While I have made an initial attempt to use VoiceThreads with my grade 2 students, I ran in to a few glitches from getting the microphones working to determining the best way to create a VoiceThread, without giving the students individual email accounts.
Over the last few days, I have been "tweeting" my twitter friends to gather more information about VoiceThread. Many of my new friends have suggested that I get an educator account...so I'm hoping to hear more about that today at the VoiceThread session.
My class was excited to hear that I would be learning more about this web 2.0 tool. They are excited to try it again with me at school and to be technology leaders in our school.
Stay tuned to see our first official voicethread (hopefully) after the training I get from this session.
JOB EMBEDDED DiGITAL LITERACY
ReplyDeletePart of our project, we hope, is to build the capacity of our fellow teachers. Cheryl and I (Jennifer) have talked about the kind of PD we have had in technology over the past few years. Most of it could be described as one shot PD sessions with no on-going support. This means that, participants either sink, or swim. Some teachers, for example, seem to be able to embrace technology and use it fully. Others struggle to use it fully because they may lack the experience and knowledge they need to sustain their use of technology in the classroom.
Our response to that issue, has been the creation of an initiative called, Job Embedded Digital Literacy. The idea behind this initiative is to offer teachers one hour of PD during the school day while a supply teacher delivers the class program. The PD session will be followed by another in class session where our technology consultant will visit the classrooms of participating teachers to offer them and their students on-going support. The in-class session will be followed by a PARTY! The party is an attempt to celebrate new learning with one another. Teachers will be able to share a hot meal along with examples of how they have infused new technology into their classrooms. The technologies we are introducing are: Moodle, Glogster, Bitstrips, Smartboard Use, and Digital Storytelling. We want each teacher to have time to play with the programs they have been introduced to so the above initiative will take three months to go from the initial in school training session to the Party stage.
CAPTURING JOB EMBEDDED LEARNING
ReplyDeleteAs of today, eight teachers have signed up to be part of our Job Embedded PD Initiative. Each of them knows that they will be responsible for attending the Party and sharing their learning with other teachers.
I intend to try to capture their journey, using the technology I have learned in the course of this project. I have therefore, decided to ask participating teachers to take part in an electronic survey, this blog, and be part of a VoiceThread.