No Posts for 3 months

It's nice to have a break, and get some real life in between posts. Not that I've been having much of a break. The NSW DET blogging tool, of which my classes and I were beta testers is a real winner. Safe, simple blogging for students, classes staff, public or private or groups.

The trick now, once they gloss has faded from the "shiny new toy" is to get some procedures and policies as to what constitutes effective pedagogical use.

So what on the horizon for this edublogger?

• I launched into twitter with gusto. Fun, and very useful, just like "they" say. Has helped me numerous times.
• Google docs has finally (yay) been unblocked for staff use at least. Next to push for the unblock for students.
• I'm running another Intel TEO (Teaching Essentials Online) course beginning the end of this month.
• More "play" with the blogging tool. Let's see if we can get our scratch creations published and shared huh?
• All this as well as an active "real life".

Speaking of real life......do you all have multiple twitter accounts (and other social network tools) which separate proffessional from home life, or do you (as does gen y) just mix it all in together.

I'm inclined to mix it all up so far. Maybe its just the old boomers who see the need to separate life into work/play/home. The kids dont seem to care.

All for now. Be back later with more thought, tools, tips, and trick.

intel webinar

An online version of this doc can be viewed and downloaded from Here

The word version of this doc can be downloaded from here. 

Using Google Earth and Google Maps with Blogs/Wikis

Mark Collinson

Mullumbimby Public School

NSW DET

 

 

 

What did students do? This is a small activity which formed part of a broader multicultural day. Other activities on the day included researching and making traditional costumes, mask making, cooking traditional foods, locating and retelling traditional stories, and learning traditional dance. Guest speakers were invited to cook, tell stories, play music, and dance. In the library, children were invited to put a pin on the map to show where there “ancestors” originated. The following activity is an extension of that. One that can be shared with a wider audience(e.g. relatives in ancestral home) than those people that walked through the library and saw the wall display.   How does this activity enhance student learning? By enhancing the “wall map” activity, and being able to share it with a global audience, the children were much more enthusiastic about the activity. The “immersive” nature of Google Earth and the ability to zoom in and fly from place to place makes it fun.   Why Use Google Earth in the Classroom? To provide a sense of reality and purpose for learning within the K-12 classroom To engage and excite learners To help learners conceptualize, visualize, share, and communicate information about the world To provide cross-curricular learning options To add a new dimension to learning environments not previously possible To leverage ubiquitous tools for learning  To create active, exploratory, and empowering learning environments To give students opportunities: to exhibit their learning to others to use emerging technologies and digital tools to communicate their research in a personally meaningful way (using Web 2.0 tools) to view their world from a more connected, global perspective to enhance map reading and navigation skills to engage more complex dimensions of human perception from: http://www.alicechristie.org/gearth/index.html   What syllabus outcomes does the activity address?   From the NSW HSIE change and continuity strand…   The activity meets the aims of HSIE by enhancing the student’s sense of personal, community, national and global identity;   It meets the objectives of HSIE syllabus by: providing knowledge and understanding  ofcultures in Australia and other places, their diversity and similarities and how they influence people’s identities and behaviors. by developing skills in acquiring information, and social and civicparticipation   By studying change and continuity, students should develop historical knowledge and understandings about their heritages and the past, and how these have influenced the present and may influence the future.   The activity fulfils the HSIE foundation Statement Outcome: Students explain how different cultures and traditions contribute to Australian and community identity. They examine a variety of local and othercommunities, investigating similarities and differences including ways of living, languages and belief systems.   Outcomes and Indicators CCS2.2 Explains changes in the community andfamily life andevaluates the effects of these on differentindividuals, groupsand environments. Indicators: listens to life stories of people from different culturalbackgrounds distinguishes between primary and secondary source material when acquiring information uses historical language when referring to source material, e.g. primary source, secondary source, oralhistory, life story identifies the contributions of some significant peopleand events to community heritage.   CUS2.3 Explains how shared customs, practices,symbols, languagesand traditions incommunitiescontribute toAustralian andcommunity identities.   Indicators • identifies diverse customs, practices and symbols sharedby their local community and all communities withinAustralia • listens to and retells traditional, religious and ethicalstories that relate to some groups in the Australiancommunity.   Here is an example of what we did. The students were asked to find their country of origin. Speak to grandpa or grandma. Record a story of why they came to Australia, or what life was like in hometown or even how life is different here. Then for this session. 1/ Find place on Google Earth. 2/Putplace mark on Google Earth and name it. 3/ Give a quick story 1-2 mins about the place or why ancestors left to come to Australia 4/ (Extension) Email friend or relative the link to the map we publish, and invite comment http://mullumwriters.blogspot.com/2009/02/where-are-we-from_18.html   . How is it Done?   A simple (one hopes) 3 stage process. (Oh yeah, you will also need a google account.)   Add place marks on Google Earth.   Import place marks to Google Maps.   Link the map’s code to your wiki or blog.
1a) Open Google Earth. Right click on my places and add a folder. Name it (for example) origins.
b) Find your place of origin and click the add place mark. Drag the place mark to your point of interest and name it. Repeat and add more points of origin
c) Make sure all placemarks are in your “origins” folder. If they are not in there, just drag them in.
d) Right click the “origins” folder and Save Place As a kmz file (keyhole markup language…it harkens back to the days of the cold war….read about it on Wikipedia).
2 a)Open Google maps (maps.google.com) and login to your Google account. Click my maps.
b) Create new map, name itorigins, make sure it is a public map, and then save.
c) With the new “origins” map selected, click Edit,
d) Then click import,
e) Choose the KML file that you saved in Google Earth, and then choose “upload from file”.
f) Your Place marks are now on the map.
g) All that is left to do is to get the code and paste it into your blog or wiki. Click “link” and copy the html code ready to paste.   That’s it for the maps part.   Next to embed into your wiki/blog.
3. a) Open your blog, go to new post, and use your blogs specific, “insert html” feature. All blog platforms are slightly different, so you may have to look for the feature.   This e.g. is WordPress (of which Edublogs is a variant).   Paste it in., and update or save your page.
b) That’s it!View your blog/wiki.
Review   Add placemarks on Google Earth.   Import placemarks to Google Maps.   Link the map’s code to your wiki or blog.

