Blogs, Jing, Video Chat

This weekend has been full of enlightenment.  I took a few risks and ended up having more fun than I thought I would. 

Blogs
Reading the textbook, I realize I've always had the wrong idea about blogs.  Maybe because many of the blogs I read I my friends' blogs about their kids, but I thought blogs were kind of like online diaries.  The more I thought about the blogs I really like reading; however, the more I realized those were about reflecting on information.  I love blogs that link to new sites and give me new ideas about cooking, teaching, or activities for my son.

Earlier in the year I surveyed my students about different technologies.  Almost all of them said they would dislike using blogs in the classroom.  At first I thought this was because they didn't want school infringing on technology they use socially and because blogs require lots of writing.  Now I think they don't like blogs because they are not being used properly.  Another case of trying to make the square peg fit in the round hole.  Most of the time blogs are used for literary response.  Students write something on the blog that they could easily have written in Word and turned in.  Then the other students respond.  From what I can tell, the responses are not as important (grade wise) as the initial posting.  The students may or may not get any quality feedback.  However, if students were required to post more quality feedback, perhaps link to a grammar website or a literary critique that countered their argument, it might be more useful for them.

Jing
I can't wait to use this with my students.  I think I can use the idea for the project in this class.  I will also use jing to post some tutorials on Moodle to help my students with some of their other assignments.  I told my husband about Jing and he plans on using Jing and Snagit at work.  He had never heard of them, but had been needing something to create tutorials for his employees.  That was kinda fun since he always knows so much more about technology than me.

Video Chat
I've been wanting to try gchat or Skype, but I thought it would be hard.  It wasn't hard at all.  The worst part was trying to talk my sister through set up (she's sort of a drama queen), but we made it through with the help of my brother-in-law.  We quickly discovered we preferred gchat to talking on the phone.  The sound is clearer and my little boy talks more when he can see her.  My brother-in-law wanted to try Skype so we played with that as well.  We found Skype had better video quality and allowed the other person to see your computer screen.  This would be helpful if someone needed help with an assignment.  I'm not sure who my class could Skype with yet, but I'll know how to use it when I figure it out.