Blogging, Podcasting & Social Networking for Schools
With Web 2.0 students and teachers can become creators and publishers of content. The main Web 2.0 tools are blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networking. Blogs are used to record and publish to a website and all users can comment or add to the material. They can use text, video, images and sound. Wikis are evolving collaborative websites where the community can add to or amend the content. Podcasts are recordings made as sound files for sharing on mobile devices. They can take the form of radio shows, tutorials or TV programmes. Social Networking allows groups to share and communicate easily either globally or in defined groups. What makes these applications so attractive for educators is their ease of use and students enjoy using these familiar digital forms of communication as part of their learning. This presentation will show how to use these tools in the classroom.
Clifford Brown is a primary school teacher in St. Brigid’s N.S. Castleknock, Dublin 15 and is seconded to work as Project Coordinator for the Diageo Liberties Learning Initiative in The Digital Hub. His work involves him in providing classroom support and professional development for 42 primary and post-primary teachers in the Liberties area of Dublin who are involved in the Digital Control Technology Project and the Clay Animation Project. He has extensive experience in professional development courses in ICT for teachers and has a particular interest in integrating technology into the everyday learning process in the classroom.