My First Student Podcast!
Below is a radio advertisement that my students created for our Shopping Mall Unit. These students developed a store that sells organic products and healthy food. They named it Enviroganics. enviroganic-radio-ad
Next Steps
A lot can happen in a very short time in the technology world. Last year I had never even heard of a blog or pod-casting and all of a sudden they are starting to pop up all over the place. Last year I struggled to understand and this year I can read about the daily life of a gold medal athlete and feel like he is my best friend!
After a half a year of exploring and learning how to podcast and blog it is time for me to think of ways to get my students involved. I have some ideas but I still have a lot to learn about how to make it meaningful and how to sign them up to contribute.
I think the best place for us to start is to by reading and exploring blogs. I am hoping that the students might have some ideas of their own and we can explore it together. It is a whole new world, and it is exciting to explore.
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Teacher Tube
Well, after taking a while to figure out how to add a video to my blog after Edublog made some changes, I am also discovering that many of the great videos that I have found cannot be viewed at school because Youtube is blocked. There are however some videos on Teachertube that may be useful or interesting, but from what I have seen so far, it may be time to start making videos.
The Bully Dance
This is a cute video that doesn’t have any words, but tells a great story.
Character Education
This is a fabulous video called UNITED. My students sang it for days and begged to see it again.
Posting a video
Uploading videos into a post is easy. This is a video about the animal school which I found very motivational. Enjoy!
Important things to consider
Important things to consider when putting things on your blog are the privacy issues for students. We shouldn’t post pictures of the students and they should not use their full name when posting a comment. A suggestion was made that perhaps students can have a code name when posting and that the teacher can keep track of these names. I guess you have to think about all angles when creating your blog.
When I signed up, I think there was an option to have your blog posted on the Internet or not. I am not sure which I chose and if there is any way to change it now. If our blog is not posted on the Internet do we need to be so careful?
Learnerblogs
I found out that students can also create blogs, which also presents some interesting opportunities. Students cannot sign up for blogs on the Edublog site but the following link has information about how students can sign up. http://edublogs.org/students/I find the most fun thing about blogs is when people leave comments! That means I actually have an audience!
Understanding Blogs
I am still working on setting up my blog and trying to understand what it is and how to use it. I found the following definition from the University of Lethbridge:
Blog – A web log: an on-line diary or frequently updated personal web page.
I think the next step will be to find educational blogs and see how they are using them. I still not sure how I can get my students involved with blogging. I have some ideas but I feel I need to know more about it before I get the students involved. I am still uncertain about some of the widgets and how they work so I will continue to explore that as well. I have to admit that understanding the new terminology is slowing me down. I will look for definitions. I know Barb’s site McBlogin will help alot when I get a chance to explore it. I did find out how to use the spell check but I am still curious about whether you can use a spell check when you leave a comment on another blog. I am also curious if anyone can leave a comment on a blog or if you have to be a blogger.
