This section of the Connectcultures website has been authored by a subgroup of the online section of EPS 315 for Fall 2012, Philip Montgomery and Daniel Bornt.
Resource List
These websites provide services that lend themselves for student collaboration whether they are in one class together or in different countries; i.e., they can be
a. useful in a cross-cultural student exchange, or
b. useful for teachers to use in collaborative efforts across cultures, or both
Voicethread
Voicethread.com
Voicethread is an online recording and presentation forum. Students can upload voiceover presentations of their writing, speeches or other work and then share it with other students. These collaborators can then comment, edit and discuss the projects. The free account (http://voicethread.com/support/howto/Account_Types/Free/) introduces the voicethread operation; educators and business have to buy a subscription for full access.
Here's a voicethread presentation about pumpkin carving at Halloween. If you create a free account, you could make comments on my presentation or even create a response presentation. Presentations could be used to learn about another culture's holidays, family, food, legends, geography and more. Students could also collaborate on writing and sharing interviews, creative stories, poetry or personal narratives set to pictures. Finally, students could use this platform to work on solving a real-world problem related to the environment, discrimination, bullying, character building, job searching and more. For a step-by-step procedure and other topic ideas, see the project guide (submitted by Philp Montgomery):
a. useful in a cross-cultural student exchange, or
b. useful for teachers to use in collaborative efforts across cultures, or both
Voicethread
Voicethread.com
Voicethread is an online recording and presentation forum. Students can upload voiceover presentations of their writing, speeches or other work and then share it with other students. These collaborators can then comment, edit and discuss the projects. The free account (http://voicethread.com/support/howto/Account_Types/Free/) introduces the voicethread operation; educators and business have to buy a subscription for full access.
Here's a voicethread presentation about pumpkin carving at Halloween. If you create a free account, you could make comments on my presentation or even create a response presentation. Presentations could be used to learn about another culture's holidays, family, food, legends, geography and more. Students could also collaborate on writing and sharing interviews, creative stories, poetry or personal narratives set to pictures. Finally, students could use this platform to work on solving a real-world problem related to the environment, discrimination, bullying, character building, job searching and more. For a step-by-step procedure and other topic ideas, see the project guide (submitted by Philp Montgomery):
voicethread_holiday_project_plan.pdf | |
File Size: | 61 kb |
File Type: |
Storyjumper
Storyjumper.com
Storyjumper is a free online storybook creation tool. Students can work collaboratively on creating a story with clipart and pictures. This platform combines the development of writing and visual arts skills. This would be a great way for students to share legends and popular fairytales from their culture, set to pictures that they create. Alternately, they could write their own stories or poems, or even tackle a real world issue like pollution or eating healthy.
Here's an environmental poem in storyjumper form. The final project can be saved for free as a .pdf or you can pay to have it printed in a book format. For a step-by-step procedure and other topic ideas, see the project guide (submitted by Philp Montgomery):
storyjumper_environment_project_plan.pdf | |
File Size: | 62 kb |
File Type: |
Edmodo
Edmodo.com
Edmodo is an online course management system, where teachers can post assignments, resources and links connected to a course. Teachers can also set up forums, polls and discussions that promote the creation of an interactive classroom. This website would make cross-cultural exchanges more easily organized and accessible, as both physical classrooms could be enrolled into one online class. These two groups could access the same assignments, discussions and resources, and then post and share their work on the course homepage.
Cool Tools for Schools
https://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/home
An impressive collection of online tools for writing, video, audio, meetings, presentations and more.
Jing -
http://www.techsmith.com/download.html
Jing is a free screen capture tool to capture portions of a webpage or short videos. Its value in the educational setting, besides being a free tool, is for one example, that students could be assigned online research projects, capturing what they find appropriate to a project, and assembling their screen captures into a word doc or into a video. This presents a good opportunity for teachers to teach about the reliability of web content, and how to best seek and find the most objective, accurate, and relevant up-to-date information.