As a follow up activity, I would get those children who put a place mark on the map, to email the blog link to a relative or friend and invite them to view and comment.

 

Further resources

http://www.google.com/educators/p_earth.htmlGoogleearth site for educators

http://www.juicygeography.co.uk/googlecoursework.html 10 ways you can use Google earth with your students

 

Questions?

Feel free to email me

mark.collinson@det.nsw.edu.au

http://c21skills.blogspot.com

 

 

 

Scratch - Visual Programming Environment - Australian Lesson Exchange

The Australian Lesson Exchange (ALE) is a relatively new wiki for all Australian Educators from all states and territories. Its a place to share your stuff! Fellow Aussie edubloggers may like to check it out!

Richard Wiktorowicz from Moorefield Girls High has kindly shared, via ALE, a fantastic set of activity cards in PDF that he has developed for scratch. Thanks Richard.
Scratch - Visual Programming Environment - Australian Lesson Exchange

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create
your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and
share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up)
develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects,
young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas,
while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

For those who are yet to discover the joys of scratch take a look at one of my year 5 student's movies here. Cody did the storyboard, the sprites and backgrounds himself, (as well as the scripting of course).

Blogged with Flock

Polls in Classroom..part 2

Well, it would appear that zoho polls is having issues with cookies on some browsers. (Mozilla and Explorer to name just 2). Then again, maybe its a blogger thing?

A lot of the free online poll creators give me rather bad code to play with , so I gave up and tried bloggers' own widget. It works for me, so how about giving it a shot. Its in the bar to the right.

Pity about the cookie issue on the zoho poll. The fantastic thing about zoho is that I can save the results, and create multiple polls, tag them, search them, and post them (kind of).

Use of Polls in classroom

Hi All

Its been a while since I posted. This is just a quick one to test a feature of online polling. Have a go and let me know what you think. There is a lot of interesting pedagogical discussion around the use of polls. I'm just playing at the moment, but can see a use for them in the near future.

Presentation to School Leaders

Roger at LIPS has a presentation incorporating elements of the shift happens/paying attention "series" presentation.

In Rogers words:

Readers may be interested to see the way that elements of the ‘Shift Happens’ series have been incorporated into this presentation for a group of school Principals, encouraging them to take a lead modelling role in the use of ICT, based on an imperative which is growing exponentially.

Good stuff Roger. Keep it up.

3 steps for 21st century learning.

