This is a journal about my journey into the world of "e-learning". Each week I will try out different E Learning tools and critique them . I will reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. I hope to narrow the list down to a top 4 or 5 that I would then use with my class.
Please join me on my learning journey. Let me know your thoughts on my reflections and whether you agree or disagree with my assessments.
I have just attempted to upload a video of a farm stay I took with my family last year. This movie was made by my then 5 year old daughter using the photos she took with her own camera to show her prep class as she missed a few days from school to go to the farm. We were shown in Art (one of our first subjects at Uni last year) how to use Windows Movie Maker it really is so easy to use and my daughter had a ball choosing the music and the titles for each photo.
However it was taking forever to load it up almost 20 minutes and it still wasn't up so I am not sure if that is what will happen all the time and my fears would be the time wasted waiting for things to upload to a virtual classroom or blog???
5 August update: I have just realised the size of the file is too big it is over 800kb so I will try my own and post that take a screen shot of it to post on the blog as suggested by Jacqui
In the spirt of the Big 6 I want to use my daughters creation as it just shows how easy some tools are to use and how beneficial they are in the classrooom. In Yesterdays lecture discussing how photos taken on an excursion then made into a video for parents to share and see what the children were doing on the excursion, the class to dicuss what they had, seen a permanent record to be used again and again.
I would be interested to know what KB can be uploaded to a virtual classroom as I think even the most basic movie will be larger than 51kb
Due to technical difficulties and my voice being a little lost I have not yet had a chance to play with creating a podcast of my own.
I was interested to see that Pod cast stands for Personal On Demand (broad) Casting and was created so that you might download a tv show, film or perhaps radio program to listen to at a later date.
I like the idea of the radio program and being able to create a radio show with the class and then ahving the ability for their parents to listen to what they have been creating in class at home. I remember doing this as part of english myself way back in the X gen day but having to record our voices to tape and use a tape player!!!
So I have been doing some reading. The langwitches blog has an interesting post about his experiences with using this type of technology in the classroom. He states that although students will probaly go home and tell mum and dad "we recorded our voices today" their parents need to understand that by podcasting they developed or improved important skills:
Collaboration skills : working in groups on different segments of the podcast, tying in and back to a story that was developed by the entire class.
Speaking skills: speaking slowly, fluently, clearly and with expression in their voices
Presentations skills: being able to express themselves orally
Communication skills: being able to convey and teach information to others (not only in their physical location and presence, but also in virtual time and from places around the world.
Oral fluency: increase awareness of their voice, speed and its rhythm.
Auditory skills: practice listening skills, address auditory learning styles
(Digital) storytelling skills: being able to weave information and facts preciously learned into a creative story, form a “relationship” with the content presented, entertain others through creative narrative.
Media literacy: different types of podcasts (narrative, informational, storytelling, conversational, collaborative, interview style, etc), understanding different components of a podcast episode, being able to express themselves in different media.
Information literacy: integrating, expressing and transmitting information in a variety of media.
Technology skills: exposure to sound editing software, such as Garageband
As I am yet to create my own pod cast I am going to reserve judgement as to whether podcasts actually arean easy tool to use and not going to become a time consuming exerise that is used simply to tick a box on a unit plan that ICT is being intergrated.
I have been seraching for podcasts to share in this and have found a podcast of a poetry reading I used Podomatic to publish it in my account and dowloiaded it to this blog using the HTML code,it loaded quickly so that is promising for future use. The poem is about "The good old days" before technology!
6 August 2010 I am still trying to create a podcast of my own using audacity but can not seem to hear my voice once it is recorded? I have checked all my volumes and even tried a mic gheadset but my voiuce is still really soft? Back to the drawing board.
This week I played with still images. I have been researching still images for a presentation I am doing with some colleagues. As a teacher I think still images are an extremely important resources for teaching not just art but so many other KLA's. Students are bombarded with images every day it has been suggested that sour students will watch 20,000 hours of television comare that to the 12,500 hours they will spend at school! It is more important than ever that we engage our digital natives with resources and material they identify with.
Flikr is a great free resource to be able to access photographs and using a program like Picnik to manipulate the image is one possible way to use technology to scaffold critical visual literacy. Asking the students to look at the image is it real? What has been done to it? Why does it look strange?
I chose to manipulate an image I have used in my postings to compare a before and after using Picnik. I changed the colours, the size, the shading and contrast, by using rotation I flipped the image around.
Powerpoint as a presentation or information sharing tool is a tried and tested one but quite frankly death by powerpoint is a phrase that suits. I have used power point previously and have always found it useful but some what over used, especially all the sound effects and animations.
Prezi has shown me a way of sharing information with students in an interactive way. I felt a little sea sick when I first started looking at the Prezi presentations on the Moodle site and was unsure if I would use the tool but having learnt that using frames allows you to group like information together and avoid that sea sickneess feeling I will definately use it.
Students in upper primary and secondary are so used to using powerpoint that I think Prezi would be a fantastic digital tool for them. It is creative and interactive. It does require some experimenting to use at first but once the students had used the program a few times I believe they would be producing professional presentations in no time.
All the learning theory framworks we have been lookign at Engagements theory, Dol the big 6 all embrace the ideas of collaborative, creative thinking and Prezi certainly enables studnets to use those skills.
This is the Prezi I just created about E Learning (after signing up for the free educators version) just to see how it all worked.
After reading more about blogs this weeks I have discovered a fantastic blog all about project based learning. I found this by reading "beyond school" the blog mentioned in the digital tools section of this weeks activities. I really connected with ClayBurell's concern in "teaching grammar on the titianic" that we are not developing our students to be real word adults that we are not giving them units of work that make a difference, that are relevant and useful to their development and the community. He feels that as teachers we fear being controversial, that we are teaching our students to be critically literate but on safe subjects. He suggests teachers redfine themsleves as community leaders afterall isnt that why most of us have gone into teaching to make a difference to our communities youth to help them be the best they can be.
