Getting Students Where You Digitally Need Them

This post originally appeared in the Kent ISD Ed Tech Blog

If you have ever experienced issues getting students to and/or into a website or application, you know how frustrating it can be. I recently observed a classroom of 9th graders in which all students could login to laptops (using network logins they can’t change), but six students were unable to login to their district Google accounts (accounts they have had for over two years but can change). The teacher had to scramble to get them their logins and help them get to the site. It was more than 10 minutes before everyone was where they needed to be. Not good.

This is obviously a problem and certainly one that can be avoided. Here are some ideas that we have seen districts use to make tech use more efficient and fluid:

Webcam Blogging - Ideas and Exploration

I have been conducting a number of training sessions involving blogging lately, and through that experience my ideas about blogging in schools have grown. As usual, working with teachers in different circumstances and with different interests led to different thinking and new learning. 

One of these ideas was utilizing webcams for posting images as parts of blog posts, which could include student authors, handmade creations, or other representations. Since most mobile devices have a camera feature, it is easy to snap a pic and embed it in a blog post without the hassle of transferring image files in some other way. 

For example, students could pose as a literary/historical character or display the results of an experiment. Then text can be formatted around the image in various ways for a unique and personal creation. See my example of Odysseus after his run-in with Charybdis.

Odysseus after Charybdis

To access the webcam in Blogger, you can click the image icon and then choose from your webcam. You may get a pop-up asking you to allow access to your webcam. Click the allow checkbox, and you should see a preview of the image. After that, you take the pic, and click to use it. Then you can choose a size, add a caption, and/or click and hold on the image to drag it to a different place on the post and continue writing. 

One potentially helpful tip for doing this with students is to require students to complete the text component of the post before they can explore the multimedia. Otherwise, some students may spend all the computer time taking funny pictures. Perhaps it's best to let them play for a while and then shift to  a focus on text. You're smart - you make the call. 

Look below for some links to resources I've used for training and coaching. Feel free to share ideas of your own in the comments. 

Craig

Blogging With or Without Students 

Making Connections with Blogging (book)