Think, Wonder and Learn with the Web

Cybersafety

2008-12-02T20:32:00.003+11:00

As I continue to explore the roles and responsibilities that we have towards our students if we are going to have them use technologies in education, I continue to build up a great list of resources that will be used by teachers, parents and students. The more I explore this issue, the more I realise how important this whole topic is and what a great responsibility teachers and parents have. Here is another link to another great site that helps us to understand this area. This is a page that lists of collection of ideas and sites that discuss the Social, Legal and ethical issues of online learning. http://onlinetools.pbwiki.com/EARCOS+Main+Page

He's right next door

2008-11-11T22:59:00.004+11:00

Tonight as I have been working I have been chatting on Skype at the same time with an amazing young teacher who teaches in another small country school only about 30 minutes drive away from where I teach. Given that there are many times where I look to find other like minded teachers who are using technology in country schools it is so refreshing to see that mrrobbo is close by and is inspirational in the things that he is doing with his students. So tonight I have checked out a wiki that he has created http://h311oe.wikispaces.com/with his Year 12 Outdoor Education class, listened to a podcast interview that he did with a Canadian teacher Rod Lucier of Clever Sheep blog fame and checked out a couple of new sites (for me at least) http://woices.com/ and http://qik.com which both look really interesting when combined with mobile phone technologies. All in all a very inspirational and fascinating chat with a young teacher who is just starting out on his teaching career. I would happily be in his class.

Using twitter to learn more about stereotypes

2008-10-22T18:15:00.003+11:00

Our Year 9 students are currently participating in a project with international students from 6 countries called It's a small world. We are asking the students to explore the notion of stereotypes. By making connections with students from 5 schools from 3 other countries, Pakistan, USA, Malaysia and Australia we are hoping that students will be able to break down typical stereotypes by getting to know other students through a ning. We are using two of the Intel Thinking with Technology tools and a wiki to share our thinking.
One of the first tasks for students to do was to rank characteristics according to how they think others view them. Our students were finding this really difficult to do. By pure luck I happened to read a blog post by Tom Barrett about how he had used twitter to ask fellow twitters to share with his students the probability of it snowing in their location.
It gave me an idea.
so on Tuesday morning I sent out a tweet asking for responses to this..

Good morning all. For Yr 9s studying identity . When do you think of Aussies, what characteristics do you think of?

Within 10 minutes we had some fantastic answers from around the world

janenicholls @annieb3525 Being an Aussie I think we are resourceful, blatantly honest and loyal! but I'm uncomfortable describing a ppl group!

middleclassgirl @annieb3525 you could look at comedy where some good st are or go to pictureaustralia.Org and look at one of the pic trails

hopeinhell @annieb3525 hmm.. ok.. easygoing, beer-slurping, binge drinking, bbq-ing, slow-drawling, adventure hunting.. to name a few.. :D

paulrwood I try to learn so much from what I read about Aussies doing. Great folks from a different part of the world. I am in Texas

suzievesper @annieb3525 - I have some negative (but not necessarily the way I think!) Brash, uncouth, racist. Some positive - resourceful, sporty.

paulrwood I am sorry to say that I assoicated so much with the "shrimp on the barbie" commercials. Now my boss of 14 yrs is from Brisbane

lenva @annieb3525 - Aussies = casual and laidback. enjoy outdoors. confident in expressing themselves. not afraid to disagree.

SarahStewart @annieb3525 Brash but fun. Give it a go attitude. Not as sophisticated as some nationalities. Very effective at what you do eg sports...

SarahStewart @annieb3525 ...but a little redneck at times :)

onlineteacher @annieb3525 Tough. Fearless. Individualistic n opinionated. Straightforward. Kinda like way USA was 100 yrs ago *:-) Luv u guys *:-)

Some of the responses certainly got our brains and our mouths moving. Some students took offence at being considered redneck or brash and opinionated. But on the other hand it really made them think about how they also put people into stereotypes and how offensive that might be to them.
So thanks to all who contributed. It really opened the eyes of our students and had added a whole new depth to our understanding.

Do you know your Digital Footprint?

2008-10-21T00:15:00.002+11:00

As I continue to explore the ideas and importance of developing resources and lessons about Digital Citizenship. I came across this presentation by Dean Shareski. Dean asks us to think about our Google identity. Have you ever googled yourself? He suggests that there are strategies and ways to take control the way we are 'googled'. I wonder how many of us even think about that. I certainly think that it's something that we should be teaching our students. By teaching the about taking control I hope to help them understand that they are should be thinking about what can be known about themselves online. And that if they are careful and clever they actually have a choice about that. And I hope that it will create an awareness of how easily information can be posted that is not desirable or appropriate. It is important that we all take charge of that information as much as we can.
As you listen to Dean's presentation ( there is an audio with the slideshare) , think about your digital footprint. What does it say about you?

Going Global, Going Public

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: identity globalization)

Educating them to be safe is better than blocking .

2008-10-09T21:45:00.003+11:00

As I work on our new project , Digiteen- exploring what it means to be a digital citizen, I am more and more mindful of the responsibility we have as educators to ensure that our students are empowered to manage the web in a safe and smart way. I find that my daily conversations with students are changing as I watch the sites they visit, the amount of illegal (but innocent) downloading that they do, the way they happily play online for way too much time, the ineffective searching that they do, the 'friends' that they pick up online etc etc. I am also constantly reminded that blocking all but the most offensive and dangerous sites is all but useless . Our kids are too clever for that and their personal and online networks are too strong. Block one site and they will find the next one.
No, I am convinced that it is education that they need. Actually it's what we all need. It's not only kids that do this, I see teachers on a daily basis breaching copyright, overlooking Google searches that are a complete waste of time, looking past clear 'cut and paste' articles presented as a student's own work and telling students to go research a topic with no guidelines or strategy for doing so. And basically having little idea (or is it turning a blind eye?) of safe and secure ways to use the internet.
So it is with some gratification that Julie Lindsay passed on some news that she came across I by US congress where they have passed an update to the Children's Internet Protection Act requiring schools participating in the E-Rate program to educate students regarding appropriate behavior on social networking and chat room sites and about cyberbullying.
Of course we here in Australia are not sitting on our laurels and I'm happy to say that the Victorian DEECD offers some guidelines for schools when working online with students, teachers and parents. The solution I am convinced is in education. But we have a long way to go in ensuring that our teachers, our students and our whole school community are savvy in determining how to be an effective, safe, clever and smart digital citizen.

Wikispaces aiming for 250,000 educational wikis

2008-09-30T20:14:00.003+10:00

Wikispaces has been aiming for the past two and a half years to achieve their goal of 100,000 educational wikis and they have done it.
And now they have set themselves a new goal of 250,000 educational wikis.
Here is a message that I left on the blog post announcement. Basically as a wikispace user for the past two and a half years, I am very happy with the service and will continue to use wikispaces as my wiki of preference.

We love wikispaces here at Wedderburn College and I can't believe that it was back in June 2006 when I set up my first wiki with wikispaces http://teaching-with-technology.wikispaces.com/ Since then we have used them for portals for classwork http://wedderburnp12.wikispaces.com/classwiki, as digital portfolios for individual students ( all set to private thanks to the generous 100,000 wikis for education initiative, http://rose0001.wikispaces.com/ and as an online repository for sharing and collaborating on a particular topic. http://discoveregypt.wikispaces.com/ http://cleversearching.wikispaces.com/ http://the-games08.wikispaces.com/ I have used a number of other wikis when collaborating with other schools who have chosen to use something different, but wikispaces are by far the easiest, most flexible and best looking IMHO. By the way I love the new skin on the manage page. It looks great. Good luck with the next 250,000.

Giving Students a Voice

2008-09-18T13:48:00.004+10:00

Edutopia, supported by the George Lucas Foundation is a great resource for teachers. There is great depth in the site which gives a wide range of resources, lesson plans, videos, links to other blogs as well as blogs within the site.
I came across this rather simple yet powerful idea to give students a voice.

Edutopia.org wants to hear from you about which skills you think your school should teach to help you succeed in life. Kids are experts on the modern digital world, and we think it's time adults listened. Create a video stating your opinion, and submit it by October 15 -- we'll publish our favorites on Edutopia.org.

It's simple -- there are just five steps:

Create a video, no more than one minute long, answering this question:
"What do you think is the most important skill to learn for your future -- and why?"
The footage could consist of straightforward talking to the camera, or something more creative.
Introduce yourself with your first name only.
Obtain parental consent for taping and posting on the Internet if you are younger than eighteen years old.
Post the video on YouTube and tag it "edutopiaskills." (Note that YouTube users must be at least thirteen years old.)
Send an email to skills@edutopia.org, telling us your name, age, parental contact information, and hometown, and include a link to the video.

You'll need a (free) YouTube account to do the upload. Find YouTube's instructions for uploading here and for directions for tagging here.

I love the simplicity of it. I think we'll have a go next term with our Year 9/10 students.

Being a good digital citizen

2008-09-08T23:09:00.005+10:00

I am in Melbourne at the moment participating in a two day induction program with 20 other teacher participants. We have all been selected to do a range of projects around web2.0 Collaborative learning and research. The streams of interest are around social networking or streaming media. How exciting it is to be at the cutting edge. A day of listening to what others are planning is a great way to get the juices flowing.
I want to explore the responsibilities of young people when they interact with technology. I want my students to explore how they can make a difference to themselves and others by learning more and by teaching others. I also want them to interact with other students to hopefully recognise what it is that they all have in common regarding their use of technology.
Our Grade 5/6 students at Wedderburn have recently joined up with SuperclubPlus which provides very clear guidelines and expectations for students when they are online. They receive immediate feedback if they break the rules.
In planning for this project I have been emailing Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay who have already been working in this area with their students. Julie and Vicki have established a Digiteen ning and a Digiteen wiki . Their ideas and the online resources that they have created are a source of amazing ideas and thinking. I have also come across this wiki created by many like minded teachers who are committed to educating and empowering students who use the internet rather than sticking our heads in the sand, blocking sites and jumping on the alarmist bandwagon that so often follows these issues. Let's empower our students and be proactive in educating our students and their parents how to be good digital citizens. Can't wait to get started.

One Laptop per child - 21st Century skills

2008-09-03T13:58:00.002+10:00

I have been exploring more about 21st Century skills as I set up a new project for our students that has been funded by the Innovation Next Practice Division with DEECD. My project will involve students exploring their roles and responsibilities as global citizens. Through the use of a ning and a wiki I hope to help students to understand how we all have a responsibility to be aware and respond to global issues. I also want them to understand the role the internet plays in this scenario and that we can't use distance and time as excuses for not being involved.
My research led me to a brilliant site called The Partnership For 21st Century Skills that advocates embedding 21st Century skills into education. This is the type of site you revisit again and again and I will be using it as a catalyst for many a conversation with my students. I also found a really powerful video on this site that discusses the One Child Per Laptop (OLPC) project which aims to revolutionise the access for the poorest kids in the world by providing them with a robust, cheap, low powered laptop to use in their education. Although mighty impressive and an amazing project, what really struck me was this associated video of Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child that gives a very short explanation about the vision of OCPC. What struck me was that Professor Negroponte talks not about the laptops themselves but about what sort of thinking and creating he envisions that the children would do as a result of having access to this technology. It reminded me of why we need to be constantly asking ourselves why we have our students work with technology and what we want them to think, do, know and understand as a result.
I plan to show this video to the teachers here at Wedderburn in the hope that it generates some discussion about what, why and how we use information technology in our classrooms.

Wordle-ing with the Olympics

2008-08-24T19:29:00.006+10:00

Sometimes I delay writing in this blog because I want to spend time thinking and reflecting before I write. But the upshot of that I that I don't write as often as I should. So in the interests of getting something posted that might be of use to someone else, here is a little activity that I did with Grade 3/4 students using Wordle. They loved it and the teachers thought it was pretty cool too.
This is how we did it.

To start off our activity we are going to brainstorm all the words we can think of that remind us of the Olympics. I am going to write them into a word document and show in on the Interactive whiteboard as the students are brainstorming. Once we have lots of words we are going to save the document into a shared folder on the server so that everyone in the class can open it up and save it as their own.

Once everyone has the document in front of them they are each going to copy and duplicate words that are related to the country they are studying and add them to their Olympics brainstorm list

Then we are going to do something really cool with it. Everyone is going to use Wordle to create their own word clouds that shows the way they have changed words to reflect their country. The more times they duplicate their countries words, the more their words will increase in size.

Then we are going to use Ifranview to grab a screen print of it, resize it and then upload it to this blog.

We hope you enjoy the wordles.

To see more check out our burnersblog and our Grade 3/4 wiki.

An Olympic day in a Sentence

2008-08-17T17:15:00.006+10:00

Well after another exciting day of Phelps breaking all sorts of records, the Aussie girls winning the 4x 100 medley gold relay and Romania's 38 year old Constantina Tomescu winning the womens marathon, here are the Love it or hate Olympics Day in a Sentences for this week

Janet and her Grade 6 students from Ballarat said
"Ozzies love your magnificent participation in competitive games, actively modelling excellent sportsmanship."

Daniel Drury said
It was nice to view the men’s cycling on Sunday. Great scenery with reasonable visibility. All the competitors did a fantastic job in that environment.

From Blogger in the middle earth,
Today I have a headache,
my eyeballs hurt a bit,
for all the things I did at the TV where I sit -
so if you wish to speak with me
the only thing I bid
is drop your voice a wee,
and keep it simple stupid.

Kathryn Greenhill wrote
Is money being spent on circuses when worldwide people need bread, so ignored it.

From Lucy
It's the athletes with the golden hearts, not necessarily the gold medals that I love most about the Olympics.

Matthew said
As I return to work Monday at two new schools I'm hoping for at least a bronze in filing, desk setting up, and meeting people.

From dkzody
I am cheering for Michael Phelp's mom. No one ever gives credit to the parents of these amazing athletes, and you know they have made major sacrifices for their kid to get to this point.

Hayley wrote
Hi Mrs Baird, my name is Hayley and I am 7 years old and this is my sentence: The Olympics are important to me because I know that athletes are kind and caring and show great sportsmanship and they are qualities that I want to have too!!!

Amy Pyle shared a sentence and a picture

Hiking bluff and river trails, admiring the scenery and enjoying the beautiful weather was capped each night watching the Olympics back at the lodge.

