Change, underestimated?

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

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.

technorati tags: collaboration school teachers

In the last week of school I made some comments about computers not really being about the programs on them rather the read/write web as being the future. The implications of the upcoming Microsoft deal with schools, whereby $33 Million will be spent on software over the next three years does get me thinking. Why do we as schools have to pay all this money, not just for Microsoft but also other companies when we are the ones who introduce students to the programs, effectively being the gateway for software companies.

With options such as Google Docs and open office there is no barrier to people having access to these programs for free. I am reminded of this when I see students with laptops doing their homework in word pad or Microsoft works because they cannot afford the upgrade to Office. As Teachers I believe we need to understand the tools available and use them as best we can.

Recently I have been using Freemind. This is Open Source (read Free) software for concept mapping. It also has the added bonus of integrating with Mindmeister which allows anyone with an account to edit the concept map live online.

The following video I came across thanks to Karl Fisch’s blog and is simply more food for Teachers looking for reasons to get Technology involved in their classroom.

When I see these changes in students lives I’m reminded by how different my 7 month old daughter views the world of technology.  A normal phone call for her is through the computer using iChat or Skype.  What will school be like for her?  Hopefully not exactly the same as it was for me.

So which web 2.0 tools are any good? and what is web 2.0 anyway? According to wikipedia web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, it refers to a perceived second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis and communication tools —that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O’Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and it has since become widely adopted.

This cartoon comes from toondoo a site which is free to register on like most web 2.0 sites and allows you to drag and drop cartoon characters, really quite simple especially for people such as myself who are artistically challenged. Some of the other sites I use and are worth having a look at are:

Flickr: A photo sharing site. Very handy for field trips and putting multiple photos on moodle as you can select a bunch at once. There are a lot of options on how you want to share the photos as well. The site is also usable as a resource with many of the photos being copyright free and you can download them in any size you wish.

Webnote: This is a tool for taking notes on your computer. It allows you to quickly write something down during a meeting, class, or any other time that you have a web browser available. You start by creating a workspace and creating notes in the workspace. You can save your workspace at any time and return to them from the same computer or any other computer. You can also share your notes with others by providing the workspace name (or url) to a friend.

(The reason why this is indented and in italics is because it is a direct quote from webnote)

The other really useful feature is the web 2.0 homepage. Netvibes, myyahoo, googlehome, Pageflakes and Favoor etc. what these do is allow you to have all of your important information in one place. Emails, news , weather, search, bookmarks, to do lists and Calendars, in fact the list continues. The only downfall of this is the speed of the internet here in NZ which means on some connections it is a bit slow loading up but give it a try and see if it works for you.

Not really web 2.0 but very much about professional learning and collaboration is Slideshare. Slideshare allows you to view any one of several thousand slideshows and get ideas to use in your own Powerpoints.

One week of school to go so here is a link to another teacher video, Animal School.

One of the most difficult things I find about being a Teacher is the constant demand for new things. So I hope by now a few more people in the cluster have set up their Del.icio.us accounts. It was really great to see teachers sharing their bookmarks and being able to find resources, like the maths powerpoints page which has now been added by several maths teachers across the two colleges.

The next major step for us to do is get the teachers moodle site up and running. I have given the Katmat site a bit of a tidy up and given all users teacher rights to it. All staff members have been added as users and for Katikati the passwords are the same as email, for Matamata they will need to be changed from the default.

In order to get the most out of moodle the following links give you both grapics and text on what to do

How to create a course , How to add an activity and how to upload files and just to finish with a flurry the following video from Sir Ken Robinson is quite inspiring.

And for those of you contemplating the school balls later in the year here is a link to some great dance tips.