Google Earth

Dear Readers
Wow! What a fantastic tool to use in the classroom. Imagine students taking a virtual journey. They could look at the scenery, plan interesting stopovers and visit tourist attractions along the way.
Or
Create a virtual autobiography. Students could make placemarks at any interesting location of significance then edit the placemarks to add stories, photos, videos or URLs. This would be a great tool for SOSE.
Kay

Podcasting

Dear Readers
Classroom podcasts can serve as an excellent delivery mechanism for digital storytelling. It's a great tool to further motivate reluctant writers who's writing can be enhanced by the thought that their podcast exploits can be shared with the wider community. Podcasts also eliminate a lot of the hassles faced with privacy issues faced with other forms of public student identification. Podcasts can be educational and instrumentally valuable in teachings students a variety of important twenty-first century literacy skills, while also being fun. Kearsley and Shneiderman (2008) assert that technology provides an electronic learning mileux that fosters the kind of creativity and communication needed to nourish engagement.
Kay
Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement theory: a framework for technology-based taching and learning. Retrieved 16 August, 2009 from
http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

YouTube

I have just used this video to begin a SOSE unit on "Caring For Our Earth". I chose it over heaps of others because of its visual appeal and easy to understand wording for year 5 students. It's titled Earth Day 2009 and gives students a brief rundown on the importance of caring for our enviroment.

Classmarker

This was a fantastic site which I believe has a real use in the classroom. It was easy to use and will be put to the test with students at my school in the coming weeks. I have recommended this tool to other teachers so will be interested to hear feedback from them.

Click on this link to test your knowledge on space:

Take our online test

Kay

Flickr and Picnik

DSCF0669
Originally uploaded by kaysphotos2009

Well at last! This was not an easy exercise for me to do. Setting up Flickr and Picnik accounts were easy as was the editing of the photo. My major hurdle was uploading from flickr to my blog. This took me approximately three hours of going around in circles. I obviously was doing something wrong because when I finally completed the steps everything just fell into place. The problem was allowing my blog to accept photos from flickr.

PowerPoint

Dear Readers
This was a fun exercise. I used photo's I had taken of our grade 3/4 class on a mine tour last year. Adding pictures was very easy using the design template. To make this more interesting, I added Transitions to the slides. I thought this would keep the students attention focused on the slide show. I had no need to worry though, as what child doesn't like looking at photo's of themselves. Animations provided a visual effect to the bullet points on some of the slides. Adding sound from the sound clip organiser was also a hit with the viewers. All in all it is well worth the extra effort to turn a plain slide show into a masterpiece!

Voki

Get a Voki now!



Dear Readers
I see Avator technology as a great learning support/engagement tool with many uses in the classroom.
* to teach a second language
* a tool to support dyslexic students
* the teacher could send voki enhanced emails to students (more engaging)
* Embedded into the top of blogs so students can play it and get quick updates and messages from the teacher
Kearsley & Shneidermans (1998), Engagement Theory is a great conceptual framework for students to undertake authentic, project based units of work. Technology is used to facilitate all aspects of engagement. Avatars are just another way to help students stay engaged!
References:
Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (2008). Engagement theory: a framework for technology-based taching and learning. Retrieved August 8, 2009, from
http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm