Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The constructivist theory of learning focuses on having students demonstrate their learning by producing or creating some product and then communicating their learning to students. Technology can be a great aid in accomplishing this and also is keeps the students interested and engaged. While they are often used in negative ways on the internet, I think that blogs serve as a great way to use technology in the classroom. Class discussions can be conducted here where students share their ideas about various topics.

I am also a big fan of students using the podcast. Their are numerous websites that allow students to create podcasts quite easily. Students can think of unique and creative ways to put their information together and then share it with their classmates. I have had very positive experiences with podcast in my classroom. The kids love it!

4 comments:

  1. Aaron,

    I have had my students creating podcasts with Garageband, because I have a cart of Macs available in my classroom. I know that with Voice thread that can create something similar, but it is banned in our district. Can you please direct me to some other sites that are free? Our district can't block everything, right?

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  2. The program that I used is called audacity. It works well for me. You might also check out Podomatic. I've heard good things about it as well.

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  3. Hi Aaron,

    I just starting using blogs this year with my fifth grade classroom and they love using it. When you use blogs in your classroom do you have each student create their own blog page or do you have them respond to a blog you have created? I originally had my students respond to the blog I created but then in the comments box there were so many responses to go through it was hard for the students to see who was responding back to them. I also like the idea of using podcasts in the classroom. When you create podcasts with your students do they just use voice or are pictures added to the podcast?

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  4. Thanks Aaron, I'll check out those sites. I knew Audacity was software, but I didn't know it was also web-based.

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