Category: Week Review

One of the most powerful and revolutionary aspects of many technologies being used in classrooms today revolve around the fact that they facilitate student-centered learning and collaboration.

Perhaps summarized best in this week’s post from the Education Vision Leadership blog, the move to student initiated learning, while natural, is not an easy progression. Traditional methodologies, school systems, and curricula requirements are all hurdles that educators are striving to jump over each day.

Collaboration among students is a central component of building a student-centered classroom. The integration of many tech tools into teaching and learning practices are certainly changing and improving the way we collaborate.

Google Docs is one of the most widely used collaborative tools and it was the topic of this week’s Edublogs Live Webinar. The recording of the Elluminate session can be found here.

Here are a few recent blog posts that discuss different collaboration tools in the classroom (all of which can be embedded into a blog):

1. Sewing up class discussions with VoiceThread – USM Library Blog
2. Wallwisher and the Christchurch Earthquake – ICT Teaching and Learning
3. Scribblar.com – The Education Technology Blog
4. Glogster – Two Writing Teachers

Top edutweets from the week:

Featured Edublog of the Week

Lauren’s Blog and Abbey’s Blog Two incredible student blogs! Find more student blogs and register now for the Student Blogging Challenge!

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Summing it up

We think that there is no better tool than a blog to act as a “home base” for all of the different collaborative tools out there.  Not to mention the built in commenting, sharing, and collaborative tools of a blog itself.

What other tools do you use for student collaboration that was left off our list? Do you have any links to share with others of your students’ work?

You may have heard that Skype announced this week the new ability to video conference with up to 10 users at once.

We’ve tested this out and find it to be really cool. And since many classrooms around the globe are using services like Skype, we thought we would share a bit more.

Skype is a free tool that allows users to make voice and video calls to any other Skype user in the world.

Teachers and students have been using Skype for years to bring experts, authors, and guest speakers right into the classroom with no travel necessary.  Previously, Skype didn’t allow more than two video callers at a time, and with this addition, even more connections and interactions can be shared simultaneously.

If you are looking for other classrooms to connect with, a great place to start is on this post from TheEdublogger.com.  To add your class to this list, visit this post here and leave your details.

Here are a few other great recent posts about using Skype in the classroom:

1. An Author in Every Classroom: Kids connecting with authors via Skype. It’s the next best thing to being there.
2. Learning Beyond Walls: 21 Skype Resources
3. Skype Saves the Day for Teacher Seminar
4. Miss Tyler-Smith’s Class: Our First Skype Call!!

Top edutweets from the week:

Featured Edublog of the Week

Heroes 2001 Indianapolis, Indiana USA A fantastic English class blog! Read our interview with Jana Haffley, creator of this blog here.

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory!

Summing it up

As the world grows smaller each day, and increasing focus is placed on global connections and relationships, we think Skype and other communication tools (like blogs) will only increase in their popularity.

Leave a comment and let us know if you have used Skype in your teaching or if you have anything else to share!