Module 5

I am going to register with YouTube it is a wonderful teaching tool.  I didn't realise that i could bookmark my favourite videos. It has also been fun to discover teacher tube, I had a big giggle at the teachers who had created timetables raps for their students.

Students in my class are often telling me that their parents have uploaded videos of them for all to see. It really is quite a long way off the private home movie nights where super 8 films were projected onto Grandma's living room wall.  These children are growing up with a very public projection of their daily interactions and mishaps. Teachers of my generation perhaps are quite shy and guarded with their online presence. Students today, from a very young age have a very public online persona. As well as YouTube  videos, there are baby blogs, flickr sites and many other forums for parents to "upload their children".  In schools we should continue exhibiting the child's educational development online. It is really important as teachers, that we make use of this online confidence in our pedagogical practice as well as equipping the students with strategies to manage their online presence safely and ethically. 

Digital story telling, podcasts and vodcasts are great to use with students of all ages. It is a particularly valuable in our school with the high ESL population. Down loading podcasts for listening tasks during guided reading has been great as well as using vodcasts to create short animations for our narrative unit. The uses are endless, its just the access to the equipment that can be limiting.