This is the avatar that I produced for my voki. I chose the garden background, as I love gardening and picking flowers. In my hands is a suitcase, as I just love travelling. My two sons live in London and I really hope we can go there each year to visit them. The sun is shining in the background, as I love summer and warm sunny days. Unfortunately I have to wear glasses for reading so I am wearing glasses and I put the hat on my head to try and look ‘cool’. Jeans are worn for comfort and the shirt dresses it up a little.
What avatar did you produce and why? Describe in full and then give the website you used to construct the avatar.
Happy Birthday to classroom2.0! Cr2.0 is 12 months old today (well, actually, yesterday as the USA is a day behind us.) To celebrate, we held a party at elluminate with Steve Hargadon, its founder and someone whom I stand in awe of, for his hardworking contributions to the global web2.0 community.
What has this got to do with web2.0?……Well, nearly everything for me. In July, 2007, I joined classroom2.0 wondering what web2.0 was really all about. It was at this site that I made global contacts, friends, joined in discusions and forums, became a member of various groups of interest and participated in global projects etc . I learned so much about the web2.0 tools and their possible application in an educational environment.
To be able to embrace web2.0, educationalists do not necessarily need to be taught the skills, but need to make social networks where they can find people of like interests to further their understanding, learning of, application of and sharing of these tools. Connectedness is the key.
Tips for starting off with web2.0
Join active mailing lists for teachers. Many of these lists now have messages, requests, advice for web2.0 use. Connect with those people.
Browse around people’s blogs. Check out their blogrolls to see whose blogs they like to read.
Connect with these people byadding or inserting comments on their posts, with questions if needbe. Most are happy to reply back to you and connectedness begins.
Join in a global project. This is a great starting point and 2 ning groups are mentioned above or do a search for global projects.
Commence a social bookmarking acount with diggio, delicious etc. Networks can be created using this means.
If you teach in Victoria, join www.globalteacher.org.au and register your students for globalstudents. Heather Blakey has been one fabulous mentor to me and helped me through the blogging maze and introduced me to both experienced educational and non educational bloggers.
Commence blogging and join wikis. Let your friends know you have started blogging. Eventually, people will find you and comment, so make sure you categorise and tag your posts. Always reply to comments as this establishes another wonderful network.
Attend online pds. This another wonderful connecting tool as like minded people are also part of this environment.
Twitter - another recommendation high on the list where microblogging exists in 140 characters gives advice, discussions and lots of sharing.
Be prepared to work actively and fervently to establish a network. The rewards and dividends are high.
The majority of our students have set up their own blog space. A little risque as some of you might ask! After all some are only in years 4,5 and 6 and the even riskier end is year 9 and 10 teenagers. Well, so far so good.
Some have tried to put images on their posts, to give their stamp of personality but this has led me to talk to them about public perception, cultural impact and plagarism. Most students have immediately complied and removed possible offensive material.
Cyber safety is constantly being addressed and talked about. Most have created their own avatars and are in the process of adding them to their blogs and their comments.
Much of the time it is student directed learning as they work out what they might need and the image they wish to project. eg Many started creating a personalized header image, using the panoramic option in irfanview.
Some have added posts for Chinese (mandarin Chinese is our LOTE). The principal and various members of staff have commented on the posts, and comments from overseas are starting to come in. (A clustr map widget exists in edublogs now.)
A meeting was held with grades 4-6 parents and part of that time was spent outlining our goals with student use of web2.0, including blogging. (See the slideshare below for the content). One parent commented from the floor that her 11 year old boy no longer wanted to play game……the staff who were present held their breath for the next comment……(as there had been rumblings as to the need for any technology at their age)……. but the next comment delighted us all…………..he only wants to blog now!!!!
Many students are now adding their own posts and journal entries, adding samples of their photography. Students with learning disabilities are also taking to it with ease and some of these students have actually entered the most detail and posts into their blogs.
Some are using it as journal entries about their daily acitivites with others adding any school work that they are proud of producing.
Below is the presentation given to parents, using pedagogy to justify the use of web2.0 and predominantly blogging.
(Aussie, Aussie, Aussie oi!oi!oi!)
For the weekly “day in a sentence”, we will experiment using
· a voicethread respsonse and/or
· the usual text reply via a comment on this post.
I am priveleged to host this activity for the week, so thank you for joining in.
You will need a VoiceThread account to use this platform. It is easy to get one and is a great way to experiment with one of the most popular applications on the Web right now. Either follow the link to sign up on this VoiceThread or head to http://voicethread.com/ Make sure you apply for the free educational version if you are a teacher.
If you want to add your sentence, but you would rather not use VoiceThread, you can add it to the comment link on this post. Please introduce yourself, first, and then tell us about your day in one sentence.
(Instructions are below for adding to the thread)
User Instructions To add voice: press record>allow and then wait to see the recording text come up>talk your sentence>stop recording. Wait a few seconds and it will automatically play back your recording. If unhappy, click cancel and commence recording again. When satisfied, click save. Even when it is saved, You can delete your recording by clicking on your image and selecting the rubbish bin in the bottom right hand corner. Any problems or queries, contact me (via a comment on this post) or check out my contact details or Kevin. Thanks Kevin, for letting me be host for the week!!We look forward to hearing you, and your day’s experiences.
