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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, funnily enough, now I am doing a course on Web 2.0 for work. I decided to do the course for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I knew that people would ask me what it was like, and I wanted to be able to honestly recommend it. Secondly, I figured that if I learnt one new tool that I could implement, that it was worth it. Looks pretty good so far. We have to create a blog (I’m combining it with my current one) so, you will see some mixed posts between this and the other stuff I currently do. (please don’t be confused!)
I’ve also been using igoogle for a while, and here’s a screen capture of how I have it set up:
Already, I’ve found something new. http://newtoolsworkshop.wikispaces.com/ aside from having a very nice funky user interface, categorises alot of learning tools into categories that relate to applications in the classroom. And already, I’ve found something useful! I’ve been looking for a web-based citation manager for a couple of months now. I use End Note for the past few years for my academic writing, and found that managing multiple computers is quite difficult with this. The wikispaces website mentions a few web-based citation managers. I’m going to be checking them out. The one that I’ve applied for a trial period of is only $8 for a year, for a single license, so this seems quite fair.
I’m going to check them out and repost when I’ve decided which one to use.
I teach animation to Years 7-12 in Technology, then IST and Ind Tech. We use Flash, which students even at a younger (secondary) age have had some good success in. However, we can afford the luxury of time to teach the technology in technology subjects, as it’s the basis of the course. Today, I thought I’d cover some animation tools that allow you to use animation in the classroom without having to teach the technology.
I’ve written about this before, so I’ll steal some info from a previous post:
Have been checking out GoAnimate for the last hour.Since I have a fair amount of knowledge in Flash, I approached GoAnimate quite skeptically. After about 10 minutes fiddling around with their very simple interface, I think that it may be a great animation tool for those that know absolutely nothing (and don’t need to) about the technical skill of animation. I’m definately planning on implementing this into my Year 7 Technology (Mandatory) class, but also see it as a very simple tool for effective implementation of ICT into any curriculum. You can use a variety of their characters, and backgrounds, and create simple storyboards, with even complex emotions shown in animations.
Movie Maker/Imovie: you can get students to draw individual frames and import them into movie maker or imovie and add transitions and effects. I’ve found that some of the other free tools are easier than this, but if you’re operating on limited bandwidth, these tools are not effected by this.
Pivot: Also a good program. Free, and not internet based, so no bandwidth issues. You create stick figures and then animate them based on the pivot points of the animation. You are, as far as I’m aware, limited to stick figures, however, but you can put in stick figures of things like horses.
Stop Motion animations can be created quickly and easily using Monkey Jam. Money Jam is a free program available on the net, but that doesn’t use the internet at all for running. You can created a simple play-do animation, but you could use anything, from kids toys to Lego to show simple narratives, or build moving models of concepts. This is really the easiest, most motivating way to do it, with no technical knowledge or bandwidth required.
I’ve included instructions for how to use Monkey Jam (at the bottom of this screen, that I used at a PEEL meeting. Please feel free to photocopy and use the instruction page in class if necessary. (We also had some serious fun playing with the play-do.)
Pencil Animation is a program that will allow you to download hand drawings and to run them together into an animation. Good for testing animations for technology, but you can create a flick-book style animation easily with this.
Some ways to use this in the classroom involve:
Digital Storytelling: English, HSIE, technology, Science, really any subject that involves any kind of narrative.
Idea Communciation: A tool for presenting an idea that may (hopefully) stimulate conversation by students. Eg, “create a video presenting safety issues in the workshop”
Responding to ideas: You could create a video log, responding to each others animations.
Awareness Programs: Students could create awareness programs for relevant issues, such as health issues for PDHPE, Environment in Science, TAS, HSIE
Interpretation of texts: Converting different texts in English to an animation. This could also be used for fairly fact based texts by presenting them in an unusual way.e: Creation of animation helps in the understanding of setting the scene.
Drama: creative interpretation
Advantages:
Students can collaborate on ideas.
Great for literacy skills
Students plan out their animation before creating. Allows for development of storytelling/narrative skills.
It’s very motivating. Students get really excited about it.
You avoid the inevitable “But I can’t draw!” Comments
Good for kinesthetic students that need to move things around to understand concepts
This week, I have been planning our Staff Development Day e-learning session. So, apologies first of all for the late (okay, really late) post. And co-incidentally enough, this week was also my week of using Google Docs quite a bit.
Firstly, I had to write synopses of all the sessions for the SDD. Then, I had to give this out for editing to everyone that was presenting, and then get it back and make changes. Traditionally, I would have printed it out and got everyone to make their changes on paper and give it back to me, and I would have edited the master copy. Or, I would have emailed it to people, and then made the changes that were emailed back. This time, I used Google Docs to do this.