Bonnie K said
I am glued to my TV screen as Michael Phelps swims for gold after gold, making it look second nature. I can imagine what he and the young athletes have given up for this chance; what passion and dedication! In my reality, this week has been filled with stimulating work with teachers and computers and finished with a great new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Christina Barcelona. Thumbs up!

Murcha wrote
My sons have finally arrived in Beijing for the Olympic games, after a trans-Siberian train ride from Russia, where on route they were in Mongolia when Mongolia won their first ever gold medal and they witnessed the celebrations, the sheer sense of pride and bonding of a country and its citizens, that the Olympic games can bring.

And finally my sentence for the week
Why does it take the Olympics for us to knock down walls between countries, cheer for our own athletes and barrack for the underdog?

Olympics: Love it or Hate it, we can't ignore it-aka A Day in a Sentence

2008-08-13T11:44:00.005+10:00

The Olympics is probably on the mind of most of us at the moment.
We might be teachers using this opportunity for our students to do a little bit of real maths, or google geography, or civics and citizenship or just a bit of fun keeping track of how our country is going. Perhaps on the other hand you are trying to avoid it all by spending more time outside in the beautiful weather if you live in the northern hemisphere or staying by the heater and reading a good book to avoid the freezing cold weather if you live in the southern hemisphere.

Perhaps you are a sports junkie and you are struggling to stay awake each day if watching it overnight (again it will depend where you live) or perhaps during the day you are finding all sorts of reasons to wander past the tv or stream it live on your computer or iphone. Either way the Olympics have given me a theme for our Day in a Sentence for this week.
Let's call it Olympics, Love it or Hate it, we can't ignore it.

It is my privilege to host Kevin's ( of Kevin's Meandering Mind fame ) A Day in a Sentence for this week. Kevin is on holidays on a beach somewhere I think. And so a few readers of his blog have been volunteering over the past few weeks to keep the Day in a Sentence process going via our own blogs.
Check here for the archives of all Kevin's Day in a Sentence.

So my challenge to you is to come up with a sentence that encompasses your Olympics 2008 experience. Love it or hate it, it's a bit hard to ignore so why not embrace it.

Write it in the comments section of this post or send it to me at annieb3525 (at) gmail.com. On Sunday I will collate them and post them all for you to see. Feel free to send any images that demonstrate your thoughts and ideas to my email and I will add them as well.

I can't wait to read your thoughts.

Working with Nings

2008-08-10T15:18:00.004+10:00

This semester I have decided to try something completely different with Year 9/10 IT elective class. I want my students to consider how their world is influenced and is changing due to the internet and in particular Web 2.

Using curriculum framing questions as our guide, I have posed the questions

How is our world changing? as our essential question.
Then as our unit questions I have asked
How does the internet influence our lives?
Why do so many people now share their lives on the internet?
How do people share on the internet?
How can we ensure that our online safety and reputation is not compromised or damaged?
and as our content questions I have asked the students to answer
What does the term Web2.0 refer to?
What are data mashups?
What are blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networks, video sharing sites?
What is an online profile?
What is cybersafety and cyberbullying?

While they are exploring these answers they will be using web2 tools such as a wiki to share their resources, their own blog to reflect on their own and each other's learning, a ning to communication and collaborate with each other and many other online tools to demonstrate their learning.
It's only early days and this is a journey that we will all be undertaking together.

I have already enlisted a class from a neighbouring school who will be joining us this week and we would love others to join us. So if you have a class of 14, 15, 16 year olds who are interested in joining us on a journey of discovery please email me or comment to this post and I will send you an invite to our ning and our wiki. As teachers we can also collaborate in the projects and activities that we will have students undertake.

Wiki http://web2teen.wikispaces.com/

Ning http://web2teen.ning.com/ Because this is a ning for Year 9/10 students at this stage I have made the settings private so you will need to email or ask via the comments on this post to ask for an invitation.

The Whiteboard Challenge

2008-08-06T08:00:00.005+10:00

Twitter once again has come to the fore (well it's not really Twitter it's the people who use it) with a connection to a great idea created by 6 very innovative teachers. In this Whiteboard challenge they call themselves the Task Masters. A great name. Meet Jess , Danny, Ben, Lauren, Chris and Tom. Check them all out here.
What they have come up with is a challenge for those who have interactive whiteboards in their classroom. Each week you take up a challenge created by one of the task masters and then write about it in a blog post on the wiki. Check out Danny's challenge number 2 which is whiteboard cloning. They are encouraging you to write, video, podcast, draw, show your learning in pretty much any way you can.
It doesn't matter which whiteboard you have in your school or classroom. It's about the teaching and learning that can be achieved with it.
So why not sign up. Make a commitment to spend a few minutes a week for the next few weeks, have some fun and learn lots more.
I am.

Reflections on Blogging

2008-07-28T19:46:00.003+10:00

Last night I participated in my regular Sunday night discussion , Oz/Nz teachers with around 35 teachers mostly from Australia and with a smattering of educators from around the world. I was a little late to the discussion last night and when I entered the meeting the discussion was centred around the role of the teacher, eLearning and the changes that are occurring due to the way we see the integration of technology. The discussion had arisen I think from a post that Lauren o'Grady had written where in part she questioned the role of the teacher in the classroom. In her post Lauren suggested that the term eLearning is or should become redundant.
What I took away from the conversation was that the fundamental thing we are on about is creating opportunities for powerful learning in the classroom and that the relationship between teacher and her students should be one of mutual respect.

I posted a comment to her blog .

I think that the most important thing/issue/idea that you raise in this post Lauren is that you begin with the most important outcome in mind and that is powerful learning. If we begin with the end in mind then the use or the embedding of technology into the learning falls into place. If we recognise how students learn best, if we ask them what and how they want to learn, if we encourage them to demonstrate their learning in different ways then the “problem” of using technology should go away. The change that is required is not so much using technology but it’s in the way we teach. It requires a real shift, a letting go of the power in the classroom and a change in the expectations of what students can and should achieve. This is not about making things easier for our kids. I believe it’s actually about raising the bar even higher. Perhaps the question is not whether we are raising the bar for our students but whether we are raising the bar for our teachers.

But what I really want to talk about is what I am listening at the moment which reinforces everything that we discussed last night. I am listening to a wonderful conversation between Sue and her students. Sue is an English teacher in Melbourne Australia. I haven't actually met Sue in real life and know her as sukojat which is her online moniker. Sukojat is very well known in the online education world and is doing some amazing things online. She has established the Oz/Nz meeting that I love to attend each Sunday night. From humble beginnings another meeting is now taking place via Elluminate on Tuesday nights so it's growing in leaps and bounds. Sue has also established a ning for the OZ/NZ educators group and a focal point for discussions and links to our regular group meetings.

But again I digress because this is what I really want to say.

Tonight Sue tweeted that she was posting her first podcast ever on her blog. It was a conversation with her students about their experiences with blogging in their English class.
Of course I couldn't help myself. I had to have a listen and I'm so glad I did.

What I heard between Sue and her students were echoes from last night's conversation with the Oz/Nz teachers group.

What I heard in Sue's podcast, was a real conversation between a teacher and her students where there was equal value given to both the teacher and her students opinions and experiences.
I heard students being able to say what they thought without fear or favour.
I heard a teacher sharing her thoughts about her own practice with her students.
I heard students reflecting on their own work and their feelings about that work
I heard a teacher asking for valid suggestions and opinions about where they should go next.
I heard students asking questions and reflecting about the process of blogging and why they would do it
I heard a teacher and students laughing, sounding relaxed and enjoying themselves
I heard a teacher skillfully probing and encouraging more thinking and reflection
I heard a teacher who clearly knew her students well and who knew a little about them beyond the classroom.

What I didn't hear was a teacher telling students what they have to think and do
What I didn't hear was students saying what they thought the teacher wanted them to say.
What I didn't hear was students who sounded bored and uninterested.

From this short podcast I could tell that Sue is clearly a highly skilled teacher who has created a professional and personal relationship with her students. I could tell from their conversation that there is some very powerful learning here.
Congratulations Sue. I would love to be in your classroom.

Do kids prefer to read online?

2008-07-27T22:50:00.001+10:00

As I prepare to begin our new computer club with SuperClubs Plus tomorrow lunchtime, I came across a post by Will Richardson on his weblogged blog who pondered whether kids who read online are actually reading. Arising from an article in the New York Times called Literacy Debate: R U really Reading it raises the question whether young people are reading effectively when interacting with text online. Will asks whether we should be teaching how to read online. My feeling is a whole hearted Yes! It's about opening up the key to a different way of reading, a different way of comprehending, a different way of interacting with text and other digital media.
If nothing else it has made me think about what and how I read on the internet. Is it different to the way I read narrative or factual text for example? I think it is and it's started some thinking that I want to explore more.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

What does it take to join the Web2.0 education community ?

2008-07-20T11:12:00.005+10:00

On Friday night, I spent about three hours with a teacher from a neighbouring school who asked me to help her set up a class blog and individual blogs for her students. I feel really excited for her as she walked away feeling on top of the moon and so excited about the possibilities. It made me think about what it was that made the encounter so successful and why I think that she will continue with her students on this exciting and new journey.

Here are the reasons why I think it worked.
1. Consider firstly what you want to achieve.
When Susan contacted me to help her we first had an email conversation and discussed what she wanted to achieve with her students. Initially it was for her students to publish their poetry. She wanted them to have an audience and to feel that they were doing more with their poetry than just writing them for themselves and their teacher.
2. Consider what is available on the web to achieve that goal.
We discussed the different tools she might use and I shared with her my thoughts about some simple tools that she might use.
If she wanted her students to create a website where they could all write and publish to the one space with equal publishing rights; where she and the students could see what each person contributed; where all entires were date stamped; where others could contribute via a forum or discussion, then she might choose a wiki.
If she wanted the students to be a bit more reflective; write in a more linear way; have others comment to a particular entry or post, the she might choose a blog.
If she wanted each student to have their own page, have students join interest groups within a safe environment, create forums for discussion then she might choose a ning.
3. Check out other examples.
In the week before we got together I sent Susan some examples of how I have used blogs and wikis (didn't consider nings at this point) and also a few other examples of great blogs and wikis that I have seem recently so that she could be a little more informed about the way they are being used all over the world . I tried to make sure that the ones I sent her were active and really good educationally sound example. Personally I want to set the bar high and try to encourage educators to not only think about using online tools but ensure that in their design they are challenging our students to use higher order thinking skills and skills that we know they will have to have to function in the 21stC.

4. Consider what network you want to use.
I suggested to Susan that she use Global Teacher for her own blog and Global Student for her class and student blogs. Mainly because this network is the research brain child of the Victorian Education Channel and the School Libarary Association of Victoria. They manage and provide quality online resources for Victorian teachers and students. This environment has been created to provide a supported online environment, or digital playground, for teachers to explore weblogging and then introduce it to their students.
It's a fantastic environment for teachers just starting out on the blogging journey as there is a great support network as well as excellent examples of how teachers and students are creating and publishing through their blogs.

5. Consider how you are going to set up a support network and learn how to create and manage your project.
Susan settled on creating a class blog and individual blogs for her students as they suited the purpose of the activity. So we sat down together and worked through the process by firstly setting up a class blog in and one student blog.
In our three hours these are some of the things we did:
She wrote one post on the class blog
she changed the design
we added one comment so that she could experience the moderation of comments
we added a couple of widgets to the class blog
we talked about what she does as an administrator and made a decision about the settings for the students. She decided on contributors at this stage.

She is now going to set up her class using the user and blog creator.

6. Consider how you are going to remain active
Susan has also decided to set up her own personal blog in globalteachers and we talked about what she would do with that blog. She wants to be able to reflect and discuss with colleagues her teaching experiences as she is in a small school and the only Grade 5/6 teacher. She is so excited about is all and I feel certain that she is going to ‘fly’.
She is looking at it from the point of view of her students and her own professional practice.

While we worked together over the three hours we also talked about and visited a few other places on the web that would help her in her professional journey.
I shared with her the tools that I now use in my daily professional life that keep me informed and connected in such a powerful way.
Twitter, nings, (Classroom 2.0 is a great place to start) RSS feeds, wikis, (I love wikispaces for teachers) teachertube, Diigo, vokis, Animoto education are but a few of the places she is going to hopefully visit and learn from over the next few weeks

I have been actively working and learning in this environment since around 2007 and I still get really excited about all the possibilities and connections that I make every day I came away from our meeting feeling very excited for her.
I think she has caught the bug :)

2008-07-17T19:57:00.002+10:00

Tonight I read a wonderful post by Steve Hargadon titled Web is the Future of Education.
He says..
I believe that the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press. I believe that we cannot even begin to imagine the changes that are going to take place as the two-way nature of the Internet begins to flower, and that even those of us who have spent time imagining this future will be astounded by what happens.

Steve discusses what he thinks are 10 trends in that regard that he thinks are particularly pertinent to education. I won't list them here because simply listing them wouldn't do them justice and you really need to read them in context.

Finally he suggests 7 steps that educators might learn more
they are: (with my comments in blue)
Learn About Web 2.0-
if you don't understand it and don't know where to start then start somewhere. join a ning, read a blog, join twitter, do something each day on the web that is part of education

Lurk-
spend some time but don't necessarily respond or comment. There is nothing wrong with just reading and looking

Participate - once you have checked out a few blogs or nings or whatever you choose to look at, have a go at participating. Post a comment, ask a question, help someone out with an idea. Remember we are all learning together.

Digest This Thought- if there is content overload, the produce more content. This works for me. I know that the more I interact with content on the web and then react or create more, the more successful I am in coping with the overload of content and ideas there are.

Teach Content Production - for me, as an educator I should be empowering my students to think and produce on the web. Doing so encourages and fosters thinking. But I have to teach how to do it, it won't just happen and/or there is a danger of too much superficiality

Make Education a Public Discussion-
we have to open up the conversation more, by posting more, by producing more, by teaching more, I hope we open up more opportunities for those who are stakeholders to talk, learn and discuss education

Help Build the New Playbook . This to me is the most powerful suggestion. We are in a position to actually teach here. This is not only about collaboration and communicating. There are opportunities here for deep discussions with our students, for challenging them to think, design, create and learn through others . It's about asking the right questions, creating the right opportunities, learning the right skills.

