The Big Question

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

One of our great challenges as teachers is encouraging students to use a wider range of presentation styles.

Movies can be a great way to bring a range of text types to life, making publishing and sharing student work much more accessable and increasing the access to and impact of their work.

Xtra Normal is a great example of a simple and powerful presentation tool that may be useful in your classroom. Students simply sign in, paste their product (text) into a text box and have it presented by a 3d avatar.  Students can choose from a range of backgrounds, characters, speech styles, expressions and more. Best of all its free.

The movie below is an example of a social justice project where students were working on a short information report on a ways to reduce your eco-footprint.

Note :- A first time user took 10 minutes to take their written content and create their movie.

Vegetarianism – reduce your eco-footprint

With our focus on iMovie 09 today the issue of finding great footage raises it head. Of course if you can go and get that footage yourself that is wonderful however with many of the things that we study thats not possible. Antarctica for example is a visually stunning environment however quite difficult to visit and film.

Fortionately we have some great free options available. We can use these movies as stimulus, create a mashup from them, or modify them to suit our needs.

Welcome to the Archive’s Moving Images library of free movies, films, and videos. This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts.

ABC Fora brings you the most engaging and interesting speeches and debates from all over the world. It lists movies in the following catogories

Topics

• Arts
• Books and Authors
• Business
• Culture and Society
• Education
• Environment
• Health and Medicine
• History
• Law and Ethics
• Philosophy
• Politics
• Religion
• Science and Technology

Australian Screen – Australia’s audiovisual heritage online

Over 1,300 Australian film and television titles produced over the last 100 years, represented with clips, curators’ notes and other information. Browse titles.

neoK12 Free educational videos and lessons from around the world

Our diocese has an excellent collection of blogs and wikis being used in powerful ways to improve student learning and teacher capacity. Below are a collection of blogs and wikis from the Wollongong Diocese along with a brief description of their intended purpose.

A Professional Reflection Blog

This blog captures a teachers ideas and thoughts around ICT in the classroom at http://smallsteps.edublogs.org.

Secondary Blogs

Publishing and Assessement

A blog to assess the students through the use of technology. This blog is only in the very early stages and will be added to over the coming weeks.
Survivor North Era

Resource Sharing and Organisation

http://scomagdalene.wordpress.com – sportcoaching webpage which is used to share materials with other teachers and to organise the resources used in the course.

Student Course Content Wiki
http://pdhpe12.pbwiki.com – Wiki to support the PDHPE HSC Course. It has a range of student created materials on there as well as other course material and resources that are useful in teaching the course.

Blogging – year 11 and year 12 economics (http://11economics.edublogs.org, http://12economics.edublogs.org

A wiki that will help students and parents discuss and review math topics from school for years 7 – 10 http://mathemaniac.wikispaces.com/

Welcome Year 7 to your online classroom. This site has been set up for you to access set class work and additional material that may not be covered during class sessions. http://7history.edublogs.org/

A photography blog posting content for students and inviting their reflections on artwork. http://stage5wetphotography.edublogs.org/

Primary Blogs and Wikis

http://ithink.edublogs.org /….. the purpose of this blog is to explore the text types ‘exposition’ and ‘discussion’ . The students are presented with two points of view and asked to develop their arguments in an online environment

http://puzzlingprimaryproblems.edublogs.org /….. the purpose of this blog was to trial differentiation via blogs in the area of Mathematics

http://mshearman.edublogs.org /….. the purpose of this blog was to enable students to showcase their artwork in an online environment and also participate in art appreciation type conversation using a thinking framework

http://neverendingstory.pbwiki.com /…. the purpose of this wiki was to encourage my students to build a collaborative story
*
http://creation1.pbwiki.com /…… the purpose of this wiki was to showcase the RE LITERACY PRODUCTS. It was created as a wiki with the view of other schools also adding their products, thus creating a diocesan wiki

http://rainforestrescue.pbworks.com/ a student rainforest wiki – a wiki book of sorts

The purpose of this blog is to explore the power and potency of IMAGES and other forms of MULTI MEDIA . By participating in this blog you will be asked to INTERPRET and COMMENT on a variety of different images http://picturetalk.edublogs.org/

Due to some issues with the TEACHnology for Stage 4 Teachers blog at the moment I am posting some resources from that course here until the course blog is back online.

In our discussion on net safety and appropriate use of blogs we mentioned the Federal Governments Net Alert site. This is a great resource for teachers and students alike, regardless of age level.

To further this it was suggested that teacher develop rules for students while they are using the blog. I am unable to find the original author of these blogging rules but i will republish them with full credit to the original author. Likewise, possibly from the same author is a sample letter that could be used to inform parents of your use of a blog.

For those right back at the stage of setting up a blog these Comic Life notes should help you  through the process of creating an edublogs blog and starting to use it. Once you are ready to move beyond this you will find a number of helpful movies to guide you through must things that you would want to do.

The presentation options presentation is available below and may help you and your students expand your presentation options

[slideshare id=67441&doc=presentation-options317&w=425]

technorati tags:blogs, presentation, safety

Blogged with Flock


is a free service that will back up your blog automatically each night.
With a number of our teachers now using blogs it would be prudent to
embrace this backing up strategy.

Blog Backup Online

technorati tags:blogs, backup, web2.0

Blogged with Flock

Ewan McIntosh explains why edublogging and edupodcasting are changing the face of teachers’ and students’ lives.

This was recorded from a BBC Radio Show called “Blogs and Pods”

The following is from Ewans post on the show

Teachers have always shared their ideas within
their own staffroom, but now teachers’ staffroom chat can be more
in-depth, more wide-reaching than ever before. Meanwhile, kids are
already discovering the joys of online social networking. How can
education take advantage of this to increase motivation for learning
and improve the processes we use to teach and learn?

Listen to Ewans talk here Ewan McIntosh on BBC radio

technorati tags:EwanMcIntosh, podcasting, education, learning, blogs

Blogged with Flock

This is from a 15 year old Student blogging on Web 2.0 and School

The Benefits of School 2.0

I was sitting in maths earlier this week, learning about some formula
that I’m almost certain I’ll never see again after my exam in May
(unless I fail that is…) when I turned to the guy sitting next to me
and told him about the Blog I wrote a couple of days before hand, and
how there were people out there taking a serious interest in my
opinion… which to be honest really surprised me. When I had finished
the story there was a pause. He then asked me, “What’s a Blog??”… My
only thought after that was if only he knew. If only he had discovered.
Not just what a Blog is, but what a Wiki is, what an RSS or and Atom
feed is. How it could benefit him. If only he had been taught…

Read the rest at the source

technorati tags:web2.0, students, bassplayersblog, learning, school2.0

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TecnoTeach has a useful post of blogging teachers sorted by subject area and complete with a description of what their blogs are about.

TecnoTeach: How Can Teachers Blog?

technorati tags:teachers, blogging, blogs, web2.0

Blogged with Flock

The burning question answered by a new teacher. She has used a free online diagram maker and publisher

Why Teachers Blog

technorati tags:why, blog, learning, technologies

Blogged with Flock