So here is another example of what elementary kids can do in terms of publishing text and audio to the Web. This is the Top of the Fold online newspaper that Grandview Elementary in Monsey, NY uses to publish student artwork, podcasts and more. The teachers have a lot to do with posting the work, but the idea is pretty simple: give kids the opportunity to share their work with wide audiences and have them teach to others what they themselves have learned. Take a quick listen to this podcast to see what I mean.
Just think for a second about how differently these teachers consider the work they assign. I’m finding more and more, that’s the real power in all of this. We need to stop passing paper back and forth, don’t we?
technorati tags:podcasts, education, weblogged, learning, teaching20
Will –
Keep them coming. As a teacher and a parent, I am always looking to find meaningful and engaging methods to entice my children to expand their learning beyond the classroom. Recently, I had my fourth grade daughter start a blog on a recent move our family experienced. My daughter began to express her emotions, and her thought process in text form. These ideas, especially the podcasts have peaked her interest. Thanks
Pat Aroune
What a great way to put those little voices and their words out into a worldwide audience! I’d call this a “best practice” wouldn’t you?
Hi David,
I am sure that my Grade 3-4 children down here in Geelong, Australia would love you to check out their Middle P Prattlings and the associated Middle P Stories Blog. The former is our class blog full of news and insights ad from where you can link out to our other blogs and wikis via the blogroll. The Stories blog houses Windows Movie files made with Photo Story 3 of books that the children have authored handwritten before transferring them into Publisher, adding hand drawn pics, photocopying via a duplex photocopier to produce multiple copies, then scanning and cropping the images and processing them in Photo Story inclduing narration before I finally uploaded them into the blog. Check out Picnic Cookies in particular which was written by an eight year old, :).
PS The children would love any comments…
Thank you for this example.
With UNESCO we have implement several experiments where young people from several countries have create and share, both their working process and the final “art work†they made. Based on the experience we made wrote an “Educators Kit†with lesson plan and CD-Rom with open source software for audio, image, web editing. The book and the CD-Rom are available online: http://unesco.uiah.fi/ydc-book/
In the MobilED project we have also experimented with podcasts. Students inn South Africa have produced podcasts with call phones and are then available for other via their cell phones. Link: http://mobiled.uiah.fi
It was ever thus. My advice to aspiring high school teachers is to see what the kids are doing in their local elementary schools. It invariably comes as a surprise — and not necessarily a pleasant one as it dawns on them that their caefully prepared lesson plans need to be tossed in the garbage.