What is Twitter? Twitter is a website site where you have 140 characters to give your message. You follow people and they follow you.  So you can see each others messages. Messages are called Tweets! What is the purpose of Twitter? it allows you to connect instantaneously with people all around the globe to share ideas, resources, news and much more. Many educators have accounts on Twitter and a font of useful information, there are also news services such as the ABC that ‘tweet’ the latest news, celebrities that tell you what they are doing, airline companies, bands, cruise lines, churches, emergency services even Kevin Rudd. I have even seen a twitter account which tweets each earthquake in the world as they happen!

Twitter has also been an amazing resource for broadcasting the news before the news services get onto it. See my post here where I speak about the speed at which social media such as Twitter and Fazcebook had accurate news on the Korumburra Earthquakes!

So how do you use Twitter? Sue Waters has written an excellent post on a wiki which pretty much sums it up so I am not going to reinvent the wheel. So click here to go to the wiki post

My Twitter account is: ldumicich

Some interesting people to follow to get you started…

Kevin Rudd

David Hughes

Lifechurch.tv

ABC News

Getting started, follow some people that you know and some famous people/organisations. Start slowly or else you will be overwhelmed with info!

Some useful links for how it can be used in an educational setting….

Interesting ways to use Twitter int he classroom

New Tools Workshop – Twitter

Twitter for Learning

Twitter handbook for Teachers

History Teachers on Twitter

50 Ideas for using Twitter in Education

Twitter Transforms Teaching

Twitter Twitter Tweet Tweet

Welcome to Newsletter 8. It has been a long time since i have sent out an ICT newsletter for school so my apologies and I hope you enjoy the resources and ideas included here!

Library Links

• 14 Ways K-12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media – NeverEndingSearch – Blog on School Library Journal

  “This is the best time in history to be a teacher-librarian. Major shifts in our information and communication landscapes present new opportunities for librarians to teach and lead in areas that were always considered part of their role, helping learners of all ages effectively use, manage, evaluate, organize and communicate information, and to love reading in its glorious new variety.”

• Teaching Info.LiteracyTeaching Information Literacy Resources

Art Links

• Sumo Paint :: Online Image Editor :: HomeOnline paint tool!

• Art Activities and Lesson PlansLots of ideas and lesson plans for art

• Pointilism Practice Page!“Here’s a place to point and paint. Georges Seurat invented the technique known as Pointilism, which uses tiny dots instead of broad strokes to put the paint on the canvas. The individual dots of red, yellow and blue are sucked in through your eyes and mixed up in your head to create a variety of shimmering shades. “

English Links

• Comics LabComic generator

• A Kinesthetic Reading Adventure « Mr Robbo – The P.E GeekUsing QR codes to create a choose your own adventure novel

• Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: The World’s Largest English Department“Ning group for English teachers reveals the potential of online social networking to break the culture of professional isolation.”

• 25 Free Sites to Teach Writing – The Writing Teacher – Tips, Techniques, and Advice on Teaching Writing“The web is a great resource for writing teachers who need lesson plans, writing prompts, interactive activities, high-tech tools, and other free teaching materials. Here are 25 sites that would be particularly useful to educators who teach writing.”

Junior School Links

• Kids Games – Play Educational and Fun Kids Games Online! Play Kids Games.“Play Kids Games provides free online kids games that are both fun and educational. Aimed at ages pre-K through middle school, Play Kids Games offers kids a safe environment to discover their abilities and learn new skills with interactive and fun computer games. Our games build skills in math, logic, memory, vocabulary, alphabet, spelling, geography, computer skills, color identification, shape identification and other various problem solving. Our commitment to parents, teachers, and kids, is to connect learning and skill building with a sense of challenge, fun, and self esteem. From the fun of “Alphabet Whack-a-Mole” to the skill building “Math Fact Practice”, our hope is that PlayKidsGames.com will be a part of our future generation’s ongoing experience and development. “

Maths Links

• Welcome to Absurd Math“Absurd Math is an interactive mathematical problem solving game series. The player proceeds on missions in a strange world where the ultimate power consists of mathematical skill and knowledge. Many of the pages have hidden clues and areas. Anytime a player needs help, they may email our staff for assistance.”

General E-Learning Links for everyone!!

