Friday, February 12, 2010

Reflection 2

I am using a blog and wiki in the library to share information on library news/events, research help, book reviews, etc. It provides an great format for promoting the library and the resources we have to offer making book recommendation and reference services available 24/7. I have create research guides, tutorials, and book suggestion to provide virtual reference services to students and teachers. The blog is a space for discussing and sharing books. Students can respond to polls, read reviews to find a good book, and even share whether or not they liked a book. I am hoping to expand the blog to allow students to post book reviews as well.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

WIKIs in the Classroom

I have used WIKIs in a varied of applications in school including collaborating with colleagues, schedule library lab usage, and displaying student work.

WIKIs could easily enhance group projects that we are already doing in our classroom. They would allow some of the group work to be done outside of class without all students having the same schedule.

WIKIs are easy to edit and embedd material to share document, powerpoint presentations, images etc. that are part of instruction or a product of student work.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Video Sharing Website Review

Videos are an excellent tool that can be used to introduce a topic reaching audio-visual learners or to engage student in a topic (creating a video) reaching kinesthetic learners.

Teacher Tube is a valuable resource in many school districts where You Tube is blocked. It has benefits such as filtered content so you can ensure that all of the videos will be school appropriate. Teacher Tube include videos from the web as well as teacher/student created videos. Teachers can create channels for their school or classroom to make lessons accessible from school and home, as well as share student work with stakeholders (administrators, parents, community members).

School Tube is a place to upload and share original videos created by students and teachers. This is a great tool for publishing students work and showing exemplars. The ability to browse by category makes it easier to find videos since other users may not have used the same vocabulary as you

YouTube offers a greater variety of videos but is blocked in many educational settings to both teachers and students or to students. This requires teachers to closely review materials to ensure they are appropriate before sharing them with students. The massive quantity of videos also makes it difficult to find relevent and useful videos for instruction. Youtube also allows teachers to upload and share lectures/student work. YouTube EDU allows you to find more educational quality instructional videos.

Next Vista for Learning does a great job in dividing videos into a catagory based on how a teacher would use the video; introduction of a topic, global views, and service learning. The site also allows you to browse by topic (subject area) or search by keyword. The videos on this site are also created by students and teachers.

Watch Know is an awesome site for educational videos because it is organized by subject and age level. The site pull free educational videos from YouTube, TeacherTube, Google Video, National Geographic, eHow, etc. and catagorizes them by subject and age appropriateness. This site is great because it compiles videos from all of the sources above plus others and sorts them based on out divisions in education (subject/grade) the videos would be great for introducing/reinforcing topics.