Podcasts: Where do they fit into an ELA Classroom?

           Podcasting, as Richardson calls it, "is the creation and distribution of amateur radio, plain and simple" (Richardson, 112.) I like to refer to podcasts as a piece of someone's life, a portion of their heart and soul, poured into a microphone, chopped up, edited, re-edited and then published somehow for an audience. One of the most popular websites to find podcasts is This American Life, a popular online radio program where you can listen to podcasts streamed live, or you can search the archives to listen to older programs. Although these radio podcasts are all very well done, I sometimes find it even more interesting to listen to podcasts done by the real amateurs, the ones who are creating stories not just for a website, but because they have a story they want to tell. One of my favorite podcasts is called Remorse, and it is a story told by two teenage boys about some of the issues of living in the inner city. They tell the story of a young boy, Eric Morse, who was killed at five years old, by being thrown out of a window for not wanting to steal candy for some 9 and 10 year old friends. Although the story is heart-wrenching, it is also done beautifully and in my opinion, it really gets at the soul of what a podcast is.

          I think podcasts can be useful in the classroom for a couple of reasons. I think one of the more obvious reasons is that podcasts can be interesting to listen to as a supplementary text in the ELA classroom. Students can listen to stories told by other people, even other students like themselves, to analyze them, to discuss them, or to use them for inspiration. Furthemore, I think it would be wonderful if students had the opportunity to create their own podcasts in the classroom. It is my firm belief that every student has a story to tell and I think it would be wonderful if students could not only write their own stories, but could turn them into podcasts and "publish" them in a sense, online. I think that writing is much more meaningful when it is personal to the students, and this would be a great way to allow student to create meaningful stories to share with their classmates and with a larger online audience. I had to create a podcast in one of my English Ed classes and I chose to write about my father, who has had many brushes with death but is luckily still alive to talk about it today. I created a story and incorporated narrative, interviews and music to make one piece. This project became really important to me because I wasn't just telling any story, I was telling my father's story, my family's story, my story. I think students would find a project like this also personally meaningful because they could choose what they wanted to create, just like the choice that I had while creating my project. I have included a link to listen to some podcasts that I have created so that you can listen to them, if you'd like, and get a sense of the type of project that I believe students are capable of in the classroom.

Going Global!

          EPals is a website designed to connect students, teachers and classrooms across international boundaries. This website provides opportunities for students and teachers to discuss topics in forums, to create new collaborative projects and to upload work and lesson plan ideas for sharing with the global community.

         One of my favorite parts of this website was the page for ePals Projects for Classroom Collaboration. On this page, there are numerous project ideas that classrooms from around the world can collaborate on. For example, one project idea that I thought would work well in an ELA classroom was the "Digital Storytelling" project. This project was designed for ePals to work collaboratively in creating a story digitally. By creating the story online, you can have one student working in the United States working on the same story as a student in China or Germany. I think this is a really neat idea and can provide students an opportunity to broaden their knowledge about other countries and cultures.

            Another interesting part of this website was the Teacher Media Galleries. In this section of the website, teachers can upload lesson plans or activity ideas, as well as work they might have done with other teachers in the system. Students also have an opportunity to do the same in their own forum, Student Media Galleries. This gallery can serve a different purpose for students. Students can use this gallery to publish their work that they are proud of and it can give them a sense of accomplishment for their work. So many times in school, students are asked to do projects, to write stories, create movies, posters, books, etc. that no one other than the teacher ever has a chance to see. With this forum, however, these projects can have a real purpose for students because they can be published for students all over the world to view and to comment on. I think that knowing that someone else will be viewing their work could really help to motivate students to put more time, energy and thought into their work.

         Another aspect of this site that I think is really useful is the forum, one for teachers, one for students, one for families, one for projects and one for focus areas. I think forums are always a great way to help people to communicate and to share ideas with one another. I think this is especially useful on a global website because there are not many opportunities for students or teachers to share ideas with students halfway around the globe. I thiink that this global sharing of ideas can really help to generate a deeper understanding and appreciation of other cultures and customs.

