Discovery Education Video Streaming

No matter what subject you are teaching, the more relevant visual stimuli you can give children about a subject, the better the chances are that they will come to truly understand that topic.  The problem faced by teachers is that providing these visuals usually requires a certain degree of inconvenience when it comes to obtaining and bringing in a variety of objects, or setting up and executing an experiment.  The solution to this dilemma may be a video streaming website like Discovery Education.  With this site finding and storing relevant visual aids for a lesson plan is quick and easy.  

However, what sets this particular site apart from other video streaming sites such as Teacher Tube is its advanced search capability.  With Discovery Education a teacher can search specifically by SOLs.  This makes finding appropriate media unbelievably efficient for the time-pressed teacher of today.  Once these videos are located, the teacher can save the videos (or segments of videos) that he/she wishes under "My Content" for easy access come class time.

Smart Board

The Smart Board, a type of interactive white board, is fast becoming a staple of the classroom and with good reason.  The built in multimedia that comes with the Smart Board program provides teachers with almost limitless possibilities when it comes to creating interactive lessons.  The program includes several different types of interactive activities, useful tools, and even a picture database to further enhance the lessons.

The ease of use of this tool allows even those with relatively limited experience with computer programs to create engaging lessons.  Beyond just being a tool for creating visual-based lessons for the classroom, the Smart Board makes kids want to participate because it is fun for them to use this interactive touchscreen system, as opposed to a chalkboard or whiteboard.

Teacher Tube

Teacher Tube appears to be one of the easier to use tools for teachers.  What the site lacks in quantity of videos (compared to youtube) it makes up for in overall quality and its assurance of appropriate material for the classroom.  The site contains much more than just videos, as it incorporates repositories for documents, audio files, photos, blogs, and more.  In short, the site is a wonderful addition to any teacher's repertoire to help meet their SOLs.

Here are a couple of examples of videos that could be used in first grade to teach the following SOLs...

1.2 The student will describe the stories of American leaders and their contributions to our country,

with emphasis on George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, George

Washington Carver, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

1.3 The student will discuss the lives of people associated with Presidents’ Day, Columbus Day,

and the events of Independence Day (Fourth of July).

Smart Board Activity Creator

One of the most useful tools in the modern classroom is the Smart Board.  Allowing for the displaying of what one might see on a computer, as well as the ability to interact with what is displayed, Smart Boards allow for more streamlined class activities.  One of the best tools to use with one is the activity creator.  With this tool teachers can choose from many different interactive activities and customize the content to accommodate their instructional goals.  What makes this program especially helpful for teachers is that it is extremely simple and making interactive activities is very time efficient.

Given the increasing pressures that teachers face to meet rising standardized tests standards, this program represents a great tool.  Because of how simple it is to create an activity, this program can be utilized to both challenge gifted students, as well as support the learning of struggling students, with little minimal time and effort.

Google Custom Search Engine

The current generation of internet-addicted students, accustomed to the instant gratification that it provides, are becoming more adept at navigating the internet that the previous generation. From a young age children are exposed to and trained in the efficient use of the web. The implication of this for teachers is that students are computer-smart. They can find ways around firewalls put in place by the Board of Education that many computer-science teachers would have never even thought of. Why wouldn't they be able to? They have years of experience by the time they are school-aged, many of whom used the computer before they had even begun learning to read. So even with websites being blocked, their will be one child who finds away to get around them, and soon enough, so will the rest of the students.

One way to combat this is to limit their internet searches to a custom search engine, such as the ones that can be created through Google. A teacher can not only prevent students from going to undesirable sites, but they actually can dictate exactly what sites they can access. By creating a custom Google search engine, only the sites a teacher chooses will be displayed in the results. This also benefits the students because they do not have to wade through an exorbitant number of results to find the information you want them to find. Using custom search engines can benefit everyone involved. This is definitely a tool worth incorporating in the classroom.

Cameron's Custom Search Engine for the Revolutionary War: 

http://www.google.com/cse/manage/create/3?cx=012275268733707980470:pha0a1ur37m

Flickr and its Instructional Possibilities

Flickr is a free online community that is based around uploading, organizing, and sharing photos.  However, with additional applications such as e-mail and instant messaging, it represents a smaller-scale online networking site, comparable in some ways to Facebook.  Obviously, Flickr lacks the excess of additional features that Facebook offers its users, but this is precisely why Flickr offers educators the better option for creating an online educational community in the classroom.

By being more simplistic than other social networking sites, as well as being relatively simple to use, teachers could utilize the collaboration features (i.e. instant messaging, e-mail, commenting, etc.) to allow students to post and discuss material relevant to in-class studies.  The real benefit is that anywhere that a student can get internet access, they can review, question, and comment on pictures or ideas posted on a designated class Flickr page. Rather than having to give out an e-mail address to students.  Interaction outside of the classroom setting between teacher and student could happen through Flickr accounts.  Sites like Facebook would be less than ideal in comparison because there is most likely going to be a comment, picture, or something else (inappropriate or not) that teachers would not be particularly eager to share with students.

This obviously would be geared toward middle school classrooms and up, but nowadays even elementary school students are going to be relatively adept at navigating and using social networking sites.  Perhaps something like Flickr could be used for these younger ages for simultaneous technology exploration and the ever-popular 'show-and-tell' purposes.

Reaction to Net Vibes and Del.icio.us

For those who can't always count on having access to the same computer throughout the day, websites such as del.icio.us and Net Vibes allow for access to important sites, no matter what computer they are accessed from.  That doesn't mean that anyone can access a person's information, though. It works the same way as something like an e-mail account:  each user has a personal, password-protected, on-line account.  The del.icio.us website is used for creating an on-line place to store bookmarks so that they can be accessed from any computer.  Net-Vibes is a little more advanced in that it allows for the same accessibility as del.icio.us, but it actually stores 'widgets' from many of your favorite websites.  This is a nice feature because it means that someone can view and use several of their favorite sites on one page.

The functions of both of these sites offer much convenience, but they leave a lot to be desired as newer, better internet programs become available.  Net Vibes achieves its purpose, but it falls far short of other applications on-line such as i-google.  The i-google site is much easier to navigate and widgets are easier to search for and find than on Net-Vibes.  In addition, i-google has a bookmarking application that can be added to your i-google home page, so unless you are obsessed with the perfect organization of your bookmarks, i-google makes del.icio.us virtually obsolete.