Change, underestimated?

Yes the title of this post came to me from Go dog go which I am reading to my daughter, slightly better than Hop on pop. But I digress. The English faculty at Katikati college are doing some great work between the class blogs and wikis it’s awesome to see what is being produced. Of particular note is fun with fruit which has had 1600+ views on slideshare.
[slideshare id=65163&doc=bananaslide1102&w=425]

For a quick look at some of these sites check out

Lana’s class blog, Nat’s class blog, and Emma’s Wiki this is just the beginning I’m sure of some great work. For any help setting up your own blog/wiki either send me an email or I’m sure these guys could tell you how easy it was.

Came across this presentation thanks to the cool cat teacher blog and feel it sums up some of the changes that the working world is having. I am always interested when speaking to family overseas how their working week is structured on different times with schools open later and earlier but teachers doing shifts, wonder how that would go down here

[slideshare id=42907&doc=meet-charlie-what-is-enterprise20-29751&w=425]

technorati tags : work school2.0

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.Technorati Tags:blogging, work

Over the past few months I have been trailing various offline blog writers. On Windows I’ve tried Zoundry which I found very easy to use and Microsoft Livewriter which while in Beta (still in development) is pretty good and I guess my pick for xp. On the Mac I’ve tried Ecto and Marsedit and have decided to go with Marsedit. My reasoning is it was the easiest to use while trailing so many different ones. I would like to hear any others using anything better and of course there is online which is what I use anyway since it is seldom I don’t have a connection. Mind you Edublogs has been down for a week for an upgrade and it was handy to have somewhere to get things down to upload later. Thus when I’ve finished editing a bunch of posts they will be there.

Technorati Tags:
blogging

Stumbling upon the Paris in Prison photos on a wiki site made me realise the scope of wiki’s for a wider purpose, not that I’m encouraging you to create a fan site for the socialite but it was funny all the same.

While I find writing a blog entry a chore at times, contributing to wikipedia or a wikispace is fairly easy. All you have to do is click on the edit tab and while having rubbish written on a wiki does happen it is easy enough with PBWiki or any of the other free options such as Ben Nolan’s and  Foopad really it is a matter of personal preference. For some examples of ones being used by teachers check out this wiki or this one on pbwiki. Some of the quotes from the page express its simplicity

The results have been great. Simple to use (no reading of instructions), bugs
that we had with uploads were fixed without having to report them, and the
service is fast.
- Doug Chang, private tutor

technorati tags:wiki, education

This from the Guardian UK

Want to start a blog in Iran? Then you’ll have to register it with the government - which has recently begun to require that all bloggers register at samandehi.ir, a site established by the ministry of culture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. All you need do is give your personal information, including your blog’s
username and password - otherwise it will be filtered and blocked so that nobody in Iran, and perhaps outside too, will be able to access it. This has led to an outcry among many Iranian bloggers who consider the net an independent and free forum for expression.

And then I followed the links to the President’s personal blog wow in english and farsi. The comments alone are enough to help with a social studies class.

technorati tags:blogs, world, iran, censorship

Quite important to share this information from David Warlick about blogging and while the statistics are from teachers who use blogging so they will be reasonably positive, I enjoyed the statistics regarding the care they take with their writing on a blog. I guess for our two colleges we have to get over the students initial issues with writing rubbish on wikis and blogs (eg the attack on the katikati college wikipedia entry) but this will pass and then we should hopefully see similar results to those quoted in these statistics. Also for a great blog site for students check out the schol site from ncowie.

technorati tags:blogging, blogs, warlick, education

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