Podcasting in the classroom

Wesley Fryer (via Stephen's Web via Miguel Guhlin who speaks of the urgency in corporating technology in the classroom) has an excellent introductory article on integrating podcasts into the classroom. He concludes,

We need to get serious about educating today’s digital natives for the digital knowledge landscape of the twenty-first century. In many ways, the traditional, “transmission-based” educational model of the past is insufficient for the needs of today’s learners and employers. Classroom podcasts can provide engaging opportunities for students to develop desirable skills as digital storytellers and cutting-edge communicators. The price is right, and the benefits are plentiful. Isn’t it time you and your students started a classroom podcast?

For language learning, podcasts are a good tool for students to practice and revise a presentation.

Successful High Tech Charter School

Dale MezzaCappa (The Philadelphia Inquirer) writes about High Tech Hi, a charter school in San Diego that successfully integrates education and technology.

It is "high tech" not because it trains students to fix computers and write software, although some do, but because technology is infused throughout the curriculum. Students work on networked laptops and maintain digital portfolios.

Some travel; this year, 12 seniors went to Baja California for eight weeks to study marine life, including plankton, whale sharks and sea turtles, as well as the area's history and culture. They not only collected specimens but also created poetry, a documentary, a mural, and a novel.

In the last two years, Jay Vavra's junior biotechnology classes designed, wrote and photographed a field guide to wildlife in San Diego Bay, with a foreword by anthropologist Jane Goodall.

It's encouraging to see a school that engages the students in real "work" as opposed to "learning" alone.

Tech Tools for Learning

Will Richardson has an article, Tech Tools for Learning, published in Access Learning, which you can download from his recent posting here. His opening paragraph reads:

Over the last few years, our relationship with the Web has been changing dramatically. Simple new technologies like weblogs and podcasts are allowing us to not only create content like text, audio, and video more easily, they are also allowing us to publish and share that content on the Web with very little effort. Instead of a “read only” Web, we’re entering the age of the Read/Write Web, where contributing knowledge is as easy as consuming it. Being able to publish worldwide this easily does raise legal and ethical issues for educators to be aware of, but it also facilitates a whole range of new learning potentials for students and teachers in the classroom. Here is a quick look at some of the technologies that are changing the way educators think about and deliver instruction.

He has quite a bit of information on technology tools for education (RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasting, and streaming video with links) packed into 4 pages. Recommended.

Performancing for Firefox

Performancing is a new blogging extension for Firefox 1.5 and above.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

Performancing can allow you to post into Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and Live Journal, and guidelines for using Performancing are available from Jed Brown. Of course, one can simply go about posting the normal way.

Peformancing will eventually incorporate RSS feeds and Technorati tags, too. The advantage, I suppose, is the convenience of integrating all of one's web tools into one application, the browser. But I must add that keeping up with the greatest and latest in web technology takes a considerable amount of time. Right now, I'm trying to decide on which personalized web page to go with: Yahoo, Google, or Netvibes. Then, if something else comes along, will I take the time to investigate that one, too? Will Flock, the first browser incorporating a blogging editor, come back with something even better?

On a sidenote, Firefox has many extensions available, such as Flashgot and del.icio.us. One of my favorites is NoScript, which provides an extra layer of security:

Extra protection for your Firefox: NoScript allows JavaScript, Java (and other plugins) only for trusted domains of your choice (e.g. your home-banking web site).

Handbook of Enquiry and Problem-based Learning

The All Ireland Society for Higher Education (via EduResources Weblog) has a free online book: Handbook of Enquiry and Problem-based Learning. From the foreword:

The purpose of this book is fourfold. F'irstly, drawing on Irish case studies and international perspectives, it seeks to encourage the enhancement of the student experience of learning, through the development of problem and Enquiry-based Learning. Secondly, it aims to share success stories while painting a realistic picture of the processes involved ...

It does this by discussing progress with initiatives and exploring difficulties, barriers, “mistakes,” improvements, alongside the strategies used to tackle these real emerging challenges. Thirdly, by drawing on many contributions from Ireland, it places Irish problem and enquiry-based practice in the international context. There are case studies from the seven Irish universities and the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Technology in the classroom

Will Richardson reports on a teacher creatively using a tablet PC, photos, video, and Powerpoint in a Spanish language classroom:

it was clear what was happening. Students were creating and sharing and loving the process. The teacher was using the technology to connect their learning, and it was their learning, not his. They were in charge.

Technology in the classroom

Will Richardson reports on a teacher creatively using a tablet PC, photos, video, and Powerpoint in a Spanish language classroom:

it was clear what was happening. Students were creating and sharing and loving the process. The teacher was using the technology to connect their learning, and it was their learning, not his. They were in charge.

Isn't this what learning is all about?

Composition & Rhetoric Wiki textbook

(From Kairos News) Matt Barton has started a Composition and Rhetoric Wiki book for first-year composition and is going to involve an upper level composition course in helping. He writes:

I've decided to conduct a rather risky experiment in my Computers and English course this semester: A semester-long class project whose goal is to create a free wikitext for use as a first-year composition textbook. The course is cross-listed, with about 13 seniors and juniors and 2 (maybe 3) English graduate students with teaching experience at the college and high school level. Some of the students are English majors, but others have mass comm and IT backgrounds. In other words, this is in many ways my ideal mix for a project like this. I started working on the Rhetoric and Composition Wikitext nearly a year ago, but development has been slow. The project is hosted at wikibooks, a project specifically devoted to the purpose of creating and distributing free educational materials. I think this is a valuable service learning project that will help the class reach several of its goals--gain experience with writing technologies, develop good collaboration skills, and learn about writing and writing instruction all at the same time. I think it's going to be a fun project, and so far the class morale is extremely high. Everyone is excited about the project, especially me!

ePortfolios

Matt Villano (in Campus Technology via Educational Technology Weblog) covers the development of electronic portfolios.

