K12Learning 2.0

I have spent almost two weeks on flickr now, and I have to admit that I am very intrigued by it.  ”A picture is worth a thousand words” is very applicable in a second language classroom. If I have many students that really do not speak the language very well yet, I use many visuals to use as a conversation starter, for writing prompts, or to jump start a discussion. Of course, I have always searched for pictures on the internet, but I figured out now how much easier it is in flickr, with the images already sorted and user agreements already stated. This has made the process so much easier. I have started a collection on children playing in water, as we had a discussion once on what games are being played around the world. All kids like to have fun with water, no matter where they live. These pictures could also be used for beginning poetry, as in Shelley’s example.

image by mrcharly – playing with water

Don’t you want to be a kid again?

I have listened to Kathy Cassidy’s “Using Web 2.0 Tools in a Grade 1 Classroom”, as I am teaching grade 1 this year, and I was wondering which of the tools can be realistically used with such young children. It was great to hear her refer to Flickr as a tool, as I have just spent so much time on Flickr these past few weeks. KidPicks was another tool that she mentioned, and I would like to research this one a little further. I have used Audacity, but not for podcasts yet. We do use Audacity to record students for oral language assessments, and it is very easy to use. I think that it would be fairly simply to use in a podcast as well, as was described in the clip. BubbleShare was another tool that she mentioned, but I did not quite see the difference to a slideshow; maybe it is easier to use for young children? I thought that her uses of web 2.0 tools seemed very appropriate for grade 1 students, and she inspired me to try some out this year with my own students.

The last blog that I have read in my google reader really hit home. It was called Use It or Lose It, and the author shared his frustrations about teaching great programs to teachers, and then they never use them in their classrooms. I felt guilty just reading the article, because I wonder how much I will include the 23 things into my own teaching once I am done. The author of the blog suggested a few strategies like asking people to try out new tools or programs at least 3 times to see, if these tools are really enhancing the lessons or not. I believe that this is good advice, as learning new web tools seems like learning a new language to me. If you do not practice, you will never learn the language. In order to feel comfortable with new web tools, you need to use them a couple of times, make mistakes, improve on them, and get comfortable with them to include them naturally into your lessons. This is the advice I am giving to myself right now, so I will have to reflect in a couple of months to see if I am following my own advice!

I have spent quite some time on checking out websites to bookmark and tag for future use. I wish I would have known about this during the first half of the year, before all of my favorites disappeared over the summer! I lost quite a few good websites this way, plus the access was always limited to school, so I really prefer keeping track of the sites this way. My link to my bookmarked websites is http://delicious.com/lleymitchell, and I found quite a few useful websites. Some are related to math in the elementary school, and others are primarily beginning research sites for my German students. The later might not be too helpful for my colleagues, but the math links are rather practical.

Who would have thought that the web 2.0 could be as addicting as reading a good book! After spending many weekends and weeknights on learning about different web tools, I have come to the realization that one has to be careful that the web does not take over your life. “Just another second,” I yelled numerous times at my own children at home, when I could not drag myself away from testing a new tool. They were surprised how engaged I got withthis course, and, of course, how ignorant I was to begin with about the web. There is just so much out there for me and my students to learn. The possibilities are truly endless; however, I also found that it takes an enormous amount of time to prepare the various activities for my students and to use the different tools to their fullest potential. At times I felt totally overwhelmed, not sure how I would find enough time to learn everything myself in order to teach my students. So I decided to take baby steps, using only a few tools in the classroom during the next few months, and then to add a few new ones later. I also will try to take the online course from January to March to keep on learning more about these tools, so I will have some added exposure to the web 2.0.  After all, lifelong learning is what it is all about – right?

I do not know why it took me so long to get around finishing this task, but I just assumed that it would be so much more difficult than it actually is. It just takes a few steps, but it was not hard to do. At first I wanted to use audacity, as I am familiar with this program. We use it at school for oral language assessments. However, I could not access audacity through Citrix from home, so I ended up using Windows Sound Recorder, and it was just as easy. I would really like to do podcasts with my students, as the parents always like to hear them in German. They could read some little stories that they write, or they could just simply read a short story that they can already read in German. This way the parents can listen to them, even if they do not speak German at home.

Maybe I did too much exploring on the computer today, but I have to say that classroom 2.0 overwhelmed me a bit. There is tons of information available, and it certainly is useful, but I do not know when the average teacher finds the time to look through all of these tools. I have spent the whole day browsing interesting blogs, videos, photos, and looked at the information that different groups provided. I even found  a group interested in foreign languages in elementary schools which would be  perfect fit for me. However, I do not know when to follow up this information overload! I do see the value in all of these possibilities, and there is certainly no reason at all that teachers have to work in isolation these days, as there is something for everyone on this social networking online environments, but I would like to know when people check all of these resources. I can hardly keep up with my google reader.

I have had some problems adding the template from Shelley to the teacher edition of pageflakes but not to a general pageflakes page. In any case, I do see some applications in the classroom for pageflakes. As we are starting the Exhibition in grade 5, I think that pageflakes would be a useful tool to customize an Exhibition page for the students. I could put all updates on the Exhibition onto pageflakes, the calendar and timeline for the students, interesting websites that the students find during the research phase, action ideas, sample rubrics…the list seems endless. They would all have access to this information, and we could update it anytime the need would arise. As this is an inquiry  on health issues, a link to the CDC in Atlanta might be helpful as well. For my personal needs I see an application too, especially considering all of the information that is available for teachers nowadays. It is a great way to get a quick update,and then one can follow up at a later point in time for more details.

I see the most value for collaborative documents on goodle docs for my professional life as a workshop leader. In the IB world, one often has to present workshops with partners from around the world. These workshops have to be prepared ahead of time, and, therefore, a power point on google docs would be a great way to share and revise ideas together. This way one does not have to send the power point as an attachment back and forth but just makes the corrections on google docs. In the classrooms I would set up reading lists like the one I created, so students can keep up themselves on what reading they have done at home. I also see a use for a shared class presentation, e. g. everybody designs their own page but in the end, all of the formatting would be done together in one place. This seems so much simpler than having to make changes to each individual presentation.

There certainly is a danger in exploring these sites, as you never get off! I did spend quite a few hours on both youtube and teachertube to explore what they have to offer. The possibilities seem endless; however, I do find that you need to spend a lot of time searching what might be helpful in the classroom setting. I obviously started with foreign language tools again, and I came across some videos that would be helpful for language learners to use at home. It is a basic tool for practicing the most common verbs in the German language, but what I like about it is that the students could practice seeing and hearing the correct prononciation at the same time. This is always difficult for language learners at home, unless they have a language program like Rosetta Stone available to them. They need to hear the language, or else they practice the wrong pronunciation at home. The most interesting video I came across was The Use of Google Earth in the Foreign Language Classroom. It describes many interesting ways of using the maps available on Google Earth to teach directions, relative position of cities, and how to use different modes of transportation in a city. This seems a great way to explore a real city. I especially liked the way they changed a simple children’s game called Scotland Yard onto a real Google map. How much fun that would be for a group of students to play in a German language class, exploring what  transportation is available in Berlin before they ever step foot into the real city! The other great plus of visiting the different videos on youtube or teachertube is the extra information one finds, e.g. by going to the Google Earth site, I found a great website mentioned called juicygeography which offers great ideas for using Google Earth besides just looking up locations on Earth.