C4T #2

My assigned teacher for this post was Jenny Luca. Jenny is the Head of Information Services at Toorak College in Mt. Eliza. Mt. Eliza is a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Jenny believed that web applications had potential in the classroom, so in 2008, she began exploring and using these resources. In her blog, she provides helpful tips about web applications for the classroom. The first blog post that I commented on was “Storify your English Classroom”. Jenny is currently teaching “year 10 English”. Their focus this term is “a thematic study about power and greed” with their study text of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. She is using Storify this year. She says that it is a simple application to use, and is now offered as an app for the iPad. I did not know what Storify was, so I did a little research and found out that Storify is an application that allows you to create a social story. Here is the tutorial video that Jenny provides to explain Storify: 


         


You can compile information, like tweets, Facbook posts, and pictures into a story. I think that using Storify in the classroom is a great idea. This application allows students to compile different communication websites into one story and share it. In order to use Storify efficiently, the student must know how to use Facebook, Twitter, Flicker Photo, YouTube videos, and other applications. Instead of requiring the student to use each website individually, they can assemble them all together into one project. Jenny describes Storify as “something that could be an essential part of any English classroom, just like the pen and paper or folio of old”. Storify seems like an interesting application to use in an English classroom, or any other classroom that requires projects. Instead of writing a paper, or making a poster-board presentation, Storify allows a student to write and publish social stories easily.


The second blog post that I commented on was entitled "School's Out Friday". In this post she includes the video "The The Impotence of Proofreading" and states that a senior English class would benefit from this exposure, but I think that we all can benefit from this video. Taylor Mali, the speaker in this video, is absolutely hilarious. He is talking about all of the typical errors made by students who do not proofread. Honestly, I am scared to submit anything without proofreading now, even a short text. I do not want to be embarrassed like some of these students. This video is worth watching; it might make you think twice about turning a paper or a blog post without reading it numerous times.