Tips for Teaching with Media

Edutopia has published a very good resource, Ten Top Tips for Teaching with New Media. The technology suggestions are good, but what makes the publication most helpful are the specific suggestions for using the technology with your students.

Use VoiceThread to establish the idea of collaborative, productive activities early in the school year. Teach students how to use a start page such as iGoogle that they can access anywhere there is Internet accessibility and that will enable them to have their productivity tools available. Show students how to use Wordle to analyze their own writing. (The image posted in this blog is a Wordle of the blog's text.)

The suggestions continue. Download this PDF and see which ideas will work well in your classroom.

Use Olympics data for student graphs and an RSS illustration

Are you enjoying watching the Olympics? Your students probably are, too, so use this interesting event to help you teach.

Gather some data from the Olympic Medal Tally, a gadget for your iGoogle page, for your students to use to create graphs. If your students are in school before the Olympics are completed, their graphs can also illustrate the changes from day to day.

Vicki Davis suggests using the Olympic Medal Tally to illustrate RSS to students in an interesting way.