YouTube – Dylan Teaching the Teachers How to create a basic podcast.

If you have teachers who need help, why not let students create tutorials for them? Students have an authentic project, and teachers get help with the exact hardware or software, not some generic tutorial. This is a win-win for everyone involved.

And think about this – if you are teaching a technology applications class, or asking students to pass technology literacy standards, why not have the projects the students do actually do some good? Why not have student projects that have an authentic purpose – helping teachers (or peers, or the community, for that matter).

One of the most important parts of project-based learning is having a sense of who your audience is – and the audience for student work does not have to be one harried technology teacher.

These can be useful additions to any school’s suite of tech support tools, plus, create a climate of student ownership. Brett says, “They did a series of five this year – they’re now training next year’s group to continue! Teachers love them.”

Sylvia

I think it came out pretty well – listen and you’ll hear all kinds of ideas about “The Digital Classroom” from me and others including Helen Otway, Chris Rogers, Alan November, Andy Penman, and Michelle Selinger. I especially liked opening the show by talking about how technology is not dehumanizing us as it’s often depicted. Rather technology allows a greater sense of community with people around the world, and how this can now include young people in an unprecedented way.

Sylvia

The Digital Classroom – ACEC 2010 (click to play)

If this doesn’t work, try this direct link to the ABC site for the MP3.

GenYES is remarkable in how it brings student voice into the learning conversation. In this episode, Sylvia Martinez, President of GenYES, describes the project’s original program for bringing students and teachers together to co-plan technology-infused lessons as well as a newer program, TechYES, which offers a unique project-based learning approach to certifying middle school students as technologically literate.

via Radio TICAL.

Yup, that’s me, in a podcast recorded with Michael Simkins of  the Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL). It’s the “go to” place for California school administrators who want to understand how to integrate technology in their schools. TICAL offers resources and networking opportunities both online and in person.

Direct podcast link (MP3)

Sylvia

Last week I was interviewed by Scott Meech for his I-Education Apps review podcast. Scott is interested in iPhone, iTouch, iEtc. apps for education. We had a lively discussion about games on these devices, how to find and use games beyond “drill and practice”, and what “educational games” means. Please take a listen!

Sylvia

Edutopia

They are organized into six “Core Concept” Albums:

• Integrated Studies
• Technology Integration
• Social and emotional learning
• Project learning
• Teacher development
• Assessment

We are happy to say that our own video, made several years ago at Washington Middle School in Olympia, Washington, was chosen to be among the first to make it into the new iTunesU!

Although the name has changed over the years from Generation www.Y to GenYES, much is the same. GenYES students are still helping teachers with technology integration, and teachers still need the help!

Edutopia’s iTunes U content can be accessed directly here. You can find our video in the Teacher Development album, or it’s online here with the accompanying article.

Sylvia

Now Common Craft has posted a blog showing their behind the scenes process of planning, shooting, and editing their latest video — Electing a US President.

This is a terrific post for a number of reasons:

• It proves that no matter how experienced you are, creating a video is a process of trying things, seeing what works, and the intertwined nature of risk-taking, mistakes and creativity. We often don’t let kids have enough time for the crucial “oops….aha!” part of the process.
• It emphasizes the value of editing. Editing is where an author turns a bunch of sounds, words, and pictures into a story that has an intentional impact on the viewer.
• It shows the value of powerful non-fiction storytelling. Digital storytelling should not be confined to personal stories and feel-good vignettes. Putting together a coherent video about how to save a file to the network server, how to recycle, or how to set up a classroom laptop cart might seem simple, but it’s harder than you think, and a great learning experience.

Here’s the video – show your students and tell them it’s their turn to explain something that other people will find useful.

Electing a US President in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Sylvia

Here’s the podcast link on the WOW 2.0 website.

Many thanks to Sharon Peters, Dr. Cheri Toledo and Cheryl Oakes for being gracious hosts and expert interviewers. And good thoughts out to Jen Wagner who had to instead attend a funeral for a colleague.

Sylvia

Join us at 6-7PM Pacific time for a chat about Web 2.0, student empowerment, and gender issues in technology and education. Details here at the Wow2.0 website.

Please feel free to add to the wiki if you’d like to suggest questions and topics.

Sylvia

Five on Five: A Dialogue on Profession Development

A quintet of educators gathers to sound off on what works and what doesn’t in the ongoing mission to train teachers to use technology in classroom instruction.

Thanks Matt for turning an audio interview with 5 people on the phone into a great article! Plus, they did caricatures of us — kinda cool.

If you are an auditory learner try this:

Five on Five: Professional Development Podcast

Thanks also to the other podsters – Kristin Hokanson, Jim Gates, Bob Keegan and Cathy Groller. It was so much fun we kept talking after the time was up!

Sylvia

But as I thought more about it, I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it reflects a larger issue of assessment and comfort with the status quo. In most schools, curriculum focuses on student product rather than process.

A wiki is a means to collaboratively get to an end product, something a teacher can look at, assess, and grade. It’s easier to adapt existing curriculum to use a wiki, since most curriculum is also product focused. While wikis may offer some terrific efficiencies for group work, and does provide some support for the collaborative process (like a history of changes,) the strength of a wiki is that at the end of the day, it stands as a completed product.

Podcasts are also a product. Student podcasts can be substituted for the traditional report as the culminating product of a unit. Podcasts created by teachers or other experts are simply a lecture. While there is certainly a lot to learn as a student creates a podcast, the end result is a comfortable, known quantity.

But blogs reflect the process of learning, of going through a learning experience that may not result in a final product. Where’s the report, the culminating evidence of mastery, the final draft? How do you grade a student who might be changing over time? How do you not be involved in the conversation? It almost seems like cheating, after all, you don’t sit down with a student while they are taking a test and discuss their answers halfway through so they can try again.

In this light, wikis and podcasts represent an updated and more efficient way to do traditional classroom assessment, while blogs challenge the status quo. Traditional = more comfortable, challenge = change = discomfort.

Sylvia