Never Too Young

I work with young elementary students and I was really looking forward to getting some new ideas from this session. Sharon’s presentation was extremely well-organized and her three suggestions for getting started were clear. She provided concrete examples of how you could use voicethread, dipity and 21classes blogs with young elementary students. I was not famiiar with dipity and I look forward to exploring it further.

As I consider implementation of these tools, I wonder if I am looking for a way to use a tool with students rather than the best tool to enhance learning with technology. For several years I have worked with my grade 1 students to create a multimedia presentation using KidPix Slideshows. The end result of the project is a multimedia ‘book’ similar to the example provided by Ms. Betts. The final format is not voicethread but quicktime movies which I have posted on a website so there was a large audience. The students could independently create and edit pictures and text, add audio as well as sound and transitions. Moving this project to voicethread would introduce additional tasks that my assistant and I would have to take on such as exporting pictures to jpeg then uploading them to voicethread therefore taking away some of their ability to independently create something. What is the cost-benefit of moving this project to voicethread? Will the students get any more from the experience?

I applaud the efforts of Ms. Dedek to blog with her students. I wonder, though, how much her students benefit from Ms. Dedek’s student blog. The task seems to be primarily a typing exercise and there appears to be very few comments so I wonder about the readership of this blog. If her students can explain what a blog is and why it is better to but their entries in a blog rather than write them on a piece of paper then they have benefited. As a technology facilitator, however, my rationale needs to be a little more compelling for classroom teachers.

Now that the cynic in me has had a chance to speak, let me make it clear that I am optimistic that I will ultimately find a ways to use these tools with young children in a way that I feel is compelling for students and teachers alike. For several years I have been trying to convince our grade 2 teachers to keep a blog during their life cycle unit during which they study the metamorphosis of a butterfly. They take digital pictures beginning with the eggs through the release of the butterflies. To date, although they are interested, they are unable to justify the time they feel it will take. Maybe I can convince them this year and they will see how much the children can do given the chance.