2010 - International Year of Biodiversity

Seasons Greetings

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all; and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishees.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

Module 10

Learning Communities, Constructing Knowledge Together

As we approach Term 4, my Year 3 class have a unit that continues from Term 3. In it they have used various Scootle Learning Paths. Over the year they have used Kidspiration, Bubbl.us, PowerPoint, Publisher, Flip Video, sound recording using Audacity, video, internet, myclasses, .... For their final presentation they are allowed to present it in any format they choose. Interestingly, they are using a wide variety of the tools available to them, some working co-operatively together, others not.

The work that they will be doing really does aim towards the "creating" in Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. Given the skills and the opportunity, students will use the tools of Web 2.0 to construct knowledge (maybe not always together just yet). It allows for students to become more responsible for their own learning and to individualise the learning for each student.

I think that there are still some privacy and security issues for younger students using some Web 2.0 tools, especially creating accounts that may be public. One of these days 'myinternet' (or its successor) might include some of these tools.

It is interesting that nearly every student in the class now has a 'flash drive' to take their information and work with them. Maybe, we are fast approaching the time when 'cloud computing' will become the norm.

Module 9

Networks on the Web

There was not very much new in this unit.

Scootle: I am the school administrator for Scootle, and my class use Scootle for HSIE, Science and English activities. I have set up a number of Learning Paths, and have shared these publicly. Year 3 seem to love "Catch the Thief"!

Facebook: Through Facebook I have been able to keep in contact with many former colleagues and past students. I do think that we need to be careful as to what we put on Facebook and if we let current parents and students become friends. I think it would be extremely unwise to allow current students to add you as a friend, and would certainly not recommend it.

Twitter: I do like keeping up with what the mighty Parramatta Eels are up to in Sydney and the Carlton Blues in Melbourne (and even the Sydney Swans). Kevin Rudd (PM) and Barry O'Farrell (State Opposition Leader) are also prolific users. At the recent NSWCEG Conference I heard how St. Mark's College, Stanhope Gardens keep in touch with parents and students using Twitter and was impressed. They even used it to advise the Athletics Carnival had to be postponed.

Module 8

RSS

At first I couldn't see any real use for using Google Reader or an RSS aggregator. I set up Reader and all it really did was use the items from my iGoogle homepage - not particularly impressive. However, I did play around with it a bit and found an article from New Zealand on using blogs in English teaching, and I suddenly had that Eureka! moment.

If students in your class had all set up blogs, how would you ever be able to tell when something had changed without checking them all individually? The answer is use Google Reader, so it tells you when something has changed.

I can see that Google Reader (or similar) could be a tool that might be very valuable to teachers using Web 2.0

Get a Voki now!



Just a little something to keep you from being bored.

Module 7

BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES - Delicious

I have added Delicious to Firefox on my own laptop. Unfortunately our system at school does not allow Internet Explorer to be changed in anyway, so adding the Delicious buttons and add-ins is not possible.

So far I have found it useful for being able to tkae my bookmarks with me, even if I do have to login to the Delicious main page at school.

I can see that this would be a very useful application, in allowing you to share bookmarks, and being able to find bookmarks that others have found useful.

Module 6

CREATING AND COMMUNICATING ONLINE

Bubbl.us - the web application that has really got the students in. Maybe it's to do with the age group, but Year 3 love it and most of the class have become 'friends' and are collaborating online. The main use has been to create 'word webs' which the students can then use in their writing. They are also creating their own mindmaps on a variety of subjects and topics.

Glogster is something that has not really caught my imagination, but I can see that it could be used by the students.

How is our course going at school?

The staff are very enthusiatic. The only real problem is that some of them have opened accounts with user names and passwords that they can't remember. Hopefully we will have everyone finished by the closing date!

Module 5

DIGITAL STORYTELLING - PODS, VODS, VIDEOS AND WEB 2.0

I have been using videos from Teacher Tube for 2 years now. They have some very good story starters and stimulus material for Mathematics problems.

One of the problems with YouTube is that you can easlily be caught with inappropriate content. It is important to have an account and save the suitable videos to your favourites. We also need to be careful with adding content to YouTube and that students and parents have given their informed consent.

This year we have done some work with the students making their own pods and we will eventually move on to making vods. At the moment these are added to myclasses so the students can use them on our own system.

Module 4

PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ON THE WEB

My web application of choice for photos is Picasa (Google has got me with all their applications!). They now have a version for Mac, and one of the really 'cool' features is face recognition, also found in Aperture. The only downside is the amount of storage space available.

The selling point for Flickr is the royalty free content, and the work they are doing with different galleries around the world.

We are currently working on getting students to include in any digital work a reference as to where an image came from - a digital bibliography. Students need to be awars that just as they can't copy great slabs of text from the web, neither can they copy unacknowledged photos or videos.

You will see that there is now a Creative Commons license notice at the bottom (footer) of this blog.

Module 3

FREE ONLINE APPLICATIONS - GOOGLE DOCS

Well, another part of iGoogle that am am well acquainted with. An excellent way to store and share all types of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. While it may not have quite the sophistication of Microsoft Office, it is certainly more than adequate for most.

How could it be used in the classroom? Students would be able to collaborate on all sorts of writing tasks, creating presentations and working of spreadsheets. Again, my only question is how do we deal with students in Stage 2 creating Google accounts?

Module 2

BLOGS

I have been using my own blog since 2005. I suppose that one of the big issues, especially with students in Stage 2, is do we have them create their own blogs or set up a class blogs with them as members. What do we do in terms of log-ins and being able to identify whose post it is or whose comment it is? The ideal situation would be that it was part of myinternet, or we had a system using Apple's Snow Leopard server that lets the school host their on blogs. Maybe if we ever move to cloud computing this will be possible.

I have had a look at some blogs that other teachers have set and it certainly does seem to allow the students to 'publish' their work.

Module 1 - Post 2

We have most of the staff up and running. The biggest problem we have already is people remembering their user names and passwords.

Module 1 - Post 1

I already use iGoogle as my homepage and have since 2005. I have it showing my gmail, calendar, and the various news items that interest me such as Sydney Morning Herald, ABC online, C-Net, ZDNet. A useful gadget is enhanced bookmarks, which means that I can have my bookmarks travel with me. At the moment, we will be helping all the staff create their iGoogle page and get moving with Module 1 at the next staff meeting. We may even get to looking at blogs for the more 'advanced' staff.

Web 2.0 CEO

This blog has been set up for the CEO's Web 2.0 course.
This is where the reflections for the various modules will be posted.