          I think this website could become really useful in an ELA classroom for a number of reasons. First, I think the digital storytelling project could really translate well into an ELA classroom. It would give the students an opportunity to work collaboratively on creating a story, and it can also help students to develop empathy of other people who lead vastly different lives from their own. I also think the forum could be a very useful tool for students to use. In the forums, I noticed a lot of book clubs and I think it would be great for students to participate in a book club with students from different parts of the country or world. The sharing of different ideas and multiple perspectives is an invaluable experience that students could capitalize on while using these forums. In addition, I think opportunity to share lesson plan/activity ideas with teachers around the world provides many amazing benefits. It is really neat to see the kinds of activities that are being taught around the world and to get fresh ideas from teachers who are working within other cultures. At a basic level, I really feel like the more chances we have to share and to learn from others unlike ourselves, the more worldly, accepting and knowledgeable we can become. This website is a great tool to help us gain all of those characteristics, plus some!

Say Cheese!!

       I have found the most amazing website, Big Huge Labs. This website allows you to create all sorts of awesome projects from your pictures, including puzzles, calendars, mozaics, magazine covers and many other interesting items. I think that you could use this website to create many really neat projects for a classroom but the one that I chose to play around with was the "Captioner", which allows you to add captions (speech bubbles, thought bubbles or actions) to your pictures. This website was so easy to use; you don't even have to download pictures! All I had to do was link to either my Flickr account or Facebook (I used Flickr for this assignment) and you could upload a picture you already had on one of those two accounts. I chose a picture from my father's 60th surprise birthday party and it took seconds to be "selected" on the page. Then, you can create captions for your picture to add thoughts/words/actions and spice up the image a little bit. You could also choose to add a "stamp collection" at the bottom, meaning you could choose a theme like "party" and add certain party themed pictures to your image: party hats, confetti, streamers, etc. I had a lot of fun creating this image and the website was really user friendly!

        Although I created this image for fun, I think this tool could also be useful in an ELA classroom. I was thinking that students could use this Captioner tool to add comic-book like captions to illustrations, graphics or photos in stories that they have created to make them seem more professional. You could also have students make a scrapbook or an "All About Me" book in the first couple weeks of school as a "getting to know you" activity. The students could use this tool to add funny comments or thoughts to their scrapbooks to show a little bit more of their personality and lifestyle. Another idea I had for using this tool correlates with Noden's "Image Grammar." This is a way to teach grammar and to help students improve their writing by using images. Students could use this tool and do the grammar exercises right on the page when given one photo. Then, the students could compare their different responses and you could see how vastly different everyone's interpretations can be! Either way, I think this tool could be really useful and I think that the students would have a lot of fun playing with it and making the pictures their own!

Some rights reserved by W J (Bill) Harrison
Flickr Address

Creative Minds- Creative Licenses

Creative Commons License

There are six main types of Creative Commons Licenses that apply to photography and other artwork. The six types include: the Attribution License, the Attribution- No Derivatives License, the Attribution-Non commerical- No Derivatives License, the Attribution-Noncommerical License, the Attribution-Noncommerical- ShareAlike License and the Attribution- ShareAlike License. All of these licenses allow you to download someone’s work and to share them with other people, as long as you give credit to the original artist and make a link back to the original artist. The restrictions change, however, in the way that people are allowed to edit, change or add to your original work. They also change depending upon whether the artist wants you to use the work for commercial or non-commercial purposes. 

*In the Attribution License:

 you are allowed to distribute, edit, change and add to someone else’s work (even for a commercial purpose) as long as you credit the artist of the original artwork.

Some rights reserved by Nina Matthews Photography
Flickr Address

*In the Attribution- No Derivatives License:

 you are allowed to distribute (for both commercial and noncommercial purposes), although you are not allowed to tamper with the work in any way. Again, credit must be given to the original artist.

*The Attribution-Noncommerical License:

 lets others edit or change the work for a non-commercial purpose, although you still must credit the original author for their work.

