Kinder * ology

K12 Online Conference1

Hi everyone!

Last night I was lucky enough to have the time to come back to school and participate in the K12 online conference with teachers from our school and the Jewish Day School down the street.  I watched “Never Too Young” presented by Sharon Betts.  http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=274  Sharon spoke about 3 web 2.0 tools that are appropriate for the youngest of children.  She demonstrated Voice Thread, Dipidy and blogging.  We have used 2 of the 3 tools already in kindergarten so it felt good to think that we were leading the charge in early learning.  Dipidy was a new product for me, and for all the other people who attended last night’s get together.  http://www.dipity.com/  The tool is for organization.  It would be great for timelines, student portfolios and other projects where you would want to show the sequence of events.  You can include pictures/videos in your timeline entry.  While Sharon was demonstrating how the tool worked, I was concerned about the advertising that showed up on the side.  I had pretty much written of the tool for classroom use until she said that when you embed a finished presentation into your blog you get all the usefulness of the site, but none of the advertising. 

So . . . while I don’t necessarily promote the use of the product in the classroom in front of our children, it would be a useful tool for the teachers to document progress during the school year.  Think about it . . . you take a video of each child reading and start a file.  You take a similar video each month of the school year and by the end of the year you can show the child how much progress he/she has made!

I am going to think of a project we can do in class!  I’ll keep you posted!

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