• AuthenticICT – Web Based Tools

  “here is an absolutely exhaustive list digital tools available online. In fact it can actually get quite overwhelming at times. The trick is to find the few that suit you and best meet the learning needs of your class. My other suggestion is that you start out by focusing on just one tool at a time when you’re just starting out. It can be really easy to get carried away and try out everything! The ideas for use suggested below are really only a taster. There are so many possibilities out there and I’m sure you can think of many of your own. By playing with the tools and exploring the links, I hope you will begin to build your own list of ideas. “

• teachingwithted / FrontPage

  “TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader and it has begun releasing its talks online under a Creative Commons license so that they can be downloaded for free for non-commercial use. Their applications for education are endless. The purpose of this wiki is to share ideas how these talks can turn into broader discussions, projects, and actions. The intent of this project wiki is to address: How can the TED talks be used as springboards for further discourse, exploration, reflection, and action?”

• Thousands of FREE Presentations in PowerPoint format

  Stacks of Powerpoints for all different subjects!

• Posterous – The place to post everything. Just email us. Dead simple blog by email.

  A another blogging site, very simple to use, email based

• Australian Newspapers OnLine – index.html

  A list of all Australian newspapaers that are online.

• The Best Tools for Visualization

  “Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Here are some of the best: “

• iPhone/iPod touch Apps for K-12

  “These pages include free or almost free apps for K-12 teachers and students. The list is by no means definitive, but I will add new content as it becomes available. “

• Flips&DigitalCams | Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

  Lots of tips about using Flips!

For those of you that have blogs and Nings!!

• Best Embeds for Educational Wikis and Blogs | Making Teachers Nerdy

  “Now that you and/or your students are using wikis and blogs, are you curious what could be added to them? From animated slideshows to collaborative documents to interactive review games, many great (and free) tools are available. As a follow up to my previous post “What Teachers Should and Should Not Be Posting on their Classroom Webpages”, I’ve pulled a master list of embedding options that will hopefully spark your imagination. “

 Here is a selection of websites suitable for use in the Primary Curriculum. I have compiled them from the help of my own resourcea and the wonderful educators on the OZ-Teacher Mailing list. If you have any other great resources that are useful for the Primary years please add them in the comments.

Junior School All Ages

Wordle
www.wordle.net

Adrian Bruce website links to lots of good sites!
http://www.adrianbruce.com/computers/educational-software.htm

From very simple to very hard patterns and rotations
Build a Block

Great science website looking at animals and habitats
SwitcherooZoo

Put your face in photos (a lot of fun, not sure how educational)
http://www.photofunia.com/

Creating heroes to put in comics
http://cpbintegrated.com/theherofactory/

Stacks of lesson plans for all levels on literacy
http://www.readwritethink.org/

Loads of resources for the IWB (can be used on a normal computer too!)
http://www.copacabana-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/Get_Smart_Pages/Get_Smart.htm

Lots of literacy activites to download. Some are not THRASS friendly but there is some that are!http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/cll/sea/

Times Tables Game with a Moon theme!
http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/online/moonmaths.swf

Times Tables with a Fish Theme
http://www.multiplication.com/flash/PracticeFish.swf

 Grammar Ninja coz it’s cool!!
http://www.kwarp.com/portfolio/grammarninja.html

 Look, Cover, Write check Spelling
http://www.ictgames.com/lcwc.html

Wick Ed NZ website with lots of educational games
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/wick_ed/index.php

Lower Primary

Lots of games in many subject areas. Easy to play and suitab for either the PC or IWB
Toy Theater

THRASS friendly phonics website
Roy the Zebra

Hugely entertaining and educational!! Lots of different subject areas!
http://www.tvokids.com/ 

Upper Primary

Dance Mat Typing Tutor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

Clay Animator – for stop motion animation
http://www.clayanimator.com/english/stop_motion_animator.html

Free online brainstorming
www.bubbl.us

Andrea Mosaic – create your own photographic mosaics made with your own pictures.
http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/

Here are some good websites that I have found that I need to put somewhere that wont get lost in amongst a whole heap of other links. So here they are!

QR Code for my website from Kaywa

Well thanks to Sue Waters post on the Edublogger today I am now blogging from my iPhone. I had tried the WordPress app, but as mentioned in Sues post it did not work! However BlogPress seems to be working well. I hope this is the beginning of some more frequent blogging as I have been a bit neglectful lately. I have a post brewing in my mind that has been just waiting for me to write it hopefully I will now get some time to get the post written.

– Post From My iPhone

Well it has been a while since I have done a post! I have been slack on the blogging this year, not through lack of desire I might add! Mostly though lack of time and a the feeling that I have not much to say! This year I feel like I have been behind the 8 ball right from the start. I went back to work 3 weeks early which unfortunately was not enough time to get everything done that I needed to do at the start of the year and I feel like I have been behind ever since until now!

