K12 Online Conference Session

Wow! So, I was just having a conversation with several people about possiblities for students under the age of 13  and what they can do on the internet.  I went to the K12 conferences and found the session “Little Kids, Big Possiblities” by Kelly Hines. She went through several different website that do not need students to have an e-mail and also let teachers monitor what the students contribute.

The first website is Wallwisher. As Kelly says this site is  “easy, effective, and intuitive.”  You do not need to log in and a user can do more than just write, they can also include multimedia.  This can be used to share, have a back channel discussion, and sort ideas. One tool is different users can create sticky notes. These notes can be sorted into different catagories.  The discussion with the class can then go further by discussion how the notes can be grouped and are there other options.  The teacher can sign up and on one dashboard have multiple walls to use at the same time for different activities.  The information can be monitored before it is posted.

The next site, Wordle creates really cool word clouds. This could be used for such things as looking at the main idea, general info, inference, and guessing historical events.  Once the word cloud is created it can be inserted into such things as Wikis.  To create a Wordle all you have to do is enter text or an Rss feed, or copy text from somewhere. The program will then generate a the most common word from a text by putting them in different colors, sizes and fonts and in different directions.  After the word cloud is auto generated you can change settings to make it look different. Students could then for example try to find what historical event the words are talking about.

Another idea she discussed is comic creators. One website Kelly mentioned is Comics.com.  This can be used to summarize, design, study story element, tell a story, and review terms.  The student can work from an existing comic and change the words. They can also create their own.  As Hines mentioned many students are making their own comics in their notebooks, so what a great way to use what they like to do and put it into a lesson.

The last website she discussed is one I am looking forward to exploring.  It is a Edmodo a type of social place for teachers and students.  The nice thing about this site is that you do not need an e-mail as the student. The teacher can create a group and then give that ID number to the students and that is what they sign up by.  Through this they can take and give polls, answer questions, share files and turn in assignments.  Depending on what you want to use this for the items the students share can be sent just to you or can be shared with other students.

I could see even using this in first grade as a way to have the students take a poll.  I am always looking for new options for first graders to do activities on the computer where they use the keyboard and not just the mouse. Also, in older elementary grades the students work frequently on laptops and this could be a nice way to share what they are working on with their teacher.

I really enjoyed watching this presentation. It was clear and it gave you enough information that you can go further into the sites that interest you. Kelly also was helpful by giving a group ID for Edmodo so that you can work with the site before using it in the classroom.  I could see a video tutorial useful for the students if they were learning how to do something.