An enthusiastic encounter with The Coming of Age

As I have mentioned before in my previous posts, I am not a technology genius. Not even close! Taking the Teaching with Technology class with my professor, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, has been a real eye-opener! When I am online now, I am always looking for new resources or things to help me become more technologically adept in my future classroom. Not only am I looking for new technology ideas to incorporate, but I am also looking for instructional materials for myself! I was browsing through a few of my feeds in bloglines.com, and I noticed a particularly helpful blog!

On David Warlick's blog, he attaches a printable book entitled Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New World Wide Web. It was put together by Terry Freedman and has 13 high-profile contributors from the field of technology and education. I downloaded the book to see what is was about, and I was blown away. It covers every topic from a glossary of technology terms, to blogging, podcasting and wikis. There are instructions, descriptions, how-to's, and case studies. The contributors and Terry Freedman encourage the distribution of the material, and I was so impressed that I printed out the 92 pages and brought them in to my student teaching classroom. My mentor was so thrilled, she printed it out, too! For people who want to incorporate technology into the classroom yet aren't really sure where to begin (like myself!!), this is an incredible fountain of useful information. Definitely check it out and get the file yourself! Don't forget to visit Terry Freedman's site, which is another way to download the book and leave comments!

I have not tried podcasting yet, because I'm not really sure what I am doing! On page 57 and 58 of the book, Chris Smith talks about his podcasting journey and gives a few links on how to make a podcast and examples of educational podcasts. The following pages contain even more information on podcasting. On page 64, Shawn Wheeler talks about his feelings about beginning to podcast (which I feel extremely familiar with!), links to his site about Adventures in Podcasting, and even what the students had to say about podcasting! After reading all these articles, I feel much more confident, and am willing to try my first podcast. The students in my second grade teaching classroom are in the middle of a publishing activity, where they write stories, revise them, and then have the opportunity to become their own "publishing company." Each student gets to type their stories on a laptop, add an "about the author" page, a dedication page, illustrations, and whatever else they want. I would love to discuss a way to possibly create a podcast about the activity. Since the students are so enthusiastic about it, I would love to share this activity with other teachers. It achieves both technology objectives and 2nd grade SOL English objectives. It's a great way to integrate technology into classroom curriculum. I really appreciated the advice I got from the booklet about podcasting that will make this podcast a reality for me.

Thanks again to Terry Freedman, David Warlick, Chris Smith, Shawn Wheeler, and all the contributors for putting this book together!!