It’s Elementary

Our guest, Jennifer Dorman, gave lots of great information about using RSS in education.

1. We defined RSS feeds (sorta like a magazine subscription, but online);
2. We discussed why you would want to use it as a teacher, and in your classroom;
3. We shared examples of how we use it (sometimes for ourselves and our professional development, sometimes to automate information given to and from students); and
4. We talked about opportunities and challenges.

You can find our planning wiki here.

Some featured bookmarks from the show are here:

• From Jennifer Dorman:
  RSS for Educators wiki page
  RSS Presentation file
• RSS in Plain English (from Lee LeFever at CommonCraft, examples it really simply)

A more extensive list of bookmark is here on Diigo.

One issue that came up was the lack of RSS on content pages geared towards students. We’ve used feeds from Highlights, and Discovery Science. If you have other elementary-age content that has an RSS feed, please share it on in our Diigo group, or here as a comment. Thanks!

Download mp3

With our Guest Steve Hargadon. Steve shares his insights about tagging with us.

Our discussion included use of tagging in blogs, pictures, in social bookmarking, at conferences, and with our students.

Steve talked about the purpose and structure of tagging.  We use tags on content we produce so that it is useful to others on the net.  The use of tags in social bookmarking such as del.icio.us and diggo are examples.   We are able to see how others tag content on the web.  We can tag our own content using similar taxonomy or create our own.  Steve reminded us that there is tension between using standardized tags versus a more independent free flowing tag system.  We can use technorati and or Blog search engines like google to make sense of all the content.

At NECC 2007 session specific tags were proposed and adopted by the community.  This standardized form of tagging allowed for aggregation session specific content. The same system is also used in classroom 2.0 to  standardize the way blog posts and other content is tagged.
You can download at It’s Elemenatary #11.mp3

Our next show will be on January 14th, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific / 7:00 p.m. Eastern. at Edtechtalk

We had an informative, and fast-paced show with attorney Aimee Bissonette.

• We took a look at a case study from Alice’s classroom, involving a podcast of a radio show created by her students based on characters from a story in a textbook.
• We discussed whether it was a derivative use (a no-no) or fair use (probably okay) and the guidelines to use when evaluating other works.
• We did a review and wrap up then took in some callers into our discussion

There were also a lot of interesting points in the text chat which is included here.

Download Podcast of Show at EdtechTalk

We will be skipping our show on the fourth Monday (due to the Thanksgiving Holiday aftermath in the U.S.) and returning on December 10th with Steve Hargdon on RSS: Taxing to a New Taxonomy.

Our next show is Monday, November 12, 2007 at 22:00 GMT, for Copyright, It’s the Law! with attorney, Aimee Bissonette. The show will stream on Ed Tech Talk Channel A. New teachers to Webcasting can get help here, help for newbies. You can find our links on Diigo.

Please join us then!

Click to play
36:12 minutes ( 16.57 MB)

At the K12Online Conference Join us; the It’s Elementary team as we share our picks from week one Classroom 2.0 and New Tools. We discussed the Keynotes, presentations and Live Events. We had a lively discussion in our chatroom, also. We previewed Week two strands; Professional Learning Networks and Obstacles to Opportunities. We talked about professional development credit available to teachers and the value professional reflections. Diigo links

Our next show, on Monday October 22nd at 23:00 GMT, will be our review of the K12Online Conference (which will still be in progress) and a preview of what is yet to be seen. The show will stream  on Ed Tech Talk Channel A. New teachers to Webcasting can get help here, help for newbies.Diigo links (includes all these links, plus more resources)

Please join us then!

We preview the K12Online2007 Conference in this show. We give our picks for
Conference and get the inside news from the K12Online2007 organizers.
Join us and our guests Wes Fryer & Lani
Ritter-Hall, two of the conveners of the conference. The conference is at http://k12onlineconference.org/

Click to play
64:06 minutes (7.34 MB)

Getting Connected: plug into the network with our guest: John Pederson. We streamed on the EdTechTalk Channel of the Worldbridges network. The show includes Lisa Durff, a K12 teacher in Maryland, Jose Rodriguez, third grade teacher in Los Angeles CA,Alice Mercer, an elementary computer lab teacher in Sacramento, CA, Maria Knee, a kindergarten teacher from Deerfield, NH. We discussed social networking with our guest John Pederson, including ning, the Worldbridges communities, twitter, blogs, and Flickr.

As part of Ed Tech Talk’s Autumnal Equinox Webcast-a-thon, we will be doing a special It’s Elementary. It’ll be a cozy round table with the show’s “stars” talking about what we’ve been doing in our classrooms.

Our next show, on Monday September 24th at 23:00 GMT, will be about using online social networks for professional development. The show will stream  on Ed Tech Talk Channel A. New teachers to Webcasting can get help here, help for newbies.

Diigo links (includes all these links, plus more resources)

Please join us then!