Grade 6 students are completing their digital story using MS Photostory on their global project “From Me to You”. Will save as email size for embedding in their blog.
Year 8 completing posts on their paintings of their house and uploading their artwork image. A digital camera has was used to take a photos of their painting, saved as jpg, size 380deg.
From my perspective:-
First post with teacher direction for student’s posts. Will use this as much as possible now.
Personal PD at SLAV (Victorian schools Library teachers Association) on Monday, Mar 3rd, for library technicians where Faye and I presented on our backyard blog, how we started and how to use the basic features of wordpress. Listened to two great speakers on “finding the needle in the haystack when searching online for specific item or topic” and another on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (abc) and some of their online resources for classroom and school use.
Used elluminate with Dr Ric Canale and Dr Pam McIntyre from the University of Melbourne, to interview 8 students and 4 staff for a survey on “online communities”. Our interactive white board and library were used for the actual interviews.
Student blog of the week goes to flurogreen. This year 9 girl, despite being involved in a lot of extra curricula activities and missing quite a number of my classes, has added a lot of posts and pages to her blog in her own time (and this, without having internet access at home). She has also uploaded her digital movies from last year onto a separate page about our local town, Hawkesdale and added a page for Chinese.  Her avatar is appropriate to her user name.
My favourite blog post of the week is from a person I follow and admire very much - Lizbdavis. I met her on classroom20.com and follow her on twitter and the work she has shared with colleagues is nothing short of amazing. The title of the post is ‘Understanding your 21st century teenager‘
This week we have no school on Monday, as Victorians celebrate labour day.
Crikey!!! I was stuck in the sinking ground watching one of my fellow colleagues drowning in the river and I could not move!! Was this the end of me and her?….
…..One of the web2.0 tools that I was not interested in using was virtual worlds – be it my age or the fact that my brain could not possibly cope with any more new tools than what I had tried. Although I introduced Patch, a webkinz or virtual pet to grades 3/4 , that was the extent of my involvement. Well that was until yesterday….
An email on my Australian teachers mailing list alerted me to a professional training session for Quest Atlantis, a protected virtual world for students. So Jess and I enrolled in the four sessions that were offered. So Tuesday, March 4th at 6:00pm was our start time.
As our home internet connection can be challenging at the best of times, I wanted to test it and was online at 5:15pm. A mad panic ensued when I realized I had not even downloaded the software. Finally I entered Otakhub where cool, calm and pleasant surroundings put me at ease. Initially there was noone around but soon Bron, our instructor appeared. I soon found out that I had to goto view>third person to actually see my avatar, and there I was a young, slim teenager with jeans, casual t-shirt and ponytails.
Gradually the rest of the 14 strong teacher group came on board and I had fun doing backflips, dancing a range of steps, waving, giggling and chatting. I even plucked up courage to venture into the cave but got claustrophobic and returned to the fountain. A connection to skype allowed us to talk and listen to Bron’s instructions.
Then I met a brightly clothed avatar who kept staring at me and sending me telegrams, which I could not work out how to find, let alone read so I chatted to her instead. Again I got myself lost, but she told me I was at the fountain. Chat allowed me to find out that she was a grade 4 girl from Glenelg SA. Soon, she had to leave as she had girl guides on that night in the real world.
I admire Bron so much. She was flat out finding all the lost members of the group, guiding them through all their pleas for help and advice. She gradually found us all, gathered us together and after we touched the crystal, followed her to teacherville.
After I hit a number of rocks I finally managed to get to the island and that is where one of our group fell in the water and was drowning. To my dismay, I got stuck in the ground and could not get up at all. After 5 mins or so, I finally worked it out. Two and a half hours after logging in, I left to return to my real world. Such a lot of fun and an amazing experience.
My challenge now is to complete some quests and choose my own avatar before the next pd.
Tips for me
shift + arrow allows avatar to walk
ctrl + arrow allows avatar to run
Goto view>third person to see personal avatar.
+ should get you out of near fatal experiences eg drowning, disappearing into earh etc
Today the students were going to have a guest teacher, Mr Jeff Whipple, outlining the nature of a wiki and explaining the nature of the 1001 flat tales global project. Grades 4 and 5 will work on the elementary wiki with China, Thailand, US, Canada etc whilst grade 6 will be involved in the middle school one. Jeff would use his laptop to demonstrate the wiki.
