When searching the internet for suitable ideas dealing with multiliteracy I came across that particular homepage about all kinds of new technologies being successfully integrated into classroom settings.
Cell phones to document findings during science labs, texting messages or sending pictures to the teacher after class to report could also be found as well as the usage of digital cameras. Just a few years ago, digital cameras were too expensive to be considered a staple of most school technology departments. Those schools lucky enough to own one were unlikely to consider it a tool for classroom use -- certainly not one that could be entrusted to a student’s clumsy fingers. Nowadays they have to be considered being used in schools for any kind of presentation. Students can document class projects and special events with the cameras. Children incorporate photos into their reports and multi-media presentations. They can also edit the photos to create all kinds of art. This year, each student is creating a design for mouse pads to sell as a technology fund raiser. Some of the kids are embellishing photos of themselves for the mouse pads.
The most interesting project I found was describing students of an elementary school in Pennsylva-nia, U.S.A. creating and producing their own television program (RobTV). Students are involved in the whole storyboarding process and decide what the topic of each and every episode will include. The use Windows Movie Maker and/or Microsoft Photo Story so that the episodes narrated by the students can be produced. Afterwards, they record the voices necessary for the stories. When finished these videos are uploaded to Teacher Tube and links are added to the school’s Web site. The only things you need are a computer, Internet access, a microphone, digital camera, and video camera. The editing software and Web-hosting services used are usually free.
Thus, parents and grandparents living in other states or countries can easily follow school activities through RobTV, and those who live nearby use it to catch events that they may have missed because of work or travel. RobTV has also introduced teachers and staff members to parents and community members during open house.

I am sure that this really helps the students, parents and teachers to identify with the school. Moreo-ver, it helps to develop important competences regarding multiliteracy.

Cheers,
Melanie

Recently, I came across with a very interesting online platform called WALLWISHER which can also be used for educational purposes. It can be accessed on www.wallwisher.com and offers people an interactive network for polls and posting ideas, questions, suggestions, answers and comments under a specific topic. Once you have opened an account, you can create a “wall” with a specific topic on which other users can post their impressions, thoughts and ideas. This application was successfully used in a history lesson with the topic “The Gunpowder plot”. In this lesson students had to deal with a particular event in British history. They were supposed to post all relevant information they found about this topic in order to create a sort of online mind-map which should help to visualize the collected information. Students were allowed to upload pictures and images they found on the internet to accompany their postings. The teacher also posted further questions on the wall which had to be answered by the students. Furthermore, students were required to use other online sources like Wikipedia, Google maps or www.geni.com to collect and evaluate required information. For all those who have never heard of geni.com: It´s an online tool for doing genealogy. Students had to create a royal family tree in order to trace back the connections between protagonists of that particular historical event and other historical people.

According to the comments given by the responsible teachers, using wallwisher.com for their history lessons was quite useful. I was a bit concerned about uploading pictures that are taken from the internet, since this can be traced back as copyright violation. Furthermore, collected information from sources like Wikipedia has to be seen critically since some of the given facts can be partly wrong or insufficient. In addition to that, I was wondering whether the students are required to write down all the collected information or not. There would be a risk of losing/forgetting important and necessary information by posting it on wallwisher.com only.

What do you think?

Furthermore, I found an interesting collection of different modern media used for teaching projects. It is called “Amazing web 2.0 projects book” and can be downloaded from the German server of Education (I´m not quite sure if this is a proper translation for “Deutscher Bildungsserver).
I can also upload it for you as a PDF-document on the document section of multiliteraciesberlin.

Kay

I believe we all agree that it is important to include new media devices in our classrooms. The question is, how to make sure that our pupils use them wisely and how to find a didactic way of using them.

I found a project called “KinderMedienLand Baden-Württemberg“ which is a peer-to-peer program where pupils between 13-18 years old learn about responsible use of so-called new media. The pupil-mentors acquire essential knowledge in four training moduls given by qualified teachers and experts. After the training the pupil-mentors are able to supervise media pedagogical projects at their school.

For further information have a look at the link: http://www.kindermedienland-bw.de/

I think a peer-to-peer program could be quite successful, since especially concerning the new media pupils prefer to listen to their peers (it’s more authentic) and not to some teachers who maybe don’t even know how to run a video recorder. What do you think about this program?

Lena

Internet chatrooms have something of a mixed reputation in the community. While teenagers enjoy talking to other people from all over the globe in chatrooms, many teachers and parents see them as places that are dangerous.
However, in the foreign language classroom the use of chatrooms can be of real educational benefit, some argue.

There are already a number of online learning networks that offer real-time communication between students from all continents.

www.epals.com is one of them. It claims to be "the leading provider of safe collaborative technology for schools to connect and learn in a protected, project-based learning network. With classrooms in 200 countries and territories, ePals makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally".

So what do you think?
Is it possible and wise to use online chatrooms in the language classroom, or not?
Which benefits or dangers do you see?

by Linda Jelinski

When teaching English in secondary school, as a teacher you will have to provide your students with opportunities to develop and improve their listening skills every now and then.

For this purpose, "select-language.com" offers a variety of nice audio files that can either be downloaded from the website or accessed via internet.
What is great about the audio files (despite the fact that they are FREE) is that they vary with regard to their degree of difficulty so that they are suitable for learners of different levels of proficiency. What is even better is that they also feature some useful material (worksheets as well as transcriptions of the audio part). So apart from listening to a text you can actually also read it and work with it.
This, in fact, is the reason why the creators of the site speak of "podcards" instead of "podcasts". :)

When you visit the website and click on "podcards" you will have to choose and click the flag of one of eight countries where English is spoken.
The podcards will thematically deal with your country of choice then.
Luckily,they do not focus on geographical facts alone. Some of the podcards deal with famous people from the respective countries, while others present regional specialities of the country in question.

Thus podcards become particularly suitable for group work activities where students are divided into small groups and are supposed to focus on one specific thematic aspect of a wider topic (such as for example Autralia, or New Zealand).

I think as future teachers it may come in useful to know this site! :)


(Charlotte)

Edutainment

Edutainment is a combination of education and entertainment. The term is used to refer to educational video games. These games can be designed to address specific learning outcomes. One example for this kind of games is the website from the Nobel Prize Foundation. I came across this website and had a look. You can learn about the fundamental discoveries of the Nobel Prize Winners through gaming. The web offers you thousands of other possible games in almost every field that belongs to educational games. Politics is also a very interesting field for gaming. I learned about different ways in which these games are constructed. For example, you can either decided about the day-to-day business of a country or plan an election campaign.
I read on wikipedia that simulation and adventures games such as Sim City or Roller Coaster Tycoon also count as educational games. That made me smile on the one hand, one the other hand I would have never considered these games as being eduational games. Roller Coaster Tycoon was my favourite game when I was 13 years old. In some really rare moments, I still play that game. The goal of the game is to build a theme park. You need to achieve a certain number of visitors and reputation. You do that by building new roller coasters and a beautiful landscape which surrounds them. On wikipedia it says that these games "develop children's strategic thinking and planning skills".

In addition to video games, board games and card games also belong to the category of educational games.
Board games are frequently used to teach something about geography. Here the board is used to tell you something about the region.
Card games are used for various subjects. Children can learn mathematics or biology for example.

I think with regard to the games mentioned, especially Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon the term Edutainment fits very well. I also think that for most kids "edutainment" is more or less the best way to teach them things.

(Anna)