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.

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.

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.