I couldn't resist leaving a comment and while the comment doesn't reflect my thoughts above, it adds a little more to the overall thought process I think.
---------------
Hi Steve, I see that there is a wide range of opinions and responses to your post and that is exactly what you asked for, so I hope you are enjoying the conversation. 33 comments is pretty cool. I'm thrilled when I get 5 ;) But I digress. I think I fall somewhere in the middle of those who are sceptical and those who are wildly enthusiastic. I am an eLearning coach in a school and the majority of my work is creating opportunities and supporting teachers to enhance teaching and the learning with technology. Because I see real power in the engagement factor and the collaboration opportunities of Web2, I most often suggest learning projects that use web2 in some way. And I love every opportunity to do so. But we have a long way to go. I would say that in my school there are only one or two teachers who are actively using web2 tools and only one that I am aware of that is seeking collaborations and learning opportunities with other schools independently from my support. I have learned to be patient and to enjoy the small steps that I witness. It's a real dichotomy. Here we have this rapidly expanding web2 and its associated applications in education that seem to change and evolve overnight. And yet in many (most) of our schools it's baby steps that will take years.

Twitter & microblogging

2008-07-12T13:12:00.003+10:00

Last night I decided to clean up my blog a little and give it some attention that it dearly needed. I spent a few productive hours and I'm pretty happy with the results. But much of it was just 'busy stuff, being productive but not a lot of thinking or learning. So what kept me amused and what probably made a job that should have taken one hour stretch out to three was all the Twitter tweets that came through via twhirl as I was working. Many of them lead me to another site or a blog or a bookmark that interested me.
Twitter is kinda like blogging but not. Some people use it to say what they are up to at that particular moment, others use it to say what they are reading or viewing, others use it to start conversations or ask questions. It can be referred to as microblogging. Twitter is as powerful and as useful (or intrusive) as you choose to make it. Check out some ways that Laura Milligan suggests that we educators could use twitter with our colleagues or students.
25 Twitter Tips for College Students.
You might also like to check out sirexkat's Adventures in Microblogging which she created in flowgram. Very interesting summing up of lots of different ways to microblog but at this stage I think I'll stick with Twitter. :)
PS Flowgram is still in beta, but you can request to try it out.

Learning sometimes comes unexpectedly

2008-07-09T20:40:00.004+10:00

Last night was one of those unpredictable amazing events that came from one idea and ended up in the most amazing evening. It started as it so often does these days from a Twitter tweet which alerted me to a session called The Flat classrooms workshop that was being streamed live on UStream in St Louis in the US. The session was being run by Vicki Davis, coolcatteacher and Julie Lindsay, 123learning and I and about 30 others just happened to log in as they were about to begin their first morning session. Being able to watch and listen to their introductions and their plans for the two day workshop was fantastic. At one stage they skyped in Darren Kuropatwa a renowned maths teacher in Canada who does some amazing work with his students and blogging. But what was even more powerful was the back channel chat that was going on at the same time on Chatzy. Julie and Vicki used this chat to add to and discuss issues and ideas with the real life group and they also continued to chat and share with us online. Two hours later I finally dragged myself off to bed at 1.00am having spent two great hours watching and listening and most importantly learning. Here are a couple of cool links that came out of the chat that I will certainly be returning to.
The Education vodcasting site is a site run by two science teachers who create vodcast lectures for their students. This means that effectively they turn their classes on its head by sending the students away with the lectures to listen to and when in class the students spend time with the teachers on more practical experiments and ideas.

Susan Morgan shared her school website which lists fabulous examples of teachers using Web2 in the classroom http://www.fredericksburgacademy.org/page.cfm?p=1212

smadlliinger shared a polling site that can be used with mobile phones to create and complete polls online http://www.polleverywhere.com

Martha Bogart shared her site on Videoconferencing http://www2.csd.org/newlinks/newlinks.htm
and there were so many more but I lost track.

Sometimes it takes no more than an internet connection, a few hours spare time, a comfy chair in a cosy lounge room to experience some pretty powerful professional development.

How do we keep up with the learning

2008-07-07T13:44:00.002+10:00

I've just been reading an article, Fast Learners in the Information Age that was posted to Twitter from one of my twitter friends. The article discusses changes that are taking place in Australian workforce in terms of the way we learn and collaborate with each other. The use of online applications particularly those that could fit under the umbrella of social networking are being considered in some sectors as almost essential tools for those groups that manage and train vast numbers of personnel. Unfortunately in the education sector, I don't think we are up to that stage yet although I think we should be. The percentage of teachers who maintain a sense of professional development via the web is increasing but sadly I don't believe that it's at the tipping point yet. A lot more work has to be done in terms of recognising the power and potential of these tools not so much at the change management level but at the practitioner level, the teacher level. Until that happens, I think all we can do is continue to sing the praises, the advantages, the power of this environment to our colleagues and hopefully that will contribute in some small way to the change that has to happen. For me the power of learning and improving my own professional practice comes through the use of social networking communities and tools such as Twitter, blogs, wiki, Ning, Diigo and so many more. But it takes a certain enthusiasm, commitment, dedication and faith in its value to keep participating, working and learning in and from this environment. I have no doubt that as time goes on we will embrace the power of this more and more. It's up to us who are immersed in it to continue to sing it's praises and spread the word.

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A safe site for kids

2008-07-03T22:42:00.003+10:00

It is the first week of school holidays in Victoria at the moment and I should be lying on a beach somewhere warm or at the very least taking it easy on my couch at home watching Family Guy.
Instead I am filling in some time before 12 midnight when I meet with a group of other interested educators who are training to be mediators for SuperClubsPlus au.
SCP is a website designed especially for kids between the ages of 6 and 12. Kids can create their own home pages, participate in online forums, join webrings and email other members. To me it's very much like a kids version of a ning. A social networking site for kids.
But what makes this more effective than others? Well what is unique about this site is that whenever the site is open, it is always managed by a trained mediator. "All communication between members is filtered automatically to prevent inappropriate language and content, cyberbullying, unwanted flirting and grooming. "
All communications are also monitored by teachers and by highly-skilled, professional mediators. who supervise every email, every forum post, every image upload to ensure that it is appropriate and safe. Students are only able to join through a school so their identity is validated to ensure that there is no chance of an older person impersonating a child.
Check out what some teachers who are already using it say, http://www.superclubsplus.com.au/i/teacherssay
Tonight I'm looking forward to seeing and watching what students are doing in the UK when they are online.
Should be fun.

Studio 52- real life learning and it's fun

2008-06-25T22:56:00.004+10:00

This evening as I sit here at the end of a really fabulous day spent with 5 teachers and 24 students from two country schools in North West Victoria I'm seeing something pretty amazing. These students have been chosen to come to Studio 52 in Collingwood Melbourne to record their own CD. Studio 52 is a real recording studio and the kids have been working with sound engineers and graphic artists to record and mix their music and then design and create their compilation of eclectic songs. Some are covers, some are original songs. Some students are beatboxing, others are playing in a 5 guitar ensemble, still others are playing bass and electric guitars with drums and singer. And some are pianists and soloists. What brings them all together is firstly Koolskools, the project that allows young people to record and produce their own music and participate in a state wide competion to find the best young performers and writers in the state. Also shared is an interest in music, in express themselves through songwriting and performance in some pretty cool and diverse ways and a shared goal of having their music published.
As I sit here at 11.00pm in the common room of the back packer hotel that we are staying in, I see a teacher from another school teaching a student from our school how to distort sound on an electric guitar, three girls practising their vocals for their track tomorrow, one teacher writing on her laptop, three boys playing their guitars practising their parts for their track tomorrow, two girls practising on their keyboards and generally having fun playing any song they can think of and other students sitting back enjoying the sound.
I am so thrilled to see some of our students who struggle at school in the mainstream context finding a way to impress and express their thoughts and ideas. We have one student who is an exceptionally talented beatbox artist. This afternoon at the studio he began to lay down his track and in the little recording Studio B there was myself, his music teacher and one other mate. At the end of two takes the studio had filled to capacity as other students heard or were told of something pretty amazing happening in the studio. When he came out of the recording booth he was greeted with clapping and congrats from students from both schools who may not have been beatbox fans but who recognised an awesome talent. I truly hope that one day our beatboxer will look back on these two days and recognise the wonderful opportunity he has had. But more importantly I hope he remembers the recognition by his peers of his talent and unique ability and dedication to his craft.

more on Cyber safety

2008-06-16T22:44:00.004+10:00

, I have written a few posts of late on the issue of cybersafety. Di, one of the participants in the Intel Thinking with Technology course that I am running pointed out this amazing site from the UK. It would have to be one of the most comprehensive sites I have seen on the subject of cybersafety, social networking and cyberbullying. As a teacher of students who are have a presence online the challenge for me is to stay abreast of what is out there as well as empower students with strategies that they can use themselves. This site warrents far more exploration and I hope to do more of that over the next few weeks.

Scratch-learning about programming

2008-06-04T22:11:00.002+10:00

For the last few weeks my Year 8 students have been creating their own animations using Pivot Stickman, a very simple freely available animation software. They have created some really cool little animations. I'm going to up load some of them to this blog over the next few days to showcase them. Now it's time to move on and to me it seemed a logical step to introduce Scratch. Now I'm guessing that the purists will probably say that Scratch is not truly a programming language and I am willing to admit that I have such little idea of programming that I couldn't explain it or defend it at all. But to me and my students that doesn't matter. What does matter is exposing my students to a new learning experience that offers a way to manipulate, create, design and compute. According to the website Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art . Yesterday in my Year 8 IT class we began our journey with Scratch. I'm really excited to see what they will achieve. At this stage we are in the 'sandpit' just playing around with it discovering just what it can do. Over the next few weeks we will use some of the tutorials that have been uploaded to Teachertube and we'll also look at many of the examples that are on the official Scratch website. Can't wait.

Beautiful images in Tag galaxy

2008-05-28T14:18:00.002+10:00

Today as I continue to work with the teachers in my Intel course, one of the participants came across this beautiful site. Called Tag Galaxy, it is visually stunning and beautifully dynamic. It is a way to search for images and then to narrow the search by choosing categories that appear on the screen. The more planets(tags) you click the more you narrow your search. You do have to have a flickr account to actually get the images and of course if that is the case then you need to at the very minimum ask permission. These screen grabs don't do it justice. You HAVE to go and look at it. It's stunning.

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Dvolver- another new toy.

2008-05-27T19:39:00.002+10:00

On reading the blog of 'cyberspaced' called A teacher's adventures in Cyberspace I came across this interesting little tool. Called the Dvolver it allows the user to create a little animated movie. Hmm, not sure how I would use this but I see that cyberspaced is going to try it with his Year 9 science class. Can't wait to see the results. On the site it says Dvolver creates creativity widgets - software that enables people to creatively communicate using internet technologies.

Intel Education- it never ceases to amaze me

2008-05-26T22:20:00.002+10:00

I should declare before I write this post that I am an Intel Teach Senior Trainer with the Dept of Ed, Victoria. I obviously teach in my school most of the year but every now and then (about 3 times a year) I train teachers in either the Intel Teach Thinking with Technology course or the Intel Teach Essentials course. Both courses focus on supporting the understanding of sound pedagogy, the use of Curriculum Framing Questions and higher order thinking and embedding ICT into the curriculum. Today I began another course, this time in Warragul with 17 teachers from the Catholic Education Office.
I always love to run these courses. What do I get from it? Well first and foremost it is such a pleasure to see the development and understanding that evolves over the 5 days. There is always a range of ages, experiences, schools, teaching specialties and interest with every group that I train. It never ceases to amaze me how much this course challenges fellow teachers in such a way that they are often feeling pretty uncomfortable and unsure by the end of day 1. I couldn't count how many times I said today, "Don't worry, everyone feels this way, it usually falls into place by Wednesday". But what also pleases me is that we teachers continue to challenge ourselves. We somehow cope with these feelings of inadequacy and unsuredness with a willingness to keep going. I know that by the end of the 5 days we will have 17 fantastic units of work to be shared with others as well as 17 Master Trainers who will go back to their school ready to train another 10 teachers in their school. Isn't life grand.

Working in Ancient Egypt

2008-05-22T22:29:00.004+10:00

Every now and then when you get to the end of the day and you ask yourself, what did I achieve today, there is a feeling of quiet satisfaction that you might have actually made a difference. Today was one of those days when I feel like I actually might have made a difference to a fellow teacher's practice. I have been working in the classroom with her for the past two weeks. Her students are working on a Humanities unit and are studying Ancient Egypt. Her original plan was to have the students present their ideas in the traditional project format. You know the one, where they create slabs of text, find pictures on the internet or in a text book and paste it all prettily on a large sheet of cardboard. Not terribly inspiring and somewhat dangerous...I smell slabs of text pasted from the internet in the air.
But a couple of days ago I suggested that perhaps we could come up with another way for the students to gather and present their understandings. And so was born the discoveregypt wiki. Today I sat with her and we worked on developing this new wiki which will see the students work in cooperative groups to gather and present information and ideas around their understandings of Ancient Egypt. I am quietly hopeful that this new idea will ensure a higher level of thinking, of expectation and of collaboration. It's very early days and the students haven't really started working on it yet but over the next 6 weeks or so I hope we will create something that is engaging, valuable and interesting.

Blogging letter to parents

2008-05-20T12:05:00.003+10:00

This week I have been spending quite a bit of time preparing a class blog and individual blogs for students in Grade 3/4. I have also been trying to get my head around Wordpress. I have avoided it up until now as in the past every time I tried to set something up I would run into problems. But this time I was determined to beat it as I expect that we will be using edublogs, learnerblog, globalteacher and globalstudent for blogging when all Victorian schools sign up for the Ultranet. I'm happy to say I think I'm getting there. But what was very helpful was a link that my colleague Anne Mirtschin sent to me as well as some very helpful twittering from ictguy.
Click on this link to get a very useful pdf tutorial on Edublogs which used Wordpress. The next step was to compose a letter to our parents to explain the process and ensure that they understand and are comfortable with their students entering the blogging world. Here are some examples that budtheteacher has posted to his wiki . Check out all the other samples and ideas that he has. Well worth a few hours exploration.

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Global teacher and global student

2008-05-18T20:19:00.002+10:00

Over the weekend I have been creating a new blogging site for our students in Grade 3/4. The decision about which site to choose was tricky. I wanted a site that would be safe and educationally sound and easily managed as I would be encouraging young students to blog. I was thinking of 21 classes as it was recommended to me by an American colleague. I investigated it and while it was certainly educationally sound I felt that I was going to take quite a while to work out how to set it all up. Then an Aussie colleague suggested using Global students. This is a research site conducted by the The Victorian Education Channel (DE&T Victoria) and The School Library Association of Victoria. It offers lots of support and connections to other teachers and their students. It also offers a specific blog where teachers can add blog posts to showcase what they are doing with their students.

