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
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.
My New Blog
Thanks for visiting my new blog!
Now what do I say?
It has been quite interesting, so far, setting up my blog and choosing my avatars. Yes, you are going to need to learn a whole new language in order to be a “blogger”, and “avatar” is the second new word I learned after “widget”. So, speaking of language, I really need a spell check and haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Please forgive my mistakes. Can anyone tell me how to use the spell check?
