Taking a look at this article on blogging in the classroom i was able to see how useful blogging can be in the classroom. The article itself presents some great ideas for applications in the classroom.
I really like the idea of having a teacher blog in which teachers can post homework tasks and classroom handouts and other useful resources. Not only does it help to maintain the essential links between school and home but it can also be used to support those students who are unable to complete in-class activities in addition to providing support for students who are absent from class.
The other key application presented in the article was the use of blogs for students to share there writings with an audience in order to get feedback to help students develop the writing skills. Having older students and community members as audiences is a really positive way to support student learning as well as developing the sense of community within the school as well as having the commnity involved in the school.
It is my belief that the student blogs can also be expanded on by giving students opportunities to incorporate other media into their blogs as it then can be used to not only writing tool but a tool to develop their other skills and develop their ideas about the world.
There is however a few issues and limitations to the use of blogs. Blogs for teachers as a home resources are reliant on all students having access to computers at home whilst most do there will always be some students who do not have access to computers.
Student blogs that include sharing with other students are reliant on the good nature of the audience as some feedback could be quite damaging for young learners. This is reinforced by what Tim was talking about when he was talking about being aware of student sensitivity. Although many blog sites can be mediated by teachers this could become a very time consuming task for teachers.
There is also the security issues involved with students sharing on the world wide web which is further discussed in Jennie’s post.
Although there are limitations i do still believe that the potential benefits can out way the limitations.
This report on Channel 10 news provides another great example of the benefit of Podcasting in the classroom. It was another example of Technology being used to motivate learning.
It was great to see male students engaged in Literacy through this use of Podcasting.
Just want to say Thank You to Mat for finding this Teacher tube video what a great video! Really impressive use of Podcasting in the classroom it’s great that they are able to use technology like this to reengage their students in reading, it is a great example of using computer technology to motivate student learning.
I believe that it is of vital importance that if we are going use technology in the classroom it needs to have a purpose and not just used for the sake of using it this video presents a perfect example of this.
This YouTube video presents a few great ideas on ways to use Podcasts in the classroom. Not only that the video also shares a number of useful websites for producing and publishing Podcasts in the classroom.
Along with presenting some ideas for using Podcasts in the Classroom it also presents a few strong argument for using Podcasts.
Willow Web! If you haven’t already checked out this site i would highly recommend it. It is a school site set up by Willowdale Elementary School and contains all the regular stuff you find in a schools website with one exception it also contains Radio WillowWeb which in my opinion is a great example of how Podcasts can be used in a classroom and in this case a whole school.
Radio WillowWeb consists of a number of podcasts created by students from grades 1 through 5 for students with each podcast presenting a different topic that the kids are learning about at the time. The podcasts themselves are relatively structured with different sections presented by different students and the Podcasts are great examples of how podcasts can be used in collaborative learning.
Anyway enough of my rambling about it Check it out if you haven’t already
Firstly, although i did find the whole thing quite intimidating and i felt a bit self conscious about it during the production of it i believe that it could be of great benefit in the classroom.
Why do i feel this way?
For starters i believe it could be of great benefit to those shy students like me who find sharing their work in front of a class a highly stressful situation. By producing a audio or video podcast the students can share their work in their own time whilst developing confidence in them self through their achievements.
There are a number of other reasons for why i believe the use of the Podcast could be effective in the classroom and i will try and write some more on the subject in the next couple of days.
However, although a great tool one issue that may make the application of this idea challenging is the noise factor. I don’t know about anyone else but i did find it difficult to get a quality recording with all the background noise that resulted from a number of students trying to make recording all at the same time. Not only was it distracting it was on a number of occasions picked up on the recording and for those perfectionists like me became a cause of some frustration.
Anyway that’s about all i’m going to say about that for now feel free to comment or offer suggestions on how to address the noise issue or if you want you can add some more thoughts on how and why you might use it in your classroom. Though i will try and add to it myself down the track.
Hi there everyone thought i’d just give everyone a bit of a clue as to the purpose of my blog. For the main part it so i and anyone who wants to can ramble on about anything to do with education and more specifically the use of computers and the Internet in Primary Education.
