Educational Technology Weblog

The photo is a screenshot of the Adobe Connect session we used to bring in a team member for the meeting. Steve and Ben, from VoiceThread, are the two men in the top-left corner. I don’t know why I didn’t think to take a picture with a real camera or even my cellphone, but anyway, this is the best I could do. (Sorry, Ben and Steve… you deserve a better picture for sure!)

This week our department had the pleasure of meeting with the gentlemen who developed EdVoiceThread. They are geniuses (and extremely personable – go figure) and have absolutely thought of everything when it comes to developing a product for K-12 and higher education, that is safe, secure, reasonably priced and has the potential for huge impact on learning and global collaboration. How nice it would be to bring something so powerful and easy to our school district!

If YOU haven’t heard of Ed VoiceThread, you are missing one of the most remarkable FREE 21st Century online learning applications that you can be using today! You must check out these examples !

Anyone can create a VoiceThread by adding a piece of media ( JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, PPT, PPS, PDF, DOC, XLS and a variety of video types) and then allow others to make comments in any of 5 different ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) – and share them with anyone they wish. Allowing group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

The beauty of VoiceThread is that it’s simple and safe! Here is one I created that I use as a demo. You’ll see a DE Streaming video segment and some video, audio and text comments. You can let it play or click on the avatars to activate the demo student comments. There are also some other comments that have been added by real teachers as I’ve used this to demonstrate this in workshops.

I’ve since learned however, that the way I’ve been recommending that teachers use it is not a best practice at all. In the recording below, you’ll hear me tell you that I set up one account and let my students create their own profiles under my account. Then they sit at a computer in my classroom and contribute to the VoiceThread. Although this would certainly work, especially in a K or 1st grade classroom with supervision, the problem would be that in an instant a student could accidentally delete the entire VoiceThread.

and……….that……….can’t………..be…………undone!

They also mentioned a feature that is coming soon is the ability to CLONE a VoiceThread. Once you’ve spent time creating a VoiceThread that might be complex, it would be pretty nice to be able to clone it to customize it for another use later on.

Please leave a comment about how you might use VoiceThread in your classroom or any barriers you foresee to a successful implementation. I hope you’ll also leave a voice comment on the VoiceThread here.

Thanks for your comments!

Scholarly Research on Student Blogging

We have our share of skeptics around here when it comes to Web 2.0 tools and their value in the classroom. Believe if or not, I’m one of them! There has been an ongoing conversation for a few years now about how these simple publishing and collaboration tools might be used to impact instruction. From the “This is amazing!” to the “This is bunk!”, there has been a healthy mix of agreements and disagreements about how a teacher might use Web 2.0 tools in their classrooms.

Now comes a new study from Jeff Felix, Superintendent of Bonsall Union School District in Bonsall, CA. Mr. Felix’s scholarly, peer-reviewed article can be found here as a direct download of a PDF file, or you can visit Classroom 2.0 where he discusses his findings a bit.

Some of the conclusions from the article are interesting on their face and worth a little more study and reflection. In no order of importance here are a few statements that jumped out at me:

• There were four communication patterns teachers perceived as a result of blogging: (a) increased peer interaction among students, (b) increased teacher interaction with the students, (c) students exhibiting more positive emotions about learning, and (d) an increased sharing of ideas among students and with the teacher.
• The data from responding edubloggers describe student learners who have been a part of a blogging classroom as engaged in four types of learning: (a) students increasing their understanding of topics, making sense of what they learn, and developing their own understanding of the subject matter, (b) students cultivating deeper thought processes; creating meaning and new ideas from the subject, (c) students exploring the subject beyond the immediate requirements, and (d) students connecting with previous experiences learned in or out of the classroom.
• Blogging by its very nature gives students a vehicle for sharing their ideas with one another, a contemporary way to gain additional knowledge or understanding that resonates with students being raised in the digital age.

We’re moving right along here at our new blogging enterprise. We’ve hit a few snags along the way, but for the most part our first serious stab at implementing Web 2.0 tools in our school district has been going well. From the simple standpoint of cost–everything we’re currently experimenting with is completely F.R.E.E. –and, well, things are going very well.

In addition, we’ve had some interesting internal discussions about the role of these tools and how we might use them to impact instruction. As part of the process we’ve been mind-mapping Web 2.0 tools and services we are considering–and how they are interconnected–using the cool little free service from bubbl.us. (Create an account and make your own!)

Here’s a snapshot of our efforts so far. You can drag or re-size the image below or visit our bubbl.us account and see the full size map.

Now, what do you think? Seeing how these tools might be used how would you like to see these services provided? Are there risks involved? As always, we encourage your comments!

One of the things I found innovative at NECC2008 was the use of backchannel networking during presentations or forums. The facilitators would set up a chat channel using something like the free version of Chatzky. Participants each have access to a computer and are logged in to the chat application. A central computer displaying the scrolling ensuing chat is projected onscreen. While the presentation continues participants are encouraged to engage in “backchannel” discussions about the topic at hand. Typically, links are shared as well as additional resources adding rich collaborative learning to an otherwise linear presentation. It also serves to keep participants highly engaged. Chat transcripts can then be saved and posted for later reference.

Read David Jakes’ blog post about ChatCasting.

Backchannel chats can be initiated using free resources such as Jaiku, Twitter and SMS, Plurk,  AIM, Skype or paid services such as Adobe Connect.

What are your thoughts about incorporating something like this in your next workshop? Do you see any value to something as “edgy” as this? Are there risks?