Techlearning blog

This may not the best example for a worldwide audience, however, the premise is this. As young children bring home their prized creations from school; drawings, paintings, poems, essays and even tests, many students and parents hang them proudly on the refrigerator. I know this was the way it was when I was growing up. Interestingly enough, our refrigerator was really crowded since there were 8 of us in school, always bringing home something we thought worthy of the refrigerator post! At most, my parents, siblings and neighborhood friends were able to read selected posts. If it was a holiday then sometimes a grandparent would see the the prized post. However, the posts were viewed by a limited audience and the comments were verbal in nature and only if you happened to be in the range of the refrigerator when someone else was passing by and noticed your creation.

Fast forward to the 21st Century! Where are YOU posting your prized possessions? Where do you manage and post your students' creations, wait, where do your students manage and post their own creations? Posting can include a drawing or poem or article or comment on a blog or wiki on the Internet, or can include creating with a Flickr or Bubbleshare account. Not only can our students post to a community including those from around the planet, we, too, can publish our work for comments, feedback and reflections from others.

On December 1, 2006, Rueters published an online article, Big media sees opportunities in Web user content
Fri Dec 1, 2006 6:38pm ET17 by Yinka Adegoke. An interesting fact from the article states that
YouTube says users view more than 100 million video clips daily. MySpace has more than 130 million users.

We are a community of content creators and publishers. If you are ready to begin posting to the worldwide refrigerator here are some quick ways to begin with yourself and your students. Capture some of those 100 million people viewing content on the Internet.

If you have a digital camera, have permission for students photos to appear on the Internet, you can create a free account at Bubbleshare, upload a few photos, have your students type their comments or record their reflections about the photos and then SHARE it. There are a few ways to share your photos or slide show with Bubbleshare, choose the one that matches your style and needs and then tell others. Your photos will now have bigger audience. You can run your photos through some filters if you are concerned about students faces appearing on the Internet. This is an example of our Ho! Westward integrated project from last March 2006, which was filtered to provide some anonymity. Here is an example of an integrated project from my elementary school performed to the music Rodeo displayed at Bubbleshare.

BTW (by the way) this Bubbleshare has been viewed 4344 times as of 12/2/06 significantly more than the number of people who have walked by my refrigerator these past eight months.

You can also view examples here of how two kindergarten teachers uses Bubbleshare with their students and communities. Kindergarten teacher Maria Knee, Maria has her comments written beneath her photos. Kindergarten teacher Leah Tondreau,Leah has audio of her students reading their class information.

Now a quick tip for any educator out there who wants to begin posting on the worldwide refrigerator go to either David Warlick's free blogs for teachers and students at classblogmeister and get started, or if you are interested in starting to post your own reflections about your teaching or this journey using Web 2.0 tools, a great place to start is here at Blogger. Blogger will require a free registration and once your login is created you not only will have your first blog, but you will have a user name and password which allows you to comment on other blogs in the blogosphere aka worldwide refrigerator.

You can check out my blogmeister page which has recorded over 3698 hits since last June 2006. Remember it is all about the conversation. Post a comment, create a Bubbleshare, create a blog post and join the conversation. BTW my refrigerator has only had 46 hits since June 2006, how about you?

Over and Out.