Audio

I am a huge fan of Pandora (listening to the Coldplay station right now), so I was quite excited to learn how to embed Pandora into my blog. I attempted to embed one of my favorite stations into a blog post, but I could not seem to find the HTML code. I'll need to keep working on that.  I'm not certain how I would use Pandora in my classroom blog. I can see using it in a personal blog, but I need some inspiration as to how it would be of use to a classroom blog. Perhaps a teacher could create a station that ties into a unit of study. It might work well with older students. I can envision a history teacher, for example, sharing musical works from a particular time period.

I tested Vocaroo first and (much to my surprise) was able to record myself and post to my blog. What a fantastic tool to use in a classroom! I'm imagining using it weekly on my classroom blog as a way to give the parents a quick overview of what we studied during the week. My goal would be to eventually have my cute first graders be the ones that are audiotaped. I have noticed that some parents rarely check my classroom blog (it seems to be much easier for them to email me directly with questions, even if those questions are clearly answered on my website!) I'm guessing that if they can listen to the children, they will be far more motivated to use the website. It could also be used with project-based learning activities. Narrable seems like another excellent tool. I just set up an account to I have been exploring it a bit. I can see how it would be a useful way for students to give a "modern" report. Depending on the children's ages, they can write/report on a variety of topics and share via Narrable. Hopefully, the children can listen to one another's narrables and learn even more about a particular topic.

I have also used voicethread previously. I loved how the students projects looked and sounded. It was fairly easy to use and the children loved it. But, we did have lots of trouble sharing the children's voicethreads with their families.  Some families simply never were able to access their children's projects. That was disappointing (and stressful).