Continuing my Lifelong Learning
Thought I would share my new Prezi.
It’s hard to use a new tool unless you’ve got something specific to make using it. So I designed this Prezi to use with my Year 9s next year to facilitate a conversation about Goalsetting, and hopefully help the students to think more deeply about their personal goals.
Twiducate is a version of Twitter for schools. I’ve had a quick go of this with my own kids, which, of course, is not like a full class. It seems like a good idea, but only useful if everyone has access all the time, which means staying logged on. Clumsy, clunky interface as well. I’ll keep an eye on it.
Week 12 – Digital story
Key activities
2. Can you find and share any pertinent Slideshare, Docstoc or Scribd presentations by embedding them in your blog?
This from SlideShare. I like it because it is succinct – really to the point.
Love this! This Guy Ritchie (OMG!) comic is the bomb! But it also has swearing, so maybe not so good for schools. 😦
GUY RITCHIE – GAMEKEEPER #1 – FREE http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=28830015&access_key=key-2l623x54fqdldnuh3438&page=1&viewMode=book
But this is a great use of Scribd for students
Comics http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=31423931&access_key=key-10by56bk6xtqp2qly50z&page=1&viewMode=list
I love this StoryBird!
http://media.storybird.com/embedplayer/bin/StoryplayerEmbed.swfThe Adventure of Reading by abigailcullen74 on Storybird
3. Can you develop a brief Slideshare, Docstoc or Scribd presentation of your own? Please embed it into your blog.
I decided to use Slideshare to create a presentation. I think you will see from this presentation how poorly I think Slideshare works. It is obtuse, clunky and very anti-intuitive. It is probably the least user-friendly thing I have used in the PLN program and took me more than two hours to put this 5 slide presentation together. Grrrrr!
4. How could these presentations be used at school?
If it wasn’t so hard to use Slideshare would be great for sharing documents – but it’s not helpful or easy to use. I won’t be sharing it with ANY teachers unless they have advanced podcasting skills.
5. How could Google Lit Trips be used for subjects other than English?
First of all, here is the link to the FAQ on viewing a GLitTrip, which should be on the Home page.
Google Earth would be brilliant for bringing history to life – recreating the journeys of the great explorers – and for documenting hiking tours for Duke of Ed awards – camping or adventure camps, etc.
Jane McGonigal (Professor?!) was GREAT. Another awesome TEDtalk to show staff. She absolutely made sense to me, but I am biased. I LOVE gaming (not WoW tho), but always feel like I am wasting my time. Thanks Jane for opening my eyes. 🙂
1. Loved that article from Mashable. I think the biggest obstacle for most teachers is time to research/ play/ embed the game in curriculum, and it follows then that your most important resource is your PLN, coz you’ve already got the curriculum, so let someone else find and recommend the game to you within the PLN, and go for it!
2. Quote from the BBC article:
“.. many trainee teachers did not understand the significance of the latest children’s books or films when they went into the classroom.”
Trainee teachers don’t know what they don’t know! Heck, many ‘experienced’ teachers have given up learning and just rely on what they already know to get by.
3. Games – what are kids learning. Yep, yep. Great stuff. Scroll right to the bottom though and check out the links back to our PLN blogs. Very cool!
4. FUSE video was v e r y slow to load. But despite that it was a great idea. Has anyone else noticed that there is heaps of resources for primary, but not so many for secondary?
5. Love the Consolarium idea. Could be use across classes, houses, year levels, etc.
As a teacher librarian in collaborative mode, it is sometimes difficult to get Web 2.0 embedded into your curriculum. Too often teachers don’t come (like today), or they have another agenda, it’s ‘their’ class and you don’t want to butt in, or they have less skills in Web 2.0 than you and aren’t interested in getting up to speed.
My main aim with Web 2.0 is to get more teachers up to speed with a number of Web 2.0 tools, and to keep feeding them expertise and assistance. Last week I had a Moodle win, and an Elluminate win (same teacher, and the Elluminate success fed the Moodle tryout). Trying to get into the regular all-staff PD sessions is also tricky, as they are being gate-kept at the moment. I will keep on plugging away nonetheless.
I can see so many great ways to use Web 2.0 tools in classrooms, but as a newby I have to tread softly and carefully lest I step on toes. 🙂
3. Here is my Tagxedo of this week’s main points
Well, it would be if it would upload! Epic fail! Twice! See my Tagxedo in Week 8 for my ace technique!
4. Jenny Sargeant’s presentation was quite text heavy (as she said in her intro) but there was heaps of great stuff there to share with ‘other’ staff in a PD situation. I can see myself using that Elluminate to inform other teachers about p vs t.
5. Can we quantify student improvement when using Web 2.0 tools vs. traditional tools? Should we try to quantify? Why or why not? Does this article by Will Richardson help clarify your thoughts?
