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5 Reasons Why Educators Should Network

I keep telling myself that all this Web 2.0 is good for me!!

5 Reasons Why Educators Should Network

Podcasting

Podcasting Blog Post February 16, 2010

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool (3 points)

Well, I’ve been podcasting for a couple of years now in my EDIT class at RDC and I have to say that it is one of the most rewarding things that I do for my students. A great example of how helpful this is to my students comes from last term when I had a student who missed three weeks of class with H1N1 and when she came back to class she hadn’t missed a beat. Part of this was due to the fact that I podcast all my lectures. This term I have a student who is going to miss the same amount of time with another illness and she will not be behind when she comes back. As a side note, I also post all my lecture notes that I capture from my Smartboard and I videocast all the project-based activities we do. I addition, I also offer rubrics, checklists and exemplars for all assignments my students are expected to complete. So my students know exactly what I expect of them for everything from lectures, quizzes, tests, projects and presentations.

With all this said, I have to admit that podcasting can be a bit time consuming. When I first started podcasting, I heavily edited my podcasts for every single thing. All the ahs and ums and pregnant pauses. Since that time, I have gotten smarter and a little less particular in what I include in my podcasts. I still edit for long stretches of nothingness, but now I kind of think about my podcasts, as the raw, unedited Director’s Cut!! I also add intro and exit music to all my podcasts (something my students know) to make them a bit more professional.

In my learning curve, I have used and experimented with a bunch of different audio editing and mixing software. Some of the best comes from NCH. I use their RecordPad, WavePad and MixPad suite. I also use Audacity which is free and is a really great piece of software. I have also recently been playing with TwistedWave which is the equivalent to NCH’s WavePad and I like TwistedWave better. Much nicer interface and easier to use. It’s a bit pricey at $80 US.

Since I have moved to Blogging my class, I have started using VoiceThread (and I bought the premium version because it’s that good) to upload and then embed my podcasts into my Blog. I could only have one podcast on my free VoiceThread account because of the size of them. Another plus to using VoiceThread (which I bought on the advice of the Twitter folk that I follow) is that I am not using up a bunch of space on RDC’s servers and the Blog will be there for a long time (longer than BlackBoard) for my students to have access to after they leave RDC.

Please don't listen to all of this!!

Oh, did I mention that podcasting is important enough to me that I bought a $700 Sennheiser wireless microphone system? It’s incredible but it’s a battery hog.

Discussion of the tool in terms of your personal learning (e.g. me as a learner, me as a parent, me as part of a social group) (3 points)

As far as my personal learning goes, I think I have outlined this above. One thing that I didn’t mention, was that I really do love fiddling with the waveforms that are created when you create a podcast. I like mixing different tracks and just editing the sound files. I could very easily see myself as a sound engineer in another life!! But…, don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of my own melodic voice! While I’m on a tangent, try Voice Candy. You can make your voice sound like a chipmunk or even Darth Vader!! It’s the best $12.00 I’ve spent in a long time!!

This podcast is just for fun and is an example of what you can do with Voice Candy. I have demo'd all the voices that Voice Candy has to offer. If you want to karaoke to this, scroll back up to the top of this post and follow along. I used the first three paragraphs of this post as my lyrics!

My parental role starts and ends with my kids playing around with Voice Candy and getting a few laughs from the different voices. My wife and kids are not real Web 2.0 folks, even though my wife’s grade team at her school uses Wikispaces to share info with the kids and parents. My kids don't even see the value of having a Facebook account and rarely access their accounts.

About the whole social group thing. I really don’t have one. I am the only person in my whole department who podcasts and no one really has an interest. There are a few other folks around RDC who podcast, but I am not sure to what degree. I don’t really use podcasting as a social tool. I use it as a professional one in my classroom for my students. Actually, I am not even sure how or why I would use it as a social tool within the context of my "social group."

Discussion of the tool in terms of your professional learning (e.g. me as a teacher, me as a school leader, me as a teacher-librarian, me as a member of professional learning communities/networks). This takes into account technology integration, use in schools, pros and cons, etc. (3 points)

I can see a couple cons. One of course is time and most classroom teachers might not be willing to give up the amount of time required to learn how to use and create podcasts. It really does take a while to get the editing and mixing process figured out.  In addition to this, if no one listens to the podcast, then your time is wasted. Another obvious con might be the fact that everything you say and then create becomes public record. This is one reason I like VoiceThread. It offers the whole podcast as a streamed file like a YouTube video and thus isn’t as easily edited by your audience. One of the pros as I mentioned previously, is knowing that my students can access my lectures wherever and whenever they want regardless of the time of day.