Talking with the EdtechCrew

2008-05-16T22:01:00.005+10:00

A couple of nights ago I had the enormous pleasure of taking part in a podcast created by the EdTech Crew. The 'crew' is composed of an old friend whom I have known for probably the last 10 years. Darrel Branson, or ictguy as he is known in the Web2.0 world is a highly accomplished educator who works with a range of primary and secondary schools in Mildura, a thriving city in northern Victoria. Darrel is one of those quiet, unassuming, wonderful people who is always there to give a helping hand when you just can't work something out. His presence on the web is increasing at an exponential rate and lately I seem to see his name appearing in so many contexts in the online education community . Every week Darrel and his partner in crime Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com produce a very professional yet typically Aussie podcast called EdTechcrew . I say typically Aussie because the 'flavour' is relaxed and conversational which is the type of podcast I enjoy. And professional because there are always follow ups and lots of links and helpful information from each podcast that is produced. Anyway as a guest on their show, I talked about the way we are using wikis at Wedderburn. Although a little nerve wracking initially after a while, it felt like just any other conversation that Darrel and I have had over the years. If you have to make a choice about the number of podcasts you subscribe to then, IMHO, Edtechcrew should be up there in the top 3.

a new twist on 1001 nights

2008-05-06T20:47:00.002+10:00

As I have been preparing for my presentation on using wikis in the classroom tomorrow I am continually amazed by the thinking, creating and imagination that is already present on the web via wikis. For example, The 1001 Tales wiki is a collaboration between schools from Canada, US and Australia. Students are encouraged to write and publish a story of their world. They are also expected to peer review each other's stories .
What a wonderful way to value and recognise the work of young people.

Horizon Project

2008-04-22T20:07:00.003+10:00

This Wednesday I am driving to Edenhope (3hrs drive) to present to teachers in the area on ways to use wikis. A cluster wide conference it focuses on ways to use Web2.0 applications in the classroom. Presenters are talking about ways to use blogs, podcasts and global projects. I plan to not only talk about the way we use wikis at Wedderburn but also to showcase some amazing wikis that are being created by students and teachers from all over the world. One in particular which is an outstanding example is The Horizon Project. I have volunteered to be a judge this year. I basically thought what better way to get to know more about the project than to actually be involved in it. Check it out here. Can't wait to get started. http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com/Instructions

Intel Education- a one stop shop for teachers.

2008-04-20T21:40:00.003+10:00

In addition to being a teacher at Wedderburn College I am also a Senior Trainer with Intel Education Australia. Recently I had to update my training with Intel and am completing an online Essentials course. This is a new innovation from Intel and is an upgrade to the original face to face course. The original course is five days long and therefore problematic to many schools in that it can be difficult to cover the absence of a teacher for that length of time. It is however a great opportunity for teachers to be able to devote an extended amount of time to creating a unit of work that incorporates higher order thinking and the use of ICT. This new course provides the same level of professional development but with less face to face time. This is done through the use of a dedicated website where the participants can write, upload and share the units of work that they create. Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis are used in the training. The trainer supports this learning through regular blog posts; encouraging messages posted directly onto the participants website and feedback as the participants works through the course. The participants do two days face to face where they have the opportunity to meet with other members of the group and then over the next 8 weeks they complete their unit of work. All through the course they are encouraged to share and support each other. One of the things that I really enjoy about working with the Intel team is the sense of collaboration and sharing. The website has a wealth of ideas and information for educators to use with other teachers and with their students. And it's all for free. There are many many units of work for teachers to use, many links and ideas around assessment and higher order thinking to name but a few of the sections. Each time I revisit this site (and I do go to it often) I am amazed at what is there and how substantial the website is. It could truly be called a one stop shop for teachers. It's worth a night of exploring to see just what is there.

Back to the blogging

2008-04-12T21:33:00.006+10:00

It has been nearly two months since I have posted a message on my blog. This being a space where I post thoughts and ideas about my teaching, I thought it acceptable to take some time from blogging while I took some long service leave to arrange my daughter's wedding. This took place on March 22nd 2008. The experience reminded me about what is important in life. It was a wonderful opportunity to take some very special time to devote all of my energies to my family and in particular my daughter Hannah. It turned out to be the most magical day and we had the most wonderful time.
be But now I'm back at school and back to blogging. The next post willabout teaching and learning as usual.

Digital Portfolios and wikis

2008-02-19T20:56:00.002+11:00

I have talked about the versatility of wikis in many of my posts and have often blogged about how we have been using them here at school as a portal for classroom lessons, for digital portfolios, for online projects and for information gathering and collecting.
Last year we trialled having our students in Year 7 & 8 create their digital portfolio using a personal wiki. This has worked really well and this year we are continuing to process with students in Years 7-10.
Now this week we have taken our wiki digital portfolio program one step further by requiring our teachers to create their own wiki as a personal digital portfolio. This is part of their Performance and Development process. This involves teachers reflecting on their professional practice, setting goals for themselves while working in a collaborative and supportive team environment. Our teachers here at Wedderburn College each belong to a P&D team each lead by a leading teacher in the school. Once a term they meet to share with their team their goals for the term and their professional development plans. We thought that this year we would have teachers put these ideas into their own wikifolio which would be structured in the same way as the students are . The sections are Being an Individual, Thinking and Learning, Working in Teams, Contributing to the community and Setting and Achieving Goals.
By having teachers use their wiki as the recording vehicle for their reflections I hope that they will also learn more about the way wikis and other Web 2.0 applications work. It also opens up more possibilities for recording and publishing experiences in the classroom for their P&D reflections. I have my first meeting with my team on Thursday and I am really looking forward to seeing what has been recorded so far.

Another way of learning (and teaching)

2008-02-07T20:17:00.001+11:00

One of the things that I find challenging when supporting the development of teachers understandings of ICT and their applications in the classroom is offering simple explanations of what many of the applications are. It's all very well to suggest that a teacher create a blog to get their students to record a project, or create a wiki so that they can collaborate. Harder still is to explain how RSS feeds might be a very effective way to track how students are working on their digital portfolios or why podcasts might be a new way to let parents know about the history of their school community. I constantly have to remind myself that wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasts and many more are for many teachers still techno gobbledy gook and as such, cause angst and feelings of unnecessary inadequacy.
Today via a mailing list, I came across a very cool site called CommonCraft that explains Web 2.0 applications in simple yet entertaining. The appealing thing for me I think is that it uses little props such as drawings and cutouts to visually represent a group of ideas. Very useful for both teachers and students. They are even available for downloading onto the school's local server from Bliptv or YouTube.
Here's one that explains RSS.

Google Docs

2008-01-31T22:51:00.001+11:00

I love Google Docs. It's such a simple way to collaborate, store, access documents that I have created for school. Particularly when you are collaborating with another teacher in another school, Google docs is a perfect way to share and collaborate when planning and creating units of work. Today I created some class lists with students email addresses and once complete it was only a matter of sharing with the other teachers who teach these students via an email to let them know that they can access and edit the document whenever they need to.
Even better when checking out Jane's eLearning tip of the day, I've discovered a cool little addon that will work with Firefox and Flock that places my Google Docs in a sidebar. With this bar I can drag and drop files that I have already created and stored on my hard drive into a section of the sidebar and they are automatically loaded into my Google Docs account. How cool is that?

Learning more about blogging

2008-01-29T21:22:00.001+11:00

I came across a new and I think very practical blog written by Sue Waters. Sue is already a reknowned blogger who blogs on Mobile Technology in TAFE. I must admit that I come to Sue's Mobile Technology blog as a late comer but I can already see that it is yet another blog that I will continue to subscribe to. I think I'm going to have to start learning how to read in my sleep!
But I digress. Sue now writes two blogs having just begun a new blog for edublogs. Edublogs is James Farmer's well known and acclaimed site for those in education who love to blog. Sue's new blog is one that she is writing for edublogs called The Edublogger. It seems that Sue has already contemplated the challenge of writing two blogs that might easily be read by the same people. So she has decided that "The Edublogger's posts will be “How To” tips and her Mobile Technology in TAFE will "work through topics on using blogs in an educational context."
Already Sue has created posts on How to create Hyperlinks using HTML, How to add a photo to your sidebar, Adding Widgets to your blog and Tips for doing a blog makeover.
For a while now I have been toying with the idea of taking my blog over to edublogs. Mainly I guess because firstly it's created by a fellow Aussie in James Farmer. And secondly because it is specifically designed for educators. Maybe Sue's posts might just provide the impetus to move to a new home...

I'm back- with a little personal indulgence.

2008-01-27T00:01:00.001+11:00

Matt, Anne, Hannah and Kelvin
Originally uploaded by annieb3525

I can't believe that it's actually been about 5 weeks since I blogged. With blogging and working and creating via the internet being so much part of my life for the last couple of years I do find it strange that, to be honest, I really haven't missed it. I think that actually it's done me good to have a good long break. But I am now looking forward to getting back into it.
It will be interesting how the next few months go. We have our daughter, Hannah's wedding coming up the end of March and much of my time over the past few weeks has been spent talking and thinking and making decisions about the wedding. I think that's been the main reason why I have taken a good long break from blogging. Although on holidays I have had something to keep me very busy and I guess that over the next few weeks it will become busier and busier with juggling school and wedding preparations.
So here is a little personal indulgence- with nothing to do with education and web2.0. But I figure that once in a while I can enjoy being Mother of the Bride. Should be fun :)

Creative Commons- who can use my work

2007-12-18T16:09:00.000+11:00

Yesterday the students and I worked on an activity using Flickr. I wanted the students to learn a little bit about Flickr and create some fun Christmassy things using Flickr images. There are obviously millions of images posted on Flickr with many beautiful ones tagged Christmas. But there are some of these that have All Rights Reserved and others that have Some Rights Reserved. Then there are others that have No Rights Reserved and lots more in between. So that prompted me to look up exactly what all of these terms really mean. It's something that as teachers we should all have our heads around as we prompt our students to work more and more with so much of the internet. So I checked out this great site Creative Commons.org which basically explains it all and more. It has a wizard that takes you through what rights you want to have and then gives you the exact license you need to post on your work. You can also choose particular rights according to the country you live in. I think that all of us educators out there need to make ourselves very familiar with these issues especially now that so many of our students are both accessing, using and posting on the web. I will certainly be having my Year 7, 8, 9 & 10 students learning more about this next year.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Plick

2007-12-15T22:24:00.001+11:00

I just came across this cool little app called Plick. Very similar to Slideshare, it allows you to upload Powerpoint presentations to the web in order to share them with the world. It then allows you to embedd them into your wiki or blogs etc. Firstly, it enables you to add music or sound to the presentation by mashing the slides and the sound together. You can then download the new presentation as a PPT or a pdf. You can also add notes to each slide so that viewers can get a better idea of your intent. They have also just added the ability to upload presentations created in Google presentation to your Plicks. I still will probably upload most of our presentations to Slideshare as we do have a school account. But it's always worth checking out the competition as there just might be something worth moving for.
If you are interesting in exploring more of these types of applications try Splashcast or Slide .
Another really cool app that I have only played with a little but that I like the look of is RockYou.
I'll check these out a little more tomorrow as I'm working with the students on a web2.0 activity on Tuesday. It's meant to be a bit of fun for the last days of school so I figure I won't have to worry too much about the educational value :)

Keeping on the straight and narrow

2007-12-08T13:47:00.001+11:00

Many of our students have their own wikispace. For some it is their digital portfolio. They create much of the content in class and convert to digital form and upload it to their wikifolio. Some of the younger students create their digital portfolio in powerpoint and all of those students have their own wikispace ( a private one) and are enjoying adding things little by little. Even though all these spaces are private, which means that only those who are invited can see the space, many of the students have invited their friends and teachers to be part of their space. Many of the children also use their wikispace account to email each other.
Yesterday something happened though that scared the living daylights out of me. During lunchtime I was in The Edge ( one of our learning spaces) on computer room duty and one of the Grade 5 students came to me and showed me a couple of messages that she had received through her wiki account. The messages said things like, "I know who you are" and "I'm coming to your house to get you" . Immediately my heart stopped. I thought OMG this child is being stalked or approached by some creep. My first response though was to say that she did the right thing by letting me know and not to worry, that we would try to sort it out. As it was lunchtime I asked her to stay logged on so that I could send a message to wikispaces and then asked her to come back at half time so that we could talk about it some more. She came back a few minutes later and said it was okay because she knew who it was. After breathing a slight sigh of relief I asked her to tell me who is was and after a little bit of gentle probing we established the perpetrator as another student. The rest of lunchtime was spent having a chat to this student and as it turned out a couple of other students who were in on the prank. We talked about the consequences of this type of internet bullying and I tried to help them realise that although they may have initially thought it was funny there were very serious consequences for the victim and for our school. The kids were very contrite and I really don't think knew the possible consequences of their actions. I don't believe there really was a vicious intent. I think however it was a good lesson for them to learn and I certainly let them know how disheartened and frightened I felt. After all I feel responsible for them.
But for me it reminded me that we must constantly be vigilant. It also reminded me about the code of conduct that I plan to introduce next year. Although we do have a standard form that parents sign to allow internet access for their children, we don't have a form or agreement that our students sign. It's an oversight that I plan to address at the very start of next year. In the mean time I'm going to do a little research over the holidays to ensure that I find just the right voice and style. I want it simple and easy to understand, as it will be for all students, and I want it to be positive and affirmative yet very clear about the consequences and reasons for making such a code.
I hope that there are some teachers out there who will be willing to share their ideas or examples.

