Weekend Website #36: LearnItIn5

Drop by every Friday to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours, too.

Age:

Teachers, homeschoolers

Topic:

Web 2.0

Address:

Learn It In 5

Review:

The challenge as the tech coordinator at my school is to persuade teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms. Kids are easy. I know that first-hand because I teach K-8 technology classes also. Kids are ready and eager to jump into the Web 2.0 world. Teachers, well, there’s the challenge. To them, that phrase–integrate technology–means type a report in MS Word or create a trifold in Publisher. They miss the vast landscape of exciting tools in the internet cloud that teachers all around them are using to make education more fun and motivating than ever before in history.

I’m constantly on the look out for websites and materials to make it easier, more fun, more enticing for them to integrate technology into their classroom. Learn It In 5 has made that a bit easier. It presents videos made by teachers on a wide variety of Web 2.0 topics. They’re brief, non-techie (as much as that is possible considering the topic–the tech jargon is minimized), and focused. Here are some highlights:

• Learn It In 5’s tagline is that it’s a How-to video library for teachers. That’s true. It includes topics like:
  • Classroom Blogging
  • Social Media for Teachers
  • Classroom Video Tools
  • Wikis For Teachers
  • Classroom Podcasting

• It shares the pros and cons of a social media classroom environment. Are Twitter, blogs, forums good ideas for education? You’ll find videos and brief articles on these topics.
• It explains how to use YouTube and TeacherTube
• It explains how to create a classroom blog
• It explains how to use Google Docs–and why is it considered such a powerful tool for the classroom
• They’re all free. You don’t even have to register.

I’ve tried many different tools to encourage my faculty to make technology part of their lesson plan. I’ve made my own videos using Jing, created pictures with arrows and text, taught one-on-one and in groups, modeled it. Teachers are multi-disciplinary learners, just like students. This is one more way to get the message across. If you’re having difficulty introducing your faculty to Web 2.0, this might be the method that works.

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