11 Tools, Tool #6: Using Web Tools to Communicate

Here is a blogspot I created to encourage participants of the upcoming Recipe-For-Success and Seed-to-Plate after school program we hope to start in the fall. I anticipate lots of interaction throughout the year. This could be for the participants in the after school program as well as the classroom teachers and students. I am so excited! I hope the students are too!

http://woodviews2p.blogspot.com/

I have been working with Diigo for at least three hours now and I still have barely scratched the surface. Suffice it to say that I have applied for an educator account so that I can create accounts for my students to use throughout the year for science and social studies projects, along with reading poetry and narratives that could be part of a unit of study. I am still learning about Diigo and following, being followed. I like being about to capture useful websites and highlighting important information. Previously, for bird studies I would gather information, adding my annotations, using ActivInspire. I would then print out the pages for students to use. It was so much easier than going from computer to computer finding different websites for each student. That sounds so archaic now. I'm not sure how to post or embed anything here to reflect what is to come, hopefully.

I hope to be able to Skype once in a while with other classrooms or experts in a field as a means to enrich my students learning.

2Thing #3 Skype

My brother used Skype a few years ago with family located in the UAE. It was a real saver, especially playing chess together. In the classroom there is much potential. I read the 50 Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom and found it very helpful and inspiring. Edublogger offers ways to perhaps network with other classrooms around the world. I have heard of middle school pilot programs in south western Louisiana with areas of England where social and geographical issues were worked on to resolve issues of erosion and other like concerns. Rather than debates or conversations on issues, the students worked in their local communities on similar geographical concerns and then discussed the steps each took to resolve the problems. This entailed using science, social studies, writing, math, graphs, charts, and much, much more. I think a similar project on a local issue could be used in elementary school, on a smaller scale, for a civic project benefiting the local community.