Guide to how to justify a course of action

Glossary of Key Words (from Board of Studies)

How to write a propose and justify:

1. Establish the need
2. Generally introduce the benefits
3. Explain each industry study factor with details and use headings
4. Ensure that you link each factor with how it meets the need.
5. Summarize the recommendation.

There is a proposal to let year 11 students listen to ipods within class. Propose a policy to be put in place for this, and justify your response:

Good words to use:

from Do you have enough analysis 

This post has been reposted here from a course that I am currently doing for Sydney CEO (even though I’m now part of Parramatta ) Original post, with the rest of the course, is at shortcomp.blogger.com

A podcasts is simply a free video or audio file that is distributed over the internet
through a podcasting program like iTunes. Video podcasts are often referred to as “Vodcasts”, however, in this post when I refer to podcasts, I mean both audio and video.

The name podcast is an amalgamation of iPod and broadcast, however, you do not
need an iPod or any sort of MP3 player to play them, you can just use a normal
computer.

There is great benefit in using podcasts for aiding student understanding of content. There is a wide variety of podcasts availiable on itunes, and through the regular internet that cover a variety of topics. You can do things that can’t be done in the classroom, or just use it as a review of content that involves complex concepts, that will assist students in being able to watch/listen multiple times. They can also be used for teaching concepts on a need-to-know basis, when placed online so that students can watch/listen when they need to know the concept to apply it.

Following is an example of a podcast from Dr Carlson. A colleague of mine, a great science teacher, Oriana Miano showed me this, so credit to her for finding it.

The following is a podcasts that I have created for the purpose of explaining concepts that need going over that students consistantly misunderstand. This podcast was created using a livescribe pen, which is a new technology that records while you write.

Some web-based websites you can find podcasts.
The Education Podcast Network http://epnweb.org/
ABC National Podcasts http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/
CSIRO Podcasts http://www.csiro.au/products/CSIROpod.html
An educational Podcast Directory http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting/channel-list.php
NASA Podcasting http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/
Naked Scientist http://www.thenakedscientists.com/

How to.

Funnily enough, when I was at Freeman(I no longer am), I taught a staff development day with Oriana on how to podcast, so I have included the how-to guide here for anyone to use if they wish to use it. It is PC based, because Freeman is a PC school. Now that I’m a Mac user, I will probably write one for mac when I get some free time (okay, so it will be a while in coming)

One thing that is a little annoying, is trying to access the itunes store through the proxy. After hours of searching, and reflecting, I finally figured out that the proxy settings are set through IE on Windows, and you need to change the proxy settings here, even if you don’t use Internet Explorer regularly. Obviously, on a Mac, it’s easy enough just to change the location setting under the apple menu.

Podcasting Downloading
Free Programs you can use:
Mac
Garage Band
Jing
Photobooth

PC
Debut Video Capture
Audacity
Whatever your webcam software is…

Getting Students to create Podcasts/Vodcasts is a really great way to get students to publish their work, particularly those that are more vocal rather than good with writing. It’s also a great way to get those more shy students to “perform” in a lower risk environment. At the moment, in our year 9 program, students are creating a media watch style podcast in order to critique media portrayal of the catholic viewpoint of a topic, and the students are really heavily critically analysing the medias veiwpoints and perspectives of the media.

Click here for Industrial Tech Game

I’ve just been trying out ClassTools.net, which is a website where you can easily make interactive flash games with no knowledge of flash programming. I think this is a great idea to make interactive content for your classes very easily. The game above took about 5 minutes to make, and  is easily accessible for both teachers, and even very young students.

The above game is simply the syllabus dot points of one of our topics that we do “Government requirements of Industry” for Industrial Technology. Basically, it’s just the first 3 industry study factors. All I had to do was type in (copy and paste) the dot points in the syllabus into different categories, and hit create. The website then creates the interactive game. Knowing a fair amount about flash programming, this would have taken me a couple of hours to do if not for this website.

They also have a number of different templates that you can use, including a labelling, timeline and venn diagram that looks very useful. It’s so easy that you could even get students to create games themselves and then get them to submit them to a wiki, and students can play each others games.

