kateinnovation

Today’s presentation showed me that there are a number of creative technologies out on the internet for students to use.  We first looked at Kerpoof, which is an internet site that students can join for free and create their own stories.  Students can select from a variety of different background and items for their stories.  This site seemed relatively easy to use and students can save, print and edit their work. 

The second site we explored was Piki Kids.  This site allows you to design and create your own comics.  Students can download photos and add entertaining captions.  Again this site is very easy to use and students have the choice of making their comics either private or public.  The main downfall of this site is it contains a number of adverts along the top of the page.  A lot of the time these adverts aren’t appropriate for young children. 

The final site we learnt about today was called Fotoll.  Which is a website designed for creating a viewing polls.  Students can create their own polls comparing two different subjects, view votes and also comments that others made on their poll.  The problems with this site are that it doesn’t offer any safety options for students and all polls are public.  

Where do I start with Google Earth?  Google earth offers maps and satellite images of places all over the world.  There are so many interesting and useful features of this software.  I have used the direction feature a number of times to find where I am going. I had no idea about the switch between sky and earth feature, allowing you to not only look at the earth but also at the solar system.  The great thing about this innovation is it isn’t as pricey as some of the others, allowing more schools to gain access to this software. 

Google Earth is like an interactive, online atlas and can be used in the class to cover a variety of different learning areas.  Students could use their math’s skills to work out how far away one place is from another, or study different parts of the world in Society & Environment.  I can’t see any downfalls to this innovation yet and I agree that Google Earth is definitely more then just looking at your house from the moon.  

There is a whole range of search engines out there to help us find the information we are looking for.  So why is it that I have always just used Google? Am I too lazy to try other search engines or do I not know where to find them?  I’d have to say a combination of both.  Most of the time you just need someone to help steer you in the right direction and this is what the presenters did during this lesson.  I now know that Google was launched in 1998, so I must have been using a different search engine before then. 

There is a range of great search engines targeted at school aged children.  We looked at Kidzui, which is like the internet for kids.  Kidzui holds a number of websites, videos and pictures that have been approved for children to view.  Parents also get regular emails outlining the sites that their children have visited on the internet.  Another great site would be Zoeybot, which is like Wikipedia for kids.  Zoeybot offers some useful information as well as interesting features for kids.  However, I think children may become a little distracted with the chat feature.  From the list of web innovations I can see that the internet holds many possibilities in the classroom. 

To engage a class of students over the age of 17 by simply giving them a clicker each is very promising so imagine how this would help engage a class of primary school children.  Today’s presentation covered yet another innovation that I had never seen in action let alone heard of.  However, I am now very interested in this innovation and would really like to test it out myself in a primary classroom.  Today we mainly learnt about the software TurningPoint, which is a simple toolbar add-in for PowerPoint that can be used to display questions and collect clicker results from individual students. 

The great part about using clickers in the classroom is that they are very easy to use and you get immediate feedback.  Also they are great for students who wouldn’t normally voice their opinion in class, clickers help these students stay involved in class discussions.   The main downfalls of clickers is the price, they are quite expensive.  Teachers could also start to over-rely on them for their lessons.  Clickers seem like a very engaging way to conduct class quizzes and voting.  

Sharing photos online sounds a little risky, I mean who really wants people they don’t know to view and comment on their pictures?  However, thanks to the presentation today we learnt that this was not the case.  Uploading your photos to sites such as flickr and photo bucket insures that your photos are backed up.  Meaning if something happens to your computer and you loose all your photos then they are still keep safely on the internet for you.  Also privacy doesn’t seem to be an issue as you can set your photos to be private meaning only you can view them.  You can also allow certain people to view your photos and if you really want can make them public to anyone. 

I agree with what Justin mentioned in his presentation about how the teacher would use online photo sharing more then students.  I also think this would be great for putting up class photos from camps or excursions that the students can then show their parents at home.  It is also helpful in creating slideshows for presentations.  

Who would have thought that something originally created for music can now do so much more.  iPods, a popular brand of portable media players, have literally taken over the music world.  Over time they have evolved from the simple small capacity iPods to advanced touch screen devices that can contain not only music files but also videos and photos.  

Although I knew iPods were capable of this, I never would have thought they could be used as a teaching tool in the classroom.  This presentation has opened my eyes to a variety of simple ways these devices can be incorporated into the classroom.  As they are small and portable it makes using and storing them quite easy.  During this presentation we learnt how to make a simple quiz on Quizzler, which can be sent to your iPod for students to complete.  This was very easy to do and would make quizzes that little bit more engaging for students.  One of the downfalls of using iPods in the classroom would be the cost.  Individually iPods are fairly expensive so buying a class set would immediately rule some schools out.  Like most technologies they are continually changing and improving so schools would also need too keep updating their devices.    For schools that can afford this they seem like a worthwhile investment.  

Learning about podcasts was interesting for me, as I hardly know anything about this innovation.  I’ve definitely heard about podcasts but have never used them before.  I now know that a podcast is an audio or video file, which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers.  Podcasts are distinguished by their ability to be subscribed to and automatically download new content when available. 

Using Garage Band to record and create podcasts was an interesting and engaging part of the presentation, I can see how students would find this fun.  Podcasts would definitely help students improve their vocabulary and speaking skills if they are creating their own podcasts.  I feel that students would enjoy this new innovation and it could be used in place of traditional class talks and students can listen to a podcast a number of times.  However, I still think cost is an issue, as schools would need to provide software and portable devices.  

Sarah and I presented our innovation topic of SMART Boards this week.  I felt that our presentation went well and the majority of this ran smoothly apart from our video.  This would have been fine if we had downloaded this before the presentation, but you always need something to improve on.

We both had very little knowledge of this topic before the presentation and during our research discovered some wonderful features that can be used to create interactive lessons.  Even though we had both encountered a SMART Board during our field experience earlier in the year we both avoided this during our lesson planning, as we really didn’t know how to use one.  If I get a chance at my next field placement I will definitely incorporate this into my lessons.  SMART Boards are a great asset to every classroom. 

From this presentation I can see how useful Google Docs can be for a class.  However, as the two presenters explained there are still many downfalls to using this innovation and they both agreed that they would not incorporate this into a classroom until many of the problems had been corrected.  For example privacy is an issue and restricted formatting could cause problems.  

However, I can see how this innovation could have great potential in a classroom as it allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with others.  Which is a great idea as students can not always work together at the same place.  Overall I thought that this was still a great presentation but I’m sure many teachers will not use this innovation until it has improved.      

This week’s presentation covered the topics of Facebook and Myspace and this was one of the first innovations that I felt I actually knew something about.  I was a little surprised when I heard that this was one of the topics, as I didn’t feel that these innovations could be used in a classroom, especially with the lower primary grades. However, I can see the advantages of using these sites as a replacement for emailing pen pals or other schools around the world.  I still believe that they would work best with Upper Primary and High School students and teachers would need to monitor the students closely throughout these sessions. 

It was quite shocking to hear about the security and privacy on these sites as like many other people I completely by passed these when signing up.  As a teacher I feel that a lot of research would need to go into these innovations if they were thinking of incorporating them into their curriculum.  For example, how other schools are using social networking sites for educational benefits and how to protect the privacy of their students.