You can use Google Docs to create a word document, spreadsheet or presentation online. The power of this is not only that it can be stored online but can also be shared with select people.This document is then emailed to them, but not as an attachment, but simply a link to the online Google word processed document.
Another Common Craft video (and again, there’s no sponsorship from common craft, they’re just really good)
Advantages:
Online word processor that is quality, reasonably quickly to load and free!
Kids can work on things at the same time. So, instead of having kids work together, one person actually on the computer, students can watch changes on the document happen, and respond to those, so you can be working on the same document at the same time, at the same or two different locations.
You can collaborate with others, either in the same classroom, or across the world and construct documents together. Either using a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation. You can use it as an interactive whiteboard if you have a data projector, because content that is typed on the student documents automatically goes to the teacher document. You can use this for group brainstorming sessions, or even get students to type in questions during a lecture-style discussion so students can ask questions without being required to have the confidence to raise their hands, and without interrupting the teacher. THe presentation tool even has a chat room at the same time, so students can type ideas or questions during the presentation that they think are relevant. The teacher can then go through these questions when time permits, and ask students whether the question was answered in latter parts of the presentation.
Encourages proof reading prior to submission. Revise/edit process part of the writing process is facilitated by the ease at which teachers, students and others can be involved in the writing process.
Research suggests that when writing, students are more fluent in writing on a word processor.
No excuses for not bringing homework, and no transferring via USB, disk or on paper. Students can submit work by simply sharing with the teacher, if the teacher so chooses, or students can print out and submit.
Create forms from spreadsheets, and send it to people to get feedback from lessons, units or assessments. This information is filled into a spreadsheet and you can analyse it.
If you’ve used Google Docs in your classroom, it would be great if you could reply below and share how you managed it and how you used it in the classroom.
For this one, I’m going to pull a direct quote from wikipedia, the most famous wiki.
“A wiki is a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborativewebsites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis” 1
Basically, it’s just a collection of pages, that provide a very simple way to edit, that anyone can edit. You can choose to make it public, like wikipedia, or you can make it private, for example for a particular class. You can restrict the people that edit or view the pages via their access settings.This way, you can have someone be an editor, viewer, moderator or contributor. (depending on how much you trust them)
Below is another video from Common Craft (obviously, I like Common Craft alot…and no, they are not sponsoring this page 😀 )
Where do I start one?
There are a variety of places. The main things that you have to consider are:
Is it easy to use?
Can you view and go back to page history?
Is it free?
In addition to that, there is also added benefits such as:
Being able to add rich media content.
Being able to set different levels of users
Adding discussion boards and other features.
I’m members of a whole heap of wiki engines, such as http://www.wikispaces.com/, http://www.wetpaint.com/ and http://www.wiki-site.com/ which are all free. By far the best I’ve found is Wetpaint. Basically, because of all of the above points, and the fact that it is not only easy to use, but you can also choose nice layouts as well. Surprisingly, this does matter, as the “frostier” kids think that the page is, the more motivated they are to use it. You can use rich media very easily, it’s easy to expand, and the addition of a discussion board means that you have also include the opportunity for students to discuss the issues addressed in the text component.
Roles in the Wiki
User: Join Discussions and Leave Comments
Writer: Edit pages, add images, and join discussions
Moderator: Manage pages, use all editing tools, promote or ban members, and invide others on private sites
Administrator: Access site settings and all the above.
I would suggest that the management of users depends on your purpose of using the wiki. If you have it for a class, and you only want students to view content and join discussions, then you would add them as users. However, the power of a wiki is that everyone is allowed to contribute (don’t worry, you can go back if someone ruins something), so I would add everyone as at least writers. With responsible students, I often add students (or even selected students) from the class as Moderators, so that they can assist in the management of the site, like adding pages.
Use in the classroom
Collaborative summaries work great using wikis as a tool for revision. I teach Industrial Technology, Mulitmedia at a HSC level. It includes a topic called Industry Study with 5 different sections: Structural factors, Technical Factors, etc…Most years, for revision for the HSC, I assign students groups and give each group a section of the topic, eg, strucutral factors and assign them the following task:
The following are the sections of the industry study component of the syllabus.
Structural Factors
Technical Factors
Environmental Issues
Sociological Factors
Personell (staffing) issues
OHS Issues.
In groups, you will be contributing the the construction of this website to summarise and address the industry study dot points. You should use the dot points on your page to structure your summary. Use your Industry Study Booklets for the content, and use www.hsc.csu.edu.au in order to assist you to develop depth of answers in the topic.
