I must say that I have not gone through as many hoops in setting up an account with any other site, whether it be blogging, wikispaces, or other social networking sites, as I have with imbee.com. This site has the most security that I have ever experienced to date. I received my phone call this evening to verify who I am. My account is activated, and I am looking forward to using it this upcoming school year.
I signed up on imbee.com, a free social networking site for kids, parents, and teachers. In order to sign up, I had to include my email address, my first and last name, the year I was born, my school or organization, and how I heard about imbee. This last part I found interesting because the choices listed are Other, Build a Bear Workshop, ISTE, NECC, and National Geographic Kids. I am very familiar with ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). I searched the site to find out what this organization says about imbee.com:
Tim Donovan,
Founder and
Vice President of Marketing
Tim@imbee.com
Imbee.com is the world’s first secure social networking destination designed just for kids. Imbee.com’s unique free school blogging program was designed specifically for educators who want to incorporate secure, age-appropriate, Internet-based activities into their classroom. Imbee.com enables teachers to build their students’ Internet skills, allowing them to safely express themselves, explore online creativity, and communicate with their classmates within a classroom-friendly, parent-approved environment.
I also found a link to Industrious Kid under Press Releases section. This company’s goal is to build a safe and secure social networking program for kids between 8 and 13.
So that leads me back to my registration: imbee.com then requires a credit card to verify you are who you say you are. This site is free. You will see a $1 fee on your statement, but will then be immediately reversed. On this registration page it also provides a link to the Federal Trade Commission. If you don’t want to use a credit card, you can use an alternate method: print and fax a form or provide a phone number so that they can reach you. The site also provides a phone number that you can call after registration. I chose the phone number method. Then the site enables me to create a teacher pack of invitations to send home with students for the students and their parents to join.
Now I need to wait for my verification of myself through the site, the arrival of my invitations in the mail, and school to start so that I can “invite” students and their parents to join imbee.com. I’ll keep you updated!
Initially, I decided I wasn’t going to check out social networking sites because I felt that I wouldn’t be able to use them in my classroom. Such sites as myspace.com and facebook.com I feel are not appropriate for elementary-aged students. But as I was checking out my colleagues’ blogs in my telecommunications class, I found and explored imbee.com that Jenn located. This is a free social networking site for students, parents, and teachers. I was a little leery, especially when it comes to kids. The site claims to be approved by parents and teachers. It has a link for CARU Kids Privacy Safe Harbor. I have never heard of this program, so I checked it out. CARU stands for Children’s Advertising Review Unit. This unit promotes responsible children advertising in accordance with NARC (National Advertising Review Council). This site is also copyrighted by the Council of Better Business Bureau, Inc. After checking out the links for CARU, I feel that it is legitimate. I’m going to set up a teacher account on imbee.com and post my experience shortly.
So I’ve given examples of blogs and am even posting on a blog as we speak, but exactly what is a blog? A blog is actually a combination of web log. According to Wikipedia, a blog is a website which an individual updates with commentary on numerous topics, sharing events, pictures, videos.
Currently there are many, many ways to create a blog, including edublogs which I am currently using. Edublogs is geared towards teachers and students. It is fairly easy to use, although I am having some difficulty with uploading video directly to my blog. Instead, I post the link to a video. Colleagues of mine are currently using Blogger. They have shared that it is quite easy to use. Unfortunately, my school system does not allow our students to use Blogger, only edublogs. Social networking sites, such as myspace, also include blogs.
I have found some other sites that provide free blogs:
I just checked out a colleague’s blog and found toondoo.com. It would be great for those students who have a lack of motivation when it comes to writing. Here’s a snapshot of my cartoon, “Time Out Kid”.
This site is easy to use and you can share your creations on the site, blog, email, etc. Some of the character that can be used are a little questionable for elementary-aged students. I would definitely monitor students if you choose to use this site in the classroom.
As I have more experience with wikis, I find what a great collaborative tool it can be in the classroom. Our 5th grade students conduct a simulated congressional hearing at the end of the school year. The entire grade is divided into 5 sections and focus on our U.S. History and current events related to it. Students write speeches and comment on their peers’ speeches. This past year I saw how much paper was used, how many times students had to pass papers to each other, and wait for someone to be done in order to share. Wikis could be a great asset to an activity like this. Each group could have their own wikispace, and each student have their own page to work on. This would be great for the teacher, too. The teacher can check the wikispaces at any time and see the progress being made and check for accuracy.
I found some other sites that might be helpful with creating your own wiki for your classroom:
wetpaint – provides wikis that are ad-free for use in the classroom
PBwiki – claims to be the easiest wiki to use; it is free, unless you want certain people to edit the wiki and other people to just read ($9.95/month)
helpingstudents.org – this is a nonprofit organization that provides wiki space for free; this one sounds good, so I will be investigating this one more and post a blog about it in the future
As I play around with Jing, I figuring out new ways to use it as a technology teacher.
1.) This summer I created a blog for my students to use. One way to use Jing is to model how to use my blog. I will teach my students in class, but then they can have access to a video clip that I created with Jing to show them how to navigate through it. I recorded a very short clip to show how I would use it with my students.
2.) Many times I find fun, interactive websites students can use after they finish their work. In the beginning of class is usually when I model how to navigate through the site. But as I have found, when students get to use the site, they forget what to do. Jing allows me to record a video clip of how to get started on the site. I recorded a video clip using the Visual Fractions website.
I used Jing Project in my post about how I would use a blog with the staff at my school. I shared a PowerPoint demo staff could view for the a beginner in PowerPoint. I was surprised by how easy it is to use.
What is Jing? It is a screen capturing program that allows you to capture images and create videos. Once you capture, you can share immediately. It can be downloaded with Windows or Mac. And it’s free (for now)! Jing sends your images to screencast.com, Flickr, a local folder, etc. I uploaded my demo to screencast.com. This site is secure and easily shares my productions.
Unfortunately, as I found out the hard way, you are unable to resize the video recordings. I couldn’t embed my video previously, so I created a link to screencast. Here’s the PowerPoint Demo again.
Did you remember at the last minute that you forgot to let your students know about a change in a homework assignment? How about sending a reminder message to the parents of your students about the field trip permission slips that need to be turned in? Twitter could be one way to connect to all your parents at one time. A downfall would be if your parents are reluctant to share their email address or cell phone number.
I found a link to a paper that the authors discuss the educational possibilities of Twitter. Some examples that are given are reader response and collaborative writing activities. Twitter only allow 140 characters. Students tend to write on and on and on and sometimes never get to the point. By using Twitter, students would be forced to GET TO THE POINT QUICKLY. The authors continue to share both good and bad points for using Twitter in education. It’s an interesting topic to check out.
Since our school system has Garageband for us to use, what should you use if you don’t have this luxury? I decided to download Audacity Version 1.2.5 for Mac from their website. I found a video clip (about 4 minutes) on YouTube that takes you through creating a podcast using Audacity. Audacity is free and can be downloaded to Windows, Mac, or Linux.