I also think that podcasting and the use of similar tools makes me a better teacher. I think I am using and modeling effectively the use of 21^st century teaching tools that my students could use when they are teachers in the classroom with their own kids and parents. This is one of my primary goals in my teaching at the college level. I have always purposefully design what I do and what I have my students do so that no one can leave my class and lay the big, “when are we ever going to use this stuff?” line on me or their peers.

As a parting anecdote from a PD session I just attended (and I’m paraphrasing here), student retention and recall increases up to 15% with the addition of podcasts and posted lecture notes for students.

When I am not creating my own podcasts, I am listening. I am a big fan of Leo Laporte and his TWiT (This Week in Technology) website. These folks really keep me up-to-date on what’s going on in the world of Apple and technology in general.

Demonstration of new knowledge (3 points)

The use of VoiceThread on my blog and the trial of TwistedWave are a couple indicators of new learning. The learning curve on both of these tools wasn’t too steep. TwistedWave is very similar to Audacity and WavePad. But as I said before, I think TwistedWave has a nicer and easier to use interface. The learning curve with VoiceThread was the embed code. Access and remembering where to get the code took me a long time to remember. The placement of the buttons to access the code aren’t intuitive. At least, not in my opinion. One other thing about VoiceThread that wasn’t intuitive or easy to remember was how to make the podcast public. This button is located at the bottom of the screen away from everything else just like the embed code button. This made it hard for me to remember to do and thus made the embedded podcast on my blog inaccessible to my students. Since starting to use VoiceThread, I have now figured out how to use the buttons and now regularly remember where the buttons are and apply the appropriate settings before posting the podcast. This of course saves me time in having to go back and redo these steps after the fact.

Evidence of Research and Further Reading (3 points)

I think I agree with Richardson when he states, “…barrier to entry is pretty low” (p. 111). Although if a person is going to play with the waveform of the podcast and do anything other than a raw recording, I think the learning curve increases drastically; enough for the average classroom teacher probably not to attempt podcasting in their room.

Another noteworthy thing that Richardson (p. 120) mentions is the use of podcasting for storytelling. I think this would be an excellent way for students to use this technology to accomplish a traditional task. Storycast is an interesting website that I see as having some interesting implications in the classroom. Another interesting website that offers an compelling look at podcasting is The Art of Storytelling. I think podcasting is a safe technology to use in the classroom because all anyone can “see” is the student’s voice. There isn’t any type of visual or image attached to a podcast that could compromise a student's safety.

Along the line of safety, another reason (kind of a tangent here) I like the website xtranormal is because students or the characters they are depicting are represented as avatars. Again, because the actual student’s image/picture isn’t being supplied, the safety level goes up for classroom use. I think the use of avatars will be a manner in which schools can identify students and the work they’ve authored safely.

References: 

Amadan, K. (2006). Benefits of podcasting for educators. Retrieved from http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-17-2006-96434.asp.

Fryer, Wesley A. (2005). Tools for the teks: Integrating technology in the classroom. Retrieved from http://www.wtvi.com/TEKS/05_06_articles/classroom-audio-podcasting.html

Morales, C. & Moses, J. (2006). Podcasting: Recording, managing, and delivering the classroom experience. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0604.pdf

Riddle, Johanna. (2010). The tech effect: Podcasting in the classroom - a sound success. Retrieved from http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/Column/The-Tech-Effect/THE-TECH-EFFECT-Podcasting-in-the-Classroom--A-Sound-Success-60444.aspx

Saunders, D. (2009, January 21). Podcasting in the classroom [Video File]. Retrieved from http://vodpod.com/watch/1559009-podcasting-in-the-classroom

Can social media cure low student engagement?

Can social media cure low student engagement?

Can social media cure low student engagement?

Sidney Crosby with Shaun Majumder

Social Bookmarking Blog Post - February 8

Social Bookmarking Blog Post - February 8

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool (3 points)
Well, social bookmarking is another great social Web 2.0 tool! It’s another Web 2.0 tool that I had played around with previously, but never really used because I couldn’t see the point. After playing with this tool for the last week, I can seriously see myself using Delicious, and I am. I think that the problem before this blog posting was that I imported all my bookmarks (and there were hundreds), and this was just too unmanageable. So I started over again and imported only a select few bookmarks for the projects I am working on currently. Since I did this, I have been adding bookmarks at an alarming rate!!

