Hello,
I am excited to make connections with other educators, and to bring our students together through projects that use technology and the integration of many subject areas. I am willing to learn new things, and to share my experiences.
I currently teach JK/SK blends...
A project that I have started provides authentic reasons for your children to use language and tech skills all the while making connections and learning about people from around the world. You will find more into at our Webkinz Exchange Blog
I also have a class blog that enables us to make connections with teachers and students from places near and far. We are the Westwood Wonderkids! I am looking forward to hearing from the people here! Tracy
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Last night I put up a database for exactly this kind of collaboration. I'm building the database by talking to university administrators, direct email, local educators, college friends, and online networks and communities. This isn't a process educators have time to take on individually, so I think the value is pretty clear in creating the database and promoting those distant connections that are hard to make as individuals.
I think a lot of educators come to sites like this one and stay for a while, with relatively little connection to other networks. They end up talking and sharing ideas a lot, which is great, but it's rare for me to see teachers take off and really connect their classrooms together. I think this is because there are to few teachers to fill a relatively large demographic range. However, I might be wrong about that. I know of one project on classroom 2.0 where a group of educators have come together for the purpose of creating joint virtual field trips. The idea is to expose students to places that are otherwise unavailable, and to make those connections between classrooms. There may be many other projects like this that I'm unaware of.
Hello, Jared,
Thank you for the information of your database. I have registered myself there. I hope to make contact with more teachers for some tech projects. Hopefully this will help! So thanks! Tracy
Thanks Tracy it's a lot of work to go through ALL the education networks while trying to make real world connections for the project, so I'm delighted you've decided to take part in it. I'm pretty USA heavy at this point so I'm glad you decided to join up.
I have to develop good algorithms to properly analyze the data I'm getting from the project, so my hands are really full. My goal is to get teachers set up and working towards strong and useful collaborative projects. You can keep track of where I'm at with everything at http://christonium.com/jared/. Christonium is the collaborative social desktop I've been pointing teachers towards instead of wiki's and blogs. It's easier to use than both and you can dynamically organize your content for any kind of project. It also has social networking built in. So, it's an all around useful tool for teachers who want to collaborate.
Also, in the future I plan to do some studies based on these classroom collaborations. The purpose of the studies will be to determine what real benefits exist from these collaborations and hopefully I'll be able to use the information to pair teachers up better (fortunately for me there are TONS of control groups in the population, unfortunately that means more initial work). So this is a long term project you should keep an eye on if you're really interested in these kinds of technology applications in the classroom.
Hello Lucy,
I have only recently been hearing the term "Web 2.0 " From my limited understanding does the term mean the way RRS feeds allow people to create blogs etc. and then the information can be added to and changed by users? I try to learn about these things but it is complicated for me. For me Bubbleshare is unique in that you can add speech bubbles to your photos, and that can enhance your slideshow. I would love for you to respond to this so that I can learn more...THANK YOU!
Thanks... I was wondering what special things like the speech bubbles were available in Bubbleshare. There are so many Web 2.0 type tools out there that it's difficult to choose between them all.
Here's a wiki page from a workshop I conducted this week... maybe this will help!
Hello Lucy,
Bubbleshare also allows you to insert a 30 second video, and with the speech bubbles you can add silly things to your pictures such as rabbit ears, cowboy hats etc. I doubt that would be a drawing card for you! :0)
On your previous post The Wiki Page link didn't come up...Thanks...Tracy
Replies
I think a lot of educators come to sites like this one and stay for a while, with relatively little connection to other networks. They end up talking and sharing ideas a lot, which is great, but it's rare for me to see teachers take off and really connect their classrooms together. I think this is because there are to few teachers to fill a relatively large demographic range. However, I might be wrong about that. I know of one project on classroom 2.0 where a group of educators have come together for the purpose of creating joint virtual field trips. The idea is to expose students to places that are otherwise unavailable, and to make those connections between classrooms. There may be many other projects like this that I'm unaware of.
Thank you for the information of your database. I have registered myself there. I hope to make contact with more teachers for some tech projects. Hopefully this will help! So thanks! Tracy
I have to develop good algorithms to properly analyze the data I'm getting from the project, so my hands are really full. My goal is to get teachers set up and working towards strong and useful collaborative projects. You can keep track of where I'm at with everything at http://christonium.com/jared/. Christonium is the collaborative social desktop I've been pointing teachers towards instead of wiki's and blogs. It's easier to use than both and you can dynamically organize your content for any kind of project. It also has social networking built in. So, it's an all around useful tool for teachers who want to collaborate.
Also, in the future I plan to do some studies based on these classroom collaborations. The purpose of the studies will be to determine what real benefits exist from these collaborations and hopefully I'll be able to use the information to pair teachers up better (fortunately for me there are TONS of control groups in the population, unfortunately that means more initial work). So this is a long term project you should keep an eye on if you're really interested in these kinds of technology applications in the classroom.
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=67293
I like your Bubbleshare stuff. Tell us a bit about using that. What makes this different than other Web 2.0 applications?
I have only recently been hearing the term "Web 2.0 " From my limited understanding does the term mean the way RRS feeds allow people to create blogs etc. and then the information can be added to and changed by users? I try to learn about these things but it is complicated for me. For me Bubbleshare is unique in that you can add speech bubbles to your photos, and that can enhance your slideshow. I would love for you to respond to this so that I can learn more...THANK YOU!
Thanks... I was wondering what special things like the speech bubbles were available in Bubbleshare. There are so many Web 2.0 type tools out there that it's difficult to choose between them all.
Here's a wiki page from a workshop I conducted this week... maybe this will help!
Lucy
Bubbleshare also allows you to insert a 30 second video, and with the speech bubbles you can add silly things to your pictures such as rabbit ears, cowboy hats etc. I doubt that would be a drawing card for you! :0)
On your previous post The Wiki Page link didn't come up...Thanks...Tracy