Technology Explorations 9-12

Kid Blog
Kidblog is a blog that gives kids a blogging experience in the classroom. This website is a platform that is suitable for K-12 students and allows the students to use technology without the typical interruptions found on many other sites. Kiblog allows the students to share with their peers and the global community. This is a paper-free system - something every school should work towards achieving.

This is perfect for K-12 students and according to the website, it can be used for older students as well. In the classroom, Kidblog allows the teacher complete control over the blogs and student accounts. The blogs are completely private and only viewable when made so. All comments can be blocked just as with many blogs allowing complete protection for the students. There are no personal requirements of the students.

I would recommend this program to teachers using technology as their basic teaching and learning device. In order for this to be successful, plenty of time must be provided to the students. Teachers must be willing to be diligent in looking at and monitoring student activity. It may be time consuming but looks like a good program to use - and its free!

Glogster
Glogster is a program that can be used to make interactive posters to share with other students, teachers, and friends. Students are able to use Glogster to create posters or web pages by using the drag and drop technique. It has premade pages that the kids can use when creating a glog. The company services more than 1000 schools and a million plus kids. There is a cost associated with the use of Glogster. One teacher, for free may manage up to 10 students.

This can be used to showcase what a student has learned in reading, writing, social studies, and science. The student can use this to showcase a science experiment or book report in digital format. They can share these amongst their friends. This can also be used to create web pages for things going on at the school or for extracurricular activities.

I would not recommend this to teachers that teach in excess of 40 students. Although the program seems easy, it takes work on the educators behalf to accept each and every one of the students. The cost for an educator to have more than 125 students is 390 a year and only allows 250 students. The program is unreasonable in that it only offers for one teacher 125 students. For many teachers around the nation, 125 is a dream class load.

ePals
ePals allows students to communicate with students in other parts of the world. The website offers many different products for teacher use in the classroom. Mostly this website is a portal for other companies and features these companies for purchases of their products. ePals allows the teacher to connect with another teacher and classroom that is also ready to collaborate on a lesson. This helps to build a community outside the student's community. ePal also offers E-mail to the students that allows a protection like no other. The email accounts are free as is the collaboration part of ePals.

ePals can be used to form a community with other students across the world. For the high school spanish class, a class learning English in South America may be able to help the students by pronouncing words appropriately - vice versa. For the science class, the students could collaborate with other classes in other regions of the United States that have different weather patterns or landscapes. Sharing anything in the classroom is beneficial to the learning of the students.

With the use of Facetime, Skype, and other visual technology, I'm not sure this is going to be something I would consider using in my classroom. I am familiar with Skype and tend to choose this over anything else. It is free as long as the person to which you are speaking has an account as well. Personally, I like the ease of use, the lack of commercial ads, and the sound I receive when calling. One final thing - many schools have transitioned to student emails for school. The use of an email that is not school related may cause problems with passwords and removal should a student move to another school.

PBWorks
PBWorks is a host of workspaces for students, parents, and teachers. This can be used to encourage student-centered learning and allows students to build web pages, embed images & videos, and post documents. There are tons of resources available to the teacher and staff of a school. The sharing of resources across schools can be done through this website. There are many different versions - some free some cost money.

Classroom space in PBWorks can be used to publish class notes, PPT lectures, schedules and policies and show of examples of student work. Students can work together on group projects and can create their own portfolio of work they have created. In addition, students can share and interact with other classrooms and groups on every corner of the globe.

This website is a little confusing to work through. I am savvy when it comes to technology but this website - although it offers resources, seems to be lacking the content necessary for my grade level. There are many free resources that are user friendly for sharing of resources. At many schools, there are sharing accounts over servers that allow the sharing of documents from one teacher to another. I personally wouldn't use it just because the website is terrible.