*The Attribution- ShareAlike License:

 allows you to change, edit or build upon an original work (even for commercial purposes) as long as you give credit to the original artist and license their new works in the same way.

*The Attribution-Noncommerical- ShareAlike License:

 is like the ShareAlike license, although under this license, the work must be used for non-commercial purposes only.

*The Attribution-Noncommerical- No Derivatives License is the most restrictive. Under this license, you can download someone’s work and share it with others as long as they give credit to the author. However, you are not allowed to change, edit, modify or build upon the works in anyway.

I think that these licenses are important for artists, even amateurs, to be able to have so that a person's work is not being abused, manipulated or extorted by other people who want to use his/her work. I also think its good that there are so many types of licenses so that a person can be very specific when choosing the type of licensing he wants for his work.

How "tweet" it is to be loved by you...Using Twitter in the classroom

The Twitter community is something that I am new to. I have heard a lot about Twitter, I know there are something called "tweets" and that people can follow one another on this network. However, prior to starting this Mod, I never had any idea of how this site could function in a classroom. Some of the websites I visited: "How to use Twitter for Social Learning" and "The What, Why and How of Twitter" both helped to clarify this for me. In the first article, I thought that learning about "Micro-learning" was extremely interesting, I honestly had not heard of this before I read the section of this article called "Micro-learning on Twitter." I thought that this article presented a really neat idea. A teacher could use twitter to create "micro lessons", which would have to be a lesson presented in less than 140 characters, the lenght of a tweet. This was interesting to me because these lessons have to contain links to videos, audio clips, hyperlinks, etc. in order to help students create real meaning in a lesson. This would be a great tool for a classroom because the students could learn so much via this multimedia lesson instead of the traditional, boring, textbook reading and lecture style class. "The What, Why and How of Twitter" was a neat website to check out because the author of the presentation, Jenny Luca, highlighted some of the other uses of Twitter, such as the social aspect and the ability to share all kinds of information quickly. When using Twitter, students can "debate" over their tweets, check out the newest trends and what people are "talking about" and can also share links with their classmates to help them with research or any other important topics that relate to school or their social life. Like a blog, students can use Twitter to follow one another and form a strong classroom community. I think that for all of these reasons, Twitter can be a very useful tool in the classroom and I think students will really enjoy being able to connect to their classmates in this new way.

What I've Been Fed...

I have found the RSS feed to be a very useful and interesting tool. I never knew that they existed prior to taking this course, and I can see now why they are very popular. I signed up for six different websites and within seconds, I had 218 new posts to read and look at, most of which provide useful information for those in the field of education. From the posts that I have shared with the class, I want to highlight the post titled "Site of the Week" from the edublog 4teachers.org. This post is not lengthy or complicated, but it suggests a website for teachers to use and explains the site a little bit. This post highlights the Teachersfirst website, which seems like another interesting tool to use. It is a site for teachers to organize all online databases and resources, including blogs, wikis, lesson plans, etc, all in one spot. I thought this could be useful for the rest of the class because this website may be one to help us organize all of the interesting sites we are viewing and using for this class. It can help teachers to keep all of these online resources together and stay organized!



Teachersfirst Logo



Nings!!!

I think that Nings are a really interesting resource to have: they are a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, but can be made private for educational purposes. A Ning allows people to post things like comments, pictures or videos and then other members of the group can comment on those posts or make new posts in reaction. I think this tool could be very useful in the classroom, although I must admit that I am a bit dismayed that you have to pay now to create a Ning.

  Nings That I Belong To:

- UB ENGLISH EDUCATION
The first Ning that I belong to is the UB English Education Ning. This Ning was a really good resource for keeping in touch with other preservice and current English Teachers. It was a good site to share ideas, lesson plans, videos, etc. with other colleagues in the program. Unfortunately, this Ning is not currently available because of the fee associated with it.

-ENGLISH IDEAS
This Ning is a site for English Teachers. Again, this Ning was designed to help English teachers share lesson plans, ideas, job postings, etc. I think this Ning will be very useful when I am teaching English and need a lesson plan idea, or perhaps feedback on a lesson I am thinking of teaching. Its always helpful to have a support-group of sorts, and this Ning is very useful for that purpose.

