post Module 10..... "Now what?!?"

Now that I've completed the course it's time to go out and share the benefits of completing the web2.0 course with staff and students alike.... gone are the days of being timid about incorportating laptops into lessons.  From images to wikis web2.0 has given me the confidence to modernise our Religious Education curriculum to make it more meaningful for the students. 

Module 10 Nings, Wikis and final reflections

Throughout the year I have been using Ning and Wikis, as these are a major part of the iLe@rn project that I was fortunate enough to be a part of.  We have a school group, KLA groups and project group which has been a great help throughout the iLe@rn project and the web 2.0 course.  At school we currently use wikis to get information out to my 12CAS class, as we have tried to make their learning student based due to the various levels of abilities that our students have.  By using the wiki, students are able to work at their own pace, view allowable videos to be used for formalised writing tasks and create/post their multimedia projects.  Currently we are looking at moral decision making and the students are asked to create an evaluation of a charity initiative promoting the issue to their generation.  We post all the directions on the class wiki and then students comment on the projects of their classmates. 

As far as teacher communities, we have library wikis that teachers use to find/share and evaluate teacher sites that could be of value for various KLA and unit outcomes.  This has been valuable as we are each able to visit and see the resource quickly.  This has been a great way of working together.

Overall, web 2.0 has shown me that there are a plethora of resources that are available and given me an opportunity (and a focus) as to how to use them; providing a reason to give them a try.  Since beginning the course I have experimented with a great deal of technology that I would never have considered to be useful or known where to start.  My students have been demonstrating a more authentic and engaging experience to their learning.  They have also continued to show me new applications for technology in the curriculum which has created a greater sense of community within each of my classes.  Students seem to remember the skills they are learning and can creatively demonstrate their learning.  It has also started a more cohesive working relationship between myself and other teachers outside of my KLAs as we have been going through the web2.0 course together.  We have since shared a number of sources that we continue to find and work together to overcome any challenges we face.  This collaboration is visible within the classroom as well, as the students love teaching teachers about techological things since it is such a large part of their lives today.  This has been a learning experience that will continue to shape my teaching practice!!! 

"Turns out there are a great deal of uses for technology in my classes"

Module 9 Being social on the Net

I've recently signed up for twitter and began searching for people to follow.  Sadly, I notice that there are far too many people out there that just say anything, believing that it is worthy of reading by the world.  There are a number of uses for this technology, namely in my stage 6 English and SOR classes where students can tweet each other resources with comments about their use.  Additionally, the concept that students can work together outside of the classroom to continue their learning is great.  I love the fact that this engages them to become a community of learners, and addresses their multi-modal skills.  However, I do fear the structure of their writing as twitter is 'short hand' and I fear that this will transfer back into their tasks. 

I've also discovered the benefits of using edmodo (similar to facebook, without the privacy issuaes).  This site will be of great value since myclasses appears to have some drawbacks, namely that the students see it as 'purely educational' rather than a social tool to assist learning.  The fact that edmodo looks and navigates like facebook means that they are more likely to utilise the resources available to them and share resources with eachother.  This means that they are engaged and able to practice their research skills.

I see a great deal of benefit from extending the classroom into the greater web world to make it able learning rather than assessments.

Module 8 RSS and Google Reader

RSS allows us to stay informed by retrieving the recent content from the sites we are interested in. It saves us time by not needing to visit each site individually, which is fantastic when you need students to perform a research task. Their privacy is ensured, something that is very important at school level, by not needing to join each site.  The fact that all this is made so accessible and easy means that I have prefessional development at my fingertips within a few minutes each day.  I also have the benefit of sharing resources with other teachers to maintain a professional community of learners beyond simply the school in which I teach.

I haven't signed on to tweeter yet but this GoogleReader and RSS features are a good start to instant information retreival.

Module 7 Deeeeelicious!!!!

Social networking is a fantastic way to create an online community of teachers and learners. Having your favourite websites logged on a public forum allows you to not only access them on any computer you may be visiting, but it also lets you share the fantastic sites and teaching resources that you find with other teachers.  This enables the culture of teaching students to become more modern and effective for the contemporary students we have in our classrooms.  I have recently learned about edmondo which is a social networking site that is set to replace the previously popular Ning sites.  This ability to have a networking site that looks like facebook but is confined to educational purposes allows us to relate to students in their comfort zone without breaching any boundaries that facebook might create.

Finding other teachers blogging was a great help to feel that I am part of a community rather than on this web 2.0 journey on my own.  I have also noticed a number of teachers commenting on my posts which validates that my concerns with technology and students is something that we all experience.

I now have a large community of 'friends' on my delicious page, many great resources, and several followers on my blog.  Thanks web 2.0 for making me feel that I have an online army of teachers behind me !!!!

