Students Becoming Historians - Researching and Collaboration Using New Tools

Amy Kenyon

Third Grade Teacher

North Shore Country Day School

email - akenyon@nscds.org

blog - akenyon.edublogs.org

twitter - akenyon

Vinnie Vrotny

Director of Academic Technology

North Shore Country Day School

blog - vvrotny.org

twitter - vvrotny

Presentation Wiki

http://studentsashistorians.wikispaces.com/

Tips for Using VoiceThread

1) Parental Permission - Make sure you know what your parents will allow. Can you use actual photos of your students? Names? Audio?

2) Images - Decide ahead of time where the students will get their images from. Unless taught how to search for images in a specific lesson, younger students do better with preselected images that will be appropriate and sized correctly. Older students can handle selecting their own, but be sure to teach them how to give photo credit.

3) Recording - Makes sure you have reliable microphones. Have the students do some practice recording if you've never recorded them before.

4) Doodler - Decide ahead of time whether or not you want your students using this tool. Explain your expectations to them.  It is too easy to use to just assume they won't touch it!

5) Student Comments - If your students have never had the experience of writing comments for a blog or other peer work, this is an important thing to cover ahead of time. Give them sentence starters like, "I was surprised that . . ." "I liked . . ." "This reminds me of . . ." for their comments.

6) Parent Comments - Do not assume that your entire parent body is tech savvy. Consider creating a list of directions or a video tutorial to teach them how to create comments.

VoiceThread How Tos

http://voicethread.com/#q.b409.i848804

http://www.teachertube.com/v.php?viewkey=f61611712f456f5bdd25

VoiceThread Links

VT Home - http://voicethread.com/#home

1^st Grade: Tour of Our School & Tour of Our Town - http://nsfirstgrade.edublogs.org/

3^rd Grade: Classroom of the Mysteries - http://voicethread.com/#u192899

3^rd Grade: Colonial and Revolutionary War Project - http://voicethread.com/#q.b114961.i693296

11th Grade: 13 Days that Changed American History - http://nscds.ed.voicethread.com/share/139400/

What Did Vietnam Mean? - http://nscds.ed.voicethread.com/share/331085/

Creative Commons Licensing

There is a new type of rights reservation called Creative Commons. This is a newer way for users to distribute their work and to allow you to be able to use, modify, and mash up. There are four different kinds of Creative Commons licenses:
Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike means:
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Creative Commons Search Engines