Cedu 531 Applications

Over the past week I've learned quite a bit about some new programs to use in our class. The one that I like is Voicethread as it allows students to record their voices to their projects. It'd be awesome to have students create a digital story about something they're really interested in sharing. That's the number one way that really gets them hooked into their own learning: have them tell a story they want to tell and then share it with others. The ability for them to have others view it and make comments is wonderful. Talk about getting students to share what they're learning in school with their parents is a hard thing to do. Sometimes parents don't have the time to listen to their children or see exactly what it is that they're doing in school. Words can't always convey the meaning that visuals do. The fourth grade right now is learning about how and when their families moved to Wisconsin. They had a visit with a Wisconsin storyteller and were asked to go back and discuss their ancestry with their parents. Here's one way they could import pictures from a scanner or camera, create a picture album on Flickr, import it into Voicethread and have their living ancestors comment on it, even elaborate on a picture with a story themselves. It's a great personal history of the student.
I'm also reviewing and learning more about copyright and it's one area that I do teach as students get involved with reports or taking pictures, etc. off the Internet to use. At each grade level we talk about copying and what it means. As the students progress through each grade, the lessons are more formal as they learn how to create their own notes and sources cited page.