collaboration for an exhibition
Collaborative Technologies Support Exhibition
Collaborative technologies can help develop, support, and encourage the kind of learning we are looking for during the PYP Exhibition. The list below discusses the collaborative technologies we use at IST and how they might improve teaching and learning.
NING
We have two Ning networks to support our teaching and learning. The first one, http://istgrade5.ning.com/ (password protected) works as a our class space for all things related to teaching and learning. You will find a wide variety of information there ranging from personal favorites of pop music videos to reflections on academic progress. Other students and teachers from different parts of the world have joined us. At times, we collaborate on novel studies. Sometimes we just share funny videos with each other.
The second one is this Ning and it is specific to our Exhibition experience. We keep information shared here limited to Exhibition experiences. We hope, at least I do, that this network provides us, with a variety of perspectives and resources related to creating an Exhibition experience. I see it as a place for teachers, students, and parents to collaborate. So far, it only seems appealing to teachers.
FLICKR
We document our process each day with photos and videos. To store and share the photos, we use Flickr. The organization features in Flickr, sets and collections, allow us to tell our story as it unfolds. We create a set for each week of our exhibition. Each set contains our current inquiry into statement, inquiry question, and the pics highlighting teaching and learning in action. Comments are open and welcome, but the photos rarely get any attention. I believe I need to do a better job at promoting our Flickr page. Currently, we only have last year's Exhibition posted. We're working on getting this years pics up next week. We'll have five weeks worth of photos to share.
YOUTUBE
We use YouTube to store and share our videos. Like Flickr, it allows us to organize and share our documentation of our process. We use playlists and videos tagged as favorites to highlight our current focus. You can see and comment on our videos at http://www.youtube.com/istexhibition.
VOICETHREAD
Capable of supporting 15 types of media and exporting, VoiceThread comes in this year as my favorite collaborative technology. I purchased an ed.voicethread account when they came out about a month ago. It allows me to create a class (a safe and secure environment to share work), add students to it, and create a classroom portfolio that highlights our Exhibition experience. I haven't unleashed all of its power yet, but I suspect it will soon become my number one tool for collaboration and reflection.
USTREAM.TV
Another newcomer, ustream.tv has a lot of potential that I have yet to take full advantage of. I created a channel, ISTX 08, to broadcast our various Exhibition experiences live. I can also record each broadcast. I'm learning this on the fly, but it has been very easy to use. However, I have yet to get any viewers other than our school librarian. Again, I think better promotion of events like these will build better collaboration. I'm just not ready for that yet with ustream.tv.
DEL.ICIO.US
To find, store, and share our online bookmarks we turn to del.icio.us. Not only does del.icio.us allow us to store all of our bookmarks gathered by people throughout our school community, not just our class, online in one place but it gives us tags to organize them. We try to take full advantage of del.icio.us tags. For example, during our research for this current Exhibition we created a common tag and subscribed to it. The tag is istx08. We agreed to tag all of our bookmarks with istx08 as well as other logical tags. All bookmarks tagged with istx08 come to our tag subscription in our del.icio.us account. In fact, anyone in the world who tags a bookmark with istx08 is in effect sharing that bookmark with us. So, friends and family members in other parts of the world who are tuned in to what we are researching can contribute to our research and knowledge building simply by tagging their bookmarks with istx08. Powerful.
I introduced these technologies as ones that might improve teaching and learning. I believe that in the right environment, collaborative technologies will improve teaching and learning. How often do we get all the right pieces in place - pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and technological knowledge? I often find we're struggling to teach effectively with these tools and it's not enough to say the kids will do fine, just give them access to the technology. Well, they are remarkable at manipulating technology. However, students need teachers to work with them to make sense of the information they are consuming and contributing. And that's the challenge I face most often - building information literacy fortoday's tomorrow's world. Can I meet that challenge without collaborative technologies? Probably. Once I had a tooth drilled without novacaine.
NING
We have two Ning networks to support our teaching and learning. The first one, http://istgrade5.ning.com/ (password protected) works as a our class space for all things related to teaching and learning. You will find a wide variety of information there ranging from personal favorites of pop music videos to reflections on academic progress. Other students and teachers from different parts of the world have joined us. At times, we collaborate on novel studies. Sometimes we just share funny videos with each other.
The second one is this Ning and it is specific to our Exhibition experience. We keep information shared here limited to Exhibition experiences. We hope, at least I do, that this network provides us, with a variety of perspectives and resources related to creating an Exhibition experience. I see it as a place for teachers, students, and parents to collaborate. So far, it only seems appealing to teachers.
FLICKR
We document our process each day with photos and videos. To store and share the photos, we use Flickr. The organization features in Flickr, sets and collections, allow us to tell our story as it unfolds. We create a set for each week of our exhibition. Each set contains our current inquiry into statement, inquiry question, and the pics highlighting teaching and learning in action. Comments are open and welcome, but the photos rarely get any attention. I believe I need to do a better job at promoting our Flickr page. Currently, we only have last year's Exhibition posted. We're working on getting this years pics up next week. We'll have five weeks worth of photos to share.
YOUTUBE
We use YouTube to store and share our videos. Like Flickr, it allows us to organize and share our documentation of our process. We use playlists and videos tagged as favorites to highlight our current focus. You can see and comment on our videos at http://www.youtube.com/istexhibition.
VOICETHREAD
Capable of supporting 15 types of media and exporting, VoiceThread comes in this year as my favorite collaborative technology. I purchased an ed.voicethread account when they came out about a month ago. It allows me to create a class (a safe and secure environment to share work), add students to it, and create a classroom portfolio that highlights our Exhibition experience. I haven't unleashed all of its power yet, but I suspect it will soon become my number one tool for collaboration and reflection.
USTREAM.TV
Another newcomer, ustream.tv has a lot of potential that I have yet to take full advantage of. I created a channel, ISTX 08, to broadcast our various Exhibition experiences live. I can also record each broadcast. I'm learning this on the fly, but it has been very easy to use. However, I have yet to get any viewers other than our school librarian. Again, I think better promotion of events like these will build better collaboration. I'm just not ready for that yet with ustream.tv.
DEL.ICIO.US
To find, store, and share our online bookmarks we turn to del.icio.us. Not only does del.icio.us allow us to store all of our bookmarks gathered by people throughout our school community, not just our class, online in one place but it gives us tags to organize them. We try to take full advantage of del.icio.us tags. For example, during our research for this current Exhibition we created a common tag and subscribed to it. The tag is istx08. We agreed to tag all of our bookmarks with istx08 as well as other logical tags. All bookmarks tagged with istx08 come to our tag subscription in our del.icio.us account. In fact, anyone in the world who tags a bookmark with istx08 is in effect sharing that bookmark with us. So, friends and family members in other parts of the world who are tuned in to what we are researching can contribute to our research and knowledge building simply by tagging their bookmarks with istx08. Powerful.
I introduced these technologies as ones that might improve teaching and learning. I believe that in the right environment, collaborative technologies will improve teaching and learning. How often do we get all the right pieces in place - pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and technological knowledge? I often find we're struggling to teach effectively with these tools and it's not enough to say the kids will do fine, just give them access to the technology. Well, they are remarkable at manipulating technology. However, students need teachers to work with them to make sense of the information they are consuming and contributing. And that's the challenge I face most often - building information literacy for
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