A Honeybee Cannot Make Honey Without Some Help...



       Connectivism is a new way of thinking about learning in our digital era. In this theory, a learner is described like a honeybee. The honeybee lives in a colony and thrives on working with and learning from the other bees in its hive. One bee cannot do all the work himself: it is the collaboration of all of the bees that ensures that the pollen is collected, the honey is made and that more bees are being reproduced to help maintain the cycle. In Connectivism, a learner can benefit from that same interaction that a honeybee has with other members of the hive. The interaction and collaboration in a group is a tool to help all members of that group develop knowledge and to become successful learners. Like a honeybee, one individual learner cannot be successful without the collaboration, interaction and communication with his peers.

        In the article, “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,” author George Siemens helps to reinforce this idea. Siemens writes about the need for using social media in the classroom to help embrace this shift in learning. He writes, “Including technology and connection making as learning activities begins to move learning theories into a digital age. We can no longer personally experience and acquire learning that we need to act. We derive our competence from forming connections.” At one point, learning was much more of a personal, individual activity, but now, learning has become much more social. Our students live in a world of social media and social networking sites, so we need to embrace these technologies and use them in the classroom.

 Later on in the article, Siemens writes specifically about how forming groups within these networking sites can lead to knowledge formation and understanding. He writes, “Within social networks, hubs are well-connected people who are able to foster and maintain knowledge flow. Their interdependence results in effective knowledge flow, enabling the personal understanding of the state of activities organizationally.” I think it is important to stress that this knowledge is formed as a result of the group atmosphere, not personal efforts. When we learn to utilize the knowledge of others by communicating, interacting and collaborating, we can learn so much more than we can by ourselves.

        These ideas are further developed in the video “The Impact of Social Media on Learning.” Siemens talks about Connectivism in this video and says, “Through social means, we are able to share and connect to one another.” These social networking sites are tools for us to use to become better conversationalists and to learn to connect to other individuals and form a community. The communication and dialogue on these websites is what really helps us to learn. As Siemens says, “Our learning today is one of forming networks with each other, so our tools enable that effortlessly and in a way that’s very human to us, because when you think of it, we all enjoy dialogue and conversation. It really boils down to our ability to have a dialogue with other individuals and when we have that dialogue, we ourselves grow in our knowledge. We grow in understanding of our own ideas sometimes.” Again, the importance of the group membership is stressed. Although one person might have a good idea on his own, it is the discussion and collaboration with others about that idea that makes it a great one. We learn from one another and cannot make the honey, the great knowledge, without the help of the other bees along the way.

Bees working together!

Not a fad...

I watched several of the videos listed on our course syllabus, but the two that struck me the most were "Social Media Revolution 2" and "Did You Know?" These videos, in my opinion, carried a strong message about the way our world is shifting. I really liked the facts that these videos provided, proving to the audience that social media and online social networking sites are the fastest growing communication tools in the world. I thought it was amazing that it only took 9 MONTHS to have over 1 billion IPod Application downloads! Wow! As amazing or startling as these facts are, I think it is important for educators to realize that social-media and online discourse is NOT a fad, but rather a "fundamental shift in the way we communicate" (Social Media Revolution 2.) The sooner that we realize this, the faster we can adapt our education to utilize these websites and online forums, which our students in the current and upcoming generations are so immersed in. If we have all of this great technology at our fingertips, why not use it???

Safety Issues!

    Although I consider blogs to be very useful, I also feel they can be dangerous if not used properly, or if they are used without certain restrictions. If I were to create a list of rules for some of my students using a blog, they would be as follows:

 1. Never use your full name (first name or alias only)

2. Never reveal a specific location, only general information such as the closest city

3. Don't respond to posts from people you do not know

4. Be respectful when responding to your classmates' posts

     a. No inappropriate language

     b. No condescending/ demeaning remarks
     c. Use only constructive criticism
     d. ** Understand that everyone is entitled to their own point of view and their own beliefs!
     e. Never post a comment that you wish you could take back. Even if you delete it, you don't know that someone didn't read that comment first and you don't know who you've offended in the process.

