“Communication and Collaboration in the Classroom”
SHADOWING PROJECT WORKDAY
By now you should be familiar with two teachers’ class blogs. I think most of you, who are interested in math, English, science, or social studies, easily found class blogs since technology has been widely integrated into those classrooms. But if you are interested in P.E or speech therapy, it might be a different story. If you found ones, that’s perfect. If not, don’t worry.
1. You may still explore, for example, a school speech therapist’s individual blog (e.g. SpeechTechie or check the list of SLP bloggers here) or an institutional blog (e.g., ASHA ). I even found the SLP Blogs Bundle where you can access to many SLP blogs all at once (check this article to find out how to subscribe to the bundle).
2. Just make sure to extract concrete ideas of technology supported communication and collaboration in learning. Remember you don’t necessarily need to see how teachers use blogs for teaching. Use blogs to take a peep at teachers’ practice. You may find how Glogster, Skype, Twitter, wikis are utilized to support communication and collaboration.
PART 1. Using Glogster
Today we will learn Glogster. If you already completed your 2-3 page write-up, it is perfect time to start working on your presentation. Remember you have three tool options for your public presentation online. You may use Scoop.it or Storify. They have similar features and you should be able to use them if you are familiar with Glogster.
Gloster is basically a virtual poster and it’s a great way to share with others the benefits of using technology to support communication and collaboration. You’re going to create a glog (graphic blog) to present ideas, examples, videos, lesson plans, technology tools, and more – stories you extracted from shadowing. So you might share the glog to help others (parents, educators, and administrators) understand why it is beneficial to have technology in classrooms.
STEP 1. Create an account on Glogster: http://edu.glogster.com It’s up to you if you want to create a student account or a teacher account – but make sure you choose the free account. You should be able to log in with your Google ID.
STEP 2. Explore the templates for Glogster – get an idea of how you might layout your information.
STEP 3. Find your resources (images, videos, links, and of course your write-up for text). You may use ready-made Gloster resource; you may create your own. But mos of you may want to search public domain resources. Here is one guide. We will talk more about how to find royalty free photos, videos, music, and animations later.
STEP 4. Organize them onto your glog. You will need to have
- A catchy title
- A hook that includes the purpose of your glog. Talk directly to your audience.
- Example stories out of your shadowing-what happened and how communication/collaboration tools were utilized. Make sure to included the blog links and tool links (if needed)
- Further information about communication and collaboration with technology (your readings so far this semester could help with this. You may add links to articles, write your thought, or introduce standards)
- Information about the curriculum standards addressed in your glog (this could be one or many, depending on your theme and you can copy/paste this information)
- Still images related to your main ideas (here’s a way to use Pinterest to find images)
- Optional: included at least one of these
– A video related to your glog
– Links to lesson plans related to your theme
– Information about tool resources that can assist your particular audience (Twitter hashtags related to science teaching, sample bloggers to follow, etc.)
STEP 5. Publish your glog – make sure you’ve made it public.
STEP 6. On your Communication and Collaboration webpage, create a link to your glog.
You have two options: you may want to keep working on this or enjoy creative activities. I promise it is going to be fun. You choice is ?