How do we foster sharing, cooperation, and collaboration with learners in elementary schools?  This session provides ideas for using social media and web tools for collaborative projects that can connect students within schools, regions, and provincially.  These projects can address a wide variety of curriculum expectations and can be adapted to suit your grade level or subject area. Tools that are explored include: Kidblog, Wikispaces, Twitter, Animoto, Instagram, Skype and more.

Audience: K-8

Resources:

• Kim on Twitter @Gill_Ville
• 8 collaborative projects ideas:
  1. Classroom research projects e.g. Mystery Mission project, Canada Connections,
  2. Progressive story writing e.g. Progressive Story Project, story sample
  3. QuadBlogging
  4. Global Read Aloud, GRA blog
  5. Twitter chats – Twitter.com, sample worldwide chat
  6. Picture It! Projects by Jen
  7. Curriculum challenges: OREO Project, project site, Global Cardboard Challenge (Caine’s Arcade), Teapot Project, Teapot project blog post
  8. Travelling Mascots: Teddy Bear’s Blog, Gill the Goldfish spin-off
• Kim’s Top Ten Tools:
  1. Twitter (Kim’s class, sample, learn more about Twitter, Twitter in education)
  2. Kidblog,
  3. Wikispaces: sample 1, sample 2, sample 3
  4. Instagram (Kim’s class)
  5. Skype
  6. Google Apps for Education
  7. Edmodo
  8. Voicethread
  9. Animoto, Getting started with Animoto
  10. Today’s Meet
• Other tools: Voki, Padlet, Voicethread, Padlet (test sample)