Teacher Blog, written by Vicki Davis is the third blog I focused on this week. Her blog provides resources and ideas for using technology in the classroom.

Each of these blogs are directly related to my interests. They provide information, resources, and tips I can apply in my role as a technology teacher everyday. Now that the conversation has started, I look forward to reading and commenting on blogs, and actively participating in the conversation.

Imagine... 

Imagine if we transferred this type of thinking to the classroom and the possibilities of students reading, commenting, and writing blogs. I wonder, what their first blog post would be about?