Smart Tables

I have just been reading Tom Barrett's views on using a Smart table in his classroom. These are a very expensive piece of equipment and before spending on some of the technologies it is important to ensure that it is going to enhance the children's thinking and learning. Tom was saying that these are about £5000 in England - with the present exchange rate it makes it extremely expensive here in New Zealand. His blog discusses his own experiences and is worth reading.

I have experience with using smart boards but have only seen the smart tables demonstrated. I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who is using one of these to find out how they are using it to enhance the thinking and learning and the benefits they have found in the classroom (or not as the case may be).

How a Wiki can be used as a learning tool

How a Wiki Can Be Used as a Learning Tool

Guest article by Adrienne Carlson

If you’re almost always connected to the Internet either on your phone or your computer, you’ll know that a wiki is something that is as common as a newspaper once was. It’s where we go to look for information; it’s what we reference when we’re researching a topic; and it’s what we read when we’re trying to gain some knowledge. The enormous success of Wikipedia has demonstrated the power of collaborative effort, one that works through individual contributions that are collated as a whole and organized and cross-referenced for easy navigation. Technology has thrown up quite a few tools for pedagogy, and the wiki is one of them. To learn how the wiki can be used as an effective teaching aid and tool, read on:

• Teachers can use wikis to publish up to date information on courses, lesson plans, syllabi, and other info that are useful for students.
• Students in high school can use them to collaborate on projects with their classmates. The advantage of a wiki as a collaborative and sharing tool is that it facilitates online education too, so students can be far apart geographically and yet stay connected through the Internet. This helps when projects are meant to be completed during vacation or a short break from school.
• College students can use it to collaborate on research projects
• Wikis make great tools for the presentation and evolving of ideas in new projects
• Teachers can use them as part of their e-portfolios to reflect their teaching ideology and methodology and the advances they have made in the personal journey as academicians.
• Students can use it to keep record of their thoughts and ideas on lessons, using it as a notebook to jot down their interpretation of prescribed readings.
• Wikis are a great tool for improving the knowledge of students and broadening their horizons because they provide information on anything under the sun.
• They also provide students and teachers with opportunities to add to common knowledge by putting up wikis of their own or adding to ones that already exist.
• Wikis help link to various resources, thus bringing them all under one page even though they are sorted and arranged according to category and type.
• Wikis make perfect tools for writers collaborating on a project; each member of the team is responsible for editing and maintaining certain sections of the project while one person is given the responsibility of organizing the entire article into a coherent form.

By-line:
This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of accelerated online degrees . Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson83@yahoo.com

Web 2.0 Projects Book

Terry Freedman is updating his Web 2.0 projects book. This book has been available (free of charge) for teachers to use. I am teaching about integrating ICT into the primary classroom and often find that our students initially have very limited ideas on how to do this. We have directed our students to this book for some time now and they all find it very useful to see how teachers use these tools in so many innovative ways - many of them have never used any of these tools themselves before starting our course.

I know many of you are using Web 2.0 in your classrooms, why not contribute to this book (over 11,000 downloads of the last edition). Terry has extended the time to submit until 16th October - we have school holidays here at the moment so this is a great time to do something like this. In this way we can get the ideas to each other to use in classrooms. It is great to have the ideas in one place to look through and then adapt for our own classrooms. If you are interested go to Terry's site where you will find a link to an online form.

NEW DEADLINE: due to everything going on the new deadline is 31st October.

Open Education Resource (OER)

The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation was officially launched on 17 September 2009 by Dr Robin Day.

This is very exciting for teachers globally and our own teachers here in New Zealand.

"The OER Foundation is a new not-for-profit organisation that will assist
education institutions in New Zealand and around the world to reduce costs
through open education resources. These are materials which educators are free
to reuse, adapt and modify without restriction."

To meet the demands of a new age

This video shows a 21st century curriculum philosophy. The message is one for all teachers; and certainly those integrating ICT and Web 2 tools in their classrooms will relate to it.

To Meet the Demands of a New Age from Steven H on Vimeo.

Wired for the future

Mission Heights, a school here in New Zealand, featured on our TV programme, Close Up, here last Thursday night. This is well worth watching. This is a new school who have set up a learning environment for this century. I wonder how things will change in the next twenty years?

Making elearning books

I have been making an elearning book using ClassTools. You can then embed these into your blog or wiki. A big positive is that you do not need user names, passwords etc. Unfortunately the book needs to be under 10 pages. However what a great tool to use in the classroom. As well as the obvious curriculum area of literacy it could be integrated into any curriculum area. There are some really great templates such as fishbones and timelines for example - have a look. You can also create educational games and activities. These are all done using Flash. It is free!!

Click here for full screen version

Discover a great degree at accounting online

Does the use of ICT in the classroom enhance the thinking and learning?

I have just been reading an article by Terry Freedman. He has been listening to a journalist, John Clark, at a recent conference he was at. John was obviously an interesting keynote speaker.

Terry points to four main points from the speech:

1. ICT has a number of important potential benefits for
education.
2. The degree of hype and misplaced funding has been such that the
potential real benefits are being obscured by illusory ones.
3. After massive funding in the UK over the last decade, the research
evidence about ICT's effectiveness in raising attainment is still either
superficial or ambiguous.
4. Much of the software we laud is actually anti-educational: it
institutionalises short attention span, and provides a raucous, cacophonous
environment which is anything but conducive to learning.

These points give us, as educators some points to ponder. As he says we need good research to provide the evidence that we are enhancing the thinking and learning - not just anecdotal evidence. Is anyone out there doing some research about this? I would love to hear about it.

Cheers
Di

The future of newspapers...

Fascinating article in The Independent. This is something that we regularly discuss at home as a family member was an old fashioned sport's reporter! A neighbour recently cancelled his paper as he is now reading it online each morning.

I love these maps in the article to look at different arguments on the topic.

It is a great idea to use in the classroom as a debate topic.

Pre service courses for teachers

We are currently relooking at our courses for pre-service teachers.

Any teachers in the classroom who have any ideas of what they consider important for these students to cover, in relation to the use of ICT in the classroom, while they are undertaking their preservice training please let us know.

Thanks so much for your help.