Week 5: Things 10, 11 & 12

Thing 10: Image generator

Here's a product of my image generator 'play.'

I must say, these are really fun to create.

If it's fun for us as adults, I can see a lot of potential

for children to becoming very engaged in a lesson or

activity in which they could use a tool like this.

I saw an example in one image generator of how

students created 'national park trading cards.' I know

one of the intermediate grades usually has students 

creating a brochure of a specific state or national park.

This would be a great idea for that assignment....and they 

could attain very professional-looking results!

I have a student working on a project on Madagascar right now, as we speak, and I hope I have time to refer him to these image generating sites (if he's now already aware).

Thing 11: http://www.mangolanguages.com/

I came across this site in my scanning through topics 

on the Web 2.0 award winning site list. I selected

Brazilian/Portuguese, and spent a little time learning how to 

say a few phrases.  I was impressed with the process (talking to my computer, 

responding to a 'speaker' talking from my computer!).  It was repetitive enough to learn

a phrase, but not boring. I am interested in exploring this site further to see how I might 

use it with my bilingual students who also experience a hearing loss. I did have a little 

difficulty hearing the accurate pronunciation on my laptop, but I will try again with my ear phones and see if that makes the pronunciation clearer.

Thing 11: ning:  http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com

I have already been a member of a teacher librarian ning from our previous brain friendly libraries class.  That was my first experience with a ning, and it was a positive learning experience.  When I was in graduate school some years ago, the ten students in my cohort 

often spent much time in group study for one class or another.  The cooperative learning

was very effective for us and seemed beneficial to all involved. When I took this earlier ning class, again, I was impressed with what a positive group learning tool it was, with the added benefit of being able to connect learners from different locales for distance delivery classes.

In reviewing the nings that were available to peruse on our current '23 things list,' I chose

the 'teacher-librarian' ning because it looked like the most visually appealing and user friendly.

Admittedly, this was probably like judging a book by it's cover. I did see threads on the others that I will probably go back and read as well.  I already responded to a query/post on the one I joined with some information about training programs.

Thing 12: voice thread

Creating and using a voice thread as both a personal communication tool and a teaching strategy is a new concept for me.  It's just one I hadn't really been aware of or explored before.

While watching the initial voice thread tutorial, I immediately began to see the potential related to both areas above: personal and pedagogical. I'd love to see and hear my new 6 month old grand-nephew with his own voice thread! I'm quite excited to explore the prospect of creating a voice thread page for my students with hearing loss. Earlier, after 'playing with' the image generators and thinking back to how much fun creating things like personalized avatars and trading cards is, I began to think about the psychosocial aspects of having a disability. We see how this can affect one's self-esteem. I think having my students create avatars or trading cards or business cards to trade with other students with hearing loss could be beneficial; possibly creating their own online social network. This idea can be extended greatly with the use of a voice thread.  There's a motivation to work on speech and articulation skills!