Week 4 Reflection

This week, we actually set up a Cover It Live blog to cover Winter Carnival, and Hannah got that rolling during during the Quiz Bowl & Lip Sync. Check it out, vote on the polls, and comment on the viability of this as a form of communication. How can live blogging be used where it really could be useful? Look at some of the live coverage of the attacks on Mumbai. Many people used Cover It Live to show up to the minute coverage that perhaps trumped some of the news reports because these people were able to be in the middle and doing coverage. How could this application be used within education so live blogging would be valuable?

The podcasting crew finalized their work, and presented their work. If you worked within this group, what have you learned about podcasting as a whole? Do you think this could be used successfully within the classroom? What would make it successful? What would be the drawbacks? Why wouldn't it possibly work here @ WHS? What advice would you give, based on what you know, to successfully integrate podcasting? Even if you weren't a part of this group, you should respond to the last few questions.

Over break, I want you to go and check out VoiceThread . This will be our next form of communication to explore. As well, I want you all to set up Twitter accounts. We will be looking to see how this can be used to your advantage as a student and later, as a professional. While you're playing online over break, I want you to revisit Ning. Search through the available social networks on this site, and see if any are worth us joining as a group.

You need to get people to join our discussions on the We're Curious blog, the Deep Thought vlog, and the Wiki for the world. These are starting to become populated, but we need more people to engage in the conversation. Get out there, and get people engaged!!!

Week 3 Reflection

Last week we finally connected with Belmont Middle School through Skype. You need to look at the pros and cons of this type communication - video conferencing. Avoid focusing on the fact that the students are young, but focus more on the practical application of this type of communication. How can you use it to grow as a learner, and then later as a professional?

If you were part of the podcasting crew, what are you learning, and how are you realizing this is something that should be incorporated into your current classrooms? What suggestions do you have for teachers who want to incorporate this type of technology into their classrooms?

We started a Vlog (a video log). Check it out, and see what you think about this form of communication. Do you see this being a better form of communication than just a blog? What power do you think video has over written forms of communication? Do we become biased by seeing people and seeing their facial and body expressions?

We now need to start sending the links to our blog, our video blog, the wiki, and our You Tube videos out to people so they can begin to comment on them. In other words, we need to begin populating them. We also are looking into VoiceThread, and Cover It Live as other means of viable communication. If you worked on these aspects, what are your thoughts about your experiences with them? How can we use these in an educational setting? What practical application do these have in the 'real world'?