A Global Community

    Ever think the world wide web is just too dangerous or risky for your classroom?   We all have!  But ePals is a great site that can change your mind in an instant.  It offers many different features and ideas for your classroom and is great for teachers or students. 

     For students, there are links to other pages, such as National Geographic or the Smithsonian.  These are great educational tools for students to have at their fingertips!  Furthermore, there are pages about black history, digital storytelling, the Earth, and biodiversity.  There is also a student forum to talk about issues they are interested in and a book club where students can talk about the books they have read.

     The teacher page has some similar features to the student page, such as the link to National Geographic or other educational sites.  In addition there is a teacher forum (like the student forum) for teachers to discuss topics of interest to them.  Also, there are pre-made projects that teachers can use for their classes. 

     I think this program could be very useful for a classroom, in that it give the students some freedome to explore different topics but in a safe and educational environment.  Also, the projects available to teachers are a great source and would be fun and interesting for students to do!

Digital Storytelling for Teaching

     Until recently I did not even know what digital storytelling was, but now I see how easy and useful it can be for teachers, not to mention fun.  Using sites like  Animoto, Slideroll, or Stupeflix, teachers can create a story with pictures, text, and music about anything they want.  The basics of these sites are free, making it even easier for teachers to use it. 

     The site that I tried out was Animoto.  It took me at most five minutes to log in and begin creating a digital story.  I was able to add my own pictures, and then put in text, and select the music from the site.  It was a very simple process and could be used to teach anything, from culture, to grammar, or vocabulary.  Below is the digital story that I created about Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). 

Give one of these sites a try and you will see how easy, fun, and education they can be for you and your students.

Twitter in Action

      There are so many ways that Twitter, a popular micro blogging website, can be useful for teachers.  I'll give a few examples of its use here just to get you started on this potential educational resource. 

    

     An article titled, On the Deeper Connections Built Into Throw-Away Questions, by Shelly Blake-Plock, discusses one of these great uses of Twitter.  It talks about what as teachers we may call a "throw-away" question and how one of these seemingly pointless questions can spark a great debate among students through the use of Twitter.  By posting one of these questions, such as: "Latin Students: How many museums can you find on Twitter? +10 pt coupon to anybody who Tweets 20 museums with collections in Ancient Art!", a teacher can really motivate their students to start thinking out of the box and using a site like Twitter as a resource (Blake-Plock).  The next day so many students will come into school with a list of museums to get their bonus points and for once they will (not admittedly) like doing their homework cause students enjoy the use of social networking sites.

    

     In Educational Twitter Chats Calendar, the author writes about using Twitter for educational chats.  These are basically a way to connect with other educators who are interested in the same topics as you.  For example, if you want to know about using Twitter to teach Spanish, there may be a chat specifically about that.  So you would go on the chat and be able to discuss the topic with other teachers and get new ideas about how you would use Twitter for a Spanish classroom.  The article also mentions a new calendar feature that can make it easier for teachers to keep track of all of their educational chats on Twitter.

     These are just two basic uses of Twitter but there are so many other ways that Twitter can be used to enhance and improve any classroom!

Social Networking Group: Learning with Computers

     There are many social networking groups available for teachers, but the one I checked out was called Learning with Computers.  This groups site is a place for foreign language teachers to post what they know about integrating computers into the classroom.  Teachers can then read each others' ideas about how to best use computers in teaching students a foreign language.  This seems like a great place for L2 teachers to post and take knowledge from each other about technology to make the classroom a better place for learning.

A Teacher is like a...

     A teacher is like a "Surrogate for knowledge", connection maker, database for learning, and social mediator.  Teachers can and should be all of the above according to Siemens.  In the article titled "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.  International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning", Siemens discusses the idea of connectivism.  This is basically that using new technology, all ideas, principles, and knowledge are linked through networks.  Siemens says that "nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning".  The teacher must help students to make the connections, be it online on social networks or other learning websites, so that the students can learn more knowledge.  There is so much knowledge and information out there in this new digital era and it "needs to be connected with the right people" (teachers) "in the right order to be classified as learning".  Teachers need to therefore give students the access they need to all of these great sources of information to connect them to so much useful knowledge.

    

     Siemens continues to explain his theory of connectivism through a video titled "The Impact of Social Software on Learning".  In the video he says we must "learn from each other".  Teachers have to give information to students, the Internet can give information to students and teachers, and students can even give back information to teachers.  Also, Siemens says that we are social beings, we enjoy conversation, and this helps us to grow in our knowledge.  This means that by using social software we can have conversations about learning with other people ("forming networks with each other") and this can increase our knowledge base. 

 

     Overall, I think Siemens gives some great ideas in his article and the video about connectivism.  It makes a lot of sense that we can gain knowledge from one another.  Just because you are the teacher does not mean that you have to have all the information, but you can use the Internet and other sources to share with each other and provide more important knowledge to your students.