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Ch5Q3: Share an example of when you integrated software, apps, or websites into your lesson plans.
July 1, 2012
by admin
Filed under Booknet, Chapter Five, Week Three
4 Comments
Think about the different disciples and areas of your classroom:
- Logic and reasoning
- Thinking and learning
- Math
- Science
- Creative arts
- Language arts and literacy
- Social Studies
I can talk about a couple of my favorite websites here, but we didn’t have ipads when I was in the classroom and I.T. decided what software we had so the only thing I could control was the website choices I made for the classroom. Although to be honest I.T. didn’t like some of my choices ie: Skype and YouTube so I had to use them on my personal laptop and use my personal projector and do it on the sly. I.T.’s control over these things however is an entirely different conversation
As I previously discussed, I used Skype a fair bit to engage with other classes of children and to interact with our university buddies who lived in another city. It also came in handy when various children went on holidays during the school year and would skype to us and show us where they were and what they were doing.
I used Youtube to show the children things that we were discussing in class. For example, when the underwater oil spill happened a couple of years ago, the children were very interested in trying to figure out how to plug the pipe so we looked at the video feed that was coming from the burst pipe deep underwater.
I used Voice Thread a fair bit as well and have since thought of a million ways I could have used it better. http://voicethread.com/ I started with things like Thanksgiving – I would pop a picture of a fall harvest into voicethread and then the children would each take turns recording what they were thankful for. We would then put the voicethread onto the class blog to share it with the world. In terms of accounts, I did not have an account for each child. Rather, I used my account and created 22 different identitites so that I just had to sign in and the children would come over to the computer one at a time and click on their avatar and record their message.
There are lots of websites that show different ways of using Voice Thread in a classroom. Here’s a good one: http://cybraryman.com/voicethread.html
Thanks for sharing your experiences Barb! It’s unfortunate that sites like Skype and YouTube are often deemed “dangerous,” especially with young children, in school. Like any other technology or site, I think if they’re used intentionally and with specific learning goals in mind, they can be both engaging and educative. How did your kids react to seeing the oil spill on video? Did it help them better understand the process? I think YouTube videos can be a great way to start or support an ongoing project or study in the classroom, especially as part of the investigation stage.
I’m so glad you shared Voicethread. It’s one of my favorite tools! It has so much potential to facilitate asynchronous global collaboration since different classes can come on and leave comments and with the five different commenting options, kids can use it before they know how to read and write. Thanks for sharing Cybraryman’s resources too!
The oil spill video was used in my grade one classroom and the children then brainstormed ways they could fix the problem. Their ideas ranged from duct tape to putting a really, really big rock on the opening
What was wonderful though was the fact that I had put a comment on the front page of our class blog telling the world that the children were going to write about their ideas in their personal blogs and that message was read by over 1600 people. The children thought that was pretty much the entire world! They were so excited to think that everyone in the world was going to read their ideas.
I love how you were able to use tech here to make a real-life situation more concrete and reachable for your children and then use the situation to ask them to be creators and problem solvers!