One of the things that I always struggle to keep up with is all the good things coming in through my RSS feeds. This presentation in particular has some great images/messages. To gain the full effect you can also click on the view slideshow link in flickr which gives you some basic show notes as well. The title for this blog entry actually comes from slide four of the presentation which caught my eye as I was preparing to blame my computer for something again. Don’t blame the technology I say and I promise I’ll try not to use profanity next time my laptop has a go slow day.
Came across this video on the viral video chart and it interests me the power of these sorts of videos which we can access free.
Interesting that in it the people actually state “we could sell this” but here it is on youtube for free. For us as teachers it really allows us to find some up to date resources and discussion starters. I particularly liked this one as it reminded me of the old Wonderful World of Disney documentaries that played on a Sunday night back in the eighties.
I have also came across a few more games thanks to other blogs.
Stop Disasters: Has a good sim city feel to it like electrocity that i have blogged about earlier yet this gives scenarios based around fire, flood, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunami.
Ayiti: This game from TakingITglobal is about resource use. Also worth looking at is the TIG site itself which is an online community designed for youth who want to make a difference.
Darfurisdying: I guess the title gives it away but coupled with the darfur layer in google
I visited ratemyteacher the other day just to see how it was going and whether I had received any further slating’s from disgruntled year 10’s, much to my dismay not a single hit since the end of last year for Katikati College. This then has got me thinking about the ongoing wikipedia arguement over its accuracy. Remember last year when TV and print media talked extensively about ratemyteacher and suddenly it was important, there we were thinking it was going to be an issue, just like bird flu and SARS yet what happened, nothing.
I use wikipedia extensively in my teaching and for up to date information feel that it hands down beats the newsmedia. Example being the recent events in Virginia, while the media were showing us the killer and videos (sells great tv) on wikipedia I could read about Professor Liviu Librescu who held the door of his classroom shut while events were unfolding and was killed protecting his class.
There are certainly limits to a user edited encyclopedia but where else would I find an entry on New Zealand Schools and many other topics. So give it a go click on random link and see where it takes you.
Came across this table on Darren Drapes Blog, would be interested to see what a NZ based chart would show. Incidentally the quiz is located at pew international and you can probably guess which category I was in.
Just had to blog about this, Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher in the States has created this lesson for introducing graphing to high school students. He then has offered it for download as a full 755mb disk image or in smaller packages. I know Microsoft is behind a teachers collaborative area in NZ “the innovative teachers network” and it would be neat to think that we could be sharing across the country for a start and then the world.
Have changed the look of the site. Mainly just to play around with it and with only two clicks to change it back why not. This week has seen the first entries go on 7jac’s blog, great to see this go up with photos and how appropriate that the entries involve their dressing up in school clothes from the 1800’s. Have also been playing with classblogmeister and 21classes, both of which are pretty easy for teachers to set up and allow all the students to have access.
Students also have their own blog space on moodle and despite this never being advertised they are actually using it. I am always interested in how many students are actually using Myspace, bebo and the like, As for twitter and jaiku until we have cheaper internet on cellphones these won’t really exist for us. All of these things are simply tools to enhance communication and as this quote I read thanks to slideshare says “It’s the simplest lesson of the Internet: it’s the people stupid. We don’t have computers because we want to interact with machines; we have them because they allow us to communicate more effectively with other people.” ─ Douglas Rushkoff
Over the past week I have been adding and I guess taking away functionality of the three moodle sites we are running in the cluster. Current changes are the removal of the chat and message facility at KKC as far to many students were using the chat in class, and more importantly the chat module was apparently slowing down the server speed.
On the positives I have added the ability to upload video files. Instructions to this are on the Katikati site here and also on the Katmat site here which all KKC Staff have access to with their usual logons and MMC staff will need to see me to get access.
One of the easy tools you can use to add some digital floss to your class moodle page is cooltext. Cooltext allows you to create some basic animated titles and other jpeg titles.
Another link of interest to some departments will be Electrocity. This website is an online game that is sort of simcityish for those who remember when a part of the Social Science budget had to purchase it.
