10 Web 2.0 tools for recording learning (part 2)

This post is a follow up post to one I did last week about different tools to record learning (click here for original post).  At our staff meeting today I led a session about different tools to record learning.  I included 9 Web 2.0 tools that our students from Kindergarten to Grade 5 are familiar with as they have used these already in their homeroom classes, and added 1 application that we have on all our computers but that is not Web 2.0 (Pixie from Tech4Learning).  I was thinking of adding Voki as the 10th tool as I think it is really great, but the reason I didn't in the end is because our students haven't used it yet, so I thought it was not really fair to have the specialist teachers use a tool that they have to teach to the students from scratch (though I think Voki is actually easy enough for them to do this).

Our first session today was basically a "show and tell" session.  I introduced each tool and then linked to an example of a student who had used this to show their learning.  I asked each teacher to think about the tool that I showed and how they could use it with their students in lessons such as music, PE or German.  Then I asked them at the end of the presentation which of these tools they wanted to be trained on.  The most requested tools for training were Fotobabble, VoiceThread and WeVideo.  I'm hoping that at a future staff meeting we can have a sort of "speed geeking" session, with myself, another IT teacher and our librarian each able to offer to teach 3 tools simultaneously, and teachers can choose which session they attend for 20 minutes.  After 20 minutes we can change and teach 3 more tools and teachers can again choose which session to attend.  During an hour it will be possible for teachers to attend 3 of these short 20 minute sessions and hopefully have some time to practice the tools themselves.  They can then teach the tools they have learned to the other teachers in their department.

Of course there are many more things I'm hoping to get to this year, such as training on Google Apps and on blogging, but I think that this session has given our specialist teachers a lot to think about when considering how technology can transform the way we record learning.

Photo Credit:  Camera Girl by Hien Nguyen