Jing, provided by the same creators of Camtasia and Snagit, has free downloads for Windows and Mac platforms. (Daniel Bornt says): I have just recently downloaded and installed on a pc to test its functionality. It doesn't integrate into your browser's toobar - it resides on the top frame of the browser window as a small round yellow ball, with mouseover for its tool options. Its advantage over the standard Windows screen capture of "Alt + PrintScreen" is that it allows a framed selection of the window real estate, allowing an instant image copy to clipboard for paste into chat windows, docs, Facebook posts, etc. (Jing was used for all the site screen captures on this page.)
http://www.techsmith.com/download.html
Jing is a free screen capture tool to capture portions of a webpage or short videos. Its value in the educational setting, besides being a free tool, is for one example, that students could be assigned online research projects, capturing what they find appropriate to a project, and assembling their screen captures into a word doc or into a video. This presents a good opportunity for teachers to teach about the reliability of web content, and how to best seek and find the most objective, accurate, and relevant up-to-date information.
Jing, provided by the same creators of Camtasia and Snagit, has free downloads for Windows and Mac platforms. (Daniel Bornt says): I have just recently downloaded and installed on a pc to test its functionality. It doesn't integrate into your browser's toobar - it resides on the top frame of the browser window as a small round yellow ball, with mouseover for its tool options. Its advantage over the standard Windows screen capture of "Alt + PrintScreen" is that it allows a framed selection of the window real estate, allowing an instant image copy to clipboard for paste into chat windows, docs, Facebook posts, etc. (Jing was used for all the site screen captures on this page.)
Challenge Based Learning
https://www.challengebasedlearning.org/pages/welcome
A project based community sponsored by Apple, Inc. Promoting critical thinking and technological literacy through group-based challenges that can be complete through collaboration between two different schools. Aligned with Common Core standards, and therefore more easily adaptable for classroom use.
.exe
http://exelearning.org/wiki
.exe is an open-source web authoring software - "The eXe project developed a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup." (Daniel Bornt says): We used .exe in CI484/HRE 472 Learning Technologies to develop our own online courses. Since I am proficient in web design, I was able to give it a good workout. I found it limiting in some respects - it only enabled a very basic bare-bones web page layout - but it provides the teacher with all kinds of course-type assessment features and buttons. It can embed videos and .pdf files, and allows the student a website back-and-forth functionality so the student can progress through the course in a scaffolded fashion but at the same time go to any portion of it with a click of the mouse.
ePals
http://www.epals.com
A community of teachers and classrooms looking for classrooms to collaborate with. Complete with ideas for collaborative projects, this site can connect you with another class anywhere around the world to facilitate meaningful cultural and educational exchanges.
https://www.challengebasedlearning.org/pages/welcome
A project based community sponsored by Apple, Inc. Promoting critical thinking and technological literacy through group-based challenges that can be complete through collaboration between two different schools. Aligned with Common Core standards, and therefore more easily adaptable for classroom use.
.exe
http://exelearning.org/wiki
.exe is an open-source web authoring software - "The eXe project developed a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup." (Daniel Bornt says): We used .exe in CI484/HRE 472 Learning Technologies to develop our own online courses. Since I am proficient in web design, I was able to give it a good workout. I found it limiting in some respects - it only enabled a very basic bare-bones web page layout - but it provides the teacher with all kinds of course-type assessment features and buttons. It can embed videos and .pdf files, and allows the student a website back-and-forth functionality so the student can progress through the course in a scaffolded fashion but at the same time go to any portion of it with a click of the mouse.
ePals
http://www.epals.com
A community of teachers and classrooms looking for classrooms to collaborate with. Complete with ideas for collaborative projects, this site can connect you with another class anywhere around the world to facilitate meaningful cultural and educational exchanges.
Socrative
http://www.socrative.com
Socrative takes advantage of "Netgen" students' fascination with, and attraction to, computer gaming to provide an interactive educational environment across a variety of devices.