One of the great things I’ve liked and started using again is the add-on for Delicious in Firefox. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the same add-on for Safari or Google Chrome. If anyone knows of one, let me know. The Firefox add-on is easy to use. I am pretty sure that Delicious is the only way that I will bookmark from now on.

Discussion of the tool in terms of your personal learning (e.g. me as a learner, me as a parent, me as part of a social group) (3 points)
My personal learning curve on this one wasn’t too steep. My greatest learning on this was determining that importing bookmarks en masse isn’t manageable. Especially when you have over 1200 bookmarks. Starting with the really important ones you use everyday and are using for school, work or for fun is the best way to start. Another important feature of Delicious, like that of many other Web 2.0 tools is tagging. Using the tagging feature has really helped keep track of my bookmarking. The fact that Delicious gives you some common tags really helps. The last feature that I really like is the new “browse bookmarks” feature. This feature is in Beta and I hope the folks at Delicious keep it!

Discussion of the tool in terms of your professional learning (e.g. me as a teacher, me as a school leader, me as a teacher-librarian, me as a member of professional learning communities/networks). This takes into account technology integration, use in schools, pros and cons, etc. (3 points)
I think that the greatest use for this type of Web 2.0 tool (maybe this is obvious?) is when a group of people are collaborating on a project from different venues. Currently I am using Delicious with a partner in a different class for a project on e-portfolios and it’s working great. I am also using it to collect resources for a Literature Review I am writing on IWBs.

I am also using Google Bookmarks on my iGoogle page and I really like this tools as well. I like the fact that the links for what I am working on currently right there when I open my any of the browsers I use.

This tool is really easy to use as well and allows for the addition of notes for each bookmark. This is very useful in my paper writing process.



Evidence of Research and Further Reading (3 points)
Educational Origami. (2009). Bookmarking and Social Bookmarking Rubric. Retrieved from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Feinberg, Jonathan & Millen, David R. (2005). Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise. Retrieved from http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1105676

McGillicuddy. Shamus. (2006). Social bookmarking tools pushing collaboration to the edge. Retrieved from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid182_gci1195182,00.html

Noll, Michael G. (2007). Personalization 2.0: Web Search Personalization via Social Bookmarking and Tagging. Retrieved from http://www.michael-noll.com/blog/2007/07/18/personalization-20-web-search-personalization-via-social-bookmarking-and-tagging/

Reed, Adriana. (2008). Using Social Bookmarking in Academic Research. Retrieved from http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:qqMHj1UFVYIJ:www.mpla.us/documents/handouts/2008/reed.ppt+Social+Bookmarking+research&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

Lenhart, Amanda, Purcell, Kristen, Smith, Aaron and Zickuhr, Kathryn. (2010). Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx

Just for Fun!!

Wikis in Plain English

Social Networking in Plain English

Blogs in Plain English

Social Media In Plain English

What is Twitter?

Educational Origami Site

Check out this site.

Educational Origami Site

It has some great links to Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and some cool stuff on Social bookmarking. Also check out the great links at the bottom from Common Craft on Web 2.0.

Super Hero Quiz created on ProProfs

Super Hero Quiz » Create Quiz

Free Audio Books For Your Classroom

Check out this very cool site!!

Audio Owl

Brad

Web 2.0 Quiz

Do you think you know web 2.0? » quiz school

I got 8/11!

Would You Hand A Stranger Your Wallet?

Social media use on the rise, but fewer young people are blogging

Social media use on the rise, but fewer young people are blogging

iPad Thoughts By Leo Laporte

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Feb. 01 - Videosharing

Videosharing Blog Post February 1, 2010

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool (3 points)
Videosharing really isn’t new to me. This is a tool that I’ve used in the past in my EDIT 302 class as an instructional aid. The site I use is Viddler and I have found it to be easy to use and best of all, it’s free. Viddler like YouTube has the embed code feature which is incredibly useful when I want to put the video into a webpage, into BlackBoard or into a blog.

I do have to admit that I don’t post videos to YouTube and should maybe try this, but I am a firm believer that when you have a tried and true tool that works and does everything you want, and it’s free, stick with it!!

I am growing to like videosharing as a medium to deliver content. I would really like to have a room where I can teach and have what’s going on in the class recorded from all angles and then make that video available to the class like I do my podcasts. The recording of course would not be of me, but would also be of my students engaged as teachers and learners. Rooms like this are being discussed and are in the works at RDC and I am hoping that I will be able to take advantage of this when it comes to fruition.

