Victoria Mayle 08285510 Group 6

1. Powerful Web Tools for use in the Classroom Most people are aware that Wikipedia, as the name suggests, is an online encyclopedia. This is where ‘pedia’ comes from. The ‘Wiki’ comes from the Hawaiian ‘wiki-wiki’ which means quick. Put simply, a wiki is a website where anyone can edit anything anytime they want. This works by people working as a collective to input facts and figures and weed out opinions, emotions and bias. Wiki sites are being developed by all sorts of establishments to allow for easy sharing of information and documents. Many pupils and teachers alike already jump to Wikipedia as a source of information, although lots of people are dubious as sources are often not cited or not trusted. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Weblogs and other sites are built using a coded language similar to HTML called XML. It is this code which allows readers to ‘subscribe’ to the content of the blog. The content will then be sent to the reader rather than the reader having to visit the site again. This means that you could subscribe to as many different blogs or ‘feeds’ as you like, but only need to check in one place to receive them. To receive the RSS feeds, you would need to use an aggregator. Richardson (2006) recommends bloglines.com as you are able to access it from any internet connection. Other aggregators are available to Richardson (2006) suggests there are other ways of using wikis effectively in the classroom. Wikis can be used as a collaborative tool for information or children’s work. Children could be given editorial positions, giving them a sense of responsibility and control. Students would be able to share text, images, links, video and audio files. Teachers and pupils will be able to build a large database of information that is easily changeable through time. Maybe eventually our National Curriculum will become a WikiBook, as the South African Curriculum is now. Text book companies are also starting to look at how they can convert all their information onto WikiBooks to eliminate physical books. download or install but these would only be available on that system. It is not blogs alone that you can subscribe to. Now, newspapers, magazines, schools, universities and governments publish feeds for people to subscribe to. Using RSS feeds in the classroom will allow you to subscribe to the weblogs of students in your class, as well as allow them to subscribe to yours or the schools. If students are not using weblogs, it may be worth setting up a Bloglines account which would allow them to subscribe to feeds they find interesting. Some interesting feeds for children: http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/kidsnews/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/rss.xml Wikis RSS Feeds Flickr is a web-based photo publishing site. It allows users to create a free account, upload a large quantity of photos, and share these with friends and family. Digital photography is fast becoming the most accessible technology. Children old enough to hold a camera are able to take photos. Children old enough to understand how to use a camera are able to take some decent and useful images. Teachers now include digital images in their lessons easily as cameras are available to children and classes. Using cameras in the classroom allows teachers to capture daily events, highlights, field trips, visitors, projects etc. Google defines a podcast as “a multimedia digital file made available on the Internet for downloading to a portable media player, computer, etc.” The BBC produce a wide variety of podcasts such as radio highlights, entertainment and comedy programs, and documentaries. They also produce podcasts for children. Podcasts can be listened to on websites or subscribed to and will automatically download new podcasts as they are published online. iTunes is probably the most popular provider of podcasts. Teachers could make podcasts for pupils to download to highlight key information from the lessons or even Sharing these experiences with parents, students and teachers is made easy with Flickr. One feature of Flickr allows users to create annotations and notes to parts of the image. This allows students and staff to annotate images of a Civil War battlefield for example, or parts of a plant. Users can also leave comments on a particular image. Flickr users have the option to limit the content to friends and family only. Children could share a user account, or create one each. These accounts could then be verified so any issues with members of the public seeing the images are extinguished. create bitesize chunks of information for use as revision. Children could create podcasts for themselves and others and share them online. Podcasts might be reflections on lessons, homework tasks, or could even be used as a news system to inform parents and others what their children have been up to in school. Some examples of podcasts being used in schools: http://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/radio_sandaig/index.php http://www.downs.kent.sch.uk/podcast/?pid=10&type=podcast&title=The+Downs+FM+%28Podcast%29 Flickr Podcasts Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. It allows you to bookmark your favourite sites, and ‘tag’ them. This means giving it a key word, such as education, primary, school, teachers, teaching. If you click on one of the suggested tags, the internet service will then search for other bookmarks with similar tags, and provide suggestions for sites with similar interests and content. These tags make looking for content very easy and also shows the different ways in which people interpret what they are reading. Richardson (2006) suggests that teachers could create unique tags for each of their students and Weblogs or "Web logs" are "easily updated websites which allow authors to publish instantly to the internet from any internet connection.“ (Richardson, 2006, p.17) A blog is not a huge chunk of information, but a quick reflection or comment made by another individual. Richardson (2006) notes how writing a weblog, or 'blogging' can help to teach skills such as research, organisation and synthesis of ideas. Weblogs can allow children to write about personal reactions to topics covered, post links, write reflectively and summarise reading. This poses a whole new genre of writing. References Google. (2012). Blogger Tour. Available: http://www.blogger.com/tour_con.g. Last accessed 26th March 2012. Mark. (2011). Podcasting. Available: http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/ict/podcasting.htm. Last accessed 26th March 2012. Nelson, T and Fernheimer, J. (2003). Welcome to the Blogosphere: Using Weblogs to Create Classroom Community. Available: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/research/welcome-blogosphere-using-weblogs-create-classroom-community. Last accessed 26th March Richardson, W (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms. California: Corwin Press. Tolisano, S.R. (2010). Using Social Bookmarking in Schools and with your Students. Available: http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/12/23/using-social-bookmarking-in-schools-and-with-your-students-part-two/. Last accessed 26th March Background image: StockArch. Wikipedia logo: Wikipedia Flickr logo: Flickr from Yahoo Blogger Logo: Blogger from Google RSS Feed Logo: Dumfries and Galloway LGBT Centre Podcast Logo: Apple Del.icio.us Logo: del.icio.us Centre Image: wysiwygwebbuilder.com they could subscribe to receive RSS feeds for these tags. Using unique tags, schools can share sites with parents as well as each other. However, any user of the site could use this tag if they came across it. Needless to say, the site is very useful for teachers to share sites and content they find useful. It may help students initiate research, as teachers could suggest a starting point, from which pupils can search for similar tags to find relevant content. Some examples from Richardson (2006) for use of blogs in the classroom include reflecting on teaching experience, providing teaching tips for other teachers, share ideas for classroom activities, communicate with parents, post information relating to the class, i.e. calendar events, homework etc, provide examples of work, publish examples of work done in class, creating an 'e-portfolio' of work, and many more. Obviously not all of these examples are suited to the primary classroom but some could be put into practice in a simple form for use in the classroom. Blogger from Google is the most popular blog provider, You can use a group blog with multiple authors as a communication tool for small teams, families and other groups. Blogger Del.icio.us Victoria Mayle 08285510 Group 6