This week I listened to K12 Online Conference. On the 2008 conference schedule I listened to Web 2.0 Tools to Amplify Elementary Students’ Creativity and Initiative. This was a presentation by Jackie Gerstein. Jackie is an elementary teacher that teaches gifted students. Her podcast presentation described projects for upper elementary students to use technology to collaborate, create, network, and think. These projects are rooted in social constructivism which means students create their own understanding through collaboration with other students and teachers.
In her podcast Jackie showed short clips of many tools that her students are using, and projects that they are working on in their classroom. I am only going to discuss some of my favorites. Scratch is the first resource that I found interesting. On Scratch 9 to 16 year old kids can design and create their own computer games and then share them with other kids! This encourages creativity, collaboration, problem solving, and reasoning. Because this tool is geared toward 9 to 16 year olds, it is safe and non-violent for kids. And, as far as I know, it is free!
Another really cool resource that Jackie briefly talked about was called ThinkQuest. She didn’t go into too much detail in her podcast, so I decided to go to the website to find out more for myself. I took the online tour of the website. The more I looked, the more I liked it. ThinkQuest has been created so students and entire classrooms can collaborate and share their ideas with other students and classrooms around the world.
In this page, students can create their own personal pages about anything they want. They can choose if they want just their school to be able to see it, or the entire world. The best thing about this site is teachers can monitor what students are putting on their pages. It is like having students websites inside a school website. Classes can also start collaborative projects on ThinkQuest. They can choose who can participate in the project and who can see the project. For example, a 1st grade class could start a project called “Our Community” and ask 1st graders from Asia and Australia to participate with them. In doing this students could learn from other students instead of from a textbook.
Jackie also talked about her class uses Skype to collaborate with other classrooms around the world. I also think Skype could be used to bring experts into your classroom. Another website that Jackie talked about is called Kids Click. This website allows kids to search by categories to find information on all kinds of topics. This site was created by librarians and generates “kid friendly” results.
I really enjoyed listening to all of the resources that Jackie had. Her main goal is to promote social constructivism, which is something that I really believe in. I think kids learn best when they are working with their hands and with other students just like them.
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