Breakout session: Podcasting April 24, 2009
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Podcasting.Tags: TechForumCH9, tltechforum
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Find an untold story in your community/connected to your community in some way to add depth and interest. Our students tell their own stories all too often; engage them in the stories of others and help them on their way to maturity.
Find a new audience for your podcasts. Parents are usual. In this example (on Japanese Friendship Dolls), the script had to be approved by the curator of the Milwaukee Public Museum.
http://web.me.com/dienerd/homepage/About.html (check podcasts)
http://mpm.edu/exhibitionsfeatured/friendshipdoll/podcasts.php & http://mtsd.k12.wi.us/Lake_Shore/podcast/vet-mem/Intro.html
(sample podcast projects)
Idea: What are the backgrounds of the memorials in your area? How to honor veterans? http://honoring-veterans.wikispaces.com (join in a national collaborative project -he’s waiting for more people to join in – create a project to honor our nation’s veterans). Possibility: Take some pictures of local veterans’ memorials, turn them into a movie, post it to YouTube, and post it to the wiki. Challenge: create a project in your community that connects students and veterans. Create the project online then post a link to the wiki.
Podcasting turns students into historians, brings primary sources to life, and fosters a sense of maturity.
Tool recommended in this session for podcasting with phone: Gabcast -
Video tools recommended in this session for podcasting:GarageBand & iPhoto (MAC) MovieMaker (PC) Audacity (Mac or PC)
Interesting. They have a tech-ed class for 6th graders. Hmm…the constraints of 42 minute class periods are making my spirit of creativity feel overly limited…
Friday in Chicago April 24, 2009
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in On Teaching, Random Thoughts.Tags: TechForumCH9, tltechforum
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The annual pilgrimage to Chicago for Tech&Learning’s Midwest TechForum. Thankfully the plane arrived on time, the drive to the hotel was uneventful, and the morning is underway. The first speaker, Clarence Fisher, was truly inspiring. A middle school teacher hailing from Snow Lake in Manitoba, he challenged the audience to shift from the traditional view of a classroom to what our students need classrooms to be today and moving forward. Points which stood out:
- We need to get away from thinking about classrooms the way they have always been
- Inspiration and pedagogy should be synonyms (thought: how does standardized testing and data-driven lesson planning fit in with that?)
- The classroom should be seen as a studio
- Our students need to get comfortable with the idea that learning/information is/can be messy.
- Creativity is a national resource (thought: what are we really doing to foster that?)
- We need to use technology to engage and connect our students with the world. Find the way around the “no go” zones.
- If schools don’t change the way they offer education, schools will become sideshows. Students will attend and jump through the necessary hoops, but will get all of the information they need via the Internet.
A great keynote. Always good to take some time to reflect on where we need to go.
p.s. Listening to Clarence’s stories, I felt a tug at my heart, I really enjoyed teaching 7th graders. Not sure if I could do it now, but I sure loved it then.
Museum Monday – To Washington DC! April 20, 2009
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Museum Monday.Tags: Air and Space, Smithsonian
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Two of my colleagues are going to a National Math conference in Washington DC this week, and Washington D.C. inspired me to visit the Smithsonian. Seeing as how the Smithsonian has about as many wonderful web-based materials as it does museums in Washington, we will visit one museum at a time on our Mondays. Today’s museum is the Museum of Air and Space. Not only does the Air and Space Museum have wonderful virtual exhibits of all of their past exhibits including but not limited to WWII aviation, milestones of flight, and Apollo to the Moon, some (like the Wright Brothers & the Invention of the Aerial Age) have interactive experiments and class activities ready to use.
No plane tickets necessary for this great virtual museum visit.
Happy Monday!
The Friday Five at the NYPL April 17, 2009
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Educational Resources, Friday Five, Web resources.Tags: Friday Five, NYPL
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Taking five minutes to explore this great resource will only scratch the surface. This fall, the New York Public Library published its “Treasures of the New York Public Library” website.Organized by theme and content, this site is a rich repository of resources excellent especially for literature, science, history and art classrooms. There are 3-5 minute videos on topics including the Harlem Renaissance, art deco, and mapping the world, as well as images and text resources supporting the studies of art, history, world history, New York, science and inventions, and others. A wonderful repository to explore.
Happy Friday!