With my e-Learning role at my school I have felt this year very much like a car that is in desperate need of a tune up,very rough and jerky and not getting anywhere smoothly. I guess after the massive year that I had last year some form of plateau was inevitable. I have spent the most of my time doing background admin type activities such as setting up our Parent Portal, Setting up our Google Apps for Education and setting up our Learning Management System.  All necessary tasks, but hardly setting the world on fire!

EduKate:
So we have had EduKate set up for 6 months now and it is really starting to take off. Teachers are using it to deliver work and assessments to students and students are all jumping on bard with it. I didn’t get time to out a piece of work on it one week for my class and they all told me off for not having it on there! EduKate links in with our Parent Portal and that is getting some really good feedback from the Parent body! There is still more training to do with staff as it is a year ,long training program that we are running, but thus far I am very happy with the uptake!

Wild Wednesday Workshops:
Had the ‘brilliant’ idea to run workshops on Wednesday afternoons for the first 5 weeks of each term for staff to show them web2.0 tools. Whilst initially well received as the year has worn on attendance has dropped off. We are a very meeting driven school (as I am sure most schools are) and adding another meeting into the schedule just hasn’t worked, so I am going to rethink that idea.

Changing the Teaching and Learning:
So whilst I there is lots of good ICT integration going on at school from Nings to blogs to wikis to IWB’s. I don’t think that what is actually happening in the classroom has changed that much. I think that the ICT’s have just replaced former paper based activities with ICT based ones. It is very much still teacher driven and the idea of collaboration  and 21st century teaching skills even within the class itself isn’t really on the radar! As I am not in charge of this area as such I am kind hamstrung as I am reliant on my Head of Teaching and Learning catching the vision, however she also is snowed under with lots of admin style tasks! I am totally frustrated as while what we are doing is a good start there is so much more. I think this is the thing that is making me feel like an untuned car the most!!

Google Apps for Education:
I know this is hard to believe but we have not had email for students until about 2 weeks ago!! Much to the frustrations of many! It was almost at the point (and I think we were a 1:1 school I would’ve bypassed it all together) that we could’ve skipped email and gone straight to something like edmodo! However we were not quite ready yet as a school to grasp the no email concept!

Cybersaftey:
Went to the Developing Leaders conference for CEN (Christian Education National, the movement my school belongs to) and heard a very interesting/shocking presentation from Susan McClean the Cyber Cop. She argued that teachers should not be on Facebook and especially should not befriend their students. She had seen too many cases where teachers however innocent have been accused of dubious behavior because of something taken out of context on MySpace or Facebook. She quoted the VIT Code of Conduct Principle 1.5 d. which states

Principle 1.5: Teachers are always in a professional relationship with the students in their school, whether at school or not

Teachers hold a unique position of influence and trust that should not be violated or compromised. They exercise their responsibilities in ways that recognise that there are limits or boundaries to their relationships with students. The following examples outline some of those limits.

A professional relationship will be violated if a teacher:……

d. holds conversations of a personal nature, or has contact with a student via written or electronic means including email, letters, telephone, text messages or chat lines, without a valid context

I have to be honest and say that I struggled with being told this. I associate with my students out of school all the time and always have! I go to church with them, am friends with their parents, play basketball with them, have done Sunday school with them and use students as babysitters I constantly do life as a teacher with these students and I love it! So it was difficult for me to deal with this! However I have to follow the code of conduct so I have dutifully, but not happily, deleted any current students from my Facebook profile. It was great to see a more balance approach by Jenny Luca on her blog.

So the next 6 months should be interesting hopefully I can start to get more in tune and get some really good stuff happening at school and affect more change!

What is a Ning??
A Ning is a website that allows you to create and control your own online social network. It is a similar concept to Facebook or MySpace except you can control who the members are, the content and the topic of the network.

So what use would this be in education?
For the students
Excellent to create a controlled collaborative environment for a class, year level or a group of students from different year levels that need to work together or even students from other schools. It would also be useful for a specific project that you might be working on for a set period of time.
For you as a teacher
Thgere are many educational Nings on different topics which you can join to share resources and ideas with educators from around the globe. Not to mention that it might be a safer environment than jumping straight into something like Facebook if you are worried about it.

