My NYC Writing Project Summer Journey Thus Far

[Julia Loving]

My role as a School Media Specialist is purely one of referral and demonstration. Meeting with students on various levels throughout the day can be a bit challenging when comes to deciding what is the best technology tools for everyone. I meet with individual students, teacher lead classes of students and students that are a part of our library and poetry clubs. So far, I believe I found a two wonderful tools that lend itself to precisely those various levels of usage. Tools such as Voicethread and Hypertextopia would be tools I would refer and demonstrate to students and teachers because they are very user friendly ways to allow students to express their true abilities in written and verbal formats with the use of technology. These tools will allow their voice to be heard by their friends, classmates and to the world which I believe students will naturally love. I also can see having a PD session to promote usage of these various tools.

I would like to create a "Ning" for Fund For Teacher sponsored trip to Egypt last summer. I traveled with and collaborated with a Global Studies Teacher on my campus. We brought back plenty of; artifacts, photos from temples, museums, pyramids,tombs and plenty of historical information we journaled to share with students and colleagues. After our presentations, we found that students and teachers still had plenty of questions. I believe the creation of a "ning" could have been be away of us dialoging with these inquisitive teachers and students outside of the classroom setting. The ning could include plenty of pictures, our curricular unit, links to museums or collections that house artifacts/art of the Ancient Egyptian, and commentary space.

All of the above noted writing/technology tools were great. I would like to also be able to find other specific tools that will allow students to discover books and poetry that are popular in their trusted circles of friends,influence peers by rating and discussing books and poetry online, possibly interact with and learn from noted authors and poets and lastly participate in online book groups or poetry groups to further explore literature and share ideas.

I believe I would refer Twitter as a tool that can be beneficial more or less to the individual teacher or possibly a team of content area teachers. I also see it as a way for teachers to network beyond their buildings, school districts and beyond the state.

In the Fall, I plan to begin using the tools I learned this summer as follows:
1. Creation of a Voicethread with my Poetry Club,
2. Creation of a Ning to support our educational tour of Ancient Egypt
3. Use Twitter for myself and to refer other teachers on the campus
4. Collaborate with a 10th Grade ELA teacher I worked with last year in order to create a project for her class using Hypertextopia.

I am left with one question. Can we go over the most effective ways to use wikispaces?

[Julie]

I'm having all kinds of ideas just reading your post. I'm also thinking about the question that came up this a.m. in our breakfast conversation -- what will be the benefit of using technology to foster all of these great pieces of learning?

[Sonali]

During each unit , we study some poetry so I'm curious to know how you are going to use Voicethread with your poetry club? Thanks for sharing!