today marks exactly our 5 months in shanghai, and it’s snowing quite heavily outside where we are. there isnt any snowing last year so guessed we are quite lucky (in the good n bad sense).
a few more photos to mark this SNOWY occasion …
Growing up Online – A FRONTLINE special on PBS
saw links to this “Growing Up Online” production by FRONTLINE|PBS looking into the life of our youngsters. have not had the time to go through it myself, but i’m believe the issues and concerns raised in the programme would be common to us all teachers/parents and even growing up youngsters themselves? even as we are watching it we too are growing up online in a way isnt it?
here’s a direct link to some of the press responses after the broadcast of the production.
good examples of student(s) blogging?
saw this in another feed, Will’s looking for good examples of student blogs in the classroom, with blogging as defined by “writing that has “Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked [to] and written [about] with potential audience response in mind.”
read the post and the many useful feedback which fellow teachers/educators have left under Will’s post.
if you happen to have some good examples to share, you can leave your comments with Will’s post for all the share too 🙂
VoiceThread (and Ed.VoiceThread)
chanced upon this tool “Voice Thread” when i saw it mentioned in one of my blogline feeds (which has been neglected for 3 weeks at least), it’s a pretty impressive tool which allows a teacher to engage students in self-expression or group conversation on some common topic. the ‘topic’ can exist in 14 types of media format (wmv, ppt, gif, pps, pdf, jpg, doc, png, opd, bmp, xls, mov, flv, avi) and the conversation can occur in 5 ways (voice, video, phone, type, upload).
more useful features for teachers include comments moderation, which allows teachers to invite parents, communities to view and participate (students can only invite peers within the community to comment on their work); to protect privacy further (or i think it suits students’ needs to adopt different personalities at different time), they can create multiple identities/avatars when ‘talking’.
would definitely like to experiment with it if i were in the classroom right now, if only …
you simply have to check out the following official intro to learn more about Voice Thread (not juz in written form here):
if you are currently in school teaching, you can ‘go pro’ any apply for a FREE (with some conditions) account and explore it for use with your students! details’ here.
am slow in finding out about this platform, but it’s never too late 🙂