Incompetech

Incompetech would be useful for students and teachers in that it allows anyone access to royalty free music so is legal to use in projects. The items of music also show the genre and the instruments used. It makes suggestions as to where and when they could be used most appropriately in creative projects. The most obvious use I can see for Incompetech is in digital story telling or creating presentation with musical emotion. I managed to download a few free songs and added one to my 'Our fragile reef' slidecast presentation. It gives it a somber mood now.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia could be used for research, however it is not guaranteed to be accurate. It also invites interactive use as you can add to it or edit the information within it. It is usually the first thing to come up when you google something and often it a wealth of free information. There lie it's benefits in teaching and learning.

Google Earth

Google Earth could be used to help students learn about geography and the world around them and what's in it. They could get involved themselves by creating a fly by story. As a teacher, we could create Google clips about an area that the students are discovering. It makes learning about our Earth more interesting than looking at a 2D map or even a globe. It's interactive and I think that encourages learning across the board.

Key note for blog

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Key note for blog

View more presentations from coreenabean.

I used Keynote instead of powerpoint as I have a mac. The transitions and music I added with Keynote didn't come through with slideshare. I will investigate this further and chase up some tech help to add a talking audio mp3 file.
Slideshare can be used privately allowing a teacher to make something for their students only and vice versa. It can also be made public, allowing students to present their work to the world. You can join groups with slideshare on topics of interest, add your presentations to blogs and web-sites.

Flikr

P2120062, originally uploaded by Beanie76.

Art by Beans [That's me.]

Who Took the Cookie? - Teaching Tips

You tube is great for researching an area of interest and seeing what's out there. The clips could be shown to children to learn a game for example. Or to learn from yourself. They could also be inserted into a safe learning area such as onto your own blog, wiki, Mahara sight etc to aid learning about a specific topic.

Picture from picnik via Flikr

horsing around 140, originally uploaded by Beanie76.

Picnik is an online photo editing tool. You can get photos from other places like your computer or Facebook etc. then work on them. It wont store your photos though so you have to send them to Flikr or Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc. or back onto your computer.
It would be usefull in a pedagogic sense as it allows students to be more creative with their photos or slideshows then send them onto other areas for storage and input into discussions or group work.

I can see how flikr could help with teaching and learning in that you can create private groups and moderate the content. Students could add their own photos and videos to this group to create a project. Teachers could have input and make sure it was all appropriate input. You can also add a photo from flikr into a discussion elsewhere.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Voki

Well that was interesting! I didn't realise I could be so extremely GOOD looking! Ha ha. I'd have to say, this is probably a better way of reaching a more receptive audience. I would apply this technology in early childhood teaching in most areas and especially when the subject was particularly boring to the students. Or if the children were like me and started falling asleep reading text after text. That is of course, if I can get it to speak for longer..

What I think I've learnt.

What I think I've learnt about blogs, aggregators and wikis so far is;

-A blog is a way to keep a diary of what's been going on.

-An aggregator is a way of keeping on top of updates from people or web sites of interest.

-A Wiki is a way to communicate with an interest group, be it small or large. also giving the opportunity to edit information to achieve a common goal.

I would love to use these newly learnt [by me ] ICTs to help my future students by having them set up their own blogs for reflective learning and sharing what they have learnt with followers, me as their teacher and their caregivers. I would also get them to set up an aggregator to keep in touch with updates from others in their class so they have a collaborative approach to their learning. Their aggregators would also allow only specific web sites in, providing internet security. I would encourage the use of wikis to share and add to information within specific groups, allowing collaborative learning once again. There will be more on this subject as I myself learn more about it all.

Bye for now,

Coreena