You are also required to place something that may make the content more understandable, such as pictures, animations, videos that help explain the content, which can be inserted from you tube, or online photos etc.
A colleague of mine once commented that he did this quite effectively with students typing up information and then he would print it out, photocopy and distribute to all of his class. So why would he want a wiki? My reply was that students could edit each others work, if there were gaps of information, and students can continue to build on each others ideas, elaborating as you go. I’ve found that there is always one student who never has an extensive response. This way, students can elaborate on the ideas of others, and it’s never really obvious who that student is.
Which brings me to another great reason to use a blog. Building essay responsense.Students can answer an exam question, and other students can build on it, by adding and elaborating on the text. A colleague of mine uses this in Legal studies (in a word doc), where the students build an exam response over the HSC Course. Initially, their knowledge of the content allows them to answer the question to a low level, then, when she brings in further content, students are invited to go back and develop their response further, by adding more examples of issues and elaboration on facts. This is a great way to build student confidence, and to encourage elaboration and proof within writing examples. This could easily be done with a variety of pages on a wiki, with different exam questions on each page, or different issues to be addressed on each page. It also allows students time to organise, think about and construct responses, which is an advantage, particularly for gifted students.
Managing Group Work can also be done via a wiki, in a similar way to the common craft video above. Wetpaint allows you to create “To-Do” lists, and if all work is managed around the wiki, the teacher can also trace each individual’s contribution, through the “history” feature, and students can be marked individually as well as collaboratively for their particular efforts. Student discussions can also be tracked to determine whose ideas where used and whose discarded.
Annotation of Texts can be done very easily via a wiki. Here is an example that I have used in my wiki, where students have to annotate the translation of a HTML line. Students can also do this easily with any form of written text, for example, a poem or essay.
What are some of the other uses that people have for wikis? It would be good to see some comments with examples of sites, but also some different ways that it can be implemented in the classroom.
This video is from Common Craft explaining what a blog is. Common Craft are an excellent source of explaination videos, and I use them in my classroom regularly. Each of them are free, availiable on you tube, but they charge you for downloads of High Quality videos.
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.
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.
There are a whole heap of definitions of Web 2.0 online that focus on the technology behind Web 2.0 applications. Most people turn off when they hear words like server driven applications, AJAX, RSS, Convergence, social software, and many other buzz words that are travelling around about Web 2.0. To me, web 2.0 can be summed up into two major categories of important difference:
1. The Social Side
Web 2.0 applications allow us to publish, edit and share information. That’s it. In a traditional website, a person writing a website needed to write a page of code for every page of the web that was published. It would also then have to be uploaded to the website, and any changes that had to be made were through a not difficult, but lengthy process. Although this code was easy to learn (and still widely used) this limited the people that published on the web to those that knew the code. ♦
Web 2 applications are those that allow users to interact with and publish easily, without knowing anything about HTML code at all. This means, that like at bottom of this page, where you can post a comment on this site, and it be uploaded instantaneously, there are alot of sites on the web now where users can create pages themselves, edit them easily, and allow people to comment on them, or even to edit the page entirely, and add new content. Phrases such as “Users add value” were one of the founding principles of Web 2.0, but recently, they have increased sociality by most sites adding “friend” features where you can share work with friends.
2. Higher levels of interaction
People are used to doing things like clicking and dragging, moving things around, and having things instantaneously through the programs that they use on the computer. Most operating systems are designed to have these levels of interactivity, because decades of designers have researched that this is the way to make software easy to use. So, the fact that you can start typing the letters of the persons name into google mail, and it can come up with a list of people on your address book, means that it is simultaneously accessing a database, and searching for a response while you type…wheras you used to have to submit a page and wait. This happened so quickly, and everyone was so used to doing it in software, that there wasn’t a great wonder about how that happened. It was just accepted. But, people started using terminology such as web applications rather than web pages, very quickly.
To be honest, and minimise hype here, there are some things that there is no way that you would use. Some people have huge objections to the whole web 2 thing, and that’s fine. The reality is, though, that you can’t avoid it. It’s here. And students are using it, not as web 2.0, that they need to be taught how to use, but just as an integral part of the internet. Students can’t imagine the web like it used to be, with plain text and maybe a picture thrown in for good luck. Students don’t say “We’re going to go and use some web 2.0 tools now”, they are there, on their computers, laptops, mobile phones and PSPs.
And there are some great tools out there to be used. For example, I must be the most naturally disorganised person in the world. Last year, I discovered Google Calender, that synchronises with my Nokia n95, so my calender is planned. It text messages me every morning at 4:45am (15 minutes before I get up) with my daily agenda. I even put my son’s Show and Tell day in there to remind me. And I use flickr to share photos with my family and friends.
