Week four focused on microblogging, podcasting / screencasting and nings / wikis. Twitter was our choice of microblogging and I think it could be useful in various ways, both personal and professional. I liked the example in the book about relatives getting updates through "tweets" and I think Twitter could be very useful for updates at events and gatherings. Twitter might be a good tool for helping students with homework. If a student is having trouble they could tweet and give a brief description of their question. This would take some organization on the part of the teacher and I think there would have to be firm guidelines so that the volume of tweets would not become unmanageable, but it is just one way that Twitter could possibly be adapted to classroom use. I think Twitter, as well as many of the other tools we are learning about, each add a new dimension to our ability to communicate and collaborate.
We also created podcasts and screencasts this week. While podcasts can be useful in many ways, I was really excited about the idea of screencasting. I created a screencast in "screencast-o-matic" that demonstrated how to access and use our school library website from home. This tool could be used to software training with staff and archives of screencasts could be created so that staff can revisit any that they need. I see this more as a staff training tool, but there might be uses for it with students as well. Students could create instructional presentations in order to show what they have learned or created. In fact, students might have their own ideas about incorporating screencasts into the classroom.
We also started to create a Ning / Wiki that we could use in our classroom. Many of my cohorts already use PBWorks and I am very familiar with it, so I chose to start a Ning. So far, it looks like it may have some promising attributes that could be useful in the libraries that I work in. I do think it is very similar to Facebook in some ways, just more slanted toward professional use.
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Dan,
I think that if people invest into your Ning, it WILL be successful. I made a Ning last year and the people that I tried to drive it with didn't invest any time into using the tool. It withered and died. It held so much potential that it was really disappointing. I suppose it is like the tools at any hardware store or home depot, if you don't know what they do, you dont know that you need them.
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