Week 4 – Assessment of Tools

Web 2.0

1.     Investigate some of the following resources:

  • FUSE – Learning and teaching content. FUSE is good. I have made a couple of links for there to our Catalogue for students and teachers to access. HUGE! Needs more thorough investigation
  • Google Sites I really liked G Sites. I can see heaps of uses for schools – and it’s not blocked!
  • Google Docs A great way to share documents amongst colleagues or students who are working in groups.
  • Google for Educators Didn’t really get to have a look at this. One to go back to.
  • Flickr Flickr is good, although it is only one of many, and doesn’t upload to TweetDeck, and wouldn’t upload my photo. I ended up with a TwitPic account so that I could upload to Twitter.
  • One of the mind/essay mapping tools such as Gliffy, bubbl.us, Essay Map Wallwisher. All of these are GREAT, and well worth sharing with teaching staff. I particularly liked Wallwisher and Essay Map – but Gliffy and Bubbl.us are definitely cool too.

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2.   What have you discovered that is new to you this week?

Everything!

3.   How do you see yourself using any or all of these resources in your teaching?

I’ve already used Wallwisher and Essay Map at school. All of them are useful for a T-L because we see many classes that we can try them out on.

4.   What subjects could you use Flickr for? What obstacles might there be to using Flickr with your students?

Biggest obstacle is that all the photo sharing sites are blocked at work. I can only access them at home. I can see great uses for Art, but also for creating photo essays for issues in English, recording the progress of an experiment, etc, etc.

5.   Consider joining Flickr, and following the instructions, load some photos and link them to your blog.

See above. Wouldn’t load.

6.   How could Wallwisher be used for school professional learning days or staff meetings? Add a comment to the PLN Wallwisher wall about your favourite task from this week.

7.   How could Google Sites be useful in your school?

I’m going to try out Google Sites with some girls in our Book Club. We are going to learn it together!

8.   Remember to add some content or join a conversation in the Ning.

Done!

Week 4 – Oh, WOW!!!!!

education, Web 2.0

I had a win today with Wallwisher. I sent out the link to a wall I had made and got about half a dozen people having a look at it straightaway! Then one of them used it to set up her own wall about Food Tech. She is going to advertise it to the students by placing a poster on the wall of her classroom with those little rip off tags with the URL along the bottom of the page – like a babysitting service! Here is my Wallwisher wall.

Wallwisher

Essay Map is brilliant!!! Even though it says to use it for an ‘informational’ essay, I did a very quick ‘essay’ on Themes in Pride and Prejudice and it came out brilliantly! I didn’t even do a proper map becasue I was just testing it. I have already added it to our library home page for the students to start using.

I haven’t tried Gliffy and bubbl.us yet but I can’t wait!

Week 3 – Getting into the swing of things

Web 2.0

This week has been a week of consolidation. Twitter is brilliant for tweeting great stuff that you’ve found immediately, but I find it difficult to keep track of the #tags that I want to watch out for. I know how to do it, but, of course, time is the issue. 🙂

I am already a huge fan of TED, but I didn’t know about Australia Series at Learning Central (although I had seen LC before, I had rejected it as too US-centric) and I hadn’t had a good look at FUSE, which also has excellent resources for Secondary, Primary  and Early Childhood students besides being great for teachers’ professional learning.

I was already familiar with the CYL and ERGO programs at the State Library of Victoria but not about all the other programs that were on the link from the PLN.

And I’ve just sent a request to TL Virtual Cafe to join their Wikispaces wiki.

And today I was asked to contribute to the English Dept wiki/ning at school. So that’s how I’m going to be using my new skills. Yay!!!

Things are looking up, folks! 🙂

One Simple Idea – Part 2

education

I believe so strongly that students learn best by doing, especially in the sense that this is talking about. I was taught to knit and crochet by my Nan, to hammer and saw and paint and glue by my Dad and Grandad, and to sew and cook by my Mum. It didn’t stop me from aspiring to get to university, and I did get to university, obviously. But it did and does make me a well-rounded person – I can confidently ‘make’ things. And being able to visualise things as they are being ‘made’ helps in all facets of life – from rearranging a library to creating a dress to developing an online learning program.

And anyway, life’s too short to miss out on experiencing all those wonderful, creative things.

Week 2 – Twitter/ Tweetdeck update

Web 2.0

In my last blog I said that I had declined an invitation to link to Facebook. In the end, I succumbed and linked. Big mistake! I was get little ‘ding dong’s’ every 30 seconds or so, and it was so distracting. I also didn’t like the format, and would rather be ‘in’ Facebook and have Tweetdeck tell me about tweets, than sit in TweetDeck and have it do nothing very much.

I have unlinked my Facebook from TweetDeck.

I’m also not really happy with how TweetDeck is working on my phone – and it uses huge amounts of download bandwidth! I think that I have to join my TweetDeck account to TweetDeck on the iPhone.

Another day maybe.