April 14, 2011
I know that I have said this before, but now I have a new favorite post from a Comments4Teachers. In this post Mr. Fryer used a YouTube channel History for Music Lovers to show how it is not always beneficial to block websites from students.
After watching his examples of The French Revolution ("Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga) and Black Death ("Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani) I witnessed how powerful multimedia in the classroom can be. I was never really “into” history in school but that could partially be due to the methods that were used to teach the subject. These videos are just two of over fifty on this one channel alone. I loved how creative and simple the videos were because I could learn about this history by singing along to a song I already know and love.
He then uses the videos as great examples of discussion catalysts for conversations about copyright and fair use on his wiki.
I then thought about this information and watched the videos again, shared the videos with friends, and discussed the topic on Facebook with other students before responding with this message:
Hello Mr. Fryer,
My name is Jessica Brown and I am a student in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class at the University of South Alabama. I will be following your blog over the next few weeks and commenting about it on my blog. My class is about different ways to use technology in the classroom, which is important for future educators. I really enjoyed this blog post because most schools do block most of the internet from their students. The school I have been shadowing this semester does not even allow Google. I tried to show my first graders a book trailer (which is on my blog) and YouTube was blocked as well. This was unfortunate because it was part of my lesson. I have never been a huge history fan, but I know if any of my teachers would have shown me, or told me about, a website with these videos I would have done much better and probably enjoyed my in class lectures. Thank you so much for sharing other examples of how digital media can enhance the classroom. I also appreciate the links to other topics as well! I cannot wait to share this with my classmates because this is what we have been working toward all along, becoming technologically literate for our students.
Sincerely,
Jessica Brown
EDM310 Student
University of South Alabama
This post was unique to me because I have never heard of iPadio before. Mr. Fryer used this to make a twelve minute phonecast for his final exam review. He is teaching two undergraduate sections of Technology 4 Teachers and this is his first semester giving a multiple choice final exam. His class is project based with six different themes, so he used iPadio to show his students a new way to use technology and how easy it can be from any phone.
I then looked over his links and listened to his review. I think that this is a creative and interesting way to reach your students. Below is a copy of my response:
Hello Mr. Fryer,
I have been following your blog for a few weeks now and I wanted to thank you for such interesting posts. I have never heard of iPadio before, but I think this could be a great tool to help in the classroom. I am planning on teaching elementary education, but I can see where I could use this on my blog for my students’ parents. I would like to show what we are working on and give tutorials that will help parents help their children at home. I think that this would be a great tool for me to leave messages, tutorials, or even reviews so that the parents can become more involved and participate with their childrens’ education. Thank you again for posting this and I look forward to trying out some of the different resources you have taught me in my future classroom.
Sincerely,
Jessica Brown
EDM310 Student
University of South Alabama
Although I have left the link above, I wanted to repost his iPadio recording for anyone who would like to see what it looks like. As he stated in his blog, the sound quality is not as well as it could be because he recorded it in his kitchen where many of the surfaces reflect noise. He used a regular phone to demonstrate that this service can be used by any phone anywhere.
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