Things I Found Today

...via Twitter and reading my Bloglines feeds.

The first one is this short slide presentation :

A Teacher's Guide To Web 2.0 at School

View more documents from Sacha Chua.

I added the author's blog (http://sachachua.com/wp/) to my reader after browsing her posts.

Another discovery is this series of short films from Project Information Literacy, a research project of the iSchool at the University of Washington. There are five in the series and all are worth watching, but I especially liked these:

PIL InfoLitDialog, No. 3: Frustrations


PIL InfoLitDialog, No. 1: Wikipedia


Project Information Literacy is a national study about early adults (college students) and their information-seeking behaviors, competencies, and the challenges they face when conducting research in the digital age. What PIL learns will apply to how K-12 teaches research, too.

Little Twitterers

Second graders in Maine are Twittering to connect to others. This video (starts with an ad) shows how they use it in class. I think it is safe to say that none of us said, "At first, I thought it was just another instant messaging blog," when we were in second grade! Interesting comments from teacher and students.

The wonders of the Internet. I found this via the blog Ideas and Thoughts which linked to a video on Orlandoclicks, an Orlando FL TV station Web site (not that that is easy to tell, either). Looking for comments on the video, I used the TV call letters embedded in the video and ended up at WLBZ, a Bangor ME station. There I found the transcript of the story and the actual TV broadcast, with the anchors' comments before and after. Alas, no reader/viewer comments as of yet. I would like to see what "average" people think. What do you think? Does Twitter have a place in Grade 2--or any other grade?

Backchannel Hints

It has been interesting to read the blog posts about using the backchannel in classrooms. Here is an article How To Present While People Are Twittering with some insights and ideas on the backchannel. The article is from Pistachio, a consulting firm focused on "microsharing." You can read more here. Pistachio focuses on business, but there is much of interest to educators and librarians on their site and blog.

The Backchannel in Church

Amy from the Chaska MILI group blogs at One Foot in Front of the Other... Shes has a great post about the backchannel and using TodaysMeet in her German class (complete with German versions of "text speech"). Even more interesting is the discussion she had with her fellow congregants about the backchannel at church. The post is here.

It is a great example of what we were discussing--the prevalence of backchannel, how it is related to the presenter's content, and more. If her minister does set up Twitter or another backchannel in church, that will really take things to a different level! Hope she keeps us posted.