Using a podcast in the classroom

Podcasts are so useful in th elcassroom. In the world of art videos there are so many that are old, and unfortunelty, boring. It is really great to find a resource that can provide podcasts and vidcasts that can show and tell students how to do a specific procedure. The podcast that i found is based o na vermeer painting it is produced by the National Gallery of Art. The vidcast show how Vermeer used a paint layering technique to gain depth and color concentration in his painting "Girl with the Red Hat". The narrator along with the video show exactly how he accomplished the final effect of a lovely girl with a blazing red hat.

This specific vidcast is extremely useful in the classroom because in order to show paint layering techniques you either have to layer wet paint on wet paint or you have to wait a day in-between each layer. Now as a teacher I would be showing a live example no matter what but having a video that shows the entire process at once shows the students the final product. Vermeer and the girl with the red hat

Using interactive tools for Global Communication

Working from both Mod 7 and 8 would be quite easy when designing a lesson for global cooperation. Lets say I want my students to organize a global effort to clean up their community. I would have my students create a video that would lay out all the concepts for the project.
The students would write scripts and create a video that would then be published using teacher tube and they would also post an audio file along with some pictures on voicethread so that students around the globe could chime in with ideas or suggestions.

The idea of the lesson would be for students to organize a massive clean up of all the garbage and debree in the area and lay it out in the center of town for everyone to see. {eventually getting rid of it} my idea for the project is to not only clean up the town but to expose the "refuge" that no one wants to think about once they drop it on the ground. I would have students collect then "display" the trash so that it cannot be ignored. The community would need to see what they have been adding to their town/city. The global effort would come in the form of an organized time, or day that each participating class would perform this clean-up/exposure. The entire event would be documented and posted in video format or pictures on flickr. Students would then be responsible for talking to each other and listening to what happened in each site of participation, and sharing thoughts with the class.

Websites for Global Communication

The first site that I checked out was Kidlink, I really think this website woudl be wonderful exposure for students since there are children from all over the world logging on everyday. I could easily have students log on and search the site for another shild that seems to have similar interests and talk to them about a project they did. We could come back together as a class and compare what students from around the world have done with the same topics as they are studying. I'm sure kids in Greece are learning about different plant life than we woudl be here in America.
The other website that I found interesting is Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) Collaboration Center . I went through multiple aspects of this website and it seems very professional and reliable. I could see this site benefitting students and teachers because the projects that are being collaborated on are on a larger scale and involve issues that effect daily life. The success of the CICL is also an important aspect. MAny of the projects that the organization work on collaborate with specific results. One project was based on the traffic congestion in the city of Indianapolis. After one year the project included over 400 students around the country all connected by videoconferencing.

Each of these sites would be a great resource for the classroom not only to show that you can be involved with issues around the globe but that solutions are possible and working together using technology is easier than ever before. These sites are different in the sense that there is more adult involvement associated with CICL than with Kidlink. Kidlink seems to focus more on the interaction and CICL has specific agendas that are the highlight of the site.

Videos for the Classroom

I love the video of the two high school boys throwing on the ceramic wheel. I teach ceramics and it is fascinating right from the start but it would be great to play this video for my students and then do a live demonstration for them. The video about the one minute painting done with spray paint is great too. Allot of my kids are really interested in graffiti art and spray paint art so showing them easy ways to use templates and cut outs that they could make at home would be good for them.

Gabcast! My first Gabcast! #1 - First Gabcast

Just saying hello

Mini autobiographies

I wasn’t sure how I would really interact with the tweets that I would be following for this past week. I have trouble sometimes remembering to tweet because I don’t think that anyone would be interested in what I have to say in regard to my daily life. Well as I followed the twitters that I chose I realized that I is fascinating getting a small inside look into someone’s life. It’s not to intrusive and just intriguing enough to keep me interested.
I guess I would be interested in following a tweet of an actor or celebrity that I found interesting. I am going to look some people up and see what a week in their life is like. In a way it is like a mini autobiography but interactive. I would like to have read Julia Childs tweeter page as she worked out recipes or Kurt Vonnegut while he was editing a novel I know it sounds silly but I bet that they would have had a lot to say.

Twitter in the classroom

I have been thinking about ways that twitter would be useful in my classroom, and I think that some reasons are obvious. Students can tweet about assignment and questions they may have as they work on them. But also they can run ideas past each other in a very direct forum. The advantage of twitter is that it is very assessable from your phone. Text messaging is becoming ubiquitous with students these days and twittering is a great way for them to be in contact with one another. They could ask a specific question in relation to an aspect of an assignment they are working on. They can post events that are happening in their lives personal or otherwise.
As their teacher I could assign specific twitters that they could follow, maybe in current events and then we could discuss the tweets in class. Maybe for an art project we could print out all the tweets from the week from all the class members and put them into a collage that would make a statement about our public/private lives?