Women of the Web2.0 & Digital Storytelling

2007-12-02T20:44:00.001+11:00

I have recently joined the Fernwood Gym in Bendigo. I felt like it was time to give myself sometime to get fitter and healthier. But for me ( I live in a small country town) it means an hour & 15min drive each way to get there. A big commitment I know but so far so good. I'm getting there at least two times a week and often I can manage three by staying overnight and going in the evening and then in the morning before driving the hour to work.
As I am driving so much I have been taking the opportunity to listen to podcasts along the way. For pure pleasure I listen to Hughesy and Kate from Nova100, a Melbourne radio station that I normally can't pick up. It's a lot of silly fun but it makes me laugh and what better way to start or end the day.
For stimulation and inspiration I listen to a number of different podcasts created by teachers from all over the planet. The one I listened to today as I was travelling to Bendigo to put in a step and a pump class was created by the Women of Web2 who are Vicki Davis, Sharon Peters, Cheryl Oakes and Jennifer Wagner, four inspirational women who are challenging us all and leading the way in using Web2.0 in the classroom. Although recorded a few weeks ago, I listened to an interview with Ewan MacIntosh and David Jakes. What particularly interested me was the discussion around Digital Storytelling and the purpose, pedagogy and learning opportunities around this particular type of narrative. The way that David Jakes described it was it begins with a story, created, written, told. From that narrative a script is distilled. In other words the meaning is finessed through drafts. Then once the script is created, the student creates a storyboard which includes the use of words, images, video, music. At this stage the students may have not even used a computer. Then once the narrative is storyboarded, they begin to search for or create images, music, short videos that will enhance and add meaning to the story. This is where the array of web2.0 tools can add to the potential and power of the story. The final and perhaps the most important part is the presentation or sharing of the story with fellow classmates and hopefully the online world. I can see that I have a lot more researching to do, but it has piqued enough interest to know that this is something I want to know more about.

Life isn't always what it seems.

2007-11-29T22:47:00.000+11:00

Tonight I came across this interesting site created by Dan Brooke which demonstrates in a very clear way what Photoshop can do for the 'beautiful' women we see on our tv screens and in the popular magazines. Just hover your mouse over each of the words on the page and you can see what can be done. What a great way to show our young girls (and boys) exactly what goes into preparing an image that is then presented as 'real'. Despite the fact that I think we all know that this goes on it's still no wonder so many of us women are never satisfied with how we look. The woman in the image on Dan's site is Amber MacArthur who is a Web 2.0 commentator that I have listened to many times on net@nite, a podcast that she and Leo Laporte host. Amber also suggests that we take our girls for a video visit to Youtube to check out the Dove Evolution Commercial. Now they can see what a bit of make up, lighting and Photoshop can achieve towards creating a totally unrealistic perception of a perfectly beautiful woman in all her simple untouched glory. The power of
Check it out the youtube video here.

Better still take your girls (and boys) to the Dove Self Esteem Campaign for real beauty. What an interesting way to begin a discussion with both girls and boys about perceptions and (mis) understandings of our strange, strange media flooded world.

John Pearce- an inspirational teacher

2007-11-28T23:01:00.001+11:00

I attended the VITTA conference last week and if I say so myself I managed to choose some pretty amazing and inspirational teachers to listen to. One session that I really enjoyed was presented by John Pearce, a primary teacher in a Victorian school. Earlier in the day John had been presented with the VITTA Primary Teacher of the year. You know the deal, they start to read out the things that the winner has done and I must admit as soon as I heard things like this person has created some wonderful science resources, keeps a number of blogs, has his students create blogs and wikis for sound educational purposes that are recognised all over the world...well you know the drill. I reckon by the first sentence I knew it was John who was the winner. and it's well deserved. So I was very happy to go along and listen and watch him show lots of inspirational examples of how he has used these web 2.0 tools to engage and inspire his students. John very generously provided us all with a CD with many of his resources and ideas. I haven't yet had time to check it out, but it's on my list of things to do. There were a couple of little gems from John that I'd like to share. In explaining RSS feeds John used the analogy of a postman. In 'the olden days' we used to have to go down to the post office to get our mail. (without RSS feeds we have to go to the website, blog or wiki to get any updates.) And then they employed postmen. Now people didn't have to go to the post office. Their mail was delivered to them by the postman. (RSS feeds are the online equivalent to the postman) A cool analogy that is simple and easy to explain to teachers and kids alike.
Another great little gem was when John was talking about online etiquette and safety. He talked about the fact that he always posts the code of practice on the student blogs before they begin their online activities. He said that he used the "grandma rule" which is the idea that students should only post things that they would be happy to have their grandma read. How cute but cleverly in it's simplicity and clarity.
Finally the last gem I'll add here is that John uses RSS feeds for all his students so that he can be informed when students make changes to their blogs. This inspired me to do this with our students wikis. There were lots more fantastic ideas from John...thanks for sharing. Perhaps when I get to the CD I'll be able to add more.

Stephen Heppell and Future Trends

2007-11-22T21:47:00.000+11:00

For the past three days I have been attending the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association annual conference in Melbourne. This is, I think, the third year in a row that I have attended and the third year that I have presented as well. This year my presentation was called Wonderful ways with Wedderburn wikis and in a future blog I might reflect a little on the session. This post though is about Professor Stephen Heppell who presented the keynote on Day One. Prof Heppell is a world reknowned thinker and futurist in the area of technology and learning. What I gained from the keynote was a sense of the way teaching and learning is changing at an exponential rate. Obviously this isn't something that we all haven't been aware of. He presented us with lots of examples that illustrated the world that our students are growing up in. It was not unlike the Did You Know video created by Karl Fisch with lots of 'facts and statistics' that indicates the rapid rate that our world is changing. In fact one quote that I think he said was that there are something like a new school being opened in the UK every 4 days, that China has 1,173000 schools. There was lots of discussion and again lots of examples of the ways that educational bodies and in particular schools are addressing these issues through recognising and embracing new technologies rather than banning them and pretending that they don't exist inside the school gate. There was also some amazing teaching and learning spaces that are being created all over the world. He also asked us to consider the trends from the 20thC to the 21stC that he and other colleagues have identified. and then challenged us to think about where we currently are , where we would like to be and how we will we know when we get there. I can clearly see these trends reflected in web2.0 and it's influence on millions around the world. What does it mean for us now? Does it really change anything at the coalface? At this stage, I would say no...it is not enough to simply recognise that the world is exponentially changing for our students but to recognise that if we accept these observable trends then what is this going to mean for us as educators, facilitators and colearners? I wonder. There's lots more to explore.. in another post.

Arthus-the new generation of 14 Year Old?

2007-11-18T21:47:00.002+11:00

Arthus is an amazing 14 year old student from who blogs. I came across a post about Arthus on a blog called the Infinite Thinking machine, an educational blog that is contributed to by some very emminent educational commentators.
In this post titled "A 14 year old talked Educational Technology- Steve Hargadon reflects on the type of 14 year old Arthus is and how he uses and moves in the online world. His suggestion is that Arthus is not your typical 14 year old and I probably agree with that. I'm not suggesting that other 14 year olds are not as articulate and maybe as prolific as Arthus as I can think of a few that I teach at my school but none of them, as far as I know keep a blog or contribute to the online educational debate. I stress though " as far as I know". To be perfectly honest I would have no idea what type of online presence our 14 years olds have at our school. I do know that a few of them have bebo, facebook or myspace pages but I don't know what their online monikers are and I don't have any online dialogue with them. But I digress.
What really fascinated me about this post was that in the Notes section Steve wrote about where Arthus started his online journey and even more interesting was the habits and behaviours of Arthus as he interacts on the web. Much of what is listed here is a very mature response to some of the challenges and fears that educators and educational institutions face. But what is even more interesting are the 40 odd comments that have arisen out of this post. You must check it out as Arthus participates and again represents himself very powerfully in a new and exciting world of equality- he gives as much as he gets. An example I think, of the (educational) world continuing to flatten- I'm not sure that this conversation would happen in the classroom where often unfortunately the teacher has all the power .

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Flock is great

2007-11-15T22:11:00.002+11:00

After getting hooked on Flock, a couple of weeks ago it became corrupted and no matter what I did I couldn't download it again without the corruption message returning. And boy did I miss it. After some problem solving I finally found a little file that was causing all the problems, got rid of it and downloaded Flock again.
Flock is a great browser for anyone who is into online social networking community as it has so many cool little tools and widgets that you can add. For example, instead of having to go to my blog and log in to post something new, I can simply click on the Blog Editor within Flock and begin to write. I can also check out all my images in Flickr with the Media Minibar. I can upload new photos within Flock using the Photo Uploader and get all my RSS feed with Feed Reader. I'm sure there are lots more things that I will discover as I continue to use it.

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Learning more and more

2007-11-10T10:28:00.000+11:00

As I have been researching and building this information wiki for a couple of presentations that are coming up, I have been learning more and more about the amazing things that are available to educators in the web. In the past couple of days a couple of blogs have really helped my project. One is from CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis who recently blogged about the Web 2.o applications that she loves. What is even better the comments that have resulted from her post have added even more to the idea of thinking about what you find essential in the world of the Web2.0.
Chris Betcher also blogged about this in this post a few days ago where he describes the online tools that he couldn't live without. I don't think I can add to either of these lists and I guess in a way that makes me feel good because it means that I'm probably on the right track in my learning journey of web2.0 and its application in education. But what makes me even more excited is that the kids that I teach also seem to be getting excited about the possibilities. For example the Year 8's have to create a Service announcement about the environmental issue that they have been studying. And today two of the girls who have been working really well and who are great thinkers and enthusiasts asked whether there was something they could use to get some video from the web for their project. 15 minutes later they had learnt about KeepVid and VideoPiggy and were well on their way to finding something on TeacherTube to enhance their project.

Creating a Learning Wiki

2007-11-07T22:13:00.001+11:00

I love wikis. Mainly because they provide an opportunity for anyone or everyone to create an online presence to share, to provoke, to describe, to collaborate. Wikis as we know simply enable anyone and everyone to create content online using easily understandable tools. Many of our P-12 schools are taking advantage of the opportunities for "collaborative construction" that wikis provide. But I love the fact that we can also use them for whatever we need to create online. At the moment I am working on my presentation wiki , Teaching-with-Technology, in preparation for a couple of conferences I am presenting at over the next couple of weeks. My aim is to have all the information that I need and much more on the wiki so that people who attend my workshop will have a type of one stop shop where they can get all of the information that they need. It will contain links for both teachers and students to sites that help them to be organised, collaborate with each other, learn from others, see examples of Web 2.0 being used in the classroom and much more.
Over the next couple of weeks I will continue to build on it and I would love some feedback or suggestions.

When is out of date, out of date?

2007-10-29T21:29:00.001+11:00

A couple of days ago I was exploring a link to a wiki created by a class in New Zealand. It was posted to a mailing list to illustrate a good example of educational use of a wiki. And it was an excellent, genuine example. However as I was reading it, I noticed that the last entry was posted in about June 2007. My immediate reaction and consequent action was to stop reading and to move onto something else. Why?
When I thought about this, I realised that the more I read information and ideas on the web, the more I expect the posts, or entries to be 'fresh'. Why, I wonder. I would have no qualms about reading a non-fiction textbook that might have been published 10 0r even 20 years ago. What is different about the web?
Speed is also a need. I find that often I'll read something and if it doesn't 'grab' me, I'll either move on or at the very most, tag it and then move on.
I wonder what it says about me as a consumer? I wonder what this need for immediacy or action might say about our students as consumers?

Visitors all around the World

2007-10-21T20:47:00.001+10:00

I have always gotten a kick out of looking at the Clustr maps that sits on the right hand side of my blog. I'm not naive enough to think that all of those are visitors who regularly come back to visit my blog. In fact I'm sure that most of those are ones who just happen to stumble across it. However it is still nice to see the red dots building up.
Last week I got a message from Clustr maps to say that after a year of using the Clustr maps widget they have archived all my visits and I'm starting all over again. Oh well, it looked good at the time. I wonder if I can get more than about the 2300 visits that has been 'dotted' over the last 12 months. I know, I know there are lots of educators who probably get that many in a week and not a year...but I've had fun and will continue to use my blog as a tool for reflection. Having people 'stumble' across it is a bonus. And I do get a real buzz when someone leaves a comment.

Voki -creating a new you

2007-10-16T21:11:00.000+10:00

Over the last few weeks I have been introducing our Grade 3/4 students to Vokis. What is a Voki you ask? Well if you ask the kids they would probably say something like, "It's this really cool site where you can make something that talks and moves. It can be a person or a cartoon or an animal. You can dress it and change the way it looks and then embed it into your wiki or blog by copying the code that is created.
The kids love it and I do too. One of the things that I do like about it is something really simple that looks a lot of fun. It also allows for students to create something that can go online without readily identifying them. But there is also the flexibility of the avatars to present the ideas of the students. One of the activities that I have asked the kids to do is to create a voki that talks about their passion. An activity that they already regularly do in class but here is a more powerful and exciting way to present it to others in their class and their parents.
Here's an example created by Maddy...

Get a Voki now!

K12 Online Conference 2007

2007-10-14T20:28:00.000+10:00

I am going to do my best to check out a few of the prestentations on the K12Online Conference 2007 which is already underway. The main presentations are beginning this week and the following week with some Pre conference presentations already completed. There are some pretty cool presenters check them out here.
Follow the schedule here http://k12onlineconference.org/docs/k12online2007schedule.html
If you read this blog regularly, you would know that I am pretty passionate about the value of wikis and this K12Online conference wiki is a pretty great example of how wikis can be used extremely effectively.

Technorati Tags:

k12online07

Happy Birthday James

2007-10-04T12:29:00.001+10:00

james and danny
Originally uploaded by annieb3525

Happy 22nd birthday for Oct 3rd to my beautiful son James who is at trade school at the moment in Melbourne. This time last year we were preparing a 21st birthday party in the local footy sheds. This is James on the left with his good mate Danny only 12 months ago. My how time flies.

Blogging is worth it

2007-10-04T11:37:00.001+10:00

I have been on holidays for the last two weeks and have taken a little break from blogging. But in that time I have received 4 or 5 comments on previous posts that I have made on this blog. Some comments were on posts made over a month or so ago. That is really heartening and encouraging as sometimes when you send these thoughts out into the blogosphere you don't really know if the only one reading it is YOU (as in me). It made me wonder about the immediacy of the web and the feeling of moving on that I often get when I read or post something. I think it has to do with everything happening and changing so quickly on the web. It's like, once it's gone it's time to move on to the next thought. It's good though to every now and then go back and read and respond to previous thoughts. So thanks to Sarah, Jess and anonymous for waking me up again and getting me back on the blogging trail. Looking forward to another exciting term of fun !!

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Adding images on the web

2007-09-09T18:43:00.001+10:00

A few weeks ago I was reading Darrel Branson's blog The ICT Guy and he mentioned that he uses pic resize to resize images that are to be uploaded to blogs and wikis. In the past I have (and still do) teach my students how to quickly optimise images in Fireworks or Paintshop Pro. But pic resize will now also become an additional option for our students to use when they quickly want to resize something to up load to the web. It's so easy. All you do is select the picture you want to resize, choose quick resize, go through the options, download the image (you have to download it within 20 minutes or you will lose it) and the upload to your blog or wiki. Cool !!