Publishing from Flash

For the past few years I’ve been doing HSC Exam Analysis Guides for subjects that I teach. I’ve just put these up on Scribd.

There is available:
Software Design

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18176173/HSC-Exam-Analysis

Industrial Tech Multimedia
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15102526/Ind-Tech-Exam-AnalysisKellyBauer

Design and Technology

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17489788/Design-and-Technology-Exam-Analysis-Key-Words

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17489817/Design-and-Technology-Exam-Analysis

I’m working on an IPT one at the moment.

Hope that these are useful.

Image from: http://helloviking.com/2008/work/case-study-jerry-garcia-%E2%80%9Csad-bus%E2%80%9D/

5. Using the pen tool, trace around the following piece of the car. Click a vector wherever the curve changes direction, or in the middle of the curve. Just do it roughly to start with, as this can be edited later.

View the following video to explain the pen tool

6. In order to edit the vectors, click on the following tool:

You will notice that if you click on a vector, then you will get a line that has two handles. Adjust these handles to change the shape of the tool.

Don’t forget to edit the shape so that the curves fit!

11. Use the circle tool for the headlights, and rectangle tool for the wheels

Change the stroke style by drawing a selection rectangle around the entire car. At the top of the screen is the outline properties. Select a different brush and stroke width

14. Add colour by selecting individual parts of the car and clicking on the colour tool on teh right hand side of the screen.

15. Once you are happy with the design of your car, you can delete layer 1 (the template) and add details of your own.

Our internet access at school, aside from being extraordinarily slow, is also run through a proxy server.

Trying to use Itunes at school can be enough to tear ones hair out.

Discovered last week that Itunes pulls the internet access information through Internet Explorer. I use Firefox exclusively, and actually had to do a search for IE on my system. However, once I changed the proxy server in IE, it now works perfectly at school.

Now I just have to find it again to turn it off at home…

I’ve spent the last couple of days re-reading Scott McLouds’ “Making Comics” which I purchased last year for a unit of my masters that I was doing on Graphical Communciation. I think the book is wonderful, and really the only good book that I’ve seen on the topic. (Feel free to recommend some in the comments!)

But although this book is spectacular, and easy to read, most teachers just want a simple way to make comics that don’t take alot of time. In the past, I’ve given out this scaffold, which is great for students to make a comic based around a topic that you set that helps them give an alternative communication method.
Safety Comic Strip

There are also some great online comic editors. I’ve been using Toondoo for the past few years, and it’s now part of our Automatic Homework policy at school (Make a comic about a topic that you have studied today at school)  and it’s a great tool that gives you options for backgrounds and characters, and even different arrancgements from the same characters.

Comic Strip Generator http://stripgenerator.com

A little bit less logical in the sign up process, very easy to use, but very limited in terms of people, and types of framing offered. For example, I couldn’t easily work out how to create a comic in less than 3 frames.

Pixton http://www.pixton.com/home

This is very cool this one, and may alter my first preference of Toon Doo. Firstly, it’s got a great style. Secondly, you can change the characters expressions, body language, etc, to make it a more interesting comic. The only problem I see with it is that you can’t save as a JPEG. And even though they allow you to post to a number of different sites, flickr is not one of them. I was planning on screen capturing the browser screen and importing into an image editor (as you would have to, say if you wanted to print, when I noticed that they had an embed tool:

Note, after publishing, I went back and did the photoshop thing becuase the embed did not work. This is a big pain in the otherwise very easy and highly quality system.

Uses in the classroom:

Using comics to communicate:

• This is a comic on binary numbers that I use to teach students how to convert between number systems. It really makes students understand the concept of binary. It’s also great, because it encourages students to integrate movement into their learning, which is good for memory.
• I use them to make classroom rules a little more fun and easy to remember.
• Look at them as a literacy exercise. Kids will read them.
• Break them up and get students to sequence them for something where the sequence is important to remember, like dates in a history lesson.
• There are some great comic books on particular content based subjects, like Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the world, (I’m trying to get a hold of the computer one), and some Shakespeare plays

Get students to make them in order to:

• Communicate a sequence of events
• Make learning fun
• Communicate the important points in a topic
• Communicate difficult concepts
• Simplify a topic into accessible language
• Empathise and personify a topic
• Helps with memory!