Discussion of the tool in terms of your personal learning (e.g. me as a learner, me as a parent, me as part of a social group) (3 points)
There are a few features from YouTube that I did like. I have subscribed to a few different video channels and I am finding that entertaining as well as useful for me personally and in my EDIT class.

Much of what I learned about YouTube revolves around subscribing to peoples’ channels and in adding YouTube widgets to my blogs and iGoogle page. I’ve used YouTube on and off on my iGoogle page for a long time. However, it often gets bumped for other things I add.

I do totally get it when it comes to the power of video, and particularly when it comes to this (Much Music) generation of kids using the medium. I just have to figure out more and better ways to leverage the use of videos for my students. And…, I can’t resist, if video killed the radio star, how come podcasting is so big again??



Don't forget this bit of trivia. This video was the very first video to air on MTV!!

Discussion of the tool in terms of your professional learning (e.g. me as a teacher, me as a school leader, me as a teacher-librarian, me as a member of professional learning communities/networks). This takes into account technology integration, use in schools, pros and cons, etc. (3 points)
What this part (videosharing) of our class has done is reminded me that we should all be sharing the videos we find with our colleagues and our students. There is so much information out there for us to use and it’s not all in the form of a textbook. We (our students and ourselves as teachers) should also be taking the time to create videos to use in the classroom.

Next term (Fall 2010) I am going to require my students to video themselves during their presentations in my class and then they will have to post a part of that video to the class blog and YouTube if they are comfortable with that. I know I will have some students who aren’t.

Another thing I love about this medium is the fact that YouTube is part of every iPhone or iPod touch and this makes it the perfect tool for mobile learning. So access to “class material” is truly, anywhere, anytime and with anyone!!

Evidence of Research and Further Reading (3 points)
I think I took a lot from the reading this week. I found both books focusing on the real pedagogy behind the use of the tool.

I really did like Richardson’s thoughts on how videosharing is, “…digital storytelling in its most complex form, and it requires a significant amount of thinking and work to do it well” (p. 120). I think this really gets at the essence of what we’re trying to accomplish with technology in the classroom. We should be engaging kids in meaningful use of technology that requires higher and critical thinking skills. After all, we here about this all the time as teacher and teacher educators.

I really like Davies and Merchant’s reference that YouTube “…invites people to express themselves, to be creative and to discover…” (p. 56). I think this really hits home when we are thinking about constructivism and Bloom’s New Taxonomy. Again something we hammer home with pre-service educators.

One other element that I find important to mention here is the fact that if you allow students to pre-record video for any type of assignment instead of asking them to “perform” or answer on the spot, you get some very, very cool end products. I have done this many times in the classes I have taught and I think it’s one of the best parts of the class and so do students.

An additional important piece of pedagogy that Davies and Merchant’s chapter discusses is the role of the teacher in teaching students how to be critical and careful with the video they watch (p. 57). This is very similar to the skills we teach kids about being on the web, using IM or even Facebook. The teacher’s role has changed from teaching kids solely to watch both ways before crossing the road, but also to do the same on the information superhighway. This also fits in excellently with the ICT curriculum form Alberta Education and with some of the newly integrated technology outcomes from the newer programs of study.

I found it incredibly interesting that if kids could keep only one piece of technology, they would choose to keep their laptops or computers (59). I think I am in the same boat. I actually had a conversation about this today with some of my colleagues around the new iPad and the question about buying one. My response was, why would I? I have a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. What could the iPad possibly offer me (it doesn’t even have a camera) that the two expensive devices I already have couldn’t??

The explanation and examples of a “meme” was new learning for me, as was the Videojug site which I am now looking at to serve up the how-to videos I use in my EDIT class. I didn't like the fact that Videojug didn't let you copy the embed codes for their videos! Boo!! But..., if you want to see how to fold a t-shirt in two seconds just click the Videojug link.

Lastly, I think that Davies and Merchant’s make an excellent point when they say that a person, a teacher who uses videosharing really needs to explore and use the different elements that are available on a site like YouTube before unleashing it on students. As a matter of fact, I think a smart teacher would find out which students in the class use the tool/medium and ask them to teach the teacher and even the class.

Demonstration of new knowledge (3 points)
I hope that my use of widgets and my subscription to different channels on YouTube is demonstration of learning and new knowledge?

‘Kindle killer’ might not be iPad, but Blio

‘Kindle killer’ might not be iPad, but Blio

Glogster How To Video

This is an example of how I use video in my EDIT 302 class. This is served up from Viddler not YouTube.

Brad's Glogster