Image borrowed from midwestswing.wordpress.com

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Podbean

I love this idea! Our students have been creating their own digital stories and we have been saving them on the school network file. This has worked fine, but we have other teachers who have said they would love to share these stories. We have brought in memory sticks and starting saving them on it. I think if we save all our stories to podbean, the teachers from other schools we collaborate with would be able to access them. I just have a few things to figure out before we go ahead with this. Do you have to have a podbean account in order to access these files or could people just type in your webaddress and gain access to it?

First Podcast

Friday, May 28, 2010

Student E-mail addresses

I was working with my grade 6 students on mind meister. We had to set up accounts and so the students that had their own e-mail addresses was fine. It was the ones that did not have an address that I wasn't sure about. I thought about setting up google accounts and then figured I should probably have parent permission for that. In the end I just set them beside another student who already had an account and put a couple of others on my own account. The issue of student e-mail addresses concerns me. I want them to have them but I'm not sure what the proper protocol is. Any ideas?


Monday, May 24, 2010

MindMeister Map

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Mind Meister

I am interested in trying out this online webbing program in my class. I think the kids will have a lot of great ideas and be able to do so much more with it than I could ever think of. I am going to try to make my own and embed it on my blog! We'll see how it goes!
I'm also using twitter a little more and trying to find some others that I want to follow. I am starting to see some options for use in the classroom, but I wonder what kind of permission or policies would need to be followed in order to set students up on some of these programs. And, there is also the issue of being blocked from these sites.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Twitter

Twitter account is set up and I think I am following everyone in our class now. This will be interesting, but I am willing to give it a try. I am wondering how this might be valuable in an education setting. If anyone comes up with any ideas please let me know! If we subscribe to Twitter through google reader will we receive updates?
I am wondering why I am not receiving everyone's comments or new blog posts in my google reader. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Monday, May 17, 2010

CCleaner

I downloaded ccleaner and was going to run it on my computer, however I got a little concerned when it said "this will permanently delete files you may have on this computer". Will it only delete the files that are unnecessary or will it get rid of files I need as well? What have the rest of you experienced with this program? I want to clean things up but I am worried about deleting something that I am really going to need!
I would like to subscribe to some good groups in zotero or diigo but I'm just not sure where to start. Does anyone have any groups that they have found that are really good? Does anyone know the address of the ICT group that we were shown on Diigo? Lots of questions tonight!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Diigo

Although it was very hard to concentrate today, due to the beautiful weather, I did come out of it with some valuable information. I definately will be passing on these programs to people who are continuing their education. Zoterro and Diigo would have been very helpful for research and papers I have written.

I think they will be valuable in keeping up with current research as well. I like the idea of joining different groups and seeing what material they are bookmarking. By the way, I would like to do a paper on assessment using electronic portfolios so if anyone out there finds any interesting articles please bookmark them for them on Diigo!!!

Google Reader and Firefox

We were introduced to google reader tonight. I thought it was great to have the new information sent to you directly. You can check all your favorites in one spot at the same time. I liked that idea. I would like to find some online journals to subscribe to that would be helpful for my paper. I just haven't got that far yet.
Firefox is taking a little to get used to. I guess I have used internet explorer for so long that I have become set in my ways. I am trying to give it a chance, but I have become so comfortable with the other that I guess it is going to take some time.
I looked a little at Zotero and my first thought was...where was this when I was writing my 50 page essay!!!! I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I had to check and recheck my referencing and make sure I was using the APA style properly. I look forward to learning more!!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Second Class: Dim Dim

This was a different program that I have never heard of before. I haven't had a lot of time to think about how I would use it in the classroom, but I do see it's potential for working with educators from other schools.
I liked having the ability to view someone else's desktop. I think this would be really helpful when helping someone to edit a paper or putting together a presentation. I wonder if this is something even students could take advantage of when having to put together a presentation, or power point. Sometimes getting together after school is very difficult for our students because they all live out in the country and have to make special arrangements for getting picked up. This could alleviate some potential problems when doing group work. I would like to work with it a little more in order to see its full potential.
I am still working with google documents and trying to see how they might be useful in the classroom. I was wondering about setting up email addresses. I am not sure how exactly this might work in a school setting. Would you need permission from parents to set these up? Then, there is always the problems of appropriate content that come up and how to properly use them. I guess that would be another idea for a paper!!

Friday, May 7, 2010

First Class

We had our first "class" using Skype. This was the first time I used Skype and I thought it was an interesting concept. I liked the idea of being able to conference with several people at one time. I think this would be an application that could be very useful in our school division. We have a small division, but we are very spread out, which makes planning meetings etc. difficult. I could see this possibly being used for some meetings etc.
I am very interested in learning more about e-portfolios. We do portfolios in our classroom but we are looking for a more efficient way to use them. We would like to do something online that could follow the students for their entire school career. I am trying to decide how I might write my paper on the use of e-portfolios as an assessment tool. I will have to think on this a little more.
There is so much to use out there that it is overwhelming and difficult to decide what works best. Do I use a wiki, a webpage, a blog???????????? I am hoping to find the time to use them all and then decide from there! Should be interesting!

Welcome to Waldorph's Wisdom

Welcome! This is a new adventure, which I am looking forward to. I thought I was pretty smart when I told my 70 year old mother I was learning to Skype, blog etc. Her response? "Skype? Oh I've been doing that for a couple of years now!" Who says "experienced" dogs can't learn new tricks?