eteacher

Teacher need to be told why you are putting courses online. Becta book (UK), gives information this that you could use.
Issues:
Are most teachers ready for it? Does it work? Is it cost effective?
Probems with F2F PD:
Wrong place and time
Disrupts routine
Too easy or too hard
What do we lose when we go online?
Benefits of online PD:
Anytime, anywhere
Point of need
Just in time
Cost Effective
No travel
Isolation/remoteness
Privacy/dignity: too embarassed to admit problems

Challenges of online PD:
Need clear instructions
easy navigation
People easily get lost
Consistent menus
A click too far is a click too far
Nedd effective just in time tools and support

Sharing Station offers safe, FREE video sharing for educators. Link to your videos, or embed them in your web pages. Add Video, Documents, Pictures, and Audio (MP3). More important, it is most likely NOT blocked in schools, like the YouTube. ,

Although it is still in its final stages of beta testing, you can join and start using it. It has no advertisements and they claim that it will remain FREE.

It also has the option of grouping videos, audios forming a lesson list. Looks very promising.

I had used Wetpaint wiki since its beginning and it was a good looking and easy to use wiki. One problem with it was the presence of a large number of advertisements. The Wetpaint wikis are now ad-free for educational sites and that is a good news for all educators.

Who qualifies for an ad-free wiki?

The following uses of education wikis qualify for ad-free status:

• Middle/High School, University, and Grad School Classrooms (ages 13+)
• Group projects and assignments given by a teacher as part of a class curriculum
• Dissertations, portfolios, and other displays of students’ work in school
• Wikis created by educators to connect with parents

How to Apply

If you haven’t already, create your wiki, then send an email to education@wetpaint.com and include the following information:

• Your school name and address
• A short description of how you are using the wiki
• The URL of your education wiki

Why not give it a go? Create a wiki for your class today.

YouTube draws users into the experience of viewing videos and engaging with the content as commentators and creators, activities that heighten students’ visual literacy—an important skill in today’s electronic culture.Even if most of the content on YouTube lacks an educational goal, the application encourages experimentation with new media. Many educators believe that the act of creating content—in virtually any form—is a valuable learning exercise, helping develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter and the tools used to create that content. To the extent that YouTube facilitates such creation, it has the potential to expose students to new insights and skills, as well as link them to various online communities.

As a social-software application, YouTube is part of a trend among Net Generation students to replace passive learning with active participation, where everyone has a voice, anyone can contribute, and the value lies less in the content itself than in the networks of learners that form around content and support one another in learning goals.

Here are some YouTube videos on Mathematics:

Here are some videos on Sloodle (Second Life in Moodle):

Role in new learning:
A Wiki is a community website which can be edited and added to by any member – it is ideal for problem solving, collaboration and knowledge management. It can be used for constructing and maintaining knowledge bases. They are a dynamic resource which different groups can maintain and add to.

Limitations:
Wikis are unstructured and any content is editable by any member of the community. If there are version control issues or an organisation is geared up to maintain strict controls on practice, a Wiki may be too freeform and the overhead of maintenance may be too much.

Wikispaces:
Back in January, Wikispaces decided to offer their Plus Plan to K-12 teachers for free, in order to help teachers to use wiki technology.

Over 10,000 educational wikis have been created by students and teachers.

If you would like to register for a FREE wiki, please go HERE to register.

Main top tips for pro podcasting

Intros
Record an exciting advert to open your show. Get the voice track laid down first, and then add some music from a podsafe music source. Finally, cut it all together and export the file for use in all your future podcasts.

Vox pops
Ask open-ended questions and then cut, don’t mix, the answers.

Interviews
Students need to learn how to ask as many good open-ended questions as possible. However, when it comes to cutting the final interview together, try to get them to cut together only four questions and answers. This isn’t just learning how to synthesise information in your own words, but learning how to synthesise information in others’ words.

Listen to other podcats
The best way to learn how to make better podcasts is to listen, listen, listen to others’ efforts. There are plenty of ideas of podcasts for teachers and students to listen to, but even a poor podcast can help show what you shouldn’t maybe do in your own.

Planning your attack
Knowing how much time to spend on each element of creating a podcast is not as easy as planning a lesson based around textbook, where the exercises don’t change in timescale from year to year. So, beforehand, have a plan of action for how much time you wan to spend on:

• Deciding subject matter
• Planning a show
• Recording voices
• Finding music
• Editing
• Publishing

Vox pop is short for vox populi, Latin for voice of the people. It sounds simple enough, recording voices of passers-by, but there’s more to vox popping than meets the ear. Years of experience on the street have produced the following pearls of wisdom:

• a vox pop consists of a montage of voices and opinions recorded on location (shopping center)
• a vox pop is normally 20-40 seconds – any longer will sound very laboured
• vox pops are cut together rather than carefully mixed
• a vox pop should include a range of voices: young, old, male, female, multi-ethnic, sensible, outraged, funny
• use as an introduction to an interview or discussion
• normally the reporter’s voice does not appear in a vox, except perhaps to ask an additional question or reiterate the original question

If you don’t, maybe you should try podcasting or at least listen to some.

Podcasts not only provide knowledge but also experience: the experience of the podcasters. Usually podcasters are very experienced people with a lot of valuable examples and tips to speak about.

On the other hand, podcasts are easily consumable because you can load them on a portable device such as an mp3 player or a mobile phone and you can listen them wherever, whenever and however you like.

You could listen to podcasts at times such as when driving to work.

Another Slideshow on Podcasting:
[slideshare id=152486&doc=podcasting-workshop-1193928800764599-4&w=425]