Presentations

Presentations are not my forte, but I think that teaching students HOW to present is a tremendously important thing to do. I don't want them to be a self-concious as I am about doing them! I can see them being a part of assessments in my class and I would love to be able to support my students in learning how to be a good presentor.
I remember being awed by the first Power Point presentation that I saw and I was even more impressed when students started doing them. They were eye-catching, creative, and fun. A HUGE improvement over the most dull presentation ever invented ...the overhead projector! Now they seem a bit more mundane and boring... kind of like the video "Life after Death by Power Point".
I wish that I had seen some of the presentations that this class did ...I heard that they were great!

Podcasts

I thought that podcasting was a lot of fun. I like using them for my own personal use (listening to them mostly) and I saw some great examples of how teachers have used them in their class rooms ...and used them well. I have to think that they may have had some use as a tool for assessment in my class room, but with videos so easy to create and publish ... I wouldn't use a podcast. A podcast might be a better way to leave an assignment for your students, you could really explain the assignment in detail verbally as oppsed to writing, but I would cringe to hear my own voice! So I think I would use them only as a source of info, use them with a RSS feed, but would move towards Youtube as a better place for my student assessments.

Marvel

With all of the wonderful information out there on the internet, it's sometimes hard to remember that we all can be so fooled by misinformation. Adults as well as kids can be fooled if they are not careful. Following some of the thoughts of others in the class, I think that we should probably teach some internet tools to our students. Maybe a class in the 6th grade (I would assume/believe something sooner, but I'm not sure when) that would teach how to use Marvel, how to recognize reliable sources, how to sort out the information. Marvel should be available as a primary source, somewhere that kids can access it easily. I also think that as teachers become more aware of the "good" and "bad" out there, they can step in and create teaching moments around those resources. The internet isn't going to go away (but what WILL replace it?), so we can all help each other identify reliable content. Plagerism will and always has been a concern, let's continue to make that a part of what we teach.