Some solutions that might apply: instead of having kids create signing up in sites, the teacher could have one class account and invite students to be editors (generally kids have their parents’ or personal emails that could be used for the invitation), whenever this is possible. Also, in the case of Flickr, for example, the photo activity could still work if the teacher had an account, for the students could send their photos to the Flickr email connected to that specific account. Besides, I would adapt it and ask students to do the following:
- Draw their avatar and upload them to Flickr by taking a photo of each avatar, or just scanning the drawings.
- Take a photo of something in their class that called their attention on the first day of class.
- Students could create a comic strip with Go Animate (I checked the terms of use and didn’t find age restriction), or a film with fictional characters at Dvolver
- They could create an online scrapbook page with scrapblog or glogster. Yes, I know. You need to register, but maybe you could work on teams and the teacher could set up 3 or 4 accounts in advance for the class. I have some email options to create different accounts for my groups. The teacher could have different topics for the students and they could change one of them to create a scrapbook page.
- Students could send e-cards to their parents and friends. Only rule I have: I should check the card before they hit the submit button to make sure the language used is appropriate. Or you could ask them to send an e-card to you telling you about what they wish the schools were like. I’m sure you’d get many insights from the little ones.
- You could have groups make up stories and create images for an online book at Mixbook.
- With Picwing, photo tool that I mentioned before, the teacher only needs to create an album for the class, and the students could send drawings and photos to the email provided by picwing for each album you create. Here’s one example of mine I created for my hometown, Brasilia. Anybody can send a picture of Brasilia to my album using the email address brasilia@picwing.com . So, you could have something like classxxx@picwing.com as well.
- Students could record their introductions in Audacity and the teacher could upload students’ introductions to a podcast site like Podomatic or Odeo.
One thing that is interesting for the little ones is the fact that once they have their online production, it could be a bridge between home and school. In my school, whenever I have a project, I send an email to parents to tell them about their kids’ projects.
Just make sure you have parents’ authorization and that they understand your approach to online use.
Transparency leads to understanding and appreciation of our collective work.
Thank you Carla!
With this wonderful post I feel enthusiastic again!
Today, I found Murcha’s blog and she taught me how to use voice thread without young students having to subscribe. Now, this great post of yours with plenty of creative possibilities has set me on the road again.
Now I understand that I’ll have more “home work” but kids will be able to enjoy web2.0 in safety, if not everywhere, at least in many beautiful sites, playing around with those magic tools without transgressing any law.
I would like to ask your permission to translate your post and publish it in my new blog http://inpi.edublogs.org, written in Portuguese – as it is meant for my students – so that their parents could read it too. I have been publishing translated posts from Sue Waters and Sue Wyiatt about the Student Blogging Competition and Murcha also gave me permission to translate some of her posts, duly authored, of course.
Now, I’ll go and visit the links you suggested.
Muito obrigada, amiga.
Ines
Nice ideas indeed. Problem is in Portugal – at least in the area where I work – not every pupil has a computer or internet connection at home, which raises the question of applying the idea to a whole class. And if this is to be done at school, think of two real hurdles: booking an available computer room/laboratory and time to explain everything to the class. Where’s the time for instruction (geography, biology, language, etc?)Not to speak of all the extra time the teacher will have to complete at home if she really wants to carry out what she hasn’t been able to do in the class. Does the ministry of education and parents pay those extra hours?
Thanks for all the links and suggestions. They can also upload their audio directly into blog posts.
@Sue. Yes, uploading their audios to blog posts is a possibility, too. Thanks for the reminder.
@Octávio I can see your point and sympathize with the challenges as I’ve faced many of them, as well. However, I must confess that I never counted the countless extra hours I worked to add stuff online to my kids, connect to them via yahoogroups, email, blogs, Orkut, Facebook, etc…As for the time to add technology to a subject-packed syllabus, I think that your approach should be to use it in an interdisciplinary fashion. For example, if students are studying geography, why not google maps? If they are studying math, how about having them take pictures of concrete examples of what they are studying, if it’s Portuguese, how about having some blog activities? I think technology works if it’s seamless embedded into the classroom in a way that’s almost invisible, in a way that it’s part of the content. As for computers, with one computer there’s still so much you can do! I understand the hurdles, but if you start little by little, you’ll see how far you can go. I tell you this because I’ve had international projects with schools with very little resources, but they were just so wonderful in finding creative ways to bring the world to the kids. One that is unforgettable is the “Teddy Bear project’, an iEarn project (http://www.iearn.org ), and another one is a scrapbooking project between my school and a public school in Argentina in which the kids went to a cybercafe (with the parents’ authorization) to connect to our students as they finished their cultural scrapbooks to send to their partners.
Teresa D’Eça, a Portuguese educator and a dear friend, is always my inspiration. She, too, has lots of challenges at her school with no support from the administration, but yet she has moved forward and has done a fantastic job with her kids winning international awards with her class blog. Take a look: http://fwe2.motime.com/
If you need any support for any small project you’d like to try, let me know, I’d be more than glad to help you out.