Technology & Learning - February 2009 - (Page 20)

news How It’s Done trends The Science of Class Collaboration It’s safe to say that Bruce Gorrill, science department chair at the 360student Brewster Academy of Bruce Gorrill works with a student at Brewster Academy in Wolfboro, NH. Wolfeboro, NH, is a techie. He uses all the latest Web-based tools for his Gorrill then morphed his original physics classes—peer pressure by classes, such as wikis, podcasts, and program to include the social system, podcasting. “There’s something that Ning. But his ultimate goal is Ning. This encouraged group members happens when talking about a lab decidedly low-tech: to create deeper within the class to share their privatereport—the kids suddenly want to personal connections between study discoveries for the good of the have it perfect, while they don’t seem students as they work group’s end product, mirto have the same concern about the together. roring what could be their written document,” Gorrill says. “As Gorrill started his first future endeavors within soon as the audience gets a little bit foray into the future with a the scientific community. bigger and the whole class is going to 12th-grade freshwater ecolStudents collaborated hear your podcast, it’s, ‘Whoa, I better Wikis ogy class by incorporating by popping onto others’ make sure I really know what I’m Podcasts a wiki from PBwiki.com, wiki pages to fix a typo, talking about here.’ Ning an RSS aggregator at offer constructive criti“Technology is easy to tag onto pageflakes. com, and a cism or a valuable tidbit what we’ve always done before, but podcast publishing site from picked up in their own research— that’s not when it is at its strongest—it Gcast.com to support the activities knowing their movements were monireally needs to change the way we do related to the wiki. Along with these tored and recorded. something. I’m trying to get away from outside Web sites, he used “They quickly picked up on develthe kids looking at me as the person up Garageband for podcasting and iTunes oping their own pages, doing modififront with all the information. The and iMovie to offer a multimedia way cation, entering pictures—largely question is: How do we make that to share students’ knowledge of subfrom using Facebook or MySpace,” jump and how does technology help jects that hit close to home such as says Gorrill. Gorrill also discovered an us do that?” nearby bottled-water manufacturing unexpected phenomenon in his — Sascha Zuger plants, water-use rights, and pollution in a local lake that closed their summer For more details, go to Techlearning.com swimming beach. What He Uses 20 | TECH & LEARNING http://www.PBwiki.com http://www.Gcast.com http://www.techlearning.com

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Technology & Learning - February 2009 Contents Editor's Desk News & Trends How It's Done - The Science of Class Collaboration Put to the Test: T&L Editors Take Some New Products for a Test Drive NComputing X550 Epson DC-10s Samsung UF-130DX Digital Presenter Brother MFC-6490CW All-in-One Adaptive Curriculum: Science Dukane AirSlate 3 A Second Life for Professional Development Control Room 11 Tips for Better Laptop Learning One-to-One Veteran Advice What's New They Said It

Technology & Learning - February 2009

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