Instant Messaging, Chat, EyeJot, YackPack, Skype, etc (Week 4)

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Teachers from the Trenches: How do you use these tools and what do you think about them being used in the classroom?

TECS 390 Students: Now that you have explored these, what do you think? Assignment details included in week 4 of Moodle.

Here is a discussion I just found on the topic, go here to read the discussions: http://classroom20.ning.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=telephony

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

learning is not defined by four walls and a bell.

I wish more teachers and administrators thought that!!!

[Mathew Needleman]

iChat/AIM is amazing for bringing in special guests who may not be able to come in person to school for an hour. They can show up virtually for five minutes right from where they are.

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

I agree, it is just amazing. I actually give my class my AIM/iChat screen name, but unfortunately few take advantage of it. If they would just realize the power. Guess that is why I added this unit to my class!!! Hopefully they will discover the power!!!

[Betty J Mick]

Hey, I'm in the class, and I've just been waiting for a time when I'm online and you're online to figure out how to ping someone. Alas, with all my late-night and otherwise weird hours lately, I've not caught you online yet. Cool tool, though! I'm anxious to practice with it....

[Ginger Lewman]

Oh my gosh! We couldn't live without our chat or our Skype! I think it's so important for students to learn how to most appropriately use these at an early age. I find that our chat/IM is just how we breathe and communicate:
It's a great way to
privately talk to kids about a quick, sensitive subject w/o embarassing them.
allow students to ask questions to the teacher during work time, not disrupting others.
allow us to send links, pics, documents, passages, etc back/forth to one another with ease. Amazing sharing tool.
allow us to connect with students gone on vacation, at home sick or whatever. Just because you're not at school doesn't excuse you from participating in the work that your group is depending on you for!

Skype is great for connecting to other schools, teachers, individuals across distance and time zones. We can connect with face, voice, text, and it's nearly like being in the same room with the others...so much more connected than email, wikis, phone calls, etc.

Oh, and why would we connect with other schools? We plan to outsource some field trips this year, where students in another part of the globe are "hired" to take a field trip for us and in turn, we can offer them something. It's an amazing way to experience so much more learning on a truly realistic basis! :) I've already got 4 schools ready to go, thank you very much Classroom 2.0! (Selma AL --civil rights, Australia--Mandarin Chinese lessons, Connecticut -- for fun, and Long Island -- a reason yet to be determined)

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Wow, would love to go on one of those "oursource trips" with your class. You students are lucky. I hope more teachers take your lead.

[aconnolly]

That would be so fun and interesting for students to see. Many students will never get to see anything outside of the U.S or maybe outside their state. That is a great idea! I may have to use it when I am a teacher! :)

[Christine Southard]

Skype has been a great tool that I've used to connect with other teachers across the globe, like Durff and Ginger, as part of my personal tech development. This school year, my co-teacher and I are hoping to use skype in the classroom with our 5th grade students. We're collaborating with other classes around the country on similar projects. I would love to hear more about the other applications you mentioned and how I could use those them with my students. Voicethread is an application I'm going to be using with my students in reading groups during the first month of school.

[Ginger Lewman]

Christine--I'm so glad you mentioned Voice Thread! I tried to have my students use it this year, but the audio wasn't working for all of them. However, it did work for one pair. The kids were talking about the functions and structures of the systems in human anatomy and created a super-cool, but protected thread. I'm going to see if they'll open it up for me, since they were really smart and didn't use their real names or our school or anything.

Voice Thread is a WAY cooler application than just a powerpoint or keynote! The students like being able to hear/create the audio and comment on others' work!

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Another friend, just share Voicethread with me recently, and this class will be using it to do a project shortly. Of course, just working on the details of that now. But what a cool tool. And again FREE!!!!

Here is the sample project she shared with me, Operation Wind Gilder
http://voicethread.com/view.php?b=6701

Do you have any projects you could share. I would love to give them some REAL examples before I ask them to make their own.

This is such a powerful tool, I am always amazed with the FREE things out there to use.

The content of this course is changing constantly, there always seems to be something new to explore and learn, so I have to let go of something or condense it to add in something new. I know classroom teachers feel the same way.

[Christine Southard]

I created a Voicethread that I embedded into our class wiki for the novel, Sign of the Beaver. The audio was a challenge on some of our new Vista operating systems when students tried recording, but we adapted by allowing some students to type instead. This resulted in a combination of audio and typed responses. For safety, we also had students create self-portraits, which we scanned and used as their voicethread identities.

Follow this link to the wiki:
https://signofthebeaver.wikispaces.com/

*The voicethread is embedded on the Book Predictions page.

[ddeubel]

I've used Yackpack with limited success. People get all excited and it takes a lot of teacher stimulation and consistent giving of directives/assignments to make it work.

Educationally, I try to stay away from the chat. Though the technology is fine, it has to have educational outcomes and it just is too easy for that not to happen. Too hard to have any educational oversight.

I have used successfully skype with a full class and we spoke to an author (actually not the author but a person from the book - Hana's suitcase). Worked flawlessly.

I really like www.voicethread.com Why? It is contained chat. Students contribute using voice technology but they have a focus, a core to work around. Very educationally directed and it can be so much fun. I've followed it as it has grown and I'm disappointed at how it hasn't just taken off.....why? I don't know...

I do know that the Yackpack walkie talkie works great and I use it quite often on my own site....

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com