LESSON DESCRIPTION: Students create a podcast of what they’ve learned.

Radio WillowWeb is a Web site can collect students’ podcasts, and produce them for other students, educators and family members to listen to. Topics for podcasts may be selected by the teacher, but often are a result of student enthusiasm for a unit of study. Teachers follow these steps to create their podcasts:

* Students learn the format of a podcast and plan what content they will include.
* Working in small groups or with the whole class, students develop an outline.
* Students practice reading their scripts to other students.
* Recording takes place outside the classroom; the technology teacher edits the content and publishes it on the school’s Web site.

SUBJECT AREA: Reading and writing are the most obvious curricular connections. Depending on the topic, the podcast can include any other unit the students are studying.

RESOURCES: Students need access to the Web and print materials for research. Willowdale uses digital audio recording software to record and enhance podcasts. The only other necessary equipment is a USB headset microphone. To complete publishing, you need access to a Web server. A podcast requires a Web page and an RSS feed.

These Web sites include reference and tutorial assistance:

* Educational consultant Tony Vincent’s Web site has a download for the planning sheets used for Radio WillowWeb, as well as step-by-step instructions for creating podcasts.
* Educational author Dan Schmit provides general information about podcasting in the classroom.www.

Teaching Tips:

(from Cathy Greenwald, technology specialist at Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Neb.)

* To create PC podcasts, the free software Audacity is recommended for recording. Making the music requires additional software.
* Publicize your podcast by advertising it on your school’s home page. Expand your audience by submitting the Web address of your RSS feed to podcast directories.
* Try to keep the podcast 10 minutes or shorter, especially if your audience is elementary school students.
http://www.edtechmag.com/k12/issues/april-may-2007/lesson-plans-i.html
http://snipurl.com/3ftmo

A free exchange of ideas is important. At the same time, words or access to some information can be of harm to others, intentionally or unintentionally. As a commenter, I therefore aspire to participate responsibly in the great online conversation by:

* treating all bloggers with respect.

* seeking first to understand what is being said.

* celebrating another’s accomplishments.

* using school appropriate language.

* rephrasing ideas in the blog that made me think, made me feel, or helped me learn to let the blogger know his/her voice has been heard.

* commenting specifically and positively, without criticism. If I disagree, I will comment appropriately, politely stating my perspective.

* being mindful always that I may be a role model to my audience, especially if they are younger than I.

* making no reference to, link to, and/or giving access to any information that may be inappropriate for a school setting.

* asking at least one question in my comment with the hopes of continuing a conversation and deepening thinking.

* using a triple check before submitting any comment: Would I be happy to have my mother read this comment? My grandmother? My favorite teacher?

Step Two: Introduce the Project
Take several classes to introduce this project. Start with an adaptation of Anne Davis’ fantastic WebQuest: Blogging: It’s Elementary!

Lesson One
Read the ABC’s of Blogging blook in small groups or partners.Have each student pick a favorite letter and read only that page and then come together to discuss what everyone has learned. Then, create a class Inspiration mind map of the big ideas learned from the Blook – later, this will be posted on the class blog for commenting by students and parents.

Lesson Two
Take a look at some student blogs; start with the selection listed on the WebQuest. The focus will be figuring out the different parts of a blog – what are the pieces that make up a good blog (titles, posts, comments, date of entry, links, calendar, etc). Make sure students understand how to navigate a blog so that they can find their way around the partner class blogs when they’re ready.

Lesson Three
Discuss online safety and appropriate behavior. Use the Think Before You Post video. The first time around pause the video every few seconds to make sure the students understand what’s happening – there’s a lot going on in this video! Watch it a few times with pauses and a few times all the way through. This will lead to a discussion about what is safe to put online and a class guidelines for online safety – which should be posted on the class blog.

Next discuss appropriate behaviors online.Talk a little bit about cyber-bullying (video on cyber-bulling) so that the students understand that behavior expectations online are exactly the same as behavior expectations in class with the teacher present. Discuss how, when and where to share our feelings. Everything  discussed can be added to the Inspiration map at the end of the lesson.

Lesson Four
One more introductory lesson:experiment with learnerblogs by learning about the basics of posting (basic formatting, inserting images and links), the category function, and how to find their partner blogs. There will also be one teacher-written post for the entire class to comment on for the first step (this could be the post with the Inspiration map and class guidelines for online safety).

