Using the Internet in the K-12 Classroom

Happy New Year, "Teach with Tech" listeners!

Soon the new semester will be upon us, here at Indiana University. As I have since 1998, I'll be teaching my online course, Education W505: Using the Internet in the K-12 Classroom. I'm looking forward to the new semester, and meeting the new students. Of course, the class has changed over the years I've taught it, just as the Internet has grown and developed. The basic idea of the course is that I lead students through the basic tools of the Internet (email, the Web, chat/instant messaging, learning management systems, etc.) and we discuss how they can be integrated into the student's current or future teaching. Recently, I've added podcasts, blogs and wikis into the class. The activities and projects all revolve around creating things that can actually be used by the students in their teaching. I've been really pleased and impressed with the work that my students have done in this course, creating webpages, webquests, etc. The capstone activity involves creating an instructional unit that integrates the Internet. One of my favorite aspects of teaching this course is that the students are so diverse--while I welcome students from Indiana, it is always nice to have students from out of state or out of the country. This past semester I had a student in Taiwan, and I've had them from Dubai, Japan, England, Pakistan, etc. over the years. I'm still looking for a few more students for this semester (which starts January 9th). Interested? Check it out at: http://www.indiana.edu/~w505a/

Only a week or so before I leave for the MacWorldExpo convention! Can't wait! I'm sure I'll have lots to share in the podcast when I get back.

The International Student Media Festival will start accepting K-12 media project entries on February 1st! Time to start thinking about your class's entry, if you haven't already.

Cheers,
Chris

More Episode 14 Info

Some additional information about Episode 14 (ISMF):

You can check out the project created by the Cannelton, IN Elementary School Media Club, a website titled "The Moon and Beyond," which is one of the projects profiled in the podcast, at:

http://www.siec.k12.in.us/cannelton/beyondmoon/

I don't have a URL for the other project, but it was created by kids at Heard Elementary Academy in Savannah, GA (there were quite a few projects from GA at the ISMF), specifically from the Gifted Education Program, which is led by Allison Roberts, Kim Mercer and Sally Watson. Kudos to both groups!

The enthusiasm of both the adults and the kids that I interviewed was inspiring, and I can tell that these media projects have made a big impact on the students.

Cheers,
Chris

Episode 14 (International Student Media Festival) is Available!

Episode 14 is now available! Some of you may be listening to it right now. This episode features a few short, entertaining and informative interviews with teacher, parent and student participants of the International Student Media Festival (http://www.ismf.net), recently held in Dallas, Texas. This festival highlights the creative work of K-12 students in a number of formats, such as still photgraphy, web design, and digital video. The episode is the shortest "Teach with Tech" so far, at under fifteen minutes, so it's a quick, fun listen. Hopefully, it will inspire some of you K-12 teachers to start projects with your students for next year's ISMF.

The blog has undergone a slight facelift, with the new Blogger dashboard. Hopefully, it is more readable now. I'm thinking a specific "Teach with Tech" logo would be nice to have sometime...

I've got a couple of interviews coming up, as well as some more material that might make it into a podcast, so stay tuned....

Chris

Back from AECT! & Podcasting Screencast

Had a great time at the Association for Educational Communication conference in Dallas, Texas. Met a lot of charming, inteliigent people and saw some old friends. As I suspected, I barely got out of the conference hotel, so I don't have a great sense of what Dallas has to offer, though I did enjoy the Mexican food at RJs on the West End.

At AECT, I presented on the topic of "Podcasting: A New Medium for Distance Learning." It was a packed room and numerous people asked me for a copy of my slides. Better than that, I've created an enhanced podcast or screencast for you, for free download. Just click on the title above. You will probably find that it opens in iTunes, but Quicktime Player should work fine, too. (Actually, I just tried this out, on Windows---for some reason, the slides are almost unreadable in Quicktime, so you will want to use iTunes after all.) I may make this a part of a "Teach with Tech" (Enhanced Podcast) series, along with my HTML tutorial, and make it subscribable. But I don't want to confuse things and upload it along with the regular "Teach with Tech." By the way, I used Profcast to make the screencast and it couldn't have been easier.

Also, while at AECT, I participated in a Skypecast, which is a live broadcast over Skype, in a show called "EdTechTalk Brainstorm." It was a lot of fun, partly because of my co-guest (is that a word?) Jennifer Maddrell, who is an IU grad student in Instructional Systems Technology. We will both be appearing on EdTech Weekly this coming Sunday at 7pm Bloomington time. They should also have an mp3 archive of this past Sunday's session up soon, so check it out. Not that my contributions were all that meaningful, but....

Do you know about the International Student Media Festival? Sponsored by AECT, it is a wonderful opportunity for K-12 students to show off their work, in areas such as still photography, stills with audio, websites, and digital video productions. I assisted as one of the judges this year, and also attended some of the events, such as Marco Torres' inspiring keynote, and the viewing of K-6 projects. I also interviewed some parents and kids, who were very excited about the ISMF. More about this in a future podcast.

More to come....

Chris