Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
BP7_2010317_Web2.0_VoiceThread
The Web 2.0 tool I'll talk about for this post is Voice Thread. Voice Thread is an asynchronous communication tool. One person, the creator, creates a group and posts some type of media - image, document, movie, whatever. Then, anyone invited to the group can post their comments and feedback. What is unique about Voice Thread is that comments can be in text, audio or video. You can even phone in your comment. This feature works great for those who don't want to just leave a text message, but don't have the means to leave an audio or video comment. Voice Thread also allows users to "draw" while commenting. By this I mean if the creator of the group posted an image or video, you can enhance your comment by drawing on the media to get your message across more clearly. The drawing does not stay on the media permanently; rather it exists only during your comment.
Voice Thread can be used for people to comment on an image, video, document, presentation or any collection of those. I said previously that Voice Thread is asynchronous, which it is, but more accurately I should say that you cannot chat live. It isn't really meant for live discussions anyway. Voice Thread is meant more as a tool to create dynamic comments.
Voice Thread can be a beneficial (and fun!) tool for education, specifically for assessment purposes. For example, in a graphic design class, a student completes a rough draft of their assignment and posts the assignment (an image) on Voice Thread. The teacher can then go into Voice Thread, provide video or audio feedback and draw on the assignment to point out what they are talking about. Because this type of feedback has the potential of being both auditory and visual, I think students would have fun and benefit from it. Plus, in the process they might find inspiration for new uses of Voice Thread along the way.
Monday, March 15, 2010
BP6_2010315_OneMinuteMessage
One Minute Message: an Animoto Promotional
I didn't realize Animoto would fade my voice out like it did at the end, but it did
and the fade cuts out a few words. I paid for this video to be over 30 seconds long so
I couldn't go back and fix it!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
BP4_2010314_DiscoveryWeb2.0Tools_Edmodo
In a world where social media technology is growing rapidly, it is important for educators to embrace this technology so it benefits education as opposed to becoming an enemy of education. An effective social/collaboration Web 2.o tool for this purpose is Edmodo. Edmodo is mix between blogging and twitter with an educational slant. An educator creates a teacher account and sets up a “group” which essentially acts as the classroom. Posting in the classroom is much like posting on twitter, but instead of short bursts of text, you can write up long messages, embed videos, add polls, files, etc (hence why Edmodo is also like blogging). I personally liked the filtering options that Edmodo provides. In any size class working in Edmodo, posts will start to add up fast. What Edmodo allows you to do is a nondestructive filtering of posts based on a subject like just polls or just videos, etc. Filtering allows the user to more quickly find a specific post in jumbled mess of posts.
While you wouldn’t hold a full class on Edmodo, Edmodo does work as a classroom out side the classroom. The teacher can post assignments, reference materials and any additional comments to facilitate projects and class lessons. Students can provide feedback, ask questions and post any material they might have researched that they want to share and discuss. A possibly underrated benefit to Edmodo is the relative safety of the site. School administrators and parents might be more at ease allowing students to socialize and work on Edmodo (because it is controlled by the teacher only) as opposed to trying to set up a classroom in Facebook or other social site. Teachers can also post YouTube videos to Edmodo without having to send students to YouTube or worry about them reading potentially derogatory video replies.
Like Twitter, Edmodo is fairly minimalistic with a small learning curve. It shouldn’t be too “scary” for teachers hesitant about technology. With students already into the world of social media, they should enjoy Edmodo and pick up on it quick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
