Time issues

I loved the idea of podcasts in a classroom. I especially loved the Famous American activity we did, as that is a unit I teach. However, I struggle with whether it is realistic. I constantly feel the stress of SOL's and eCART tests in my school and trying to receive passing scores. The idea of podcasts is great, but its undeniable. Whenever technology is involved the time needed to teach the unit increases. How do we fight the time issue?

Great Reads

I officially had my students start working on their grade level Wiki. It took two days of social studies/science time, but my students have finally begun to master how to use Wiki's. In two days they have already taught themselves how to change the background color and how to use smiley faces. I am excited to see how they will continue to grow in their wiki skills.

Unfortunatly, not everyone in my class is able to wiki? How do I continue to help my struggling students without losing anymore instructional time?

Great Reads

Last week at a reading meeting, a couple of teachers decided that we wanted to have a school-wide initiative where students can recommend books to each other. The technology teacher and myself created a WIKI called Great Reads where students can recommend books to each other and edit the descriptions on the book. I am going to be introducing this concept to my students tomorrow. However, I am unsure of what to do afterwards. Is it fair to give participation grades to my students when some of them do not have Internet access at their houses. If I do not grade their wiki's how can I motivate all of my students to participate?

Wiki anyone?

I was thinking of how to use wikis in my room and I wanted to do something that my students could create from start to finish. I was thinking it might be interesting to create a wiki for the entire third grade where students can post information about books they have read. They could tell other students what the book was about in hopes of recommending the book to others. This would encourage students to discuss books more.

I did find a wiki where students can read books online, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior, but I am looking for where they can analyze the book. Plus I still think the books on this site are too advanced for my students.

hesitation

Before reading chapter 4 of Richardson's book I was hesitant to use Wiki's in my classroom, especially wikipedia. However, that was because I did not know much about wiki's. Before reading the entire chapter I researched some of the wikis he suggested. Like most tools I enjoyed some (wikitravel.org) and did not like others (wikirecipes.net). Previously, I assumed it would be not be smart for my students to use wikipedia when creating research. However, Richardson defends the ideas of using wikipedia and was able to change my mind. I am in the middle of a research report with my students and I think i may allow them to research on wikipedia now as well. Did Richardson change anyone else's mind on the idea of using wikipedia?

Has anyone used simple.wikipidia.org before? I am still hesitant to use this as my students struggle with the English language and I think this still may be to advanced for them?

Wiki's in the Classroom

Thanks to another member of my Commerce cohort, I recently learned that we can easily create Blogs and Wiki's on our blackboard accounts for my students to use in the classroom and at home. I have been contemplating about having my students create a wiki based on their literature circle assignments. I was wondering if anyone had any experience using a Wiki in their lower elementary classroom? I was thinking it might be interesting to create a schedule for my students in which they had to post about their reading group's setting, characters, and predictions. This would help them to build on each other's thoughts to create a detailed analysis of their literature reading. I was hoping this would solve the problem of my reading group dilema. I have too many students to work with everyday during reading instruction. Therefore, I wanted to try and find a way to incorporate either Blogs or Wiki's during this time as the majority of my students do not have computers at their homes. Does anyone have any helpful thoughts or ideas?

Access to Blogs

I am now entering my second week of blogging. So far, my opinions are still mixed on whether I can use blogs in my classroom. One big obstacle i see is that students have to all create an account to create a blog. One idea I thought of is to create a generic account and give all of the students the username and password. Has anyone done something similar to this?