Wonderful, very profitable talk tonight with Andréa, Fábio, Cláudia and Justine.
We discussed the concept of Web 2.0 and the main point of having students as producers of content and not only recipients of information. Fábio shared his idea of recording in http://voicethread.com as if he were the phantom and the students will be interacting with the phantom as they read the book. Cláudia shared her idea of working on a class exchange with another group, and we suggested some simple tools she might use:
http://wallwisher.com
http://pen.io/
http://penzu.com
In fact, Andréa mentioned that she had used wallwisher with two of her groups, and it was a very successful activity in which her students created their own wallwishers and interacted with each other. We agreed that to make any digital use successful in the classroom, the tool must be simple, user-friendly and meet the pedagogical purposes set for the activity.
Then, we talked about Posterous and how easy it is to set it up and start blogging. I mentioned there's the possibility to have one Posterous with everyone in the group being able to post.
Wikis x Blogs : this is a common question that comes up, and we explored some of their main differences. Can somebody summarize the main points here?
Finally, we talked about the essential role of educators nowadays to educate our students to work online, for once we're there in cyberspace, we start building our digital footprint, full of cyber debris. Yes, Fábio, nice concept you talked about: the fact that much that we produce online become dormant, become debris, but still part of our digital footprint. So, we must watch out and help our students become aware of the content they post online, for there's no way back once it is out there.
We quickly introduced the idea of social bookmarking and Diigo and why it is an essential tool for every educator:
- It helps us filter information
- It is about community sharing
- It helps us find interesting resources
- It connects us to the community
- It is portable
- It is an extension of our memory
Did I leave something out? Great chat tonight. Always a pleasure and uplifiting to be part of such a wonderful group.
Thanks!
