Mindy, what do you think about including this as one example of a creative way to do student-led conferences? It could just be a resource link, but I think it's fun.
Quotes:
VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio | Teaching Sagittarian
Check this out--isn't this a fun project for VoiceThread? It doesn't work as the portfolio for our classes since we want to show animation too, but it definitely creates an authentic audience.
Step by step how one teacher used VoiceThread to create digital portfolios for student-led conferences. One nice touch is that ESL students could use both English and their native language, since after all they were communicating with family members who might have trouble understanding English. Two examples are included, plus reflections on what the teacher learned from the project.Quotes:
VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio | Teaching Sagittarian
High school students in California find their voice through multimedia and learn to make a difference through what they create and share
Quotes:
Multimedia Serves Youths' Desire to Express Themselves | Edutopia
- "Media is the language of kids," Torres adds, saying that students who may not take to learning by reading a textbook or listening to a lecture often jump at the chance to understand complex concepts by presenting finished products in the form of a film or a Web documentary or a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
How Discovery's ad campaign with the Boom De Ah Da song inspired a 4th grade classroom and a family to create their own versions of the song and video. I wonder if this example could be included somewhere in the module on animation and video. This could provide some inspiration for a project that I think would do a lot to build community in a classroom as you come up with verses about what you love there.
Quotes:
Our Boom De Yada « Cole Camplese: Learning and Innovation
The discussion of copyright isn't as important MEGA, but check out the example of Animoto for creating a presentation about an author. The use of text here does lend itself to more educational purposes with Animoto than most of what I've seen.
Quotes:
The Educational Remix- At Odds With Copyright? | nashworld
A checklist of criteria for picking Web 2.0 tools for learning, most of which would apply to any technology. I've been thinking about where we come back to initial planning and design of the project in MEGA, and one of the things I think we should talk about it how you choose the right tool. This tool (or something like it) might be helpful. When we first talk about planning and ideas in M2 or M3, they won't have been exposed to the tools yet. When we come back to that at the end (M6? M7? I can't remember), they'll know more tools and be better prepared to make a selection that meets their goals.
Quotes:
Web 2.0 Selection Criteria: Save Time Choosing an Appropriate Tool | The Sloan Consortium
Showing how you can create interactive e-learning even if PowerPoint is your only available tool, with a demo of a frog dissection created in PowerPoint. This would be a good resource when we get to talking about animation to show that quite a bit is possible even just in PowerPoint.
Quotes:
» Now You Can Design E-Learning Courses Like a Pro The Rapid eLearning Blog
This is really about online communities in a broad sense, not specific to learning. I originally thought it would be good for the course, but I don't think it's actually that good of a fit.
However, it's a cute presentation, and I thought it would make you smile. You can even turn off the audio and just read the slides.Quotes:
What would Dr. Seuss Say about Online Communities?
5 minute presentation on slideshare with tips for guiding online communities
Even though this is written for F2F, a number of these ideas would still work online. This might at least be something for the resources if not an actual reading.
Not really a troubleshooting article, but the strategies could be helpful. I'm still looking for something that talks about dealing with problems in online groups.
Quotes:
Working with Small Groups in an Online Classroom
Quick overview of small groups in online learning, plus a collection of strategies for working with groups.
Podcast interview with Palloff and Pratt on assessing online learners and social presence. I'm listening to it now, so I'm not sure yet how valuable it is. They do talk about the idea of using assessments other than tests and quizzes online, which is good--maybe for M5?
Has stats about teachers' Myers-Briggs results and learning styles
Quotes:
JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching
Course from Wikieducator on communication and community for online facilitators. Might have some relevant resources for what we're doing.
A wiki example--this time for a 7th & 8th grade class. Just showing another possibility.
Quotes:
Wikispaces Blog » Blog Archive » A Classroom Wiki Webquest
Sorry to ping you with so many resources today--I'm going through old bookmarks and sharing everything that looks relevant.
This is a reflection about using wikis for global collaboration with 4th graders. Obviously, we're more focused on the higher ed collaboration, but I think many of these "lessons learned" would apply for any age group.Quotes:
Reflections on Fourth Grade Collaborations | always learning
A possible resource for Module 3, for yourself or possibly to include in the course
Quotes:
Chapter in a "wiki book" (2 chapters are free, others require payment for the book). The beginning of this chapter is a basic intro to wikis, but the graphics explaining the workflow are interesting. The author argues that when you work with wikis, you get all the logistic pieces out of the way early in the creative process, leaving more time for actual writing and collaboration. In practice, I think there are times when you have to address the logistics issues throughout the process, but it's greatly reduced with wikis.
- This is a book that you can read the first chapter of
- The above example demonstrates the power of the wiki to make collaboration more inclusive and knowledge construction efficient, distributed and fast. If you think about this visually, the email/Word scenario has limited periods of creativity separated by the logistical and socially sensitive task of combining edits:
The wiki completely changes this by shifting logistics to the shortest possible segment of time at the outset, leaving a much greater period of time for collaborative creativity and knowledge construction:
This article is cited in the last link I shared--looks specifically at how language use in online learning affects people with different cultural backgroundsQuotes:
JALN: Does one size fit all? Exploring Asynchronous learning in a multicultural environment
Small-scale study of cultural differences in an asynchronous learning environment, focusing on high and low context cultures. Includes a comparison of student perceptions of online learning based on their cultural background. High and low context learners both saw advantages to online learning, but their reasons differ.
word) dependant, it is subject to the constraints of low/high context
cultural patterns [46]. As indicated earlier, the
role of language is to carry meaning, and interpretation is an integral
part of culture. Language is one means of establishing context among participants
of a particular culture group. In low context cultures, language must
be specific and well defined, to provide the contextual definition in
which to interpret the communication. On the other hand, in a high context
culture language may be vague, lacking the specificity of the low context
culture, as the environment within which communication takes place clarifies
the specific meaning of language [36, 41].
Thus language plays a key role in the communication process. A key issue
determining the success of computer mediated communication is the encoding/decoding
by which that communication is done. Given that computer-mediated communication
is a textual (electronic) rather than a visual (face-to-face) medium,
meaning must be carried by the language itself rather than relying on
the environmental context as the means of communication and/or interpretation.
Given this relationship, because the language of communication is English,
low context communication is presumed, thus perhaps disadvantaging those
whose cultural background relies on high context communication.
low context participants concentrate on the participation environment,
while high context participants concentrate on their individual work/effort
and/or skills in the discussion.
however, the responses indicate that cultural background directly influences
the priority of perceived benefits received and challenges posed from
the same asynchronous communication network. The perceptions are based
on learning patterns which are developed as part of a participants’
ethnic/cultural development, and are potentially challenged by participation
in an asynchronous communication network, which of itself is implicitly
culturally based. Further, high context participants in an asynchronously
delivered seminar, while assured of higher quality participation through
an offline ability to infer meaning through low context communications,
are at least initially more likely to be disadvantaged by technology differences
as well as the communications norms implicit in their cultural background.
