"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."
~ John Dewey
There is no denying the impact technology is having on our schools and
they way we approach inquiry. Working in a 1:1 laptop environment with my Grade
6 students has made this a mandatory conversation for our school; how are our
technology initiatives affecting student learning? And so, I asked my students,
how has their access to technology helped them with their own learning. We
created a Google Doc to share our ideas and the following article is the result
of this collaboration.
We use our computers and access to the Internet to do many different
things at school and at home. Technology helps us develop our skills in
communication and collaboration; provides information for our investigations
and research; has tools that let us show our ideas in creative ways – we use
technology every day.
Our Blogs
Our blogs are a great sharing tool for us when we need to
show our learning. We regularly use them to share our experiences. Just like
the “Bahrain Blogger” shares his experience of being in a civil war, being
bloggers lets us show others what life is like at our school. We can upload
media files to express our feelings or show our presentations. There are cool
widgets that we can insert into pages or posts. We can also learn from each
other by giving and receiving feedback on blog posts. I think that the blog is
a great way of connecting to other people all over the world.
We also have a class blog that
shares information about what we are doing at school. There are reminders on
this blog about important events and our parents can visit to see what we are
doing. Our teacher also puts links and videos on the blog that are connected to
our units of inquiry. We can also download things we need like rubrics, letters
and tasks. I can also find the links to other blogs, such as other students,
teachers and schools, as well as favourite websites.
Google Docs/ PiratePad
Google Docs is a very helpful tool when you
are working in a group. It is an online collaborative site that allows you to
work online with other people typing at the same time. I use Google Docs almost
every time I am working on a group project. Sometimes, I even use Google Docs
when I am working alone so that I can access my project or information from
anywhere. In Google Docs you can edit a project when other people are working
on it at the same time. You can also make a spreadsheet, a survey, a presentation,
a scrapbook and many more other useful items. The chat allows you to
communicate with other people, even if you are not in the same place. It also
auto saves so when you type it will save for you making sure that no work is
lost. You can also access a Doc by a link, and you don’t have to be shared with
it to change it. The owner of the document can limit the functions of other
people, such as make them view only, or comment only. The owner can also change
who the owner is. On a Google Doc, you can change the visibility so that it is
public. Then other people can answer any questions you might put on the Doc.
Google Docs is useful for collaboration, gathering information, and group work.
PiratePad is similar to Google
Docs, but has several other features. On Google Docs, if you are signed into
Google, you are stuck with your login name. If you are not signed in,
and you have accessed the Doc by a link, then your name is ‘Anonymous User’ and
then a number. With PiratePad, you can change your name as much as you want.
There is no ‘owner’ on PiratePad, you need a link to view and edit, and you are
not allowed to change someone’s status. The only problem with that is that the
document is public. Another cool feature of PiratePad is that you can replay
the entire development of a document. Everything that is typed, chatted, or
changed is recorded and can be viewed like a recording.
Mathletics
Mathletics
is an online learning tool that allows students from all over the world to
compete against each other on their basic facts such as addition,
multiplication, subtraction and division. Besides that, it also provides online
lessons and you can work on math problems and tasks that teachers assign to
students. I like that we don’t all have to do the same tasks and if we get
stuck there are tutorials that we can watch. We use Mathletics to practice and it was fun to take part in the World
Math Day challenge.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a
website where students and teachers can login and either watch the educational
videos or practice math skills in the practice section. It is a great online
practice tool that can help you understand a math skill. For example if you are
stuck on probability, there is a video where it would help you out then you can
go to the practice page for that skill. There is even a ‘scratch pad’ so you
can use drawing tools to help figure out the answer. Teachers can connect to
their students’ accounts to check on their students’ skills and use of time on
the website. There are also achievements to boost morale, and skills must be
sometimes reviewed. The downside is that unlike Mathletics, coaches cannot assign skills for students to work on,
and there is currently only math practice, although there are videos about
other things, even science. Students are able to set goals for themselves,
track their own progress, ask and answer questions about videos, and finish
challenges. The best part about it is, Khan Academy is probably the best free
teacher and motivator around!
YouTube / Vimeo
I love using Youtube or
Vimeo because it allows you to share your
videos and pictures with the whole world for free. You can control who sees
your videos, too. Everyone can watch if you publish something and make it
public, but you can also have videos that are private or unlisted. If you want
to share something with your friends you don’t have to send a big file and they
can watch it anywhere there is an Internet connection. I find it really
interesting when someone from a far away country comments on my videos and
these provide feedback for my Youtube channel. I also make lots of friends on Youtube
– we subscribe to each others’ channels and can share our videos. When I have
free time on the computer, Youtube is the site I go to most! Personally, I feel
that it is a great site no matter if it is for education or for entertainment. I
like to surf the web and see if there are any interesting videos to watch, sometimes
this is for school to help me understand something, sometimes it might be to
find a solution to a problem I am having in a video game and sometimes it’s
just for fun. Youtube is basically a online school, but we have to be careful
because some tutorials may not be accurate and some videos may not be
appropriate, so it’s always good to double check their sources.
iMovie
One fun way to do a summative assessment or task is to make
a movie. Quite often our tasks involve making trailers or interviews
and showing them to the class. When we go on fieldtrips we also film and take
photos of things around us. Students and teachers can use this educational tool
for sharing presentations,
books and their learning of something.
