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!

We have recently purchased 6 Flip Ultras for use in the college. The website for finding out more info is here. They are very easy to use simple video cameras that can enhance learning in your classroom in a myriad of ways.

How to use:

Here is a link to the one page user guide that you can download and keep

flipultraquickstartguide

1. Turn the power on by sliding the switch on the side of the camera

2. To Record press the red button once and start filming. To stop filming press the red button once.

To View

The videos on the Flips can be viewed on the Flip itself (although the screen is way to same for showing a whole class) on a television (by using the supplied cables) ans by downloading the videos from the Flip to your computer (this is done through the ‘flip out’ USB connection on the camera)

To view on the computer just insert the USB connection on the camera into a USB port on your computer. The software should load automatically and you should then easily be able to transfer the videos accross. Once they are on your computer you can do all manner of things with them!

Teaching ideas….

So what can you do with one or more of these in your classroom? Here are some ideas

• Film any debates or plays so students can see themselves and give a critique for improvement
• Film students having a conversation to help improve their speaking and listening
• Film any exciting activities in your classroom E.g. Miss Mac filmed her Grade 1’s finding insects they were then able to watch as a class and gain even more insight into the insects in the school grounds other than what they found individually
• Film a science experiment then student can rewatch it to gain further insight into what is happening
• Students can make their own movies, commercials, speeches, presentations
• Interview students (could be good for goal setting?)
• Make a video to send to another school

I have included a link to a great slideshow by Tom Barrett which gives 35 great ideas for using the Flips for students and for staff learning.

Slide Show

If you have any other ideas please leave a comment on my blog so we can all share!

Blogging is a wonderful way to engage students in class, to help develop writing skills and to connect with other students from around the world. What makes blogging different to using a word processor is the ability to comment on each other’s posts. This gives students an authentic audience and creates engagement in the classroom. A blog would be a great way for students to reflect upon their Personal Learning Goals and to allow you and their parents to encourage them on their progress.

There are lots of different ways you can blog in and out of the classroom:

• 1 blog for the whole class, teacher does the blog posts students can read it and comment on it:
• 1 class blog teacher and students share the blog posting responsibility
• Each student has their own blog
• The teacher has their own blog to reflect on their personal learning journey in an area of interest (highly recommended and an excellent way to learn about blogging and to model this to your students)

Where do you get a blog??

There are several different websites where you can sign up for a blog each have their own advantages and disadvantages. All of them are free but some do have an option to get more space and turn off advertising for a small fee.

Edublogs

This blog is an edublogs blog. Set up sepecifically for teachers and schools. It is fully featured and easy to use. There are two options a basic servioce which is free and aedublogs supporter option which costs $40US a year which gives you all the bells and whistles.

21 Classes

Designed for schools. It is an easy to set up otion for blogging. Not as many bells and whistles available but the nice thing is that you don’t need student emaila ccounts to set it up. You can also kepp the blogs private until you are ready to unleash them on the web!

EduKate

Out LMS has a blogging function you can put pictures and videos into the posts but you can’t change the look. This is great as you don’t have to do anything to dset it up. If you are not planning to use the blog for connecting ewithoutside classes this is a great option.

Global Teacher

A website set up by edublogs for victorian teachers. Thos is another really good option if you want bells and whisltes with out cost. It is run by the Victorian Government

Global Student

This is the student version of the above blog site and where you would set up a class blog.

Blogger

This is Google’s version of a blog provider and offers a good free service. Not

specifically design ed for educatinala purposes but easy to use and lots of teachers use it none the less

Some blogging terminology and goodies

Post: An entry into a blog. It can contain text, photos, sound or videos. They appear on the blog with the most recent entry on the top

Page: A blog has a main page but can also have other pages where you can add additional information. For example I have an About Me page on my blog.

Comments: These are added to blog posts and pages by other people you can then reply to the comment on the blog and start a conversation. It is a really good thing to comment on someones blog!

Tags: A list of topics that your post or page is about. Kind of like cataloging a book in a library. E.g. the Tags for this post are: blogs, blogging, edublogs, eduKate, Global Student, Global Teacher, etc

Widgets: These are tool and gadget you can have on the side of you blog to make it more useful/entertaining. Such as a voki, map, calendar, favorite links

Clustr Maps: This is a little map that shows you which countries people have come from who have viewed your blog. Click here to go to Clustr maps website and sign up for one. The kids love them….even the big kids!

Blog Roll: A list of blogs that you read or that have useful information on them.

Tag Cloud: A visual representation of the Tags on your blog posts. A very quick way to see what your blog is about

Categories: A good way of separating blog posts by giving them a category. If you click on Wild Wednesday Workshops in my categories section you will see all the posts relating to that topic on my blog.

Very useful blogging info

The Edublogger Fabulous blog with HEAPS of hint and tips on how to blog with your students. I read this all the time!!

Blogging Challenge i  If you have had a class blog or understand th fundamentals but would like to take it a bit further this year I would STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to give this a go. It looks like great fun and a great way to connect with other classes!

Connecting with other classes Here is another blog post that has some great ideas on how to connect with other classes when doing your blogs.

I would encourage you to have a go at blogging either personally or with your class. It is great fun!

This week’s workshop is on Interactive Whiteboards. Commonly known as IWB’s. The type we have at out school are Team Boards.

These are soft touch boards that can be operated by your hand or a pointer. To be able to use the boards with you laptop you first need to install a driver. They can be downloaded from this site or alternatively you can use the CD. A driver is a piece of software that allows the IWB to talk to the computer. The software that comes with the Team Board is called easiteach.

This suite of CD’s can be installed on your laptop and it allows you to create lots of different activities to complete with your class.

You can also use the myriad of websites that have been developed for IWB use!

Some resources…..

Teacher Tube

This will link you to some great videos that will show you how to use and give some ideas for IWB’s

Whiteboard Blog

This is a great UK blog that is FULL of resources for the IWB

Spelling City

Great online spelling site!

Friv

250 Games that the kids absolutely love with lots of educational application great for the whiteboard! Tried and tested by last year’s grade one’s!

Easiteach

The website for the software that comes with Team Board. Lots of goodies to download!

Scholastic

Loads of online interactive activities in all subject areas

Whiteboard Challenge

A link to an Australian developed IWB challenge to help you learn to use the IWB better. It is definitely worth a look. A good way to improve your IWB skils for your Performance Appraisal

Rethinking tools online

A very challenging Middle Eastern Map. Great as a class challenge!!

Eyeballing Game

Cool geometry site. Excellent for hands on learners!

Crickweb

168 Interactive resources for primary students

San Francisco Kids

Wonderful Music site developed by the San Francisco Symphony. I had fun playing with this one!

Roy the Zebra

Excellent literacy website based on the samish principals to THRASS. Matthew tested this one and loved it!

100 Free Web Tools

Lots of great web tools which can be used by primary and secondary students. Many of which can involve the IWB.

Prezi

If you are over making PowerPoints and want a presentation with a little more pizazz try Prezi. Lots of application for the IWB and makes presentations soooo much more interesting than the linear PowerPoint model.

Remember if you don’t have an IWB in your classroom most of these activities can also be used on a PC!