I love EduBloggerWorld! If you haven't joined yet, then click the badge in my sidebar and join up. I was browsing through EBW and just stumbled upon this cool video by Jackie at Teacherhacks

Find more videos like this on EduBloggerWorld


Simple, practical and achievable. What more could one ask for? Be sure to visit her blog for support materials.

Reconstruction of Learning Experiences

As a smart, clever, literate educator reading this blog, you, like me, are actively trying to reconstruct the learning experiences of students to equip them for a digital, flat future. Why else would you read this?

I heard something this week that disturbed me, and will probably disturb you as well.

A teacher had taken some seven year old computers out of 15 months of storage ("too old for the network, need to be thrown out"...said the tech guy). So rather than throw them out, the teacher (with permission) reformatted them, installed some freeware/open source programs suited to the subject being taught, put them into a cluster in the back corner of the room and put the students to productive work.

Sure they weren't on the network, and there was no Internet. If the students wanted to save work, then it had to be to a usb flash memory drive. But they were productive! They were engaged. The students loved it, the teacher loved it, the other faculty staff found the idea so interesting that some of them took old computers out of storage and did similar things.

It lasted almost one week. Old structures and mechanisms don't take lightly to change. The machines were taken back, and were made ready to go into a lab. (Strangely they were now good enough for the task.)

So whilst some of us move forward, and engage the kids with whatever means (support, technology, funding) are at our disposal, it appears that some teachers still face a mentality that wants to put control back into the domain of the "keeper of the keys" (or the digital Taliban if you will).

It's almost as if there are forces at work to actively stop the sort of engagement that Greg Whitby (winner of the bulletin smart 100 award) talks about.

From Greg:

we're not saying every child needs only a computer to learn: come in, open up it's laptop time … They still need time with real people, to learn gross motor skills, and to use a pen and pencil, and to read, or to sit in a corner with a book or outside under a tree, and interact with teachers, as a socialising agent.

"But they need time to work in cyberspace. The traditional response has been to put technology into a computer lab, but it clearly doesn't meet their needs, because then you are deconstructing their learning experience, and it's artificial."

Greg Blogs at BlueYonder and will be speaking at the NSW Computer Education Group annual conference on July 1st and 2nd

Our Wondrous Journey Begins

There has been some great discussion amongst my colleagues over the last few days regarding moving ahead and engaging students with rich tasks, that promote higher thinking skills, in a 21st century context. Darren's video has helped immensely, (thanks Darren). The best part of the discussion has been the creation of a lesson sharing wiki.

On top of this came a presentation that was shown today to a group of ICT leaders in my state. The discussion has begun. It will be interesting to see where we can take it.

Quintura for Kids

Yahooligan used to be a favourite of mine, but has become a real mess lately. (Advertising, junk, too many distractions). It's even been blocked by my Education Department.

Quintura for Kids is a neat looking search engine, and it's kid friendly. Takes a bit of practice (view the demo) but I intend working with this next week with a few of my classes, so will keep you informed as to how it goes.

Unfortunately I couldnt get it to work in flock or firefox. I keep getting a "please wait" message, Internet explorer 7 was fine though. I searched for a solution to this, but found none, so maybe its just me. If you get it to work in mozilla can you let me know?

Thanks to Ben at The Tech Savvy Educator for the pointer.

Podcast is Go

Enough testing.
The first podcast on Mullum Writers is published (cast?)

Check out Zac's podcast here.

I thought that my initial post was satisfactory, but I wasnt happy with the visitor having to click a link and then have a new page open with a player, (eg firefox/flock opens a new page and you get to watch the quicktime bar as you listen.) My students and I want visitors to enjoy the artwork and read along as they listen.

When I'm not satisified, then I usually don't rest until I am, so rather than lose sleep tonight wondering how to fix it, I spent some time digging up and applying a great hack that lets you use the word press player within blogger.

Basically you'll need some webspace to store the java code and the flash script. As a blogger user I had a googlepages account. I find that googlepages is great for storing widgets, pics and stuff that I need to reference later.

Paste a script to reference your java and swf files into the head of your blogger template.

Then you paste a script into the post and add the url of your hosted audio file.
The result, I feel, is worth the effort. If anyone has a better solution then I'm all ears.

My next challenge is to setup a "recording studio" in the school that can be utilised during quiet moments. Quentin posted a fantastic site in response to my last post, so I'll be studying up on ways to make the 'casts more enjoyable.

Stay tuned!

Blogging with 6 and 7 year olds.

