OMG! I feel like a kid in a candy store! I spent the morning working with my interdisciplinary team to evaluate whether Twiddla or Vyew will work best for our interdisciplinary unit on Greece. Let me tell you!!! Both collaborations tools pretty much have the same features: you can collaborate to evaluate or edit documents, share lessons and ideas, use audio etc… But for my money, Vyew takes the cake! Vyew‘s dashboard is easier on the eyes and is much more user-friendly than Twiddla. The tools are within easy access, easily understandable, and we can use video and audio for collaboration. Further, Vyew offers a lot more flexibility to upload documents: Twiddla only allows Microsoft Excel, Word or PDF, whereas Vyew allows the upload of almost any file (PowerPoint, Excel, JPG, Word and many others). While Twiddla offers only audio collaboration, Vyew allows the use of a video camera as well. So teachers can actually co-teach without leaving their classrooms. Our team discussed using Vyew to co-teach a lesson on MLA citations and research strategies, in addition to using the resource to co-teach EOCT and GGT courses, review for and after exams, shared activities etc. I am thoroughly excited about Vyew! Once we have fully trained ourselves on the tool, we will conduct a Professional Development Workshop for our colleagues–we hope that we can finally begin the process of effective collaboration. I can’t wait!
Open Ears–Close Mouth
Reflections on 21st Century Teaching
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I love hearing the enthusiasm in your voice, as well as the good resource sharing and evaluation! Let us know how things go with your collaborative lesson!
Thanks for the post. I just checked out the site and suggested Vyew to oue 9th grade team. We meet next week and have put the topic on the agenda to view together and decide if this would be advantageous for us. I really think this is a step in the right direction for my group. Thanks for the insight.
Malaika
Do you get meeting times to collaborate or do you have to it all virtually? How many teachers comprise a team? I’m just curious about where the focus on collaboration lies. (Is it coming from the institution or the teachers themselves?) These tools look really handy in helping spur collaboration. Thank you for sharing!
Bernadette,
Thanks for the thorough review of these two apps. On your suggestion I took a look at Vyew and it was love at first “site.” I’m already planning to share this with my foreign language colleagues. We are looking into distance learning to expand our language repertoire, and this could prove to be a useful tool.
Thanks!!