So rather than using digital tools for the sake of using them because our students are digital natives, we need to use these digital tools to help our students make a difference in their community. Help them to build real life skills and undersatnaidng of what happens in the real world not just at school.Project based learning is one such way of doing it.
This blog has fantastic ideas and webinars to follow to gain a better understanding of how project based learning can work http://reinventingpbl.blogspot.com/
So today not only have I found a blog that so accurately describes my vision of teaching that I dont want to be "schooly" or to be "like other teachers" I have subscribed to these two blogs using the RSS link so I can stay up to date and to read like minded comments. I have never subsribed to a blog ( other than my elelarning cohort) before and it really was simple syndication!
I can see a vital a time saver RSS is. As a teacher trying to monitor class blog, how important to be syndicated to each one will be. I have also found reading my fellow e learners posts as they are sent to me far easier than searching for their blog each time I want to see what they are up to. A time saver that I wish I had taken note of before! This digital immigrant is learning fast.
I have actually worked on my own business website before and created intranet pages in my previous life with Flight Centre Ltd so I found creating the website quite easy as I have some skills already when it comes to adding pages etc.
When looking at this tool from a teaching perspective and using the suggestion of a SWOT analysis this is what I found:
Strengths: permanent record of information Digital native engagement Easy to create Notes and homework cannot get lost Parents can be a part of the class and see what their children are creating and learning Web quests are a fantstic use of the tool to make investigative learning interactive
Weakness: Could be time consuming if you get carried away with designs Not all students will have access at home so may need to find alternative place to access site
Opportunities: Learning oppportunity for all students and the teacher together creating real life skills for students future
Threats: what platforms does QLD Education support? is weebly one of those or is there others?
This week I have been charged with the task of creating my own wiki. I used wiki spaces and this is the address http://mrsdaisytrieselearning.wikispaces.com/. It was quite simple to create and I was able to easily put up a picture and a you tube clip.
Having read 50 ways to use a wiki I can see what an amazing collaborative tool it would make. Whether using Engagement Theory or the Big 6 or even Dol as a learning frawework, a wiki is an ideal learning environment for students to collabortate together on a project. I really like the idea of using it as a class word wall, encylopedia or glossary for specifc units of work. The students can add their defintions, after researching the words, on the wiki rather than on paper or card up on the wall as a permanent tool to refer to.
I still need to get a clearer understanding of how the wiki works. Can students type at the same time and what happens of 2 students create the same idea or in fact delete some one elses work either by mistake or deliberatley? I need to work on my own skills before I would use this tool with a class but I can see endless possiblities once I have the knowledge. If any pof you have the answer please let me share it with me.
I used "Open content" to understand the difference between a wiki and a blog:
The open style of a wiki can be useful for group projects, while a blog may aid in brainstorming or generating discussion. Also, a combination of the two may best suit educational purposes.
Because a wiki can limit which users can login and edit the content, facilitator control can virtually be the same as a blog, where comments and posts can be pre-screened. The main difference, then, between a wiki and a blog becomes the layout and organization of information. A wiki becomes a continually modifiable easy-access web page, while a blog's journalistic style catalogs and dates content so readers can see the interchange of ideas related to the blog topic in question.
This is my mind map about the weeks topics using bubbl.us.com. Once I got the hang of being able to move the bubbles to where I wanted them it was quite an easy, efficient tool. This tool would be great when brainstorming with students. More practice on my behalf would be needed to type quicky to create the bubbles if I was to use the program live. This could also be used by students in small groups to produce their own mind maps for a particular formative assessment piece to check groups were on the right track with the topic
Looking at the Big 6 Skills as this is a process model I feel this best framework is best suited to E learning and scaffolding learning when using E learning tools. I think the big 6 would work particulary well with something like a WebQuest where the students are given a task or question and need to investigate information to be able to complete the task or answer the question.
The 6 steps 1: Task definition 2: Information Seeking Strategies 3: Location and Access 4: Use of Inforamation 5: Synthesis 6: Evaluation
These skills are skills that are lifelong skills not just skills that are applied at school and never used again .The skills assist the students to define, gather, synthesise and evaluate the knowledge they are gaining and how they will then use that knowledge in the future. As Learning managers it is our role to prepare our students to think independantly as well as collaboratively and these skills lend them selves to both processes
Well so far so good I have a managed to create my own blog!
A blog is a journal or diary but rather than hand write it you type your thoughts onto a web page and share it with others. It enables like minded people to share information, knowledge and ideas on any subject, any time, anywhere in the world.
By using blogger.com I was able to choose backgrounds and layouts that I liked and get started blogging straight away. I think students would really enjoy the creative construction of the site and the ability to share their thoughts, ideas, pictures and photos with other students in their class or even an epal class. I would however suggest that a time limit for creation was placed and perhaps a narrowing down of templates as it is easy to get carried away, absorbed in the creativbe process!
As an educational tool as stated by Downes (Educase, 2004) a class teacher could use a blog as a classroom website with schedule, homework etc on it, post useful links reagrding the cuurrent unit of work and have the students comment or review books,videos or other texts they have been using during class. I feel that it would be of the utmost importants, just as you would for the class room, establish rules for the students in regards to their blogs or the class blog and ensure the tool is then used to its best advantage.
In the spirt of the Big 6 I want to use my daughters creation as it just shows how easy some tools are to use and how beneficial they are in the classrooom. In Yesterdays lecture discussing how photos taken on an excursion then made into a video for parents to share and see what the children were doing on the excursion, the class to dicuss what they had, seen a permanent record to be used again and again.
So I have been doing some reading. 
