I spent quite a bit of time looking at some of the "sample" blogs and thought of some really interesting ideas for slideshows. As an English teacher, I'm always trying to find ways to SHOW students items, places, etc. from different time periods. For example, when we read The Catcher in the Rye, there are places in NYC and items (like a Gladstone bag and Holden's hunting hat) that students often can't imagine. I could create slideshows with these places/items to help them imagine the time period better. This could be done for any book that I teach.
My biggest concern is the time that it would take to put this together. I already use Moodle to manage my classroom; I post daily assignments/activities for students and their parents, download documents for student use (which I don't think I could do on a blog), etc. I'm wondering how many students will actually use these resources -- It seems with Moodle that some students use it effectively and often, but others rarely access the site. How do I encourage student use. I also still wonder about the students' access to this technology at home. There are students who don't have computer access at home. What about them?
I agree with you that it seems like it is very time consuming to set up a blog, find time to read it, check it, etc, and still continue with all the other teaching duties we have! I am interested in moodle, I believe that is what it is called, I would like more info on that if possible, Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI love the slideshow idea. You could also use movie maker to put together imortant clips and then put this in the blog. Yes it will be time consuming, but if you teach many of the same units from one year to the next you can just save your work for repeated and simply make improvements as you think of them. I think I will use the slideshow idea myself as it could work great for any subject.
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