Step Three: Begin and Maintain a Routine
Once the introductory steps all mapped out – the students understand what’s happening, the teacher is comfortable with the technology tools, and the parents are all on board -  begin to blog regularly as part of the normal classroom routine. Making time once a week to read a partner class blog and leave comments is a great way to connect with other students on issues and ideas that they can relate to.

Step Four: Build
After a few months of writing, students should be ready to add in more exciting elements. Perhaps start some podcasting or some VoiceThread that the kids can share. This project can grow into something bigger over time. At the very least, it becomes an integral part of school-home communication and that parents, students and teachers see the value in this ongoing conversation about learning.

Here is a comprehensive interactive tutorial on blogging by and for kids. It is the creation of 5th graders!  Below is the instructor’s explanation of this ambitious project and tremendous learning tool. A critical understanding for me is that kids need to be explicitly taught how to use blogs responsibly.

Introduction
This book was written by a group of fifth grade students from J. H. House Elementary school in Conyers, Georgia. I have worked with this group on a weblog project combining a group of ESL students and their native English-speaking classmates. Students developed their abilities as speakers, listeners, readers, writers, and thinkers using weblogs to write about topics of interest to them. You can view the class weblog at http://anvil.gsu.edu/wrinkles.

This book is a way for us to celebrate our learning journey. Students brainstormed words that came to their minds about blogging. Then they added idioms to the list. We had so much fun incorporating them into our writings on our weblogs.  See our “Idioms Are Fun” weblog located at http://anned.tblog.com.

I’d like to explain how we came up with the title “Our ABC Blook on Blogging.” One day as everyone was working diligently on our ABC Weblog book, Derrick came up with a great new word. The word is blook. He said we were making an ABC book on blogs so the name should be blook!  We all agreed and hence, the creative title.

Anne Davis
Instructional Technology Specialist
Instructional Technology Center
Georgia State University
adavis@gsu.edu

Make Your Own Web Site
Want to make a class website?  This one is easy and free:
doodlekit

Alternatives to Microsoft Office
Microsoft is no longer a necessity these days, and this is particularly important for our kids, many of whom won’t have copies of Office to work with at home.  Here are two online versions of office that permit students to work collaboratively on office-type documents:

- Zoho

- GoogleDocs

And here is the “open source” version of MS Office, free for downloading.  It’s actually quite good!
OpenScource

Web Quests
A web quest consists of a well-defined task, steps to accomplish that task, links for research, and a grading rubric, all so that students can work independently/collaboratively on a project that, according to Bernie Dodge, the inventor of web quests “requires higher level thinking, not simply summarizing… including synthesis, analysis, problem-solving, creativity and judgment.”  There are thousands of excellent webquests online in all subject areas.  Many of them, however, need to be adapted to be on target for any given class.  Using one of the free web sites is a great way to set up a web quest. The mother of all web quest databases includes subject and grade level searching, and if that fails, google search– all on the same page.

San Diego City Schools has compiled a list of good web quests

zwebquest is both a library of existing web quests and a free, downloadable tool for making your own.

Online Video
YouTube for Teachers – you can make your own videos and upload them, or just take advantage of other teachers’ work.  Safe place for students!

Hundreds of documentaries free for viewing online or embeding in your web site.  Small downside: there are commercials dropped in randomly (not many, but they’re placed suddenly and nonsensically).

Mind Mapping (think Inspiration)

Game Templates
Every game show imaginable, for use in your classroom

*These tools are courtesy of another “friend” at pbwiki summer camp

23 Learning 2.0 Things

Week 1: Introduction
1. Read this blog & find out about the program.
2. Discover a few pointers from lifelong learners and learn how to nurture your own learning process.

Week 2: Blogging
3. Set up your own blog & add your first post.
4. Begin your Learning 2.0 journey!

Week 3: Photos & Images
5. Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site.
6. Have some Flickr fun and discover some Flickr mashups & 3rd party sites.
7. Create a blog post about anything technology related that interests you this week.

Week 4: RSS & Newsreaders
8. Learn about RSS feeds and setup your own Bloglines newsreader account.
9. Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or news feeds.

Week 5: Play Week
10. Play around with an online image generator.
11. Take a look at LibraryThing and catalog some of your favorite books.
12. Roll your own search tool with Rollyo.

Week 6: Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati
13. Learn about tagging and discover a Del.icio.us (a social bookmaking site)
14. Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts.
15. Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries and blog your thoughts.

