Personal Homepages in Tellecollaborative Projects

I find Pageflakes and Protopage a little bit more useful in my everyday classroom than in telecollaborative use, but had this idea.  Students could use this just as I do, in order to guide a lesson or post useful information.  It would almost serve as a communication tool similar to creating a webpage or blog for others to view information.  In the way that I use the tabs in Protopage as a daily log, I can imagine students using it in the same way.  I see this working well in an science class.  Students could use it as science log.  They could use a weather widget to post the weather in their location, they can use a photo widget to post photos of their location, use sticky notes to write captions, or to record observations.  As opposed to a regular blog, these customizable pages offer a little bit more quick personalization, a wide variety of widgets to serve multiple purposes, and fluid structure.

Online Whiteboard in Tellecollaborative Projects

I have already explained how I would use Dabbleboard in a telecollaborative project.  Just to reiterate the key points about why I think this is such a great tool to use in telecollaboration:

• Incredibly easy to use
• Incredibly easy to share, sensible user interface, nice tutorial
• Simultaneous editing, and video chatting
• Suited very well for math, where editing math symbols and expressions is made easy.
• It's Free!

Video Creation in Tellecollaborative Projects

The two video makers that I've shared, XtraNormal, and Animoto, are easy to use and could serve as a creative platform for students to share ideas telecollaboratively.  The projects that you can create with these tools are more than just PowerPoints to e-mail to another student in another location that may not even use software compatible with PowerPoint.  The availability of these creations to be shared on the internet allows for greater opportunities for sharing than files that use specific software.  Not to mention, both of these tools are easier and faster than using iMovie to create similar videos.

If telecollaborative projects are to inspire global understanding of ideas and concepts, I think it is important that students sharing their ideas be given an outlet to express their thoughts in a creative manner consistent with their cultural styles.  Our students create and stylize things much to the paradigm of current social and media norms.  Cultural styles cannot be as easily portrayed in a text or simple graphical presentation as well as they can be in videos.  I think this is important to consider in the reasoning for bringing global awareness to our students through telecollaborative work.