Teacher Bytes

What a start, late to class on the first day and then I had to hunt the students down. Finally found them in the media center instead where they were supposed to be. However, when I got everyone in the right location, which is one of our new classrooms equipped with a Smart Board, Things got rolling. After the usual “this is what we are going to do and this is how you are going to act and this is what you will need” speech I used Voice Thread to get the students used to the idea to putting themselves on the internet. They really enjoyed the activity. The only major glitch was the video I recorded from the Smart Board did not save properly. I am amazed at how well a Bluetooth headset works though (tests and today’s lecture). The lectures will be posted on a wiki site I created for the course.

Today was a different story. The topic was Media Responsibility where we discussed freedom of the press, objectivity, bias, and why these things are important. This lecture ran longer than I hoped by about 10 minutes. Then came the moment of truth where the students realized I was not kidding about them doing videos. The activity of the day was screen tests. I set up my Flip camcorder and had each student come up and answer a few questions while looking directly into the camera. All those brave future TV & movie stars now started getting stage fright. It will be funny showing these videos at the end of the course after all the students gain experience.

Tomorrow we set up our blogs.

For the past year and a half I have been using a rival blog service for the Teacher Bytes Blog. No real reason I chose one over another, it just happened that way. Starting Tuesday, I will start teaching a course called Web 2.0 Media Communications or maybe Web 2.0 Communications. This marks the first time in about a year and a half I will be in the classroom with my own set of students. The 11 students who currently make up the class roster are all 6th graders. For someone who taught Social Studies to 9-12 students, this thought of teaching 6th grade is a little daunting.

The course will have two main objectives. First, the principal wants to see student created school news projects. So you should start seeing blog posts, a podcast, uStream live webcast, and You Tube show under the Bulldog Barks moniker. As soon as these activities are finalized then I will share the links with you. The other objective is I would like to see if students who use Web 2.0 tools in their regular classes actually have better achievement. Students will be required to use what learn about creating blogs, online videos, and podcasts in assignments from their Math, Science, Language Arts, Reading, and Social Studies teachers. At the end of the course I plan to view various test data, grades from 1st semester to 2nd semester, and teacher interviews to see if achievement and the quality of work goes up because students will be posting their work online.

The blogging tool I have selected to use is Edublogs for the school’s news blog and Learnerblogs for the student blogs. Each student will be required to blog about class activities at least once a week and after class lectures and discussions. Since I have selected Edublogs for the class activities, maybe it is time I use Edublogs for my main blog as well, just to keep everything together. It will be a busy semester coming up but if all works well, it should be a fun one too.