Thing 14: Podcasting and Bookmarking

Podcasting:
I have heard of Podcasting before, but have never really been interested in learning more about it. I think it is so neat that Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Education Agency put together a Podcast filled with educational resources called Texas Education on iTunes U. The Podcast that it offers are amazing. I found so many neat resources I can use in the classroom. I found that I was drawn to the Podcasts that discussed integrating technology into the classroom. I wish I could list them all, but I will discuss a couple that really stuck out to me.
1. Learning to Integrate Technology in the "mess" of a Real Classroom was the first video I watched. It documents education majors at Abilene Christian University who were given the challenge to go into a kindergarten classroom and experience what it is like to teach students how to create a digital storytelling project using an Ipod touch and a Macbook Pro. The purpose was to teach future teachers the importance of integrating technology into the classroom, the ability of the kindergarten students to take control of the acitivty (student centered), and knowing how to adapt their teaching when problems arise. This was such a great video. It was so neat to see the kindergarten students creating their own stories, giving input about their work, talking with classmates, and being proud of what they had created. This video really reinforced for me that teachers and students can effectively use technology in the classroom.
2. Researching the Benefits of Project Based Learning with the integration of iPads is the second video I watched. This second video also documented a future teacher at Abilene University who chose to create a project based research activity in a high school Physics class. It was so neat to see the students use their iPads to conduct their research. The ACU student really mentioned some great points, the iPad allowed the students to gain information that they could not get from a textbook, it allowed them to collaborate with their classmates, create semantic maps on the iPad, and even translate the information in another language for the international students! I believe in the effectiveness of iPads with students. I think they have so many different resources available on them and can really engage students if the teacher creates an activity that is focused and has a purpose. I wish I could purchase a classroom set of iPads.
The Podcasting really blew me away. I had no idea what a great resource it is for the classroom. I will definitely be using this to gain information for my future classroom! The possibilities are really endless with how technology can transform our teaching and how students learn in the classroom!
Bookmarking:
Pinterest is my new obsession! I had to create an account after hearing everyone raving about it in class. I love inspiration boards and that is what Pinterest allows me to create. My favorite board I created is for the classroom. I am following a pre-K teacher who has so many great ideas and always posts pictures and how-to projects for the classroom. People have posted so many photographs of items, events, ideas, etc. that have inspired them. It is an online community of people from all over the world, which makes it so much more interesting to me. Pinterest= "pin" what you are "interested" in!
Delicious.com is also a really neat website. I like that I can bookmark and tag websites that I find interesting or helpful. I have word documents full of websites that I have copied and pasted as a reference in the past. It was always so annoying to have to figure out which websites were for what topic. I like that Delicious.com takes the complicated aspect out of it by simply letting me bookmark several websites and they are all categorized in one place.