It would be great to see some other people comment on how they use comics in the classroom.

So, if anyone from the CEO is wondering why I’m using edublogs rather than blogger, it’s because I already blog. I use them in the classroom too. I personally like edublogs better, because there seems to be more availiable features. Mainly, I like that you can bulk add students to edublogs and that it’s particularly education-focused. Thanks to Mick Prest for giving me the okay to do this!

Funnily enough, I’ve also posted about Blogs in the classroom, so I’m just copying my post here:

Today, I’m going to be talking about Blogs. Basically, a blog is a website that you can publish easily, that stores entries in a chronological order, like a journal. This website is an example of a blog. There is a couple of ways that I use blogs in my classroom: for maintenance of project work, journals and research.

Using Blogs for student publishing

Blogs are an excellent way to promote student publishing because it’s an authentic publishing experience. When students realise that their work might possibly be seen, it can improve the quality of work drastically. This is also how things work in the real world…people don’t write things to be only seen by one or possibly two people. Teachers generally find too, that some people that may be particularly quiet in class, who won’t contribute, can often be the most verbose online.

The picture below shows the simple interface of edublogs. I find edublogs to be the best system, because you can add student blogs in batches of 15. Blogger is another tool that works well.

You can also keep a simple “learning log” for any subject. At the end of every lesson, students could be asked to post two things that they learnt that lesson and what it means for them. The simple act of writing connects the synapses in the brain (Marcia Tate) , allows students to remember content more readily.  If you have more time, you could do a lightning writing activity, where students need to type constantlyfor two/three minutes what they learnt this lesson, and you as the teacher can use that to guage student understanding.

Using Blogs for student projects

Students in Technology subjects in Australia are required to keep logs of their work for projects that they are working on. This is a compulsory part of our syllabus and requires students to date their work, and record what they have done for particular lessons. In my opinion, students generally do this, along with all their theory work the night before the assignment is due. By asking students to blog their logs, you can keep a simple and quick check on the fact that students are maintaining this. You can also give feedback in terms of comments on the posts.  It time stamps the blog entry, so that students can’t do it the night before, as the purpose of the log is to promote time management and planning.

I also find the power of giving comments for students work works well. For example, a student could blog what they plan to do next on their project and anyone in the class, or you as the teacher, might decide to offer a suggestion in the form of the comment. I do this in class as a round table format, where students have to present ideas, and give feedback on others. Blogs mean that students can do this more often.

Using Blogs for getting information about your subject.

One of the more difficult things in being a teacher (particularly a technology teacher) is the keeping up with new areas in your subject. Blogs are a great tool for this. At the beginning of each topic, I deliver to students (generally on a subject wiki: Come back for that one) a list of blogs that I recommend that cover the subject area well. For example, the following are some good ones from my web design topic.

* 456 BereaStreet
* A list apart
* Max Design
* The Man in Blue

Students that read consistantly on your topic are more likely to give complex answers to projects and exam questions. There are some students that will read these constantly to try to soak up new knowledge, and some that will just click on the link once to read it.

Sometimes, that’s fine, because they might just absorb a couple of facts that will improve their knowledge. Sometimes I get students to repost interesting content to a blog, and show how they have implemented the knowledge practically, and set this task as homework for a couple of weeks. Find one thing, implement and write about it each night.

I also read all of these myself. (I’ve got a collection of about 100 that I check regularly). I keep track of this using a RSS Reader (also, will cover this later). It’s a really good way to look like you know what you’re talking about in the classroom.

Other reasons for using Blogs in the classroom?

Thankyou to all that posted comments on the previous post, and for all the retweets on twitter. One of the really nice thing about education, in general is that everyone is so into sharing.  Today, if you could share some ways that you use blogs in the classroom, we could all use each others ideas.

Why do I like blogs as a teaching tool? Well…students are more likely to practice writing skills, allows feedback on pages, encourages reflective writing and thinking, can encourage students to back up ideas for their arguments with facts, opportunity for blogging is relatively fair and equitable, and they give an opportunity for students work to be seen by a worldwide audience.