Features of a Ning
A Ning has blogs, discussion boards Note, photo storage, event promotion, the ability to create groups, the ability to change the theme and the layout of the Ning

To create your own Ning click here

Some examples of Nings

ICT Development Network Ning

Classroom 2.0

Ning in Education

T-Bird Times

So it has been just over a year since I started blooging as a teacher, reflecting on my journey with education. It has been a great year! From overseas trips to NZ and the US on the ACCE study tour to all of my staff completing their ICDL to seeing some great stuff happening in the classroom to particpating in an ICT development network with the Victorian Christian Schools. It has been busy and hectic and an incredible learning curve. In that time I have learnt about the value of a personal learning network, the value of good pedagodgy (how it is not just about the technology), all sorts of technological things (including geocaching!) and how adults learn and the what is the uptake for changing the way teachers teach!

Looking back over my blog it seems to be a very ecclectic mix of posts, from reflections on what I am doing, to conference sessions I have attended, to things I have done on holidays to information pages for Wild Wednesday Workshops at my school. Which really does reflect the wide variety of things that I have learnt and done over the past 12 months.

So what will the next 12 months look like? Who knows but this is what I am going to challenge myself to do

• Put in a paper to be considered to present at a conference (although I am not entirely sure what in)
• Create an onlilne presence to collate all the good resources and ideas that I come across
• Really examine my teaching and student learning and see whaat I can change given the restriction of teaching a final year subject with high stakes assessment
• Work how to better inspire teachers to change their pedagodgy at my school

I wont write too long a list as I don’t want to be unrealistic given I only work two days a week!

Anyway to finish I am including a clip of Susan Boyle from Britains got talent singing I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables (My favourite song from my favourite musical) she just goes to show you never know what talent lies beneth the surface. Impartant to remember as a teacher and as a person!

Britains Got Talent 2009 – Susan Boyle

On Friday night at 9pm I was sitting on my couch, kids in bed, husband away, feeling very sleepy when I felt what was like a huge gust of wind hitting the house and all the windows started rattling. I wondered what it was and then realised hey wait a minute I think that’s an earthquake! I had actually been through a couple when I was a kid as we lived a few hundred metres away from a fault line. However it was still  an incredibly unnearving feeling, especially as I was home alone!

So after all the ‘oh my goodness is it the end of the world?, What do I do with the kids?’ type thoughts went through my brain, I decided to jump on Twitter and Facebook to see if I was the only one! Well I definitely wasn’t the only one as many others certainly had the same idea and there were people tweeting and changing their statuses on Facebook at an amazing rate!

It seemed that the quake had affected people from Gippsland right out to the southern and eastern suburbs of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. It was only about 15 mins after the quake that a link was tweeted to the US earthquake site which had the size (4.7) and epicentre (10km’s below Korumburra) reported.

So I thought just for interests sake was was happening in the mainstream media as Twitter and Facebook seemed to have a pretty good handle on it. The Age website at about 9:20 had not a mention of it, The Herald Sun had a very brief article saying that there was an earthquake and interestingly had a link to tweetscan, channel 7 newsbreak at 9:30 had no mention of it, Sky News and the ABC had some mention of it reasonably quickly but still not as quick or as thorough as Twitter. So this is the power of social media, people on the spot reporting the news as it happens. What an incredibly powerful force. It was said that the reports were using Twitter to research their articles. Made me wonder if we need reporters at all?

Interesting implications for education, we have traditionally been focussed on finding and analysing news from the mainstream news sources mainly the print versions, rarely is news footage used unless it is on a video that is produced months later. Imagaine if a major issue was being studied and went spent the period on twitter with our kids actually making the news by addiing their insightful comments on what is going on, including links to relevant websites and being part of the gloabl conversation? That would be powerful teaching and learning! Imagine if the quake had been during school hours and the students immeduatly got on twitter to report their observations and feelings? Then researched and presented on earthquakes, found out the nearest fault lines, contacted some geoscientists, saw a richter scale in action, looked at myths of earthquakes, biblical references presented it all on a wiki that others could contribute to. Powerful Just in time learning! With Twitter being banned in most schools at this time I suppose this is just a pipe dream!!

Photostory is a fabulous program that is sooo simple to use. It allows you to put together still images (photos, scanned drawings, scanned images) music, voice and text to make a simple “movie” or story. It is on our college network and is available as a free download from the Microsoft website here.

A user guide is microsoft20photo20story20320introduction

Some ideas of how this could be used in the classroom:

• Visual representation of an historical figure
• Alternative way to present an assignment
• A verbal book review with appropriate images
• Creating an advertisement
• A group story
• A different way for kids to share what happened on the holidays/excursion/incursion
• Presentation of a concept, e.g. what Australia means to me, instructions on how to play netball

The output can be viewed on screen, emailed, burnt to DVD, and even sent to a mobile phone!