Online Experiences

As I read about Michigan's new online experience requirements for graduation, I started thinking about ways I can start to prepare my students in elementary school for the skills they will need to complete this requirement in the upper grades.
Podcasts or Vodcasts
Podcasts or Vodcasts can be adapted to many different curriculum areas. In math, you could have students create a vodcast or video podcast where they explain how to do problems. In Language Arts, students can create a podcast as a form of reading response. For example, this year my class did a biography study. Each student created a timeline for his or her person. Then, they created a podcast where they read a sequenced summary of the person's life, added a song that fit the "theme" of that person's life and they had the option to include sound clips. One pair was particularly creative. They had Anne Frank as their person and they had very sad music. When they told about Nazis marching into Amsterdam, they had marching boots as their background noise. When the Frank family was found, you could hear doors opening and glass breaking. It was very creative and well thought out and showed that the students understood the message conveyed by her biographer. I think the adaptable nature of podcasts or vodcasts makes them a great tool to be used in my classroom.
WebQuests
When I interviewed for my first teaching job, a very experienced teacher asked me a question about technology. When I told her that I had developed WebQuests for students in my student teaching, she said to me "Those are old technology." Perhaps she misunderstood what exactly a WebQuest was for. I feel strongly that now, more than ever, students need to be engaged in searching the internet and finding relevant resources to help them accomplish a task. In my teaching, I plan to use them because I see the value in students gathering information, forming ideas and synthesizing those ideas to create a final product.
Moodle
Since our district currently uses Moodle as our virtual learning environment, I see myself continuing to advocate for its use in our classrooms. This last school year, I used Moodle as a tool for extending learning beyond the classroom. Since we only had lab every other week, I would teach a new concept and we would engage in our regular classroom activities. Then, on our lab day, we would use Moodle to explore a question or idea we were studying. For example, in science when learning about consumers, I asked students the question "Why is it important that we have carnivores, herbivores and omnivores?" Students watched a United Streaming video and then in Moodle they posted in a discussion board. Another time, we were working on descriptive writing and we were writing about a roller coaster ride. Students had to describe how they felt before, during and after their ride. I used Moodle to simulate a roller coaster ride by uploading 3 roller coaster videos from Cedar Point. Then, I gave students the link to explore other coasters. They had 15 minutes to "ride" roller coasters before they had to write about it in the Moodle online text/document.
ePortfolio
Finally, as I was reading I was thinking about ways that we could engage students in beginning an ePortfolio from an early age. The middle and high school requirement in Michigan is 20 hours before graduation. I was thinking it would be beneficial for students in elementary school to have a requirement as well. My idea was not to make a time requirement but maybe a requirement in the number of ePortfolio pieces that a student does each year in elementary. It would be beneficial for them later and it would be a great way to see how they have grown in their technology skills since Kindergarten. Just a thought and something I want to think about piloting at my school this year as the technology coach!

One technology that I struggle seeing the benefit for in elementary is the RSS reader. As an educator, there are several great resources for professional development. However, with the students I work with, I don't see a huge benefit. There may be some students or classes that track each other's blogs or podcast pages but I see those students or classes as the exception and not the rule.