Wow! I can't believe how much I've learned in this class in such a short time. Using the webcams is pretty cool. I'll be Skyping with a classroom in New Zealand next month; I just need to figure out how to get my whole class in the webcam view. My students have been correponding with this class for over a month learning how environments and culture affect their lives. It's been a great project, courtesy of www.epals.com. Using all this new technology to share documents over the web has given me another idea. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could get the New Zealand classroom to collaborate over Google Docs with my students? My students are paired up with individual students in New Zealand working on a final collaborative project. We were just going to email the projects back and forth, but after seeing how user-friendly Google Docs is, I think this would be the best avenue for the collaborative piece of the project.
On a different note, I like the idea of online storage; Box.net and DropBox are the two I am most interested in. They have similar features and both appear to be very user-friendly. Both have free accounts, which is great. Box.net offers 1 gb free space while DropBox has 2 gb free, so I'm thinking DropBox is what I will go with. Again, with my New Zealand project, we are going to be sending photos and videos to each other and I was worried about space issues. If I save these files on DropBox, I can allow the New Zealand teacher to share my folder on DropBox and won't have the space worries.
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ReplyDeleteI am so excited to hear about the skyping in the classroom. I really think this is an amazing project! It sounds so engaging and innovative. How do you students like the project? I bet they think it pretty cool. :)
ReplyDeleteI would also me interested to hear about how using google docs went. It sounds like it should be a rather smart way to collaborate with other classrooms.
Very exciting about connecting w/the New Zealand classroom. I just had a Skype session with an entrepreneur in CA. I just set my laptop on my desk and had the students gather their chairs together (I have a tiered computer lab as my classroom so the students all gathered in 2 tiers and sat reallly close together - all 24 of them!). It is so neat that we can connect students states or countries apart! It sure does make the world even smaller!
ReplyDeleteMary, I LOVE your blog! I like the idea of voting for the favorite series - where did you get the format for that? It would be fun for the kids at school (they may actually use my website for more than just accessing Alexandria, World Book Online and AR!)I also like the format - very cool!
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