2007-09-06T09:11:00.003+10:00

Recently I was in a Grade 3/4 classroom discussing the possibility of setting up some new blogs and adding them to the class wiki. As part of the activity we decided to explore the blogs of other students in other schools. My purpose was to have students consider why we blog and to hopefully see their value. One of the student blogs we looked at used an avatar that moved and spoke and looked pretty cool. Thinking I would be teaching something new I asked if the students knew what an avatar was and to my surprise some students not only knew what they were but had created them. A little further probing revealed that they had been taught how to create an avatar by older siblings. It made me wonder what else they knew how to do (many of them knew about myspace and youtube) and once again it forced me to consider the challenge we all have as teachers to keep up with the changes that are occurring in our students lives even as we read this article.

Talk about the Being green activity. Planning with skype

Ubiquitous technology

2007-09-04T19:08:00.000+10:00

When I went to South Korea earlier this year to run a workshop in Intel Teach Thinking with Technology I remember talking with one of the participants about the notion of ubiquitous technology. At the time I really had no idea what he meant and he explained that it was the notion that technology will become such a part of our lives that it will sit in the background working for us; available to us at anytime, anywhere.
The reason I thought of this conversation is that I am presently travelling on a school bus with Year 8 students from Wedderburn College going down to the Pixar 20 Years of Animation display at ACMI in Federation Square. While travelling I've logged into the internet via a wireless connection which means that I can do a little bit of work (or blogging) as we head to Melbourne. Every second kid on the bus is texting friends and family and we are listening to music via an FM transmitter that one of the kids has brought on their Ipod.
Serendipidously (it seems to happen to me alot) I was reading John Pearce's blog and one of his posts was about m-learning called Today Two Years is Tout d'abord in which he discussed in part his progress along the continuum of ICT capabilities. He concluded that in some sense he wasn't as far along as he thought when comparing himself to Alex Hayes a senior Education Officer with TAFE NSW who writes about m-learning in a very interesting presentation that he is presenting at a conference in Canberra very shortly. According to WikiPedia as of August 22nd 2007, M-Learning is "learning that happens across locations or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies"
Check it out here:

But Alex's point made me think again about the fact that ubiquitous technology, m-Learning or whatever you want to call it is changing the way we work, think, communicate, share, talk, learn, manage, reflect. But has it yet changed the way we teach???? I think in your case John, the answer is a resounding yes.

Being Creative

2007-08-29T20:01:00.000+10:00

This morning I went into the Grade 3/4 classroom. We began yesterday by setting up a wiki for the kids to create and post their ideas and reflections about what they are doing in class. In planning for this session I had a chat with Tanya, the class teacher and she told me that every Tuesday afternoon she challenges the students to be more creative by having them design, create, problem solve and produce an article or plan that addresses a particular problem or issue that she poses. For example she has asked them to design the best handbag for a teacher, or a farmer or a carpenter. They have designed and planned the best holiday for their family. They have designed the ideal spot for them to spend three hours relaxing and thinking.
As she was telling me about this I firstly thought- what a fabulous teacher- someone who values creativity and expressive thought and gives it the due time that it needs. It's no surprise to me that Tanya was once a pre-school teacher. But I also thought about how we could use the wiki as a repository for their ideas. We could scan the ideas that the children draw. We could have students descibe and explain their plans and upload the audio files. We record students demonstrating their inventions. I'm really excited about what we could achieve with just a little bit of effort and imagination.
Serendipidously I was reading a blog entry from Cherie Toledo this evening and she commented on a video presentation by Tony Buzan on creativity. He says "creativity is the engine of all curricular" That it's not about what we learn but HOW we learn. and that is the challenge for us as teachers. Not to teach facts and knowledge (although he says we have to do that) but to teach HOW to learn. By teaching and allowing for creativity we are unleashing the potential of every student, every brain.
check it out here:

Our new project- Being Green

2007-08-27T21:26:00.000+10:00

This week we are beginning a really exciting new project with a school in Andale Kansas. The opportunity arose through some funding that I received through the Knowledge Bank. My idea was to create a connection with a school overseas and to develop a problem based project that used the Intel online Thinking with Technology tools So I approached a fellow Intel Senior trainer, Dyane who is a curriculum consultant in Andale. After about three months of planning we have finally started with our Year 8 students here and Year 7 students at Andale.
We did our planning via Google Docs which was a fantastic way to collaborate and share . We have set up a wiki using PB wiki for both teachers and students.
Beginning with a viewing of An Inconvenient Truth and a skype interview with Dyane and our students, the main task is that students will work in cross country teams and will research an issue that has some effect on their community. They will compare and contrast the differences between our two rural communities and prepare an environmental action plan.
The task after viewing the movie was to reflect on it in the wiki on a shared page for each group.
This is what one of the students said.
After watching 'An Inconvenient Truth' I was surprised at how bad the problem actually is. I never realised it was that disastrous, especially the part about the melting polar ice caps. It was a very confronting film. The statistics shocked me. It made me want to take action.

I am looking forward to learning about my American group members. I want to know how they look and what their personalities are like.

Another two students wrote their response together
The other day we watched an Inconvenient Truth.

It was really surprising to see all of the changes that could occur to the world if global warming continues at the same rate as what it is now and. What surprised me a lot was the amount of people and animals that would be affected by this. For example the polar bears drowning was a fact that reached out to us. Also that whole country could be submerged by water and the central town of Wedderburn might just be on the beach.

Also the increasing temperature and less rainfall was a concern to us as Ashleigh lives on a farm. But we have run out of time so we have to go Bye.

Tomorrow our students are going to calculate their own ecological footprint and add that to the wiki. I think it's going to be a pretty exciting time for us all.

Intel Thinking with Technology - another group trained.

2007-08-22T20:11:00.000+10:00

This last 5 days I have been in Melbourne training another wonderful group of Master Trainers in the Intel Thinking with Technology program. I ran the program at Soundhouse at Debney Secondary College in Flemington, Melbourne. What a great set up they have there. Equipment ranges from a piano, drums and other musical instruments to a fantastic lab that has equipment set up for creating animations & film, audio & electronic music and I'm sure lots more that we didn't get to see. The lab itself was perfect for the training of the teachers and we were very well looked after. As I have done during the last 4 training groups we used a wiki to support the learning. It was used as a repository for information as well as a place where the participants could reflect on their own learning and share ideas with each other. Once again I chose wikispaces as the most convenient and easy wiki to use. Intel has now also just released a new assessment workspace for teachers to collect and store assessment tools such as rubrics and checklists. This new workspace is very similar in design to the Thinking with Technology workspace and provides a very convenient online repository for accumulating lots of examples of assessment artifacts.

Why Blog

2007-08-18T20:33:00.000+10:00

Chris Betcher is celebrating his 1 year anniversary of blogging and he pondered about why he blogs and why it is important to him. I actually started my blog on October 12 2005 although it took a while to get into a regular routine. I'm not as prolific as Chris (he has written an average of three posts a week) but I have written 84 posts most of which have been written in the last half of 2006 and 2007. I remember writing a few posts about the topic of blogging last year. And I guess I haven't really changed my mind over that time. I still write to keep a record of what I have been thinking and doing mostly at school. I like the fact that it's there for me to go back to. Not that I do very often though.
I do like to think that it keeps me in track professionally though. I have even used my blog as a record of my personal professional development and have presented it as evidence of progress in our Performance and Development process at school.
Like Chris I'm not sure that there are many people who read it and unlike Chris's, I don't think mine is terribly insightful or clever. But for whatever reason I still do like to see my words in print even if I am the only one who reads it. Even so I do like reading other blogs and it's often where I get ideas to think about. It's all very social and friendly and a wonderful way to keep in touch with some pretty amazing educators.

Reading - What works

2007-08-16T12:21:00.001+10:00

We recently had a discussion at our school about the value of Reading Recovery as an intervention program for students in Grade One who for whatever reason have not learnt to read as expected. As an ex Reading Recovery teacher I was very disheartened to hear that our region is reducing the level of support provided to schools to run the Reading Recovery program by changing the training of new teachers to every second year instead of every year. I'm not sure what this means for RR teachers who are already trained and working in schools. Traditionally they have a 6 weekly meeting called Continuing Contact where they meet with their RR tutor and discuss the progress of their students.
Today I came across an interesting article at the What Works Clearing House - a website that provides scientific evidence of what works in education. The article, entitled Beginning Reading discusses reading interventions for students in grades K–3 (or ages 5-8) that are intended to increase skills in alphabetics (phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, letter recognition, print awareness and phonics), reading fluency, comprehension (vocabulary and reading comprehension), or general reading achievement. According to the studies done so far Reading Recovery is the only one that has shown effectiveness in all four of the above areas. It simply reinforces what I have believed all along. The Reading Recovery program really does work. I have seen it in action and I know of many ex students who have continued to soar once they have been through the program. Without it they may have been in the too high percentage of children who slip through the cracks and end up without a functioning literacy.

Maybe the message is getting through

2007-08-14T21:37:00.002+10:00

Today I was working with a Grade 5/6 class. They are building their Digital Portfolios in Powerpoint and while they have learnt lots of technical and practical skills the impressive thing are the ideas and thoughts that many of them are adding. But what blew me away today was a conversation I heard between three students. One was showing the others some images oon his DP of his pet lizard. The conversation went something like this. Student One: this is my pet lizard Lucky. Student Two: what is that other picture of a lizard? Is that Lucky too? Student Three: I don't think that is Lucky. I think you copied it from the internet. Student Two: What about copyright? Remember we're not allowed to just get pictures from the internet if they are copyrighted. Student One: Hmmm okay I did copy it. I'll delete it and get another real picture of Lucky from home.
All this happened without the kids knowing that I was listening. I was pretty rapt as earlier this year we did some lessons around copyright but I wasn't sure whether it sunk in. At least it did with these three!

Being tagged has it's challenges

2007-08-09T20:50:00.001+10:00

Maybe it is a smaller world than we think...in the last couple of days I have been tagged by two 'bloggers' that I regularly read. Thanks Cherie and John. The challenge is of course to then tag another 8 bloggers and I presume without tagging the ones that have tagged me. Now that's a bit of a challenge because when I read who they have tagged they are ones that I might have tagged as well. Tricky, you see.
But the task is first to follow the rules:
1) Post these rules before you give your facts
2) List 8 random facts about yourself
3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

1. I live in Charlton, a small town in North West Victoria and have lived here almost all my life.
2. I have travelled to Switzerland; Portland, Oregon; London; Seoul, Sth Korea; Cook Islands; New Zealand; sometimes for work and sometimes for pleasure
3. I have two children, Hannah and James.
4. Of five siblings, I am the only one who has remained in my hometown. My brother and sisters live in Bendigo, Brisbane and Zurich, Switzerland.
5. I teach at the school where my husband is principal. We have worked in schools together for most of our careers and seem to manage this very well.
6. I taught my daughter Hannah in Grade 4. The only thing she tells me she didn't like about it was that I never chose her for anything. I guess I didn't want to be accused of favouritism.
7. My great uncle, the later Gus Parish was once manager of BHP.
8. I grew up on a wheat and sheep farm.

And I'm not going to be able to tag as many as 8. I hope that people don't mind me doing it. I found it much harder than I thought because I know that a couple of you have been tagged in recent days. Not sure what this means for the progress of this tag but anyway here goes...

Now for the tagging
Vicki

Tom

Chris

Darrel

Adrian

Mash Up awards

2007-08-08T19:38:00.002+10:00

I just came across this great website http://mashupawards.com when I was looking for a definition of mashable content on the web. That led me to bookr - the winner of today's award. What a cool little application. I can see how we could create lovely little books for kids to read on the web using images that we have taken and posted into flickr. It takes no time at all to put something together and then to embedd it into a blog or a wiki. Put as many pages as you like .

This isn't a great example but you'll get the idea.

Blogged with Flock

Flock

2007-08-07T21:15:00.001+10:00

I've just been skyping with Chris Betcher, chatting about this and that...mainly school and webby stuff. He's been raving about Flock lately in his blog and mentioned it again tonight so thought I'd check it out. Just quietly, I think he might be right. It looks pretty cool. I think I'm going to have fun playing with this new browser. In fact this is my first post using the Flock "create a new post" button. It says only one click to post and it's right. COOOOL !

Blogged with Flock

Oz teachers - the best mailing list in the educational world

2007-08-06T21:01:00.000+10:00

OzTeachers is the most prolific and supportive mailing list that I have ever seen. It is amazing how generous and supportive the teachers are who belong to it. I honestly don't think I would have learnt a quarter of the things I have learnt over the last few years about computer technology and now Web 2.0 without the wisdom of all these wonderful educators. I have just been reading a really interesting discussion on the list about the use of social bookmarking in schools and in particular the popularity of delicious. It seems that there are a few teachers out there who are using delicious as a very effective bookmarking tool for students and teachers when researching topics required for school projects. I wonder however how much those who contribute so prolifically to the list are not the norm. I suspect so. I think we are still a long way from seeing the use of these tools as part and parcel of the reportoire of a student's or a teachers for that matter researching strategies. I guess it's our challenge to start making inroads.

I love PageFlakes

2007-07-20T10:12:00.001+10:00

I know that I have written about PageFlakes before and raved about the convenience and value of it as a personal homepage and repository for regularly visited webpages, links and much more. This morning I opened up my pageflakes to see that it's been revamped again with lots of new widgets and flakes and a whole new look. There is even a flake now called Anything Flake which is one that anyone can use to design and create for themselves.

"The new Anything Flake lets you add any type of content from text to images or even build custom HTML applications. This Flake can be used to personalize pages and Pagecasts even more fully.

For non-technical users, its WSYWIG editor lets users write text, add images, or grab URLs or other content from the Web and drop it in. Essentially, If you can use Microsoft Word, you can make a Flake. For example, a new mom or dad might copy images from their digital camera and paste them into their Pageflakes page or Pagecast.

Advanced users can take the Anything Flake much further using HTML and Flash components.

COOL !!!

VideoJug

2007-06-25T14:32:00.000+10:00

It seems that everywhere we turn these days someone is mentioning YouTube and the incredible way good videos on YOuTube can be spread across the world by work of mouth (or email) in a matter of what seems like minutes. In my experience most teachers still do not use the power and the ease and the accessibility of video to support, teach, enhance, influence, engage etc etc in the classroom. I have blogged before about Teacher Tube and the great things that are on it. Today I came across another site called VideoJug that is basically life explained on video. vidoes are tagged according to group or topic. e.g. How to clean your house the green way or How to put out a candle without blowing it.
People can even post requests for things that they would like to know and they then hope that someone will post a video to answer the request.
There is a whole section devoted to education with some amazing historical footage Check out in particular the section on learning.