Week 7: Wikis
16. Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them.
17. Add an entry to the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki.

Week 8: Online Applications & Tools
18. Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.
19. Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it and write a blog post about your findings.

Week 9: Podcasts, Video & Downloadable audio
20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos.
21. Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts.
22. Take a look at the titles available on NetLibrary and learn how to download audiobooks.

23. Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog.

* This list of “things” can also be found on the 43Things website. Note: This project is loosely based upon the website 43Things (which allows you to set and track personal goals) and the Stephen Abram article titled 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook – Feb 2006).

2. Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Wiki

3. Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos

No surprise, this valuable information comes from Larry Ferlazzo!

Larry Ferzlazzo has an amazing blog! He has not only compiled extensive lists of wonderful tools for educators, but he has shared all his information and knowledge. How cool is the internet community

I thought I would put the number-one ranked sites from all thirteen of my Websites Of The Year into one list of their own. Links to each entire list are also included in this post.

Even though this is going to be my last list for this year, I’ve decided to try to prepare similar lists in new categories once each month during 2008. Since I have over 8,000 categorized links (and growing) on my website, I figure regularly reviewing them and their features would be beneficial to my students, other teachers, and me.

These new monthly lists, however, won’t displace another regular feature I post called Websites Of The Month. There, I point out my picks for the “Top Ten” new posts I’ve written during that month. I use that list primarily for the large number of readers who have requested a monthly newsletter instead of daily blog posts.

You can get all these lists, and my daily posts, by subscribing to this blog via email or RSS Reader.

Here, now, are the best of the best for 2007:

Best Web 2.0 Application For Education: Tumblr — This “micro-blogging” site upgraded their service this year. It’s a great place for students to easily post a whole lot of their work. Students can have individual or group “Tumblrs.” A student can also share their password with a small number of students who can leave comments.

The Best Web 2.0 Application For ESL/EFL Learners: VoiceThread — You can upload pictures and create an audio narrative to go along with them. In addition, audio comments can be left by visitors. VoiceThread also provides a great deal to teachers by allowing them to get their premium services for free, including allowing them to create a zillion VoiceThreads for free. Happily, they’ve finally incorporated the feature of allowing you to include images off the web just by inserting its url. It’s that new feature that made me choose VoiceThread as number one.

The Best Online Learning Game: Wordmaster — A great game from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.

Best Internet Site For English Language Learners: Henny Jellema’s Online TPR Exercises — You’ve got to see this site to believe it. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into creating the exercises. However, as he cautions, it’s critical to combine using his online activities with physical TPR lessons.

Best Social Studies Website: Here, there was a tie. One is HippoCampus. It has great (and complete) online and accessible textbooks for many subjects, including History and Government. Their resources include extraordinary multimedia presentations. HippoCampus tied for first place with The Virtual Smithsonian. It’s a fantastic multimedia window into the artifacts, and their stories, held by the Smithsonian Institution.

Best Science Website For Student & Teachers: California Science — It’s from MacMillan/McGraw Hill and has some great online activities. However, what makes this site stand-out (and my ESL/EFL bias is clear here) is that it contains translations in many languages (including Hmong!) of the science concepts taught in the textbooks.

Best Math Site For English Language Learners: It’s actually three sites, all from the extraordinary Learn Alberta organization. The three math sites are Math Under The Sea, Math 5 Live, and Spy Guys Math. Instead of explaining each one, I’m going to suggest that they’re definitely worth the time to just go and check out.

Best News/Current Events Site For English Language Learners: BBC Learning English – It was a tough choice between this and the Voice of America, but the BBC won out because its design is much more attractive and has images.

Best Article About Education: I’m ranking Richard Rothstein’s great article in the latest issue of The American Prospect as number one. It’s called Leaving “No Child Left Behind” Behind. The title says it all.

Information On Countries & States: A tie between Fact Monster & Infoplease.

More Best of the Best For 2008

Best Writing Website For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcement: BBC Bitesize Revision for Writing — Admittedly, it’s geared towards a younger audience (and perfect for English Language Learners), but their multiple activities are just great and deserve to be in first place.

The Best Website For Intermediate Readers: Into The Book — This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies — visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years it had only been partially completed. In the course of examining sites for inclusion in this list, though, I found that all its exercises were finished. Users are led through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.