Audacity is a free and easy to use audio recorder and editor. Using Audacity, students can create podcasts based upon readings. Teachers are able to give directions for the podcasts that are based on the various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For example, they can be placed in small groups and create a digital story. The teacher can ask them to make predictions, vary the ending of the story and even explain the ramifications of the various endings.
Edmodo allows a teacher to create an online classroom community. For example, in the area of reading, the students can read a passage or chaper book write their reflections and discuss it online. The teacher can give prompts for further analytical reflecitions which the student can discuss among eachother. There is a multitude of activities for which this can be used. It also can be used in any subject area. The teacher has complete control over it.
This is an interactive website which teaches children parts of speech.They are given sentences and parts of speech and they match the two. If they are correct, it is celebrated and they get a new sentence.
I listened to two principals who have a series of podcasts. Scott Elias and Melinda Miller have never met but they have developed multiple podcasts together. Milinda is an elementary principal and Scott is an assistant principal. In the podcast that I listened to, they reviewed twenty two different technology tools that they use and like. They mentioned Twitter, Skype, Video and Audio Chat and their favorite is the IPhone.
The description of the multiple uses of Skype was new to me.
This enables a teacher to be able to share blog ideas with other teachers that have the same interests in education. RSS makes it easy to follow other teachers when they come up with new ideas. It could increase a teacher’s knowledge of a topic easily, quickly and exponentially. I subscribed to Bloglines.