Chapter 2 Weblogs "Pedagogy and Practice"

"Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms."
 My reaction to Chapter 2

I am always particularly drawn to the practical uses of a thing. It is  all great information to me when one explains how and why a thing was created because it then enables me to structure my mind around the proper usage for that thing. The question that comes to my mind when I am introduced to any idea, activity, instrument or concept, is how can this thing be put to the most effective use.

This chapter gives me some inspiration to attempt the incorporation of webblogs into my classroom format, and also gives me some ideas of how to do it. This made me start looking up some more info about classroom blogging sites and so I wanted to share this edublog video showing ten ways to use it:

Youtube video posted by:ymj1321

 As Mr. Richardson says (pg.28) "Posting to a weblog can take many forms. I also liked that he included a discussion on "scaffolding blogging" (pg 32)because it could be an excellent forum for such a practice. Students can be thus encouraged to write material on the blogs just a little beyond their own natural level with available assistance. Feedback can be timely and assignments can be relevant across the curriculum while connecting to everyday activities.

Finally, Richardson offers a comprehensive list (pgs 39&40), of "Classroom Uses of Weblogs". I especially like these kinds of resources because all I need sometimes is a starting point, a spark to get my mind flowing.

Reference

Richardson, W. (2010) Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin   

Add Voice Comments to Google Documents With Kaizena

Add Voice Comments to Google Documents With Kaizena 

I found this document to be very informative. Actually this information is in another blog from "Free technology for teachers". As we seek to teach and do collaborative projects this tool called Kaizena comes in very handy to me and what's best is that it is both free and easy to use. They added a very helpful video to understand the process:

 Video created by
Kaizena by @JohnHardison1

Now my initial reaction to this piece of technology is that when working on a collaborative project on a google document, we are sometimes stretched for time. This would be great just to leave notes by voice without over complicating the document or ( if you like typing), you could leave written comments relative to some highlighted portion of the document.

I like it!! 2 thumbs up!