Driven by a variety of goals—including assessment and professional development— the electronic portfolio technology has caused a good deal of excitement in the academic world during the last few years; for some schools—those fully adopting the technology—it is dramatically changing the way they require students to demonstrate competencies.

It wasn't clear from the article how students changed other than from print to electronic with the ability to include a wider and flashier variety of data. Is there greater competenece in their major or career? Eportfolios needs to go beyond simply showcasing more of one's interests: They need to improve competence, if only in reflection.

Smackdown learning

Although not related to ESL or technology, Kathy Sierra (via Learning Circuits) discusses the smackdown learning model, presenting different perspectives that forces students to make a choice.

New technologies and software

Via Educational Weblogs, here are some new technologies:

MediaTuner: a rich media RSS aggregator/player that handles text, podcasts, videocasts, etc. (free)
Blog.mac: a weblog editor designed for the Mac ($29.99)
Free vlog tutorial
mefeedia: an aggregator for videos

From Sudeep Bangal at Brilliant Ignorance (via XplanaZine): a list of essential freeware for PCs

Podcasting potential

For a variety of uses for podcasts, read Marc Fisher's "Podcasting Potential" in The Washington Post. Among the more unusual was the one for obituaries:

The need to have newspaper obituaries read to you via your iPod may not have struck you as an imperative for the new media technology, but audio obits nonetheless await your download at http://blogofdeath.com .

The iPod and God

Michelle Meyers talks about the iPod and God:

A lot of people worship their iPods. Now they have a new way to use their iPods for worship.

That is, iPocketBible lets iPodders read "Holy Bible, New Living Translation," listen to it, or do both.

Awhile back, Duke gave all incoming freshmen an iPod for coursework. They've scaled back since to give them only to those courses in which they'll be used.

One professor (I forget where I read this), who drives more than an hour one way to work, uses the iPod for listening to an audio version of electronic texts, thus saving time away from the office.

The iPod of tomorrow will likely be the computer of today, and after that, perhaps human beings will become integrated with their technology.

Digg: social bookmarking, RSS, blog and more

A new software tool Digg combines elements of social bookmarking, RSS feeds, blogs, and more. From their site (via Ulises Umejias):

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

This seems to combine all the software tools into one. But what's different is that the users decide which articles are the best.

Podcasts: mainstrean and underground

Robert McMillan (Washington Post) writes about the paradox of podcasting.

Podcasting has done what no new technology that I'm aware of has ever accomplished: It's gone mainstream and underground at the same time.

Attribution and credibility

David Pogue often has good comments on technology. In the last week, he has had several excellent articles, two on writing.

"Attribution where attribution is due." One was on checking one's sources. Although he cited his source, that source didn't give appropriate credit, perhaps unintentionally, but still it's technically plagiarism. As Pogue said, "Foolish moi!"

"Choosing words carefully." In this article, Pogue had offended the folks at Apple through his choice of words. Pogue concurred. The ability to say one is wrong is great for one's credibility, and note how well he does it with his concluding paragraph:

"In short, if the column’s opening paragraph left anyone with the impression that I believe Apple is somehow coasting on existing technologies, let me set the record straight. Innovation *is* Apple’s heart and soul. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to name another company whose fresh technology ideas affect so many lives so often."

Increase in malware

Louisa Hearn (in the Sydney Morning Herald via The Blog Herald) reports a large increase in malware targeting computer uses. Moreover, hackers are becoming more innovative by residing on blogs and community sites like wikis.

"Photo albums, scrapbooks, blogs, screensavers and free greeting cards are all becoming potentially dangerous destinations as hackers and cyber criminals take advantage of a lack of security features on many of the hosting sites where they reside."

Disposable PCs

According to a NY TImes article, PC owners are beginning to buy low-end computers rather than take the time to maintain and rid their machines of malware. As Bora Ozturk said, it took him 15 hours to learn how to transfer pictures and music from a paralyzed machine to another one before doing a clean re-install on the hard drive. I recommend buying a Mac.

Technology: some success

Well, after spending four hours yesterday and two today trying unsuccessfully to figure out how to add titles and taglines to my weblog, I decided to go to the academic technology lab for help. Three of them tried to help out even though they had no experience with Tinderbox. One, Kim, who had more experience with web pages after about 30 minutes finally came to attributes, and noticed that we simply needed to type in the name. What is strange is that I had already looked at the attributes window and somehow didn't understand that I could type in the values for title and tagline. That's a lot of hours for such a little piece of information.

The next few hours, I spent figuring out a problem with assigning URLs to my blogroll. For some odd reason, when adding a new site and then the URL, it would overwrite the previous blog, so that they both would have the same URL. I figured out some awkward retyping workarounds and Mark Bernstein suggested using the browser for reassigning the old URLs.

Technology: bane and boon

Technology is both bane and boon. It's great for communicating widely and quickly, but the learning curve is steep and takes time. I spent 6 hours learning to use iBlog, a fairly simple program, and now I'm spending even more learning to use Tinderbox, even with the aid of templates. I have to admit, however, that much of the steepness is due to not reading slowly and carefully. Regardless, isn't learning a major part of the reason I'm a professor: I like to learn--at least if time is available after preparing for classes, looking at students' work and giving them feedback, and attending committee meetings.

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