How (and why) would I use it in teaching?
There is a whole heap of research around this. But put quite simply is that it caters for different learning styles, and a range of learning levels. If used properly. When the smartboards first came into Australia, they were touted by some as the next revolution in teaching (“$10,000 smartboards in every room”). However, in some cases (not all) they were used as glorified overhead projectors that students were not allowed to touch. I cringed to hear around the staff room “I really need a Smartboard room next year, because all my teaching resources are on powerpoint”, or “The kids are really interested in the Smartboard, because it’s the first new thing that I’ve done in 30 years”. Bad teaching on a smartboard (or computer) is still bad teaching. Good teaching on a smartboard, or computer, or not, is still good teaching.
Teachers that use e-learning in innovative ways, get good results. Students do see technology (most of the time) as motivating, generally because it puts some novelty into the classroom. Students very quickly get sick of the technology in the classroom when they discover that it is the same teacher, and teaching style that they get for the rest of the lessons, just on a computer.
That’s the bad side. Now, for the advantages. Web 2.0 allows you to teach in a different way. Firstly, students are “digital natives”. They generally know alot about computers. Remember when you used to have to teach students how to use powerpoint in a secondary school? Kids would generally laugh at you now when you try to do this.
Students are emmersed in a rich fabric of technology at a young age. My son is three. He knows how to turn my laptop on. He knows how to log into his user name (it’s got a picture of a robot on it). He knows which icon to double click on for firefox. (“Its the fire one, Mummy”). He knows where to go on the browser in order to find the bookmark to the Spongebob Squarepants website (They have good games). And he knows how to navigate the website by clicking on links, scrolling down and finding the objects that he wants. I pity the computer teacher that has him in secondary school. Lets use the tools that they know how to use. They know how to interact with, and they think in different ways that are more simmilar to the way that they navigate technology.
Teachers no longer have to teach technology, they have to be able to put it to use within the classroom to learn the content. Teaching using web 2 is still about teaching the content of the syllabus. It’s not automatically more motivating, but it does provide two things that are very valuable:
1. Rich media
Students have more access now to information than they have had at any other time in the world. I am a computing teacher. Job opportunities for me have decreased over the last 10 years that I have been teaching, because the subjects are attracting less and less numbers. Why? Are students less interested in technology? No. Students are more interested in the content, but (some) schools (teachers) are not offering anything more that you can learn outside the classroom. I taught a highly gifted technology student last year in year 9 Graphics. He was doing stuff in year 9 that I learnt in my Masters program. I asked him why he didn’t do Information and Software Technology (the year 9 Computing course) and his response was “Why? What can you teach me that I can’t learn online?”.
Theres also more richer types of inforamtion that could be used within teaching? Remember having to draw diagrams on the board to try to explain difficult concepts? Thanks to Flash, we now have a variety of free interactive or animated diagrams that explain the concept in 20 seconds. I used to spend lessons of time showing students how to convert binary numbers. Or, you could download a you tube clip that tells you how to convert them in 60 seconds. You can use Google Maps/Earth, and trace pathways of characters in the Bible, or in stories for English or History. Geography teaching can be revolutionised by Google Earth where you can even take photos and draw models of local areas, upload them to Google Earth and share them with the world wide community. Science can access videos of experiments that they don’t have the resources to do at school, or are too dangerous. Languages can talk for free over the internet with schools on the other side of the world. There is so much opportunity for rich interactive classrooms that the mind boggles.
2. Authentic Publishing
Finally, the area that students find quite motivating is the issue of authentic publishing. How many times have you heard the statement “but WHY are we doing this? Who is going to ever see it? How is this going to make a difference. Students can now upload content to the internet and publish video, sound, written works to a world wide audience. This, linked with issues that students care about, can make a big difference in their motivation to complete a task. The power of giving those shy quiet students an opportunity to contribute to a discussion, while giving them the time to phrase a response, is quite a gift.
♦Cudos to those developers of the web that made this code reasonably easy to learn, and totally free.
So, now that we’ve an understanding of web 2.0 is (hopefully), what are some ways that it can be utilised in the classroom. For those newbies to web 2.0, is this something that you can see yourself using? For those more experienced, what kind of tools do you use, and how do students respond?
I plan over the next couple of weeks to blog about a whole heap of different tools that can be used in web 2.0, and also some e-learning tools that you don’t need the internet for, for those lessons or schools where the internet may not be that effective.
What is Web 2.0?