Thing 7 SKYPE

I just signed up for Skype. At the JHS we will be using it to talk to some authors that will be coming to the Hudson Children’s Book Festival on May 5, 2012. I have used our own video program within the district which I think is pretty cool. We have 8th graders teaching 2nd graders about science. So I think I will like Skype. I plan on testing it out on  some friends before I have to do it for real at school.

Thing 7 Collaboration

So Titanpad is easy for students to use. This is what I learned. Have students write there essays in a Word document then paste it into Titanpad. Some of my students were typing on Titanpad at the same time and were distracting each other by using the chat box and changing each others essays. I had to delete the link from my web page because of content of the chat boxes.  Titanpad has both good and evil sides to it. It allows each member of a team to contribute to the project that each member can see. It also allows us to see who is copying and pasting information so that we can help the student paraphrasing. We were also able to look at the areas that the students needed help to complete the project.  The students had to create a PowerPoint for this project so students could just grab information from Titanpad to add to their slides.

The evil side…the chat box.  The way I set up Titanpad was grouped by periods. We found that students from other periods were changing other student’s essay as well as leaving negative comments in the chat box. The other issue was that the program actually created misspelled words which was frustrating for the students. The other thing is that I don’t know how to delete the pages we created. If anyone knows how to delete pages I would appreciate learning how to do it.

I will probably use this program with a smaller group that  is easier to keep track of.  I like it because we did not need passwords, but using a pass-worded program would help in keeping an eye on the students.

Here are a couple of examples from this project:

http://titanpad.com/maYuhgfg9i

http://titanpad.com/pzUit6bWxB

http://titanpad.com/xeQpw4miP8

 

 

Thing 7 Collaboration

Problems with Titanpad. It’s no necessarily the program but the users. I have had to delete a couple of Titanpads for my World War 2 project due to inappropriate postings and comments in the chat box. The aother issues other than student input is the spelling errors that Titanpads create by itself.

Thing Seven Collaboration

Well I decided to jump right into it. I am using TitanPad for my 8th grade students to work together. I set up topics for each of my five classes to link to on Opals pathfinder. So far it is going good, some kids jump right into it while others want to do it the old way. Issues with this is that 13 year old boys make up strange names for them selves and they love to use the chat feature. It is my first time using it so we wil see how it works with the kids doing different parts of projects. I will also have to look at what each group (40) all together to see if there is inappropriate comments on the site. After talking with the teacher we came to the conclusion that we should only use Titanpad for three classes that would get the idea since we already started the project. Titanpad is really easy since you dont have to go through the hassle of signing up for an account.

This is the link my students are using.

I have cut the link and will have a couple of direct links