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.

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.

On Wednesday I gave two presentations about by ACCE/NECC journey.

The first was to the ICT Management Committee and the second was to the Junior School Management Team.

Each presentation was quite different but talked about similar things.

For the ICTMC, I went through in chronological order the events of the ACCE Tour, stressing how important and valuable it was to be able to travel with a large group and have time to bond and discuss ICT before, during and after the conference sessions and visits.

The aspects and themes I highlighted were:

• the Auckland primary schools (eg Marina View) that were running TV studios
• the notion of collaborating on global projects to actually make a difference (eg Think.com - Oracle Foundation, iEARN)
• the sense that the use of portable computing and handheld devices were on the increase
• the notion of ‘cloud computing’ where on-line, predominantly free software was leading the innovation of web tools (eg flowgram, xtimeline, befunky)
• combined with on-line tools is the development of off-site file storage and shared documents (egGoogle Docs)
• social networking sites (Web 2.0) are a valuable way for students to collaborate, learn and share; and a great way for teachers to discuss and find examples of best and innovative practice (eg Edublogs, Wikispaces, Ning, Twitter)

In subsequent meetings I will take the ICTMT through examples of cutting edge learning tasks and Web2 technologies.

For the JSMT, I walked them through my first Flowgram (but without the sound). We then discussed some associated issues (eg how do we adopt these things?) and the possibility of taking them through a Web2 unit of inquiry.

The response in both sessions was very positive and I believe that there was the start of a shared vision of where ICT in our school could go.

The following day I was reading a new post on ‘The Thinking Stick’ blog, and I thought that this quote was very timely:

Our Principal, Susan Phillips, then presented on Web 2.0 and School 2.0. She reiterated that the web has changed. It has gone from software based to web based from individual to collaborative from offline to online from costly to free and from copyrighted to shared. We, as educators, must move swiftly as this shift happens in order to reach and engage all kids. We must focus on project based learning that is rich, real, and relevant. We must have engagement that precedes the content. We must encourage risk taking, ask for help, search for answers. We must embrace the web as participatory, and have students as designers for learning. To be successful we can no longer be digital immigrants teaching to digital natives

A few weeks ago I came across Flowgram (a link shared via Twitter). On visiting the site and watching a few examples, I signed up for a test account for their beta version. About 10 days later, I decided I’d better have a go (I’d already received an email asking me how I was going with flowgram – good follow up from the flowgram site!) So, one friday afternoon I spent about 30 minutes choosing and ordering the links that I thought were worth sharing (I could have added so many more).

My flowgram saved on the fly and then I was ready to try adding sound. My work pc let me down ungracefully. Although flowgram was very good at leading me through the 3 steps to making sure I could record, the settings of my computer didn’t like the idea and Explorer had no option but to crash. Subsequent re-openings not only failed to allow me to add sound, but also had my flowgram in a state of non-appearance.

Another hour passed and I gave up and downloaded and installed the latest version of FireFox. Well, I’m afraid to say that Firefox couldn’t show me my flowgram either. So, I posted a quick bit of feedback to the creators to my problem and went home.

The following day, I opened Safari on my iMac at home. My flowgram was back and having followed the same 3 steps that my pc didn’t like, I could now record audio! I had a little play with the audio and decided that I needed to write a few notes to help get me through the audio recording without too many ums and arrs.

Meanwhile, the people at flowgram had sent me an email replying to my problem and also leaving a phone number I could ring them on for help. I have to admit, that the service they provided, given that it cost me nothing to sign up, was fantastic. However, calling the US from here was not really going to be an option for me.

Monday night, the kids are asleep and I’ve finally bitten the bullet and recorded my audio. There is no way I’m going to listen to it back (well, not for more than 10 seconds, anyway), so I hope it sounds okay.

The upshot of all this is to say, that I think flowgram could be a great Web2 tool for education, both as a teaching tool, but also for students to use as a presentation tool. as well as the web pages and sound, flowgram can also highlight text on a page and allow you to add notes – both of these I didn’t try.

Have a look/listen to my flowgram and check out the Flowgram web site for other examples.

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.

Since discovering the CommonCraft ‘in plain english’ videos, I have become a real fan. Zombies in Plain English is one of my favourites.

For years, both personally and professionally, I have been interested in clay and stop-motion animation. In 1986, I had my Year 5-6 students use 8mm film to create clay-animations. They loved it and I still have the films they made. More recently I have had boys in years 4, 5 and 7 do clay-animation (some indirectly through another staff member) and boys in Year 5 and 6 use paper cut-outs in stop-motion animation.

While I don’t have access to an IWB, I’d really like to create some content for my maths classes. I mentioned this to Trudy on the ACCE08 Study Tour and said I just didn’t have the time. Her reply was ‘why not get your students to make them!’ Simple!!

So, for the first week of term 3, while some of my boys catch up on a few tests they missed, the remainder will be making their own maths videos, using the “in Plain English” approach. While I have suggested they use PowerPoint or PhotoStory3 (those that want to use stopmation just have to ask), I do still want it to be animated.

You’ll find the task here in pdf1 pdf2 format that includes a storyboard and an assessment rubric.

I’ll see how it goes and post the better ones next week. Fingers crossed.

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.

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.

itcetech2005-jamessurowieki-20050316

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

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.