Beyond NECC (was ACCE Study Tour 2008)

In session 2 we staretd by discussing what a ‘blogroll’ could be and boys were shown how to add links to their blog page on classroom21 (not called a ‘blogroll’ in classroom21 but acts as the same thing).

Once again we talked about cyber safety and not giving out critical personal information. Boys were shown how they could change their password (when I signed them all up to classroom21 I used a default password) and a few other account preferences.

The main task was to watch the video ‘Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’.

We watched about the first ten minutes (skipping a bit here and there) and boys were encouraged to watch the whole video in their own time, and we discussed the theme of childhood dreams.

The boys were then introduced to the website 43things and signed up using their school email address and just their first names. They were encouraged to start making a list of some short, medium or lifelong goals and having a look at people who shared their goals and what other goals they had. They also needed to add a link to their blog page for their 43things page. Tom’s 43things (via blogpage), Francesca’s 43things, Clare’s 43things and Bill’s 43things.

Finally, we talked about the fun of having someone leave a comment on your blog and that the purpose for this was to create a discussion. Homework was to leave a comment on 3 other boys’ blogs. At this stage the comments were set to be moderated so that any offensive, silly or totally off topic comments would be deleted. The boys were aware of this and responded in the main, appropriately. They were also encouraged to write posts not related to the tasks I set, but keeping in mind that anyone has access to read their blog.

In term 3 I began a unit of work with each of the three Year 7 classes that involved using blogs and exploring a small range of web2 tools. Naturally, we started off, after a brief discussion, by watching a CommonCraft video.

Having looked and used, to a small degree, edublogs, wikispaces, ning and blogger, I decided to try 21classes as the blogging tool. I liked the way that 21classes offered an overiding way for the teacher to manage and facilitate the student blogs. As well, it offered a class home page that the student blogs used as the ‘parent’ to the blog. Three months later and while I still like those aspects of 21classes, I find that some of the ways of doing things are a bit clunky eg you have to import a video and then link to it, you can’t embed the video. If I was to repeat this program in 2009, I’d be tempted to look for an alternative that still had a two-tiered structure.

Session 1: In this session we talked about blogs and what web2 might be. We discussed the internet as a social networking tool and the boys gave examples of what they were using at home. Some where on MySpace and Facebook or a web-based multi-player game site. We also emphasised the need to keep personal details off of the blogs and why they needed to do so. Before writing their first post, we talked about the need to introduce themselves to their potential audience. Their task was to use Inspiration to make a mind map of ‘things they were passionate about’, to export their map as an image and then to upload it to their blog. Their first post would include this image and would give a little more detail about one of their passions.

If I was doing this again, I would probably try using mywebspiration or mindomo instead of inspiration to keep in the Web2 theme.

Year 7M class home page. Andrew’s ‘About Me’ post (scroll to bottom of link)

Homework or follow-up work in their classroom was to read some of their classmates’ blogs.

One of the rquirements for running the unit was for the classroom teacher to join in with all the tasks just as if they were a student. This worked really well for a number of weeks. Bill’s blog, Francesca’s blog, Clare’s blog.

Thanks to Jo McLeay’s twitter for this one. (You can find her blog here.)

A Yr 7 class in Huguenot used iMovie to create book trailers. What’s a book trailer, I hear you ask?

Well, have a look and listen here. It’s probably worthwhile having a look at the assessment rubric first to understand what was required and thus to appreciate what the students have produced.

A link to the rubric can be found on the same page as the trailers, but here is a small screenshot just in case you don’t have Excel.

I would love to see our Yr 6 and 7 students doing some of these and while it would be easier on an iMac using iMovie, PhotoStory or Windows MovieMaker could both do it.

There might even be some Web2 tool (site) that can help to create something similar.

I have always shied away from these as I wasn’t sure how to use one.

Having returned from NECC with dozens of websites bookmarked (most of them blogs) and having discovered CommonCraft videos, I thought it was time to proceed.

Step 1: Watch “RSS in Plain English” here or here

Step 2: Sign up to Google Reader here (note, I must have signed up to at least a dozen different web sites over the past 3 weeks!)

Step 3: Visit blogs and web sites and click on the orange icons  to add their RSS feed to Google Reader. In some cases I just copied and pasted the blog web address into Google Reader.

I have to admit, that I’m not that thrilled with this. Sure, the web now comes to me instead of me going all over the place, but the way they are presented in Google Reader is nowhere near as nice as on the actual web blogs.

Google Reader blog.

How Sue from the Edublogger uses RSS feeds.

Here is a quick RSS set up guide by Will Richardson rssquickguide. It also talks about using RSS with students.

And, “RSS Is Changing the Web – How Will It Change Our Classrooms?” by Quentin D’Souza can be found here rsslinks.

Have any tips on RSS? Post a comment.

The second keynote was a couch session, where a presenter from NBC interviewed Jim Carleton and Mali Bickley in Today show style. They are 2 Canadian educators who have become really involved in global projects with their students over the past 5-6 years.

These have been through the iearn.org web site and include some of the following projects:

My Hero Project - this is a good one to start off with. This project is done through learning circles which provides very good support for teachers new to global projects. A teachers guide to learning circles link.

Art Miles Project - also good for beginners.

My Dream World Project - This project provides an opportunity for the students in schools around the world to share their ideas about their dream world through writing essays, prose, poems and short stories or drawing pictures.

There is much agreement here that schools need to start teaching kids 21st century skills through authentic tasks that require higher order thinking skills. Global projects that can make a difference help our students to be global citizens and to develop the skills they will need.

More about the keynote. And more.

James Surowieki was the first keynote speaker and spoke about the irony of group wisdom- it is only when a group is unaware of its intelligence that it can be effective. He suggests that a group of mixed intelligence can predict future events and solve problems to a higher degree than the smartest member in the group.

itcetech2005-jamessurowieki-20050316

His book “Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds” discusses this in detail. An older presentation can be found here. 

Judy states in her introduction to the group “I was responsible for the ‘modernisation’ of 80 school libraries, the centralised systems associated with information delivery, as well as a being a key integrator of Web 2.0″

I would be very interested to know the criteria, or briefing outline, Judy was given in order to transform the “Resource Centre into a leading 21st century environment”. It would be interesting to know what the Resource Centre was like before (e.g.how it functioned within the school)and what the school is expecting.