We No Longer Need to Speak to Explain

Digital Storytelling is a wonderful phenomenon which has taken off in the last couple of years.  I found a YouTube video which explains digital storytelling in plain English.  Since I wasn’t sure if there was a specific idea for the storytelling, the video thoroughly explained the idea to me.  Digital Storytelling is actually very simple and is easy enough for anyone to do.  The idea is to use digital media like a PowerPoint, video, podcast, or an animation to explain an idea.  The idea is not to just explain an emotion or how your day has been going, but to make a digital story which helps people understand how to do something, like a mathematical equation.  These digital stories are far easier to make than anyone could have guessed and I recently made one without even realizing it.  All you need to get started is a camera or video camera which easily converts the files onto your computer, a computer, and editing software.  Once you have decided what you are going to be explaining you can add the videos, captions, transitions, music, and even a voice over.  Digital Stories no longer limit your audience to being the people who are around and can hear what you are saying.  The storytelling and animation can travel through the internet to anyone you want to see it.  Even posting these stories on YouTube attracts more viewers than you would have thought possible. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP6CeGLPuOY

Connecting the Education World

As I began to look for communication systems, I found a company called Sun.  In 2008 Sun launched two different portals or web programs for the education community to use to communicate about education.  One of the portals is used to connect the educators and people from the education community.  The second is for students who are interest in these tools and communicating.  The first portal is called educonnect.org.  This site allows schools from across the nation enter in their information about new technologies for schools and allows Sun to engage and support the educational community.  This program works to find out the information about the technologies, give all the information about them good and bad, and provide support for solving technology issues.  There is also a link on the page called parish web portal. This sounds almost like a home page for people to get to know you and then interact with others.  The second program is called Open Source University Meet Up.  This site was created to help students connect and share information about tech tools like Java.  The site lists several times and places where groups of students will meet up to have conversations and ideas about them as well.  In a way both of the websites connect the world of students and of educators.  May people can see what students are thinking about the tech tools and the same with the education world.  Sun also supports a program which creates a virtual classroom.  This is a free and open program called Project Wonderland.  There are also digital libraries and identity software to make sure that once a student logs in, they are who they say they are.  This website is full of wonderful information and a world which little people know about.  Virtual Classrooms are becoming more popular in the education world and it is important for many educators to understand and navigate them. The website that had the article about these programs is http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/128/5/opt-edu/20800.
The virtual classrooms are like any classroom with students asked to raise their hands and provide wonderful points on readings and the class homework.  The conversation revolves around educational technology as well for the web sites.

This is an image from Project Wonderland.

Growing by Reading Blogs

Unfortunately the site that have been fallowing chose to close its doors recently.  However, all the information that the author put into the website is still there.  I looked at three different posts from http://www.assortedstuff.com/top101/.  The first blog I looked at was about the Exploratorium which is a hand on museum in San Francisco.  Since most of our students can just jump on a plane and fly there to get the experience this blog gives a link to a web site which allows teachers the opportunity to recreate some of them.  One that I looked at was about using mirrors to make a person look like they are flying.  Students would love these activities and they don’t seem to complicated.  The second blog post was about the red wood forest.  Since students can only see pictures and videos of the monumental sites the blog gives the website for national geographic.  This web page gives students, parents, and teachers the opportunity to see these exhibits through interactive web pages and vivid photography.  The last blog that I looked at was about Evolution.  First off, I love that the author mentioned how some people might not like this topic, but that they had resources or those who wanted them.  The blog listed a website which has a mind map.  All of the side words you can click on and you can receive all the information you ever wanted to know about understanding evolution.  This website with the 101 websites is a vital bit of information.  I think it is great that someone compiled some of the best websites so that teachers can easily navigate the area to get the information they need.  Without other teachers sharing their knowledge about these ideas, some may never grow.  I think this site, along with many others allow teachers to grow and get many phenomenal ideas and understand what they might be doing right or wrong in the classroom.