It’s an interesting article, but a bit airy-fairy on the detail. Of much more interest to me was the model shown by Richard Buckland in Week 8 where he used a wiki to increase learning, and where the learning WAS transparent and quantifiable. I think that sometime teachers get really caught up in the assessment and not in the long term, and possible unassessable goal. For example, the English department at my school recently decided to timetable English class into the library once a fortnight to increase literacy. Great! Woot! said I. The HoE then send an email saying that teachers must check what the students are reading, and get work from them. Aaaargh! If this is a long term project, then we’re not going to see the results of this initiative for at least 12 months. But we had to be seen to be assessing the work, and not just sitting around on our bums reading, which IS what we are doing – but there’s is so much more going on than just a ‘slack’ lesson for the staff and students.
Small steps, small steps. 🙂
Key activities
1. Explore some of the following items:
Here is my Animoto video.
http://static.animoto.com/swf/w.swf?w=swf/vp1&e=1280645770&f=W65sz8sI2MuzLk0Ly2CfdQ&d=37&m=b&r=w&i=m&options=
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
I found that the software was very slow, which was quite frustrating. May have been my parents’ poor bandwidth though!
Also, Animoto ‘wastes’ about 5 seconds at the start of the 30 sec free video, probably so that you want to upgrade to Pro. I could only fit 6 photos onto a 30 sec vid, plus a title shot. That’s 5 secs per photo. Mmmm.
See my Week 7 Glogster for my thoughts on that. Not impressed. Clunky.
So here is my Voice Thread. I can see lots of uses for this in education, particularly in Art, but also in English where you could all make comments about a photo, or clip from a movie, or a character image, and get the whole class involved in the conversation. Although, it is quite complex to set up. I like that you can have a single logon for the whole class, and they just have to pick their avatar to leave a comment. I really prefer software that makes you create an avatar and a username, and alter your settings on your first use. Then you can just go ahead and use it without having to go backwards and forwards to keep fixing things. Otherwise, I like it!
Pretty funny. I got my kids involved in this one, and I think they’ve made some really funny comments. 🙂
Ha! ToonDoo is fun!
I LURV Richard Buckland. I want him to come and setup a Wiki for me! Am a bit cranky that WikiSpaces is now commercial. Boo.
So I see that PBworks may be a great alternative to Wikispaces. That’s great, as we have a number of wikis set up at work, but they are no longer going to be viable becasue they are with Wikispaces.
I’ve used Wordle, but Tagxedo is SO much more versatile. Here is my Tagxedo using the reviews from my blog.
2. Make a Voicethread, animoto, glog, Wordle, Tagxedo, or ToonDoo on a topic of your choice. Link or embed the results in your blog. Help for embedding is available here.
3. Which is your favourite application and why?
The wikis are my favourite app from today, just because of Richard Buckland. If he was any more enthusiastic he would burst!
He made it seem so useful, but I think that he has one very important thing going for him – the students in his course, by and large, WANT to be there. So I think that in Secondary school, you really need to bring the WANT and the SKILLS to your class before you can get the results he is talking about.
4. How could these presentation tools by used by students and teachers?
Holey moley! What a question?! My brain is buzzing as to how these could be use in classes. Mostly I keep thinking of ways that OTHER teachers could use them in class, and how I can help facilitate that.
Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This review will have to do for all the Famous Five books, because, well really, it’s just the same story over and over again.
But that ‘sameness’ is the very reason I come back to the Famous Five even now. There’s something very satisfying about knowing that the Five will triumph, despite all the set-backs, baddies and dire (unlikely) occurences. End Blyton was a queen of the ‘safe’ book – predictable in a very British sort of way, but with four capable, clever and courageous protagonists, who had their foibles, but were, in the end, the victors.
I wanted to be George so much! Anne was too prissy for me, Julian too grown-up, Dick was OK, but George and Timmy were fearless, head-strong and in deep, deep doggy love with each other. And I loved her for it.
If you haven’t read then for a while, or ever, read them for a time gone by, read them for the language of a time and place that no longer exists, and read them for the fun.
Anonymity Jones by James Roy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
True to form, James Roy has written a thought-provoking and moving novel of a young girl on the cusp of adulthood. Anonymity Jones is seventeen and until now has not really paid attention to what is happening in her family, but now finds her comfortable, familiar life disintegrating around her. Anonymity’s Dad, Richard, has had an affair with a work colleague (again!) and this throws a spanner in the works of her parents’ marriage. Megan, Anonymity’s older sister, has changed her name to Raven, has left school and has decided to head to Europe for a gap year. And as the Four Musketeers, Anonymity, Tina, Viera and Andi, approach the final years of school, their lives start to diverge and change in a way that Anonymity is not altogether comfortable with.
James Roy’s ability to consistently tackle the family and personal issues that confront teens, and to write about them with a genuine voice, compassion and class is shown once again. He is skilled at getting inside the thoughts of the teenage character and examining difficult ideas and events in a realistic way.
Recommended for secondary students and beyond.
This Teaching Life Two 