Using iMovie we can easily
piece together movies, adding music, special effects and the photos and films
we have taken. The application includes a camera to capture your film, special
effects, sound effects and themes, such as newscasts or scrapbooks. iMovie is
simple and easy to use and it has great editing tools which helps your video to
be more exciting. We use iMovie a lot so we all know how to use it and have fun
with it.
Soundcloud
Soundcloud is an
online audio website, where instead of videos, like Youtube you can put up
sounds. Sounds may include original songs, written or composed, they can
also be covers of songs that have already been made, they can also be a clip of
you playing an instrument, you name it. The presentation of these sounds is
really cool because there is a wavelength feature so you can see what is loud,
and quiet. The accounts are completely free and come with approximately two
hours of audio time. If you upgrade to their paid version, there is an
unlimited amount of time. You can comment on a specific section of the song, or
just make an overall comment. It helps people to become recognized in the art
world. For example, I started an account for fun a
month ago, and now there is already over 700 plays of my songs! It is a really
good interface because I can get feedback from musicians halfway around the
world! Also, similar to Twitter, you can follow people and they can
follow you.
Student-led Conference Series
Our class participated in an
on-line student
led conference series this with schools from Australia and Romania. Using a
virtual classroom called Blackboard Collaborate we took turns sharing
presentations we had made with each other. Our subject could be about anything
we wanted - my presentation was about Minecraft. I think this was an amazing
project!
Skype
Skype is a free way to
video call people around the world and is something that you can use to
interact with different schools and communities. It is simple to use so you can
easily communicate with others. Skype has a chat function that is student
friendly. We have used Skype to chat with other schools across the world, and
right now team members for the PYP Exhibition can create Skype conferences to
chat with each other after school. There are some drawbacks. Sometimes people
say things they wouldn’t say if they were face to face and then cyber-bullying
could become a problem. Also, some people stay on Skype too long chatting to
friends. You have to be principled and use Skype responsibly.
Global Hello Project
The
Global Hello Project is an online website where a variety of schools
connect with each other and share what life is like in their school and
country. Each school has their own page to add links, videos, and pictures in
order for visitors to about each other. Our class is part of the Global Hello
Project and added a video to our page.
Twitter
Twitter is a great place to send
out short updates of what is happening for us right now. We can quickly and
easily share an update or an event that’s going. Other people can even reply to
your tweet or retweet you and share your tweet on their own page. I like using
Twitter because it is a great way to connect with other people in your class or
even songwriters, director and singers! Twitter enables us to contact people in
our exhibition group and even our own families! You can use an @ to talk to someone
specific and a # (hash-tag) to tweet about an event. We are currently using
twitter for our exhibition as we don’t have a lot of time to write a blog post.
A great way we used Twitter was when we wrote what our top 3 choices were for
the Exhibition. Then we had a neat little hash-tag called #cdnispypx12 and when we
searched on the Twitter page, all the results which had that hash-tag came out.
WallWisher/CorkBoard.Me
(online bulletin board)
Online bulletin boards are a very
useful tool, when you want to share your ideas or thoughts you can just start
writing into it. It is not possible to get confused about who wrote what
because each person uses their own sticky and the sticky asks for your name
before you write anything. There is an unlimited amount of stickies you can out
on the board and you can pile them up if you want to. Since you have your own
sticky if someone uses a new line it will not move your words. WallWisher and CorkboardMe
can also be used by a large amount of people, once our whole grade used it to
write down ideas for a project. While the whole grade was using the corkboard
the online bulletins did not lag or have any problems. Unfortunately sometimes
the online bulletin board sticky has a word limit and that can be annoying.
Coding
Applescript
editor is a fun tool that is pre-installed on our computers. From this we can
learn to code different types of dialog boxes, and make our computers ‘talk’!
Learning how to code is actually a skill that will be useful later on in our
lives, which are heavily influenced by technology.
Applescript is easy to learn and
it helps you understand how your computer and software that you have works.
Once you know how to use it you can use it is easy to make your computer do
things by writing applications. We have made different ones including a
security application that opens on login to make sure the owner is using the
computer, and an application opener, that opens up different applications and
asks you what you want to do with them.
Some of us like to use Xcode, which is more advanced
than Applescript and lets you design your own apps. With Xcode you can create
apps and post them on the app store for anyone to download.
We also go to a website called Code Academy, where we can learn to create
Javascript. Applescript is slightly different from Javascript, and the two are
not interchangeable. However, both serve basically the same purpose and both are
quite fun to experiment with.
NoodleTools
NoodleTools is an online website where
you can organize a research project. You can cite your sources here and it will
create a proper MLA bibliography. You can also add people to your project and
work collaboratively, linking to your note cards and a Google Doc. You can
share your project with your teachers and they can give you feedback using
annotate.
I like using NoodleTools because
it is an extremely helpful resource.
~ Collaboratively written by the 6C Cookies.
