Virtual Camps and Unconferences

I have been attending PBWiki Summer Camp 2010 since June 21st and I must say, I am impressed with the content and the requirements. The leaders and mentors "get" that many of us are on summer break, on vacation, at home with school age children who are also home for the summer, etc. I am enjoying learning about how wikis work best in an educational setting. Week 1 was all about wiki basics, Week 2 is all about using plug ins to make the wiki more inviting, engaging, and interactive.
I was curious about the ISTE conference that is being held in Denver until tomorrow and as I was following tweets on Twitter, someone mentioned the ISTE Unplugged wiki. I have enjoyed plunking around the wiki and have had my own sort of Unconference by looking at the blogs/wikis of presenters that are mentioned by the people I follow on Twitter. Update--July 3, 2010--thanks to Marsha Erskine for sharing the ISTEVision site where you can go to see ISTE sessions that were recorded.

Text to Speech

Text to speech technology is rapidly improving and adapting. During the last two weeks of school a fourth grade teacher and I used glogster and xtranormal with her class to publish their research about technology in N.C. While using xtranormal, the students quickly caught on to the need to phrase questions carefully, so that the technology could get the intonation right. Just this morning while I was visiting the PBWorks Summer Camp wiki I read about someone using voki to embed a talking avatar into their wiki--takes all of five minutes, even if you fancy up your avatar. And of course, voicethread has been around for a long while now.

Enough about the cool factor--what I like about sites is the text to speech capability--users key in text and the tool transfers it to audible speech. I am amazed at how eagerly students approach learning tasks when these tools are used. And their increased conscientiousness is leading to better finished products that include more polished compositions. Afterall, who wants their avatar or their video characters to sound, well, you know, d@*b (there, I didn't say it)?

You Tube, Teacher Tube, Vimeo

Been aware of these Web 2.0 tools for a while, but never really given them much thought as to how they could fit in an elementary setting, so I never spent time to explore them until I read about a guy who is delivering lectures via You Tube (College 2.0: A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy' on YouTube http://bit.ly/bNTTy0
Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for tweeting about it:)

I just uploaded my first You Tube video earlier this week to allow the colleague that I was preparing it for to review it and was amazed at 1. how easy it is to upload a file 2. contrary to my initial uninformed opinion, I was not besieged by pop ups, raunchy ads, raunchy videos, etc. and 3. I can control who has access the videos I upload.

Beginning to think that these tools would be an excellent way to implement reteaching activities and increase the students' capabilities to allow other students to provide feedback. For teachers--when they are preparing things for professional development, they can record real-class examples of the strategies they are using. And, finally, kids in our summer reading program really enjoy Storytime Online, so I am considering recruiting some of our local "celebrities" to complete a similar project.

Just exciting to think about the possibilities from these tools that I had more or less written off:)

I Know my mama, but not my MoMA

But I plan to use the Do You Know Your MoMA? feature with students who absolutely love art, but could care less for reading. Each segment has a blurb about each work of art. We have Word Masters and Math SuperStars at our elementary school--wouldn't be too hard for someone to keep track of results of students who want to play along. Makes me want to look to see if other opportunities exist for other content areas:)

Where in the world???

Happened to glance over at David's laptop the other night while he was studying for a Cultural Geography quiz and he was using activities at:
http://lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/index.html
and
http://www.maps.com/FreeStuff.aspx#
to prepare. Pretty good success rate--he scored 18/20.
What I like about both sites' activities is that users get multiple chances to answer and I also like how both sites give informational corrections. Finally, the GeoQuiz at the maps.com site uses high quality maps and included movement from place to place as if the user is turning the globe.

It's Been a While...

With this new post comes a new goal--to visit at least every other day and discuss at least one new thing I have learned.

Was just thinking today as I was helping two of my colleagues burn DVDs of their 2nd grade class' year-in-pictures projects that with my use of google docs and the capacity to upload any file, that I have developed a much better understanding of file sizes,which elements of videos really bump up a project's size. Knowing these facts is helping me plan more effectively and communicate to our faculty how much production they can realistically expect to complete in a day's time. As a result, we are creating higher quality products, because we are not in a frenzied panic to get something done in 45 minutes that will in reality and by the necessity of the medium, software, and hardware we are using will take 2 1/2 to 3 times as long.