Rachel Boyd has an awesome presentation at teacher tube on blogging with young children.

Well done Rachel, it's inspirational.

Children, blogging and safety.

Karen Mann at Web2Wanderings has a post regarding issues of internet safety when it comes to young children. (Lets say K-6)

My understanding is that blogs can be moderated if set up that way and therefore before any item is published the teacher could have the final approval. I guess I will have to follow up on this under the NSW system. If you have come across similar restrictions, please let me know.

Its a tough one Karen. I have had a students' blog blocked by my organisation.
I complained, (well actually I requested an unblock), and I got a sympathetic hearing by a well informed senior administrator, (yes...they do exist), and the blog was unblocked very shortly afterwards.

I did have to make some modifications though.

1. Parents need to be aware of their child's participation (publication).
2. No child is to be identified. We limit names to first names only. Though it has been suggested that we may need to consider using only initials. (Overkill, or good sense?)
   
3. All comments are to be moderated.

Pretty easy to do, and very sensible when you consider the unsettling implications of some alternate scenarios.

Why Don't School Directors Blog?

Here is a great story.

Kimberly Moritz challenged her superintendent to start a blog

How many of our decision makers leave it up to others to try and explain their decision? Wouldn’t it be great if they could blog it themselves. The community would have one version of a story and minimize confusion. It might even eliminate the gossip.

How many of your/our regional directors have a blog?

What about the principals out there?

Do you see a need or necessity? Is blogging still confined to the domain of innovators and early adopters? (aka classroom teachers).

It seems that so many of our communication channels are still firmly pre web, (what's web2.0?). How is that to change?

Teaching in Todays Classroom

Greg Whitby will be presenting at the New South Wales Computer Education Group (NSWCEG) at Newcastle on Monday 2nd of July.

In this video he talks about "today's school" rather than the 21st century school. The primary aim of todays school is to aid learning outcomes.
This happens through a process or concept of learning anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
This can only occur when staff are liberated from current working conditions. Conditions which Greg says "enslave" and "de-skill" teachers.

Would be interesting to hear a Teacher's Federation response to this.

Learning outcomes versus working conditions for teachers. Makes for a lively discussion.
Greg has an excellent presentation here. Its a pdf file in the form of some slides.

Click To Play

For and against IWB's

Sure to be a passionate discussion starter:
From Tony Richards

Learning - Thinking - Playing

All this has got me thinking. I am going to start a little ongoing post of the "for" arguments and the "against" arguments, in line with this I am going to also list alternatives as many schools do not give any thought to the possible alternatives.

I welcome any comments - suggestions - arguments and ideas:

Comment on Australia Rising

As an educator I am somewhat shocked by Mr Howard's speech.

Its hard for many to see past the party political rhetoric of an election year campaign speech. However Mr Howard's speech struck a chord with me. Perhaps that ought to be "discord".

You see, out of all the 21st century skills, flat world, what if, shake it up, type presentations that I have been referring to in my previous posts, (presentations which in my opinion inspire and motivate many educators), it took Mr Howard to link 2020 to the ongoing global war on terror. (In my mind at least).

Mr Howard's choice of words is very telling. When describing australia in 2020 he uses, Struggle, terrorism, fight, war, enemy, battle, defence force, combat, heavy burden.

Have the educators got it wrong? Or is it the politicians that refuse to shift from 20th century "world is round" thinking? What kind of world are we creating? Do we tell the class of 2020 (todays kindergarten), that our leaders are planning to continue the war? That the world they graduate into will be a burden and a struggle, or ought we be trying to inspire them with some other, more hopeful vision?

Cartoons as a Resource

Great site here, using cartoons to enhance literacy.

ToonDoo - The Cartoon Strip Creator - Create, Publish, Share, Discuss!

check out my first "toon"

Putting it all Together with Intel Teach.

This is a fantastic resource. It brings together current thinking and research on thinking skills,and strategies teachers might use to develop those skills in their classrooms.



From project design, to thinking, to planning, stategies and assessment. Lots here.



Intel Education: Designing Effective Projects

This program emphasises curriculum development that aligns to Australian state standards and syllabus outcomes. It promotes higher-order thinking using Curriculum-Framing Questions, authentic project tasks, effective instructional strategies, and performance assessment. Designing Effective Projects provides a foundation for good planning and supports you in adapting these project-based units – or developing your own from scratch.