Diigo

I just set up an account with diigo and I love it! For my major projects this year, I have been posting all of the links that the students would need on progress book. This shouldn't be the case, but some students cannot get into progress book except on their home computer where the password is saved! This would be a great place for me to post the links and let students add other links. I also like how I can leave comments for them about my favorite links, etc. I have not tried to start a group for my classes yet, but I am going to try it next quarter for my communications project. I love finding out about these fun new websites! And it was so easy!

Digital Story

I've been working on my digital story with my communication students in movie maker. We've had a few problems with video - the only video I can add is a united streaming video (saved as .wmv) or a video that they take on their own (I think I can add this). Other than that, they can't download videos from the internet and save it in their public folder to upload into movie maker. This has been frustrating for some students who have found good videos.

Audacity is a great program, but sometimes freezes up and students lose their work. They also have trouble with the functions sometimes not working, and they have to restart the program.

We are now beginning to record our voices, and hopefully be done with the project next week!

Wiki

I looked at a few wikis created by other teachers, and I found some pretty cool ones. It seems like a lot of science teachers use them as a science journal. Everytime a student does a lab, they record their data in the wiki and then add pictures, answer questions, etc. I like the idea, but I don't know if there are really any advantages to this over using a google doc.

I created a wiki and uploaded some documents, but I can't find where they show up on the wiki. This is definitely more confusing then a google doc! But I did get the good idea to use the google doc as on online science juornal and have students keep track of everything they do in labs.

Movie Maker Project

Last week I introduced the students in communications to their movie maker project. They will be putting pictures, video, voice, music, and text into movie maker. Today each group came up with their topic and essential question for the project. This week they will be finding pictures and video and saving them to their public class folder. They will have to cite everything and each group created a google doc to easily keep track of their citations. They seem really excited about creating their movie - some of them much prefer it to talking in front of the class!

Digital Storytelling

In my communications class this year, the students have been using movie maker and audacity to create digital stories. They use music, voice, pictures, video clips, and text to create the movies. I am going to add on to it for my digital storytelling project. I think it's a great way for students to express themselves and they really enjoy making them!

Google Reader

I am becoming obsessed with google - there is so much you can do with it! Google reader is pretty cool and I also learned about google voice at a conference. One day everything you need will be found in your google account:). I like the idea of google reader because all of the up to date information about the topics I'm interested in pop up on my screen. Now I don't have to search through the same websites everyday; I can find it all in one place. The feeds that I subscribed to are: science news for kids, nasa, science friday, how stuff works, e entertainment, and cincinnati channel 9 news. Obviously a few are for my enjoyment, but the others are science sites that I look through on a weekly basis. I am always looking for current articles that are related to what I am teaching. Now I can quickly skim my google reader and see if there are any relavant articles.

Podcast

I did a podcast about my photoperiod project. I recorded what is printed on the photoperiod packet. I thought this way students can review photoperiod for whatever learning style they have - audio, visual, etc. I have used audacity a lot in my communications class, where they students add voice, pictures, sound, and video into movie maker. They produce very cool projects. I will say that audacity is very touchy, and many students have lost their work from it freezing up. I guess that's what happens when it is free software:).