There’s seems to be a lot of buzz about a new open source “Social Media Classroom” that’s being worked on. It allows blogs, wikis, chat social bookmarking, etc in a learning context. It is meant to be an addition to the regular classroom, and not a replacement for it.
It all looks very intriguing, but I’m not clear yet what the difference is between this new project and the long standing Moodle Classroom Management System. While Moodle is intended as an online learning environment, it also has chat, bulletin boards, rss feeds and dozens more nifty features once you throw in a few plug ins.
I’m not clear how the two projects differ, but even though Social Media Classroom is late to the ball, having more choice in your social media options is always a good thing and it tends to keep the developers of the different systems on their toes. I look forward to seeing what’s behind the buzz in the next few days.
Today we’ve got about a third of the Grade 11s out on some extra curricular activity or other. It’s one of those days where you’re not eager to keep going with your regular lessons, but you don’t want to quit working because if you do most of the remaining kids will skip next time. What do you do?
As a history teacher I’ve got my backup list of Canadian game websites. Some are just kind of silly, some are just kind of fun, but they’re all educational in one way or another. Admittedly, some do little more than work on where the various Canadian provinces are, but even in Grade 11 that seems to need some reinforcement.
You wouldn’t expect “sophisticated” Grade 11s to get into kids educational history games, but they do.
Though my blogging seems to be going by the way side, the technology I’m always talking about is in near constant use in my class. I seem to have had my kids playing with computers this year far more than ever before. Maybe it’s motivation and maybe it’s opportunity, but the kids have been hard at it.
We did a little audio recording using Audacity with my Grade 11 history class. The historical fiction they recorded about the Loyalists was interesting overall, but as a technical production the quality was generally (how do I say this nicely?) really, really weak. They over produced it not only disguising their voices (which is good) but making them almost impossible to understand at times (which is bad). They all used some copyrighted music (which is bad) which also means I can’t post their work (which is bad). Even so, they learned a lot about how to record and understand, just a bit, how easy it is and how powerful (which is good).
We got some good wikis going where my students researched Canadian political parties in conjunction with the Canadian election. That went fairly well and was encouraging.
I’ve also had a chance to get some of the teachers playing with more computer technology. I’ve been working with a few with wikis, got one started on social bookmarking, and still one more will start playing with stop motion animation with me.
Overall it’s been a pretty good start to the school year. I haven’t got to play with technology as much as I do at other times, but I’ve certainly had a great time getting it in use.
I have to give credit for this to DailyWritingTips.com Their e-mail newsletter provides daily writing tips (what else?!) and this morning’s letter had a couple of really fun ones.
- The Imagination Prompt Generator gives a random idea, unfinished sentence or thought to get you started when you’ve got to do some creative writing. When English teachers assign creative writing tasks students often have trouble getting started. This has some wonderfully creative ideas and they all seem to be in good enough taste that you can use them with students. Of course, double check that, as always.
- The Random Word Generator could also be a great idea starter. It only gives you a single word, but you can decide if it’s a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. This would be a trickier way to get writing started, but it still has some interesting promise.
