K12Online07 Audio & Video Podcasts

Listen, share and learn with designers, thinkers, bloggers and educators from around the world.

This is functional, "just in time" professional development. New directions in 21st century learning.



Below are links to all of the K12 Online Conference presentations.

K12Online07 Audio Podcasts

K12Online07 Video Podcasts

H. Songhai
10/19/07

Skype conference with Maryland 8th graders

Today, six of my Media Literacy students here in Philadelphia, participated in a Skype conference with educator, George Mayo and two of his eighth grade classes in Montgomery County, Maryland. George Mayo is an author, an innovator and one of the country's leading edu-bloggers.

My high schoolers talked to George Mayo's eighth graders about peer pressure, forming good habits and the importance of doing well in middle school. The Skype conference was a big success. My students enjoyed giving advice to the younger middle school students and the middle school students passionately expressed their impressions of it all in series of thoughtful blog posts. Read some of their posts here.

Thanks George, for inviting us to share and learn with your students and for giving us another opportunity to stretch the boundaries of the classroom. Continue to push the ed-tech envelope!

Let's do it again soon.

H. Songhai
10/12/07

iGoogle, Netvibes and Personal Learning Communities

Last week my students created personalized start pages in iGoogle and Netvibes. The purpose of a personalized start page is to help computer users organize their favorite education feeds, podcasts, videos, music and other subscription-content, all in one place. Personalized start pages are free and simple to set up. iGoogle and Netvibes let you create an account with just an e-mail address and a password.











All of my students were asked to add two Google Labs applications to their iGoogle start pages - Google Docs and Google Reader. This year, we will use Google Docs to create and publish a variety of authentic hypertext documents. In the computer world, hypertext documents are more engaging and more informative than handwritten or printed documents. With Google Docs, creating a hypertext document is as easy as copying and pasting.

Google Reader is another powerful web tool. It's an aggregator based on RSS. It allows web surfers to subscribe to only those blogs, news feeds, videos and podcasts that you specify. Whenever a new post is published by one of your specific subscription providers, you get it delivered directly to your Google Reader instantly.

Last week, all of my students added three education feeds to their Google Reader accounts. They added Moving at the Speed of Creativity, Read/Write Web and my blog to their subscription lists. Students will use the feed from my blog to get their homework, take surveys and to collaborate with others. In lieu of textbooks, students will study and read online works from Speed of Creativity, Read/Write Web and other sites. These sights will keep students current with 21st century learning, media literacy and safe digital social networking.

iGoogle, and Netvibes, are at the heart of my virtual desktop. I start all of my web based computing with at least one of those gadgets loaded. When you think about it, a personal start page is very much like a personal learning community and since iGoogle and Netvibes allow you to create tabs on your start page, students can tab and index their learning around the important issues I feel they should know as well as tab knowledge according to their own individual passions and interests.

If you haven't signed up for a personalized start page yet, try iGoogle or Netvibes.
And make sure you check out the K-12 Online Conference 2007.















H. Songhai
10/9/07