Working with teachers and blogging for blogging's sake

2007-06-20T15:20:00.000+10:00

I have been struggling my health a little bit lately, hence the blogging has suffered. But each time I think about it and not post, I realise that I'm losing the momentum. And I don't want to do that. The stream of thought that comes with blogging is really important.
So to keep things going I'm going to be a little kind to myself and rely on the generosity ( and brainpower) of others to ensure that I have something reasonably interesting to post.
Chris Betcher recently blogged about Bryn Jones 11 Things that make a difference in using ICT to improve learning.
Briefly they are
1. Emotional Support
2. A shared pedagogical understanding.
3. A constructivist philosophy
4. At least 4 computers per classroom
5. Help to access appropriate material
6. Just in time technical skills and support
7. Reliable infrastructure
8. Access to professional development(but not necessarily participating in it)
9. Links from home to school
10. Leadership
11. Flexible Learning Space
All of these factors ring really true to me in my role at school. For me personally I would add another couple. One is persistence. Most days I try to be like the blow up clown that is weighted at the bottom so that no matter how hard you hit it, it will keep bouncing up. I must admit lately I have really felt like staying down. But any change takes a long time and so in my role I have to accept that I just have to keep bouncing back, presenting ideas and encouragement over and over again until someone takes up an idea. (or until they are so sick of me they do it to shut me up)
Another is time. I am extremely lucky in my job to be able to devote a lot of time to learning and exploring exactly what is out there. (and I get paid for it!) If I was a full time classroom teacher I know I would still be passionate about technology but I wouldn't have the time to learn as much. I know I'm slightly twisting Chris's intent here but in Chris's post called The Challenge of being a Life Long Learner he talks about the relentless aspect of lifelong learning. And it's true. The nature of the web makes it even more so. So what teachers need is time to explore, to learn and to practise.
I'm sure there are lots more but that will do me for now. Thanks Chris and Bryn. You don't even know it but you are helping me through a rough patch.

Where do we go from here with WikiFolios

2007-05-30T11:05:00.000+10:00

Years 7, 8 & 9 students all have their wikifolios created and I believe the biggest challenge now is how to support teachers in our school to feel comfortable and confident enough to create opportunities for the students to populate their wikifolios with examples that they have chosen that illustrate their thinking and learning. Last week in a PD meeting we brainstormed ideas of how we might do that. Teachers came up with lots of great ideas but the biggest challenge is still (I think) the organisation and preparation that goes with using technology. At our following staff meeting on Monday I tried to support that concern by showing some links on our school wiki to a couple of very useful and easy to use applications that can be embedded in the wikifolios. One is called SlideShare and it allows students to create Powerpoints, to upload them to the web and then embedd them into their wikifolios. And the second is called PhotoBucket. It allows students to create simple pieces of video and mash them with images, audio and text to create a cool little video which can also be embedded into their WikiFolios.

I need some advice

2007-05-18T11:59:00.000+10:00

I have been thinking about the power of blogging and the way we use it in schools and as a reflective tool and collaborative tool for teachers and students. But I have been grappling for a while with the dilemma of where to place my blog. Until now I have been using blogger and have been very happy with the tools and ease of use. But my problem is that in many schools blogger is blocked and I wonder if this is not going to be an ongoing problem.
Edublogs on the other hand, is unlikely to be blocked in the near distant future and so I'm wondering if I should move over to edublogs. But what happens to all the posts that I have made up until now. What about the cool little add ons that I have on my current blog such as the flickr widget and the clustrmaps. I really love those things and would want to know that I can have them as well.
I think maybe the best thing to do is to contact a few of the regular edublogs users and see what they think about the value of edublogs and then do it. If you are reading this post and you have some thoughts I'd appreciate your input.

2007-04-22T15:19:00.000+10:00

This is what happens when you get busy...the less pressing things gets let go. Notice that I say pressing rather than important. This process of reflecting and sharing and creating ideas is important but perhaps is the thing that gets dropped off the list when there are things to do.
But I'll try to get to it more regularly if I can.
But here is something that caught my eye and prompted me to comment.
One of the things that I rely on most is the community that is out there who are willing to share their ideas.
A leader in the learning community for many years (I think) is Bryn Jones. ( sorry Bryn if you are a young gun) He runs the very successful company, Atomic Learning which provides online tutorials for teachers and ICT educators all around the world.
It's great to hear that he has now entered the world of blogging. See Bryn's Blog. I'm sure his thinking will be worth following.-
A case in point is one of his first posts which shares a very clever video creating an analogy...no I'll let you enjoy it and take from it what you will.
Enjoy!

The challenge is how we respond...

2007-04-01T09:36:00.000+10:00

This video link was sent to me from a colleague, Dyane Smokorowski who is a fellow Senior trainer in Intel in Kansas USA. It challenges us to think about how the web has developed and how it is changing the way we think, work and play. I will show some of our staff at school this although I wonder if it is still a little too foreign and new and will end up confusing rather than supporting their understanding. On the other hand we have to challenge and recognise that this is all happening under our noses and if we don't choose to understand we will do so at our peril.

Teacher Tube

2007-03-31T21:35:00.001+10:00

I came across a post by Anne Bubnic who is a Tech consultant in California. She has a blog called Tech Savvy Teacher and writes about the way technology is changing teaching and learning. In this particular post she talks about the newly established Teacher Tube and how it was established by brothers Adam and Jason Smith. They have come up with a fantastic idea which I hope will establish a really positive environment for schools and teachers to share their videos. I haven't tried it yet but I hope that we will be able to embed these videos into our wikis and blogs just like we can with Youtube and Google Video.
But congratulations anyway to Adam and Jason for recognising that as we continue to recognise the power of Web 2.0 applications we need enterprising educators to lead the way.

Teacher Tube

2007-03-25T14:38:00.000+10:00

While researching for a workshop for Intel Education in Brisbane this week, I came across this cool little video that Vicki A Davis has made and uploaded to Teacher Tube. I subscribe to Vicki's blog called CoolCatTeacher using Bloglines which has lots of great ideas and reflections about using technology in teaching.
My understanding is that Vicki is regarded as one of the leaders around the world who is using her blog to promote and share great thoughts and enthusiasm for the art of teaching. She was a finalist in the Teacher blog of the year and her class wiki won Edublogs Best Wiki in 2006
You may need to watch this a couple of times...I did...but it's message and design is very clever.

Digital Portfolios + Wikis

2007-03-25T10:05:00.000+10:00

Last week I conducted a workshop for all staff and considered the question of how we are going to use wikis as the basis for student portfolios in Years 7, 8, & 9. The initial challenge for many teachers is to understand the concept of a wiki as an online website that can be created and edited by teachers and students, or anyone for that matter. And the second major concept is the potentially complicated notion of a digital portfolio as more than simply a repository for excellent work. Part of the workshop was to use the Intel Education Visual Ranking tool to rank different purposes for digital portfolios. The main purpose was to have staff discuss how they see portfolios being used with their classes and what learning, assessment and evaluation they might support.
The challenge is to create a shared understanding of what a portfolio is, how it is structured, how and what it demonstrates about student's learning and how it is used in parent/teacher/student conferences. The Victorian Education Department has some excellent online documents that support the understanding and development of portfolios through templates, documents and weblinks. For teachers in the department they access them through their department login although I believe that you can view some of the material as a guest. Try searching from this link for digital portfolios.

Creating our WikiFolios.

2007-03-18T12:09:00.000+11:00

Now that students in Years 7, 8 & 9 have created their wikifolios the time has come to talk with teachers about how they might have students add to their portfolio.
This is obviously the much more challenging area of digital portfolios. What does each subject add to it to ensure that students and parents find it a valuable source and record of student's learning.

A change is as good as a holiday

2007-03-05T12:49:00.000+11:00

Why change the title from Educating Anne to Think, Wonder and Learn with the Web? 'Cause I can I guess.
I'm thinking that this year will be a new opportunity to explore what is out there in www land and to create new opportunities for the teachers and students at our school to think, wonder and learn. It's funny, I was just thinking that I sort of think of the web as something separate, it's out there, it's removed from us.
But of course it's not. It's constantly referred to. Every business, every media outlet, every educational institution to name a few, would be mad not to have an online presence.
It makes me wonder about those who don't or choose not to have access to the web.
As time moves on will it be harder and harder for them to function comfortably with no knowledge of how to get to a website, how to send email, how to buy things online?
But in order to learn you have to use it.
And to use it you will probably want or have a need.
Part of my role here at school is to create that need for both teachers and students.

Working with Wikis

2007-02-16T13:08:00.000+11:00

This term we have hit the ground running after a few trials late last year of using wikis as an online precence for students and also for class programs.
This year I am team teaching Year 7 & 8 IT classes. I am also currently supporting the development of ICT and higher order thinking skills in three other grade levels, Prep/One, Grade 5/6 and Year 9.
The wikis that we have created so far are all linked through our main wiki for Wedderburn College.
From there teachers and students can link to their class wiki and their own individual wikis. Through the generosity of Wikispaces we have been able to create these wikis as private so that only the student and those that they invite can see it. They will be without advertisements because Wikispaces deems them educational. As an added precaution I have asked students to create their log on and their wikispace with their Cases number which is a series of letters and numbers unique to each student. That also means that if I as a teacher want to see any of them I know the url. It does mean that students have to invite their classroom teachers to be a member of their wikispace but that isn't hard and is a good exercise in itself.
We have decided to call them WikiFolios. I'm not the first one to think of that term. Although I did Google it and came up with only 16 hits in English which is pretty amazing. So maybe I am a bit of a trail blazer after all !!! :)

Lost without my Laptop

2007-02-06T09:16:00.000+11:00

Now that I am back in Australia after my amazing experience in Korea and in Bangkok I now have time to reflect on what I did. I have the time but not the technology.
when I left Bangkok my laptop, mobile phone and palm pilot got left behind at the hotel. It wasn't loaded into the transit van and I didn't realise until I got to the airport. By then it was too late to get it delivered to the airport.
So in between many many phone calls to Bangkok and to the courier in Australia, I have now been without my laptop for a week.
It has made me realise how much I do depend on it to do my work but also to function in my every day life.
With no laptop I have no address book for my emails, I don't have recent work (although thankfully I did back up important work before I left)
I don't have the regular software that I use in my teaching classes. I can't easily connect to the interactive whiteboard because I have to borrow a laptop.
It seems that everything that I do has added time and organisational things to be done.
It has made me think and reflect on just how much I do depend on it for my every day work.

Everything Korean

2007-01-21T13:16:00.000+11:00

I have arrived in Korea and have been here for 4 days now. What an amazing country! I have explored a little bit but really haven't had a lot of time as I have work to do while here as well as some other urgent work for Intel that had to be completed. Nevertheless any spare moment I have taken to check out some of the views and society of Seoul.
Speaking only English provides a real challenge. There seem to be very few people who speak English and even the people in the hotel speak a very limited version of English. So I have spent much of my time communcating in a very limited way by sign language. Taxis are everywhere but again noone speaks english so to get anywhere I have to firstly show the concierge where I would like to go, get him to write it on a Hilton business card and then I show that to the taxi driver and then when I catch one back I show him the card with the Hilton on it. It's not always successful, I got refused in a taxi last night because I was on the wrong side of the street-it seems that they don't want to have to turn around!!!
Of course I can't read any of the shop signs although luckily the street signs and things like the railway and subway stations have both Korean and English sign. But even to write this blog I am looking at Korean characters in the login, the post section etc. As you can see, so it's a bit of a guess which button that I push. Even to tag this page is impossible as it's all in Korean. I'm sure that there's something that I can download but I'll muddle through for now. :)

I saved this post until I got back home because I quite literally couldn't read much of the page because it was in Korean text.

Technorati

2007-01-09T19:44:00.001+11:00

Technorati Profile

Thanks Adrian

2007-01-05T21:29:00.000+11:00

Adrian Bruce is an avid blogger, webcreator and teacher who seems to be going from strength to strength with his website and his teaching ideas that he aggregates under his very comprehensive blog and his amazing website. Adrian continues to share his ideas and stories about the class that he teaches. His work is recognised by other educators all over the world. Just check out his awards page ! Each time I go to his website I seem to see something new. He's certainly prolific and has great teaching and learning ideas, particularly for Primary teachers. Check it out!

I notice that he went to Seoul Korea in 2005 as part of the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Award. Interestingly I'm off to Seoul on the 17th Jan 07 for a training Program in Intel Thinking with Technology. I will be training 30 Master trainers from all over Korea. It will be a very interesting and exciting time and of course I will be blogging about it while I'm over there. But I think I'll email Adrian to check out his experience.

This is one of Adrian's posters that he has created and shared on his website. Thanks Adrian!

Cool things that make my life easier

2006-12-12T08:53:00.001+11:00

I haven't posted much at all lately. Here in Australia we are coming rapidly to the end of the year and with reports and awards nights and end of year activities, I feel a little guilty even doing a post. But I don't want to lose the momentum either of regularly keeping a log of the things that are happening here at school.
I thought today I would add a little about a really cool little application called Page Flakes which I use as my home page.

I plan to teach my students about it next year because one of the requirements of our students in the Victorian Essential Learnings is they manage and maintain their files and links as well as use applications to create, visualise and communicate. I think that giving them ways to do this through the use of Web 2.0 applications might be a good add on to the more traditional ways that we save and manage work at schools.

Podcasts and Cool things on Firefox

2006-11-26T22:04:00.001+11:00

I listen to a few podcasts driving to and from work and it's often where I get a few good ideas. Commonly it's where I often hear of ways to use the Web or Web 2.0 applications. They are not always about education although many are. I find it's a good use of time as I'm driving along the Calder Highway to and from work
Besides some of the great podcasts that are done by educators such as Chris Betcher who produces The Virtual Staffroom podcast and Dan Schmidt who produces the KidCast podcast, there are also other more general podcasts that inform about more general things.
The one I have found really useful for just finding out about new things coming out on the web is one called Inside the Net. These podcasts have introduced me to things like Delicious, Flickr, wikis, Bloglines and RSS. Each week they seem to come up with something new on the web to talk about. All of which have added a new dimension to my teaching practice.
Another great thing was the introduction to Firefox (which I use as my browser all the time now) and all the cool add ons that you can get from Mozilla.

