Pre-service teacher training

We set our 1st year students a task to create a multimedia resource to use in the classroom with primary (elementary) aged children. The students were given a range of web 2 tools to use or they could use PhotoStory 3. The students were encouraged to use a tool they had not encountered before.

I provided online help tutorials as they were required - 'just in time learning'. As well students supported each other in group situations or through an online forum. This gave the students an experience where they were able to see how the tool (or something similary) could be used in their future classroom.

After making the resource they had to either give a link to their work or upload the work to our online learning environment. Many of the students who used Photostory 3 or Animoto then uploaded them to YouTube to be able to embed them in our online environment or into their e-portfolios. I wonder if there are many teachers who are providing experiences like this in their classrooms and how they are doing it. It is great to be able to show these students 'real life' examples to follow on.

Fantastic book for all teachers

Terry Freedman has done it again. He has put out a new book - The Amazing Web 2 Projects Book.

This book is free and has many ideas for the busy teacher. The best thing is all of these ideas come from teachers globally so that there are some really great ideas. These teachers have trialled the projects so you know that they are going to work.

Facebook in the classroom???

I have just been reading Ewan McIntosh's blog. He uses an example of Kimberley Swan and her total lack of understanding about consequences. His blog reminded me of a similar case here in New Zealand a couple of years ago when a teenager was derogatory about her place of employment. Her post was seen by her boss and she was sacked. Many teens here were very upset and did not understand why she had been fired. Lawyers were called in to show that the company had every right to fire her.

He further links to Lindsay who complained about her boss on her Facebook page; the only problem was she had added him as a 'Friend'.

Ewan's final sentence to sum up is fantastic (I wish I had thought of it...)

"If Lindsay or Kimberley had been taught by a real "real teacher", maybe they'd
have not only had a conversation at some point about how one uses social
networks for both play and work, as part of your public face, they may also have
had, subject to the filtering policies in their schools, some hands-on practical
sessions in privacy settings and the art of communication on the net."

Kevin Kelly talks about technology

In this thought-provoking talk Kevin Kelly muses on what technology means in our lives -- from its impact at the personal level to its place in the cosmos. It is worth having a look

NetVibes

Netvibes is a free personalised page where you can organise your online content.

Netvibes allows you to:

• Put your stuff in a page accessible from any computer or mobile device
• Manage and update your facebook and twitter accounts from one place
• Along with your personal, private page, create a public page viewable by everyone
• Setup a "watch" dashboard to keep track of your favorites subjects

• Pick a widget from a large catalogue of content and applications
• Put a widget on your own blog or computer desktop
• Share anything in your page with your friends

VoiceThread

VoiceThread has an interesting presentation about using Web 2 tools in the classroom. There are some great ideas in here. There are several different slides to the presentation so make sure you look at them all. You might like to make some comments on different pages especially if you have had experiences in with the tools.

Voicethread 4 Education wiki has some great ideas for using VoiceThread in the classroom.

Prezi

I have not discussed Prezi on my blog but it is a web 2 tool that I use for presentations and is a nice change to the usual PowerPoints. An advantage is that you can download presentations to take with you as well as embedding videos etc into the presentation.

It is a great tool to use in the classroom for students to present their work.

I made this one about Web 2 tools used in the classroom for communicating and collaborating.

Using collaborative tools in the classroom on Prezi

21st Century Teacher

It seems so long since I wrote anything in here. I have been incredibly busy but hopefully will now be able to keep this more up-to-date!! That is my New Years resolution anyway.

I have just been reading a booklet "21st Century Teacher: Are you ready to meet the challenge" on the Becta site to help teachers to cope with using the technologies of the 21st Century. In here you will find a checklist for teachers to use and then provides useful ideas for based on their answers. This is a UK site but very relevant for teachers from any country.

The booklet addresses:

• learning and teaching
• planning and administration
• assessing and reporting

Each of these areas has case studies discussing how teachers have used technology in these areas.

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