Digital Media Class #3

This week we talked more about wiki's. At first, I was thinking that wiki's are not really useful to me. Then I did a search of some and found some really good ideas out there that could work. I just would need to find the time to build and maintain one. That is my biggest concern with a wiki. I would also need to teach the kids many lessons on how to use it, which is not a bad thing because it is teaching them a life skill, but as a third grade teacher, I am under a lot of pressure to teach reading and math for so many minutes a day. I could use the wiki for reading and math and that would count towards the minutes. I would also like to take a look into wikibooks and see how that would appl to my curriculum.

Digital Media Class #2

This week we met online in Elluminate. I really liked this method of meeting because you were not just sitting there listening to the instructor. It gave you the opportunity to turn your mic on and off to participate in class. I also like the features like raising your hand, applause, and the check mark. Those are great ways to communicate without having to type a response. It was cool how you could also draw on the board. It will take a little getting used to, but I found it very easy to use.

We also talked about blogs and wikis. There were some interesting articles that we discussed about the use of both in education. We also watch some Plain english videos about both. I LOVE this series of videos. I use on with my third graders on how to elect a US president. I am still up in the air about using a blog for m students, but could potentially see using a wiki. We will see what I come up with!!

Digital Media Class #1

This week, besides the whole getting to know the class stuff, we explored blogs. There were some nice search tools to help us to find blogs that may be interesting to us as well as looking at different weblog sits that could be useful to us in class. I find that most of the time, I think that there is not much that I can do with third graders and some of this technology, but once I research and look at different ideas and examples, I always seem to come up with at least one thing that I could use. I have to remember, I don't always have to be thinking about just the kids in my class. A great way that I could use a blog would be to use it as a resource of other teachers in the building. I feel like I am learning so much through the program and learning about so many resources that a blog would be a great way to communicate with other teachers not only in my grade level, but across grade levels and throughout the district. I always seem to have people asking for advice and a blog would be a great resource to refer them to.