Module 6 Visual literacy tools

http://lisaineurope01.edu.glogster.com/Lisas-web-20-glog/

Using bubbleus and glogster are great ways to have students visually organise their information in a fun and creative way.  Students can spend hours playing with all the features to 'pretty up' their poster and in during this process the students are compartmentalising their information/pictures/music etc.  This enthusiasm for learning would be very beneficial for the Shakespeare unit I am doing with my year 9 English class.  We do character studies as well as try to relate the themes present in the play back to world of the students.  This could allow them to surf the net for relevant newspaper stories, images, quotations and themes present in modern adaptations.  Each of these in a different context would be different to get the students to do both in class and on their own time.

The sites are easy to navigate, have plenty of options and offer easy to follow instructions.  Each mistakes can easily be 'undone' without destroying the integrity of the piece of work. 

Module 5 Videos, "Storytelling, itunes and podcasts oh my..."

Storytelling has been a wonderful addition to the picture book unit that we do in my year 8 English class. The students are able to present images that they weren't able to draw in order to present the basic moral that they wanted to convey in their story.  The voice over option allowed them to narrate their stories, providing them with a speaking task and me an ability to mark their speaking without the fear associated with class oral presentations.

Podcasts have been an excellent addition to my cas class when they try to explain how a scripture related to their modern life.  This ability to adapt the message in a format more accessible and engaging has really opened up the level of involvement that they have felt in classes.

itunes has provided the students with the ability to add music to their video presentations and add educational resources such as having access to novels read aloud to them.  I have some hearing impaired and visually impaired students who have benefitted from having lengthy novels accessible in a way that provides them access to the information.  Additionally, student who are reluctant readers in class are able to follow along while the material is being presented to them, then download this audio file onto their ipods/ laptops to continue reading outside of class, something they wouldn't have ever considered with a traditional novel.

Module 4 Pictures galore!!!

Well I've created a flickr page and uploaded 3 photos which is quite easy to do as they prompt you along very simply. The adding of photos to the blog became a little more troublesome as they are moving without my asking them to.  This could be a very usegful tool for English since we do visual literacy and deconstruct the impact of colour, positioning and participants.  It is always difficult finding images that offer varying camera angles for the students to look at since google images tends to be blocked on our system to students.  This would be a way of getting around that issue nicely.  Flickr seems like it would also be a good way of sharing photos with a class of major works (videos, artworks and photography stills) this would simplify my marking by having them all in one spot-- besides stopping the large box of awkwardly shaped marking that you transport from home to school each day.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/etaboada/4973369576/   I couldn't get this image to post onto my blog so if anyone out there in blogger land can help here is the image I was trying to borrow from creative commons.

Module 3 Google Docs

Just created my first google doc and it began as a frustrating experience of trying to find out where I had sent it an who was allowed to help edit it.  I notice that the lag time might make it difficult to implement into the classroom if there were several people trying to access the document at the same time.  Do I look impressed so far after having been kicked off the network yet again.... 

In my classroom I would see this being useful for collaborative work where students could add definitions to terms learned in English (for instance film techniques in year 9 current war stories unit).  Also, this would be helpful for revision with senior students to ammend study notes according to the syllabus dot points so they could share their knowledge with each other and build from what other students are contributing. 

Module 2: Blogging like mad

After having seen some examples of teachers who have successfully implemented blogs into their teaching practice I can see a lot of benefits from using them.  I am currently doing an i-Le@rn project with a group of year 10 students that I don't teach with the aim of using their project to help teach my year 9 students Shakespeare- daunting task for anyone.

Throughout the project blogging with the students and their progress will enable us to maintain communication about their progress, address any concerns that arise in the process and provide the e-learning proof that I need for the project.

Also, with the year 9 and year 10 students at our school having constant access to laptops throughout their studies I can see this having a benefit to creating collaborative discussion boards to enable them to help eachother.  For the year 11 and 12 students could use this to have an open discussion about syllabus dots points for my English and SOR classes to help suppliment their learning as a group.  This could be very exciting in deed!!!

Module 1: TV on the computer

After having: registered for the course, signed up for a gmail account, registered for blogger.com and spent a long time coming up with a blogger site name; I felt that I was quite successful!  Then it all fell off the rails... delicious pages, flickr pictures, youtube, blogging, googledocs, wikispaces.... what the heck is this new language!!!

Thankfully we have a wonderful web 2.0 yoda who is helping me 'use the force'
         -for instance when I closed the window and thought that my blog post had been deleted.. oops... internet tabs are great fun

Our slow group of learners watched the movies from Module 1 and feel like there is a lot to learn in the next 10 modules.  I hope it's easier than it sounds!!

My first time.....be gentle

So this is the first time that I am trying to become a techno nerd so feeling a little out of my depth after watching those videos.  How old am I for not being aware of half of these sites????