Tuesday, August 4, 2009
It's time for me to reflect again on my technological journey. I am still feeling very much like a toddler but hopefully with each step I am gaining a bit more stability on my climb. Thankfully my curiosity hasn't diminished and quite often I catch my reflection on my monitor and remind myself that although it's all super cool, I need to close my mouth:) I must say that I still find the wiki to be the most interesting option for me in terms of what I could use with both my students and department. This past year I was lucky enough to receive a framework fund grant. Our department was able to purchase i-pods and headsets to use along with the free on-line tool known as audacity. Because so much of our content area relies on listening this tool allowed us to record ourselves in the second language that we are teaching and then have our students be able to access these listening act ivies outside of our classrooms. This was particularly helpful for our learning labs and resource rooms where we can't be present but additional support is so important. As a result we became more and more proficient in using audacity so it could reach out to all of our students. The challenge was that the files were too big to download onto our classroom web sites. I think that by setting up a wiki all of our students would be able to reap the benefits from audacity because they could access the activities right from home and listen to parts that were a bit challenging for them. The possibilities are endless and exciting. I only wish that our department could set up a time to work on this together. Sometimes I do feel a bit closed out especially when my ideas start flowing and only the cat is listening.
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4 comments:
I like your use the Wiki. I think between the two of us, we have a lot of ways we could spend a day in September/October setting up some of the new technological tools that we have learned about this summer. It acutally is overwhelming at this point. Just starting out with one or two ideas would work out just fine.
I think a Wiki would be a great place for the Audacity files. I agree that all this technology is wonderfl and overwhelming. I try to focus on what I think will give me the most bang for my buck and keep plugging away.
I know exactly what you mean about the baby-steps. There is so much information that it becomes overwhelming at times. I love your ideas about setting up the Wiki for the kids to access audacity (i have no clue what audacity is ~ I'll be looking it up) any extra resources for them to use outside of school is great.
I'm totally fascinated by your description of how you use ipods in the classroom. I wish special ed. could get some to use with books on tape. Perhaps some day we will. Thank you for sharing the idea.
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