However this was no ordinary classroom as Jeff lives in Canada (read his blog for his version). He is the technology educational specialist for his school and is setting up the wiki for the project. With the help of our library  interactive white board, 50 odd students and half a dozen interested teachers watched with amazement, Jeff talk to us from his home, show us his pet cat, outline the project and then with the help of the SMART Technologies Bridgit tool on the IWB allowed us to view his laptop screen and walk through the wiki. His time was 10pm, ours was 12:00 midday. The weather was sunny and 25 deg C where we live, with students about to go to the pool for swimming classes. 15cm snow and -16deg C was the weather pattern where Jeff lives. Students are now fully motivated to start the project. Atlases came out and we found the city where Jeff lives. A great deal of geography was learned in 30 mins.!! Jeff was kind enough to come back to us 40 mins later to do a photo shoot for our local newspaper “The Warrnambool Standard”. The photographer and reporter had to make a 30 minute drive to our school.
How, did we get to know Jeff, you may well ask? Well, I was trying to sort out our “From Me to You” envelopes in the computer pod last week. My year 11 students were quietly and diligently completing accounting exs when I noticed my laptop flashing. Having forgotten that I was still logged into skype, I found someone was chatting to me.  My curiousity got the better of me. It was Jeff, introducing himself as he was setting up the wiki for the project. As we chatted, he offered to demo the wiki via skype to our classes. We took him up on that offer. My twitter network through Kim Cofino, from Bangkok, had alerted me to the existence of the project.
The second interesting event of the day, occurred prior to our skype session. I had spent several hours the night before working out a cyber safety lesson. Again, my twitter network came to the rescue with lots of interesting links, url’s, wikis and online videos. I had my year9/10s for a double class first thing this morning, but to my utter dismay, found the internet was down and all my lesson plans with it. Students started writing a post for their blogs whilst the principal and I tried to sort out the internet. Some time later, it was back on. Students quickly checked out their blogs and found they had comments on them, some from our staff, students but others from Holland and the US. Well………..that was it!!! My lesson plans never went into action. Instead, the students initiated their own learning. They wanted to email back the people who commented, some of whom were similar age students in the US. Then, they checked out those student blogs. Students who are often reluctant readers and writers were fully engaged reading the various posts. The boys even found a post on cricket by one of the US students. That encouraged them to wrote a post about the local cricket team they play for.
Next, they wanted to add a clustrmap to their blogs etc. The double was finished all too quickly. An authentic audience makes such powerful learning!!!
….and to top our day,our first two cards from the US schools in the “From me to you” project arrived. Excited students will open them tomorrow morning.
Last week, despite personal mental and physical exhaustion coping with first week back at school, one crashed computer lab and intermittent internet access, my students on Friday, set up their own blog space. We decided to enrol with global students, as our experience with edublogs did not work last year. (possibly our school’s tight security.) Following are the steps we took.
Pre-Learning activities
Viewed some online blog sites, including our own backyard site (where I would grab their writing and images and post them online myself) and discussed content and appearance.
One group was given the responsibility of commenting back on a youthradio blog that we will be involved with this year. I quickly checked content and spelling to ensure comments were suitable and discussed etiquette and the need for saying where they were from. (but no personal details!!)
Going online
Each student applied for a blog, checked their emails, activated the response, got their username and password) and then logged on.
Each student had to set a minimum of 5 goals for the year, three had to be school related and two could be personal. (a very interesting excersice and will summarize the results at some stage as it was a rather eye-opening one)
We kept the post simple except for some basic formatting and will look at presentation more fully next week (although the geeks were off and running and found that option early on.)
Students then created a cartoon to illustrate some portion of their blog. Most are still working on this and it does add interest to the post. They created the cartoon, made a screen dump and resized the image and saved it through MS Paint. Then uploaded it into their blog.
I am in the process of linking all their blogs to this blog and will ensure that I have administrative rights over their blogs.
As our students as a whole call themselves technokids, each year level has techno in front of it. Scroll down this blog and some year 9s and 10s (technoteens) Â have completed their first post. (eg Tarzy, Dhugsy) Even our challenging group of ex-year 9 boys were focused on the task and enjoyed the challenge.
Evaluation
All students, from the least to the most literate, completed 5 goals (only a few struggled to find 5)
Would have liked a little more depth to some of their goals and had to push them to explain some of their sporting goals.
They enjoyed making cartoons and enhancing the presentation
The geeks were off and running - discovering all sorts of areas of wordpress that took me months to find
The comments we made on youth radio ended up in Kevin’s spam box. They were quickly retrieved. Hint: email your host informing them that comments have been made.
Post lesson acitivity: will endeavour to reply to student posts with comments plus try and get form teachers to do so as well.
 With great interest, I read a blog post by a USA administrator concerning the need to introduce teachers to social networking rather than showing them ‘how to use web tools’. These social networks are then the main sandpit where skills can be shared, taught and new tools compared. This made me reflect on the networks that I have used and am using, their role and part they have played in my use and acceptance of the emerging technologies. On the same day I received a comment from Rash Kath, one of my e-colleagues who commented on my posting re my 10 new year resolutions and she encouraged me to share with my colleagues and keep this paramount for 2008.
Australian Mailing Lists
Yr12 IT Apps The first and still one of my most important networks. A Victorian teachers mailing list that allows teachers to share resources, assessment materials, advice and moral support when teaching year 12 IT. It is a branