Category: 03n. Misc

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):

1. What’s a VoiceThread anyway?
2. What’s Ed.VoiceThread?

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 🙂

the blog hasnt seen new content for quite some time as i’m tied down by this and this.
Yes, Culture Talk 2007 aka 《文化开讲》is finally announced! It is a Chinese Language online discussion forum competition for secondary school students. The theme is naturally “culture” as you can tell from the name of the competition.
registration for the competition is now opened, am waiting to see how many schools will be interested 😛
for more info, check out the forum 🙂

2006 is coming to an end real soon. so what has been the top 10 ed-tech stories stirring up in the states, read this report from eSchoolNews to find out 🙂 oh btw, Part 2 of the article goes here.
a quick glance at the ‘headlines’:

10. Cell phones: The good, the bad, and the ugly
9. One-to-one computing: Promising solution–or overhyped mistake?
8. Video-gaming in the classroom: Playing attention
7. 21st-century learning environments: Building schools of the future
6. Social-networking web sites challenge policy makers
5. Online learning comes of age, multiplying the opportunities available to students and teachers.
4. Video goes ‘viral,’ expanding the reach of college lectures–and turning ordinary students into internet celebrities.
3. Education 2.0 has arrived: The emergence of web-based services and other open technology alternatives is changing the nature of school software.
2. Disaster planning takes on added importance for schools–and technology plays a huge role.
1. Elections bring a ‘changing of the guard’: New Democratic majority in Congress set to tackle several education issues.

If you can�t read this headline, you�re clearly not using text messaging as efficiently as possible. It actually reads “Text messaging abbreviations to know and use”. the above i received in an email from hp, you may want to read an article on text abbreviation by hp, or another article by webopedia to learn some of these shortcuts 🙂