Digital Storytelling!?

So what is it anyways?  Well, Digital story telling is the practice of using computer based tools to tell your own story.  Digital stories typically contain computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and music.  It can be as simple, or complex as the author chooses. These videos typically last between two and ten minutes, and can range from personal stories, to historical stories, to made up fairy tales.  It's just a new way to tell a story!  To learn more,  watch this video!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKZiXR5qUlQ

Global Connections

There are so many options out there for how to connect yourself and others into the outside world, and communicate globally.  Just typing into google "Connect Globally," so many options come up.  I chose to look at TakingITGlobal. This is a social network that connects you to global issues that connect us all.  

Although we live in all different places, and have different backgrounds, we all have some things in common, or have at least heard of these things.  You can go to the left menu on this page and choose a topic you're interested in communicating about.  Some ideas include: culture, environment, global warming, health, politics, technology, sports, and many more!  On this page you can click basically anywhere in the world, and click on different peoples profiles and read about them, and their area and what they do. 

I think this could be useful for a teacher to use as a resource when studying different areas, and pick out certain people they may want to study or contact.  It would also be fun for the students to just surf around the website and maybe find a pen pal!  Within this website there are many more programs that support global communication. 

I also found EPals which is a network for safe connection to over 200 different countries and territories.  It makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally.  There is a different section for teachers, students, and families.  I think this would be an awesome website to be able to find pen pals for all of the students in your classroom.  They can connect classrooms for the age groups Kindergarten - 12th grade.  

http://www.epals.com/

http://www.tigweb.org/.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8940619-reading-globally-k-8

Bloggers Afterthoughts.

      I read through many of Joanne's blogs, however 3 stuck out to me and seemed to go hand-in-hand.  I read, Laying off the Least Effective Teachers,  Teacher Quality Trumps Class Size, and Same Schools for All?  The first two were talking about how if you lay off the least effective teachers, your school could afford to buy a couple new things like computers, books, etc.  Rather than laying off the "newest teacher"  Figure out who really is the least effective teacher, just because they have been there longer doesn't mean they are more efficient.   She spoke about how a P.E. or Health teacher is much more likely to be layed off than a math or science teacher, but really, if one is doing a great job, and the other performs poorly how can this make sense.    
      Her next article talks about how sometimes class size doesn't determine it all.  Would you rather have your kid be in a small class with a mediocre teacher, or a larger class with an excellent teacher? If you fired the least effective teachers, and let class sizes go up about 5%, your children may have a better outcome.  She also speaks again about how you could save money and buy things that would positively impact the classrooms.   
      In her last article she talks about children needing the same schooling, or different schooling.  While her article was interesting, I found that the comments and discussions afterwards were even more interesting.  She was saying in a way that black children need different schooling than latino, which is different from high class, as well as low class etc.  In a way, perhaps she has a point, parents have different expectations, and the children may have different needs, however, it's unrealistic, you cannot create schools that only allow students of one class or race into a classroom!  The comments were saying it's not so much about who is in the class, but that the important part is to have individualized lesson plans, add something for each student.  Then another teacher got on and commented:

"I have 35+ kids a class, six classes a day (we are on a 7 period schedule), and four subjects to teach.

Just how in the hell do you expect me to come up with 200+ different lesson plans…let alone teach them?" 

      I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this comment, at first I laughed, but as I think about it, I feel like it is our job to connect with each and every student in some sort of personal way, and make it applicable to their life.  It's like we talked about learning styles in this class.  Maybe just teacher things in more than one way would be your method of connecting with each children.  I don't know.  

     Overall I found these blogs to be very interesting, and I enjoyed reading the comments/ arguments that came afterwards! :)