15 items | 11 visits
Karen Kohn's List: Collaboration Resources
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Jul 09, 11
Collaboration tools for teaching
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Jul 10, 11
This is a great example of why Social Networking in the classroom works. Please visit this blog post. Miss Night, along with her fellow Kindergarten teachers in her school in Canada use social networking to communicate with another class in Indonesia. Her students have learned so much from this contact and have even surprised her with some of their comments and questions. READ THE POST.
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a virtual exchange between our class, and a partner class overseas. For my 20 Canadian munchkins, we found a partner group in East Borneo, Indonesia. Both classes have created an imaginary friend, who attends our partner school. (For the curious, our imaginary friend is a little girl named Ella. She is 6 years old, she has blond hair, brown eyes, and brown skin. Her gender and name were decided by vote. Her age and appearance were drawn at random.) We use Twitter to ask research questions of our partners, and the answers allow us to write stories documenting our imaginary friend's experience in another country. Each child has a journal for the project, where they record things they have learned. It being kindergarten, the recording mostly takes the form of drawings. The children dictate text to go with their drawings, and then copy that text onto their pages. We are working on a Prezi presentation to share our learning with parents and other classes. We have made a video to teach our "Indonesia friends" about snow and how to get dressed for recess when it is very cold.
When my team conceived of this project, I knew it was going to be cool. As mentioned in my previous post about Twitter in kindergarten, I love love LOVE that my students are building real connections with other children their own age. This project brought it to another level, by pushing them to imagine themselves in a completely different setting. (As we graph the often FIFTY degree difference in our daily temperatures, I often imagine MYSELF in a completely different setting, too!) I knew that this project was going to take us in unexpected directions, and there is no doubt that it has.
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Jul 10, 11
Answers a question I'm sure is on every teacher's mind when thinking about incorporating social networking into the classroom. Teachers need to teach students how to act, write, speak, and present themselves.
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How do you keep students from wasting time chatting or sneaking to inappropriate sites?
You teach! You have frank discussions. You show them examples and ask them to make ethical decisions. You ask: What does it mean that fifteen-year-old kids are calling themselves nineteen and posting racy pictures online? What does it mean that college kids are posting raunchy spring break pictures that a prospective employer can find? The idea that we are the stories we tell has never been more important. Schools have always taught kids how to present themselves -- that's why we did oral presentations in the classroom. Now we need to teach them to present themselves electronically. That's why it's so scary to lock these technologies out.
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Jul 09, 11
Interesting article on Social Networking in Schools
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Great post Karen! You included so many great ideas about using Skype in the classroom. I really like how you mentioned using Skype as a tool to demonstrate for students how to follow directions to accomplish a task because it is such a real-life example. And, the idea of the Web Chat Challenge where students visit classrooms in every state is awesome! How do you think you could incorporate that into curriculum? I think it would be great for language arts and math presentations.
<!-- show link to message attachment file --> Wow! There are many ways to incorporate the Web Chat Challenge into a curriculum! The idea is that students will not only reach out to other students in other states and chat, but will learn about different dialects, likes and dislikes, climate and topography of the state, landmarks, historical sites and people, and many other facts from their peers across the country. The students could calculate how many miles away the classroom is that they chat with is from their own. What time is it there in the state they talk with, and what is the difference from the time on their own clock? One could use this in Social Studies (including History, Geology and Geography) Writing, Reading, Math (as per the example just mentioned), foreign language, art, music, drama. Students can share projects like poems they have written or perform a skit for the other class. The possibilities are endless. -
At first I thought, like Ben had said, that Twitter would be good for tweeting homework and due dates to students, tweeting other professional peers about meeting or time changes, and communicating with parents. After reading the articles and exploring Twitter and its many organizations and people that use it, I see the possibilities.Using Twitter for professional development, one can:- Share resources and articles- Comment on other teachers tweets and share the comments with others- Meet other teachers in your field of expertise- Lend support and advice to other teachers- Share ideas, tips and recommendations with others- Have discussions on reflections and gain new insight on lesson plans- Inform peers of events or exhibits in the area or in your schoolUsing Twitter for communication with parents, one can:- Inform parents about deadlines, student's progress, grades- Promote an event or school exhibit- Inform parents of exhibit that may expand a students interest or understanding- Provide links to class blog for viewing student workUsing Twitter for communication with students, one can:- Provide links for research- Promote class discussion and increase/reinforce use of current lesson vocabulary- Encourage tweets among students to enhance understanding and respect for one another- Encourage students to ask each other about assignments and questions- Promote brainstorming of ideas- Provide surveys to solicit student reflection on self performance, lesson effectiveness, and ideas for new projects- Provide tips for using materials- Ask questions to keep the learning moving forwardTeachers need to make rules for their students on how to use Twitter and what and how to to say what is on their mind. Teachers need to warn students that what they tweet will be permanent and will have an affect on their future education and professional career.One site I found interesting through someone's tweet was Fakebook. This isn't Facebook and no relation. But it provides an educational tool for teachers to allow students to create a profile page of imaginary or real people in history. This could be used in lessons for many areas studying famous scientist, artist, authors, historical figures, etc. The student would learn so much more about the person while creating a profile on a mock Facebook page that can be shared with the class.Overall, I found Twitter to be a useful tool for teachers. It will help me to be a more effective teacher by being able to reflect on lessons openly with others and get feedback immediately. I can find new information about items of interest, get links to new sites I was not aware of and relate to peers. It really is like having a professional development staff meeting in my computer. I thinks the possibilities are amazing.
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