    Basically, these rules reflect a need for safety for the students and also a level of respect that the students need to use when using the blog. The students need to follow the first three rules so they don't put themselves in danger by revealing too much personal information about themselves. There are way too many "internet creepers/ stalkers" and I would never want my students to put themselves in harm's way because of our class blog. The last set of rules corresponds with my belief that students should always be respectful of one another, inside of the classroom and out. These rules reflect my strong belief that in order to create a strong classroom community, each student must respect one another and should listen to one another's point of view, even if it is different from their own.

In regards to district policy, there might also be other rules that a district may set in place in order to protect the students. Some districts might not even allow blogs to be used as an educational tool, so it is important that you check with the administration in your school to make sure that blogs are an appropriate tool to use in the district that you are working in.

Using Blogs in the Classroom

       I think that bogs could be an extremely useful tool in the classroom for several reasons. First, I think blogs can be used to help shy students open up and really express themselves. I highly value student-led discussion, but sometimes establishing discussions can be difficult because students feel shy, nervous or guarded about sharing their opinions.  I think that a blog can open up avenues for those students that are too shy to speak in front of the class because they can feel much safer expressing those opinons online. By using a blog, students could feel more safe because they don't have to physically voice their opinions in front of 30 students in a classroom, rather, there is a certain distance there that allows students to feel more confident about sharing their responses. Also, when writing on a blog, students have more time to formulate their responses than they usually do when participating in a class discussion. They have the choice to draft, revise and edit their work before putting their response out for the rest of the class to view, so they also have that safety in knowing that they can have a chance to perfect their response first.

        I also believe that using blogs can help to create a strong, safe classroom community, where all members feel that their opinons are important. Although I believe it is necessary to set some ground rules with the students and make it clear that cyber-bullying will not be tolerated, I think that by asking the students to read and respond to each other's ideas and work online, the students can form a closer group, a learning community. By showing the students how to respond to one another's ideas respecfully, the students can learn to interact with their peers and to give constructive criticism, without demeaning their classmates. I think that this is always an important skill to have, but especially in the secondary schools, where socialization is so important to the students.
        Another way that I think blogs could be used is (as Richardson says) a "Class Portal." Richardson describes the "class portal" as a way to help teachers“publish the course curriculum, syllabus, class rules, homework assignments, rubrics, handouts, and presentations.” (Richardson, 21.) I think this could be a significant tool because students would have online access to any information they would need about a class. This way, if a student got home from school and realized that he forgot his homework in his locker, he could log in to the portal and see exactly what he needed to do for homework that night. This could solve a lot of issues in the classroom and it could also help to prevent the "I forgot my homework" excuse (although I'm sure students would come up with something new, like "I forgot my portal password", "I lost my computer", or "my dog ate my blog.")
        Last, but not least, I think that blogs can be a useful tool in the classroom (or outside of the classroom) because it allows for students to extend their discussions outside of the classroom walls. Many times, teachers have so many good ideas and there are so many things that we want to discuss with our students, but there just isn't time. With a blog, you could have some of those discussions outside of class on the class blog so the students are creating meaningful learning at home, just as they would be with an authentic discussion inside the classroom.
     I think that in an English Language Arts classroom, a blog would help teachers to reach all of the NYS standards. The standards are as follows:
Standard 1: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding.
Standard 2: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and expression.
Standard 3: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation.
Standard 4: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction.
When using a blog, the students will most definitely be working for information and understanding as they create ideas and learning together on the internet. It can also be used to help with literary response and expression because students can be asked to respond to a piece of literature and to express their opinions on the blog. They could also work to analyze a piece of literature and to evaluate their classmates' work so in that way, a blog could help to reach Standard 3. Standard 4 is probably the most likely to be reached with a classroom blog because blogging with classmates is all about social interaction.