Communicate, communicate, communicate - and collaborate
This headline tells all about what you could learn if you participated in the workshop ”eTwinning & Tools” at the eTwinning conference.
With professor Sugata Mitra’s lecture in our minds we were very open to hear about tools for collaboration.
When you have an eTwinning project it is possible for you to use some external tools:
• Videoconferencing with FlashMeeting
• Magazine Factory – a tool for making web-magazines
• Blogs and podcasting
Click on the link below the picture to read the rest of the post.
Posted by: John Kraaer NSS Denmark
All the tools offer possibilities for communication and collaboration. FlashMeeting is a communication tool developed by the Open University in eEngland – video conferencing is communication and live interaction. John Warwick’s showed some examples where the tool was used both by teachers planning a project and by students collaborating about a project.
Along with the video conference there is also a presentation tool and a chat function. Read more about Flashmeeting at http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net.
Christian Komonen showed the features in Magazine Factory.
Magazine Factory is a tool for producing web-magazines. It has a very easy to use editor. You can either make a single user magazine or a collaborative version where teachers and pupils from different schools and countries produce the web-magazine collaboratively.
It is possible to embed YouTube videos and Google Maps in your magazine.
Read more about Magazine Factory at www.edu.fi/magazinefactory. If you want to start using Magazine Factory contact Thomas Maier at Thomas.maier@eun.org.
Thomas Maier made a presentation about blogs and podcasting. There are 35000 blogs with educational content and the number is still growing.
A blog is like a journal where you can write what you do each day. http://blog.eun.org/watercrosswords or http://blog.eun.org/musica or http://blog.eun.org/abbeyroad are some examples. It is possible for others to comment on the content.
If you want to get a blog you can either download your own server software or use a public blog service – it is free and no maintenance, but you may have to put up with advertisements.
You can also contact the CSS (Thomas Maier) who will set up a blog for you. You get one administrator account and 2 or 3 student accounts.
Podcast – you do not need an iPod to listen to a podcast – any mp3-player can be used.
The idea of podcasting is that when you have found the services you want to follow it is possible to subscribe to it. After this you will automatically receive new podcasts when they are published. Your podcasts will appear in your podcast software - for instance iTunes.
Read more about all these and other tools at www.etwinning.net -and choose “Tools”
Posted by: John Kraaer NSS Denmark