Gcast is a great way to make your own podcasts for classes. This is a podcast created by GCast and then turned into a widget to post on the page. Obviously, the podcasts can be embedded into a blog. Talkshoe is a site that not only lets you create podcasts, it allows students to converse or chat collaboratively. It cn get a bit hard to follow due to echoes. How might these awesome technologies be used for YOUR class?
Widgets can be added to wikis or to Blogs to enhance your content. You can play podcasts by others. Most podcasts done as MP3 files can be downloaded & played on portable devices – think of the potential learning!
Every educator should watch the PBS Frontline special, “Growing Up Online.” It is a great insight to the digital world in which these kids live. What are the implications for education? What are the new issues? Your comments about this program are greatly appreciated.
Record the sounds of learning and share them with students, parents, other educators…
VoiceThread.com allows you to record voices and attach them to a sequence of pictures and post the files so that others might make audio comments or simply listen and watch. Educator accounts are free and you can set up files for each student in a class. Then the entire class can upload comments and start threads of their own. It is a web forum that lets one talk, capture, and save audio to surround the images. Lots of different voices, or people, can attach comments to the same image. (See http://voicethread.com/pachy.php)
A word of caution about photos on the Internet: Once the photo is out there you cannot take it back. I’m using a photo that was already published on the Internet – which I simply downloaded and cropped. Photos can be electronically altered and republished. It may be best to post diagrams or student work.