One that I heard about the other day is a little add on called Googlepedia. When you search for something in Google, the add on will also search for the equivalent in Wikipedia and produce it in a split screen. You can click on links within the wikipedia article to create a new Google search as well.
Really cool.

VITTA Conference

2006-11-20T21:14:00.001+11:00

Today I presented at the VITTA conference in Melbourne at the beautiful Flemington Racecourse. It's an amazing venue and certainly adds to the ambiance of the conference.
Over lunch, I had a lovely chat with Renee Hoareau, Executive Officer of VITTA. I have known Renee since her myinternet days (now Editure). She shared some visions that she has for VITTA and also mentioned that VITTA aims to continue to lead the way in Australia as a very active organisation for teachers of Information Technology. Renee is certainly one of the leaders of ICT in Australia and I think VITTA is in very good hands. If the conference is any guide this conference is certainly a leader in Australia and I venture to say the world.

I wonder though if we are hopefully seeing more and more of the 'ordinary' teacher who is interested in integrating ICT into their curriculum rather than the IT specialist at these sort of conferences. I hope that is the case but then I'm a little biased towards the all round teacher who has a passion for learning all sorts of things including using internet technology.

After my session Teaching Thinking with Technology, in which I addressed the Intel thinking with technology tools and cool and geeky things that teachers can use from the web, I also met with Jim from Editure who very excitedly mentioned that they are investigating the use of Web 2.0 applications and have received a government grant that will allow them to research across Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Asia.
I think it's great to hear that companies such a Editure and Intel are recognising that many of these Web 2.0 tools make teaching and learning via the internet much more accessible to the 'ordinary' teacher who is not necessarily skilled in all things to do with information technology.
By the way by 'ordinary', I mean extraordinary. I mean the teacher who is not necessarily a specialist but a generalist, who is a seeker of new learning, not one who stays in the same groove year after year; who recognises that the world of teaching and learning is changing. And that we better be there or be square. :)

Solving Problems of access

2006-11-19T19:44:00.000+11:00

On Friday I got to school and went through the usual routine of setting up my laptop and logging on, connecting to my Pageflakes page and decided that I would quickly blog some thinking that I had done on my way to work that morning. But to my surprise I discovered that my login access to blogger was blocked.
After trying a few problem solving strategies and loath to spend too much time on it I resorted to phoning a couple of contacts at the Victorian Education Department to see if I could get to the bottom of the problem.
Long story short- I finally caught up with Sandy Phillips Manager of the Victorian Education Channel, Office of Learning & Teaching, Department of Education & Training. It seems that there are some concerns about blogger and it's suitability for use in schools and so it is going to be blocked at most Victorian Government schools. I am okay with that as I have had some concerns myself about the 'danger' of the Next Blog button which simply means that you never know what is going to turn up at the next click of a button.
With this in mind we switched to learner blogs very early in the year for our students. This is an environment set up by James Farmer, a Melbourne teacher and consultant who saw the need for an educational environment for teachers and students , in fact educators of all kinds to have an online space that would be suitable and protected , but also open and freely available to others on the web.
It 's a balance between recognising the importance and value of an online environment which is accessible to all and protecting to some extent the hearts and minds of our students as they learn to navigate their way around the web.
I had a really productive discussion with Sandy about some of the plans she has for developing just such an environment for Victorian teachers and schools where we could use the expertise and support of James and the Wordpress opensource software to create our own online collborative space.
With this in mind I have joined up with the Global teachers project which is a growing group of Victorian teachers interested in exploring the use of blogs and other Web 2.0 applications.
But while there is this 'cutting of teeth' so to speak I still intend to maintain this blog and will simply post the same material to my other blogs until I am brave enough to bite the bullet and go to just one again.

Maybe it is okay to show some emotion

2006-11-18T18:47:00.001+11:00

My last post was partly a pondering about whether I am sometimes too enthusiastic about the things that are available on the web and the way it is changing the way we deliver, receive, interpret and think about education.
Comments to that post seemed to indicate that it's worth just showing a little bit of excitement and enthusiasm for what you do.
To top it all off I received a lovely email from Meron Drummond who is the Innovation and Excellence educator for the Cresswell Cluster in Victoria.

Hi Anne
My feet have just hit the ground for the first time since last Monday’s LiNum21.con event.
I wanted to take the first opportunity I could to let you know that I thought you did an absolutely FAB job last Monday.
Your session was short, sharp, informative and inspiring.
It also made it quite clear that there is heaps I don’t know!! But it pointed me in the right direction for some more ICT learning! I would just LOVE to know how you do what you do, but I intend to find out! At the moment, Podcasting, Skype, wikis, blogs - make my head spin, but in such a good way. I crave to know more.
Thanks
Now all I need is time! LOL

Meron Drummond

Gresswell Cluster Educator

Meron also has a lovely quote in the signature of her email credited to Jamie McKenzie

‘…the conscious personal commitment to building one's repertoire is central to the model of quality teaching…. Quality teaching amounts to a lifetime journey of exploration, practice and discovery.’

ã Jamie McKenzie, 2004

And I think that sums it up pretty well.

Enjoy your head spinning....it's lots of fun. :)

Is it all too much? The LINUM 21 Conference

2006-11-13T20:35:00.001+11:00

Today I presented a session at the LINUM 21 Literacy and Numeracy conference for the Northern Metropolitan Region in Melbourne, Victoria. My session was entitled Teaching with Technology and was designed to showcase the Intel Education Teach Thinking with Technology Tools as well as tell a little of the story of the work we are doing at Wedderburn. In the second half of the hour long session I also planned to demonstrate the Teach with Technology wiki that I currently use to document my work at Wedderburn and the blogs and Wedderburn P12 wiki that I have been using with the students at Wedderburn College as well as mention and demonstrate some other tools such as Skype, podcasts, rss etc. I was hoping to excite and enthuse teachers to have a go at some of the thinking tools and the Web 2.0 applications that are freely available on the web.
As I began the session I simply said to people that if they wanted any information about any of the work that I was showing that they simply needed to write down the url of my blog (this blog) and they would be able to get all the information they needed and more.
I think that I probably demonstrated my personal enthusiasm for the potential of the internet and the power and engagement value of discovering ways that can create and relate the curriculum in a meaningful way to our students. But I'm not sure that was a good thing.
I fear that I may have lost a few people along the way by being too enthusiastic and assuming that participants were more aware of the Web 2.0 apps. There were people there who weren't familiar with blogs and wikis and although I tried to explain and demonstrate in the time that I had I'm not sure that I was too successful.
So if any of you have been brave enough to come visit this post, and check out this blog, tell me what you think.
Would it have been better to just look at one thing..I have this terrible tendency to get excited about things and want to share them with everyone else assuming that you will all love them and see the educational potential as much as I do.
Anyway if you do make it maybe just have a go at one thing...
try a blog, or try a wiki or download Skype

anyway post a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Skypeing with Oz Teachers

2006-11-11T18:39:00.000+11:00

Chris Betcher arranged for a Skypecast to be conducted at 10.00am Australian time for members of Ozteachers. Ozteachers is a mailing list that I understand from the comments of one of the members, Marg Lloyld is one of the oldest educational mailing lists in the world for teachers. Even if it isn't it's certainly one of the most active and one that I rely on very much for great ideas and friendly and helpful support for all manners of issues, problems and suggestions related to teaching. I don't believe that this is a list for teachers who are IT specialists. In fact there seem to be many in the group who are dabbling around the edges with eLearning and ICT. But that's great because most of the time the questions and discussions aren't too 'techie' and are often about great ideas that someone has come across or a problem that someone has. And there always seems to be somebody out there who has a suggestion or answer.
Anyway to get back to the Skypecast, at one stage I think there may have been about 70 online. Chris did a brilliant job managing all the chatting and comments and while there were a few technical hitches mainly to do with the number of people online and sometimes the occasional intruder, it worked really well.
A few of the highlights for me were
Hearing the voices and seeing pics of so many of the people who I read about online.
The discussion about how we might use Skype in the classroom was really valuable and one that I know that we will explore some more. I seemed that there is an opportunity for someone to try to gather a list of those teachers who are using skype to see if we could link up.
We also discussed some ideas for using copyright free music and sounds as well as reference to the K-12 conference that John Pearce presented at and many people listened to. We were reminded that the presentations including John's are still available to listen to.
After the skypecast I stayed online for a little while and chatted to Michael Cridland, a teacher in Brisbane who is also teaching Year 7&8 students. He is also 'playing' with blogs and wikis with his students and we had a good discussion about using wikis as a digital portfolio. Great to talk over some ideas and get someone else's opinion.
Hope we can do it all again.

The Beauty of Flexibility and the wonder of technology

2006-11-10T16:02:00.001+11:00

I have a routine at the beginning of each IT lesson to always have my laptop connected to the interactive whiteboard, data projector and internet whether I plan to use them or not. There have been many instances when we have been discussing something as a class where we have wondered about an issue or an idea and then quickly googled it or gone to Visual Thesaurus Googlemaps or Wikipedia to check something out immediately.
The other day we were just about to start our class when the students noticed the Skype icon pop up as one of my Skype friends logged in and naturally being curious they asked what it was.
Well I couldn't resist, so out the door went the lesson plan and in came a quick lesson on Skype. A minute or so later we were Skypeing with Chris Betcher and his daughter over in Canada. Chris had his webcam on so that added another excitement for the kids as they could see as well as hear Chris and Kate. It was fantastic and we had other teachers come into the room to see what was going on.
Chris has blogged about this as well on his blog. The wonderful thing as Chris said was that it took no time and was a really powerful opportunity to make links across the world. What I saw was total engagement, every student was totally engrossed. Many went home and checked out Skype for themselves. But I think the best thing was the chance to talk to Chris and Kate about their experiences in Canada and the opportunity for us to spontaneously (if only virtually) spread our wings into the big wide world. It's certainly something we will do again. In fact we are already planning another skype opportunity with some students in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thinking about where to next with IT

2006-11-08T17:12:00.001+11:00

This year has been my first year of teaching a Year 7 and a Year 8 class for Information Technology. As a primary trained teacher who hasn't been fulltime in the classroom for the last 5 years it was exciting yet challenging at the same time. Particularly as I had to rethink my ideas about assessment, class structure, class management etc.
For example, as primary teacher I am used to having extended blocks of time where as a class we could go off on a tangent or run with an idea that the students have come up with, or explore something deeply and make up for lost time later. The absolutely most frustrating thing I found about teaching secondary students was the time limit. 48 minutes periods in an IT class is a ridiculously short amount of time to ensure that we had the time to talk and think and learn before getting to the computers. And of course the kids always wanted to get to the computers straight away.
It also meant that the end of lessons were often chaotic with shouts of SAVE your work as they were rushing out the door to the next class. This was instead of the lovely "okay everyone lets come together and think and talk about what we have learnt today" that I was used to as a primary teacher.
Teaching older students also came with the delightful "why do we have to do this" "this is boring" responses- not that I didn't get that as a primary teacher although I did mainly teach elementary students so it was rarer.
Having said that though I was somewhat surprised sometimes as I really tried hard to provide some (what I thought) were pretty stimulating lessons and activities.
But that's okay, it just challenges me more.
I actually did a survey with the kids last week and asked them things like what did they enjoy the most, what did they least enjoy, was there anything I could have done better, did they understand my instructions, was I approachable when they had difficulties.
On the whole the comments were very positive. But one interesting thing was that almost all kids said they hated blogging and they loved creating their digital portfolios.
So that got me thinking that maybe what I should do is think more about using wikis as a way to have the kids document more of what they are thinking (blogging) but make it more possible to express themselves like they like to do in their digital portfolios.
The Cool Cat teacher blog has some great ideas for ways to use wikis that I think I might try.
I'm thinking that this might be the way to kill two birds with one stone....maybe.

What did they learn?

2006-11-08T16:47:00.000+11:00

The final task that the students had to do was to think of three reasons why they think that one person could change the world and three reasons why they think someone couldn't and then to decide for themselves.
Some coped with it well and others found it extremely difficult to think from another point of view and give both sides to an argument. With more time it would have been great to have a socratic discussion but with only one period it's difficult to find the time.

It's something more to think about and something that I would like to try again with another group of students.

How did we go?

2006-10-23T20:16:00.000+10:00

The key to making this lesson work has been finding something that the kids can relate to. About 3/4's of the kids loved the Punk Rocker song and some turned their nose up but that was fine. It still worked as a way to get conversation happening.
I ended up using three different videos that I downloaded from YouTube- all related to the Free Hugs phenomonem. One was the original video by the Sick Puppies, one was a video created by a student in America and the third one was of a young girl in Canada who talked to the camera about the effect the video had on her and what she then did. It was a lovely reflective piece that summed up the power of the connections that can be made across the world.
I used a cool piece of freeware FLV to download each of the videos onto my laptop so that I could use them off line and also because we block Youtube here at school.
The lesson has actually blown out to three lessons because there was so much discussion and the kids wanted to hear the song and see the video a few more times.
Today we did our group thing, took the kids outside in the beautiful sunshine. They worked in groups of three and compared and contrasted the way each media-video and audio got it's message across.
Then after even more discussion and sharing we are almost ready to individually blog. It has certainly taken alot longer than I thought but the results have been really positive and have encouraged me to continue to use what is available to stimulate and encourage.

Going to try this idea tomorrow

2006-10-18T21:31:00.001+10:00

As a result of an oz teachers post that mentioned a really cool little video on Youtube called Free Hugs, I decided that I would try to use the video as a way to have students think some more about the way the internet and Web 2.0 is changing the world-or is it?
So what I have done is downloaded the videos using a great little add on in Firefox called FLV download which enables the videos to be loaded onto my computer. (Youtube is blocked at school so I can't make a direct link) and then I'm going to use Sandy Thom's song, "I wish I was a punk rocker" to get them to think about the different ways that one person might change the world. I bought it the other day on Itunes so hopefully I'm fine with using it.
The question is Can one person change the world?
For these students I have been using a blog - Wedderburn 7/8 Blog to write up my lessons and here's the post. I find it's a good way to keep a record for myself and also hopefully gives kids a chance to think a little more about what they have to do.
I think the addition of music will also help. We generally have music going in the classroom when we are working anyway although I'm guessing some will love and others will hate the Punk Rocker song. I think I'll try to find the lyrics to the song as well as that will add another level of understanding.
will report back tomorrow on how it went.