LeArnInG connec TIons |
Listen to echoes
it’s always fun when teachers or students share postcards that their friends or family sent from far-flung locations. It’s equally entertaining and educational to see photos
and video shot in distant lands or
historic spots. And now there is a
free site called Woices (http://woices.
com) that allows anyone to attach
“echoes,” or audio recordings, to a
location on a world map.
Although the site is relatively
new and not heavily populated, it
has more than 3,500 sound bites
that range from history lessons
and personal memories to walking
tours and first impressions. There’s
even music and other distinctive
sounds. The echoes can be linked to
geographic locations or landmarks.
Some are fictional accounts placed
at famous settings of a well-known
novel, poem, or story.
Foreign language students can find
authentic examples of dozens of world
languages and listen to specific dialects
and accents. For example, your students can listen to variations of Spanish spoken in Mexico, Spain, Ecuador,
and many other countries.
If your students are studying the
culture of a region or country, they
can also find music or historical accounts of an area. For example, click
the Explore tab and zoom in on the
country of Kazakhstan in Central
Asia. If you click on the echo marker
in the center of the country, a list will
pop up on the right. You’ll find one
entry called Lagarta Blues, which is
Tip
a song posted by a
user in Shalqiya, Qa-
raghandy, Kazakh-
stan. Click on that
entry in the list and
it will bring you to a
page that shows the
title of the echo, the
date it was recorded,
the user name of the
person who posted
it, the language it
was recorded in, and a short descrip-
tion. If you like what you hear and
want to find more echoes from the
same user, click on the user name,
and you’ll find other echoes that
person submitted.
Like most Web 2.0 sites, visitors can
comment, share, or download an MP3
file.
Once you get a feel for some of
the echoes that have been posted,
the next step is to have your students
create some. Students can record snippets of research about a landmark or
a poem about a place, or talk about
their favorite location in their hometown or vacation destination. The
possibilities are endless.
—Diana Fingal, L&L senior editor,
and Scott Meech, ISTE intern
Problem: How can you bookmark, organize, and share numerous resources each day using Diigo? it takes me forever to do this. Here’s a solution: One of my favorite things about Diigo ( www.diigo.com) is how easy it is to bookmark, add, and share resources to the various personal ists i have created or groups i belong to within this bookmarking tool. By installing the Diigolet, a super bookmarklet, into the toolbar, you can quickly bookmark, annotate, highlight, and add sticky notes to online
Share Resources Quickly by Installing Diigolet
resources. Diigolet also gives you the option of saving links to the lists you have created within your library or sharing them with the groups you belong to within Diigo. every morning i go through all of my Diigo group e-mails and then use my Diigolet to bookmark these into my lists or share with my groups. it is quick and fun! Shannon McClintock Miller is the district eacher librarian and technology coordinator at Van Meter School in Van Meter, Iowa. Find her blog, The Van Meter Library VOICE, at http://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com.
