The Big Question

K-12 Online is a FREE conference open to ANYONE by educators for educators around the world interested in integrating emerging technologies into classroom practice.
Now in its 4th year, K-12 online is an extraordinary opportunity to learn more about learning technologies and their application.
You can find out more about K-12 Online at the Getting Started page

If you do decide to participate in K-12 online, Mark Blake (@sirblakey on twitter) has managed to secure some google wave invites and we have decided that giving them to local teachers participating in the conference would be a great idea. Sign up for the conference and then send Mark or myself ( @mrwoolley on twitter) a message and we will sort the rest out.

No idea what google wave is? Find out more below

This is a wonderful, free collaborative learning opportunity. Please join us.

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Wednesdays Illawarra Regional Science Fair was a great success as usual. The students continue to astound me with their creativity and knowledge and after 7 years of judging I still look forward to spending the day with students passionate about their learning.

Well done to Kerry and the team.

Get started for next year, all the details here

Today we will have a look at a range of story telling tools that will allow your students to develop and showcase their understandings in a range of powerful ways. We will be exploring the following tools and I have placed them roughly in ease of use order.

Storybird – Tour

Storybird promotes imagination, literacy, and self-confidence. Its a simple writing and publishing tool that is quick, effective and powerful. Look here for the first attempt by a 5 year old. Drag and drop illustrations, text boxes and a quality product created quickly.

A very nice tool. Currently you are able to publish it to storybird, accept comments but not embed elsewhere. Students can collaborate on books.

Tikatok

Tikatok is an online creative community whose mission is to turn kids into published authors. Students can use their own illustrations and publish their book, even order real paperback and hardcover books.

Dvolver – Movie Maker

Create a text based, comic style movie with simple animation. Its very simple, quick and effective. No easy download at this stage or character voices but very easy to use.

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

A powerful cartoon/animation creation tool. Choose your characters, background and exercise full control over voices, languages, gestures and framing. Students can create powerful movies, role plays, presentations and debates, quickly and free

Creating and enhancing your personal learning network to empower your profession learning.

The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has created a list of the Top Tools for Learning, compiled by learning professionals, for the last 3 years.
Having regularly been caught up in the conversation with peers and eventually getting to the writing stage I thought it fair that I share them here. They are almost in order and many are about my professional learning but all are powerful learning tools.

Diigo – Social bookmarking and collaboration at its best. Its a jump to move from Delicious however well worth the effort for the collaboration and annotation capabilities.

Google reader - My staple for professional learning. Via RSS I am connected to the best educators from around the world.

You Tube – The worlds second biggest search engine, what cant you learn here?

Slideshare – A powerful way to extend students audience and a great way to learn from others.

iPhone/iPod/ Touch and apps – An amazing learning tool for all ages. The quality of the apps make it so powerful and I am continually amazed at how essential my iphone is.

Google search – Old school but still quick and effective

Wordpress – This could just as easily be edublogs, powerful blogging for students and teachers

Evernote – I need this. Organisation and retrieval of ideas and learnings made easy

Google Docs – Collaborative editing and sharing. Keeping things open and accessible

OpenSim – Virtual worlds are so powerful. Just working with and watching the students involved in creating Virtual Corpus Christi convinces of the power of developing creativity and opensim is a great place to do it.

A nice little presentation encouraging teachers to use Web 2.0 tools to create personal learning networks.

Today we will have a look at a range of story telling tools that will allow your students to develop and showcase their understandings in a range of powerful ways.We will be exploring the following tools and I have placed them roughly in ease of use order.

Storybird – Tour

A Tour of Storybird, a great reading and writing tool. Simple, quick and effective. Look here for the first attempt by a 5 year old. Drag and drop illustrations, text boxes and a quality product created quickly.

A very nice tool. Currently you are able to publish it to storybird, accept comments but not embed elsewhere. Students can collaborate.

Dvolver – Movie Maker

Dvolver creates creativity tools. Have you ever wanted to direct your own movie? No problem. Our MovieMaker helps you make a movie in a few simple steps. When your opus is complete send it to a friend. Or, post it to your website or myspace page. No easy download at this stage or character voices but very easy to use.

Whrrl – What’s your story?

Simple iphone friendly story telling, location, images and text, quite good for a procedural text or excursion report. Students can collaborate on projects. Really good with mobile technology.

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

Easy Movie/cartoon making – Make 3d movies for free. Includes a range of languages, easy to use interface and a selection of backgrounds. Great for languages

GoAnimate

A very powerful animation tool, very flexible and fully featured. Much steeper learning curve than the other options tagged. Easy to embed or download the result. Top end product, very flexible.

My StoryMaker : Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

My StoryMaker lets you control characters and objects – and creates sentences for you! Once you are done with your story, save it online or print it out in the Library. I really liked the way the story was made and the structure it provided for the students while writing. However the publishing and sharing options are very limited and I would suggest the child capturing the entire creation process with a screen capture tool.

Myths and Legends from E2BN

Welcome to Myths and Legends. This site is for pupils, teachers and all those who enjoy stories and storytelling. Make your own animated myths and legends. Really interesting voices and speech capabilities. I can see a range of uses within HSIE

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

This course as a 12-part series challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas. It could be a great resource in Religious Education and HSIE to engage students in bigger issues.

The video below will explain a little more.

Collaborating, Presenting and Publishing in your classroom – New Pedagogy

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The presentation from the Magdalene Staff Development day

During the session we explored

• Dfilm – is now Dvolver. Make your own movie with the
  

  Dvolver creates creativity tools. Have you ever wanted to direct your own movie? No problem. Our MovieMaker helps you make a movie in a few simple steps. When your opus is complete send it to a friend. Or, post it to your website or myspace page.

• Picasa Web Albums
  

  Easy and free web albums for schools. A number of our schools now use this to publish school photos and student work.

• YouTube – moviesfromsje’s Channel

  An example of a school youtube channel. This one is from the art department at St John the Evangelist at Nowra

• Woolley’s posterous – A demonstration site

  A demo posterous site. Just email anything to post@posterous.com at it will set up a blog for you and post the contents of your email.

• TrueTube – Education

  TrueTube is a free, website which uses real-life stories and issues to encourage teenagers to explore and debate the world of morality, ethics, politics and religion.

• Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

  Easy Movie/cartoon making – Make 3d movies for free. Includes a range of languages

• A N I M O T O: the end of slideshows

  Easy and visually cool. Make great videos very easily

• Arty Reflections » Welcome

  Student Art Blog, a great example of using a blog to share student work and encourage positive feedback. Evaluation and thinking skills are also embedded in the process

• SlideShare

  Share powerpoints online, easy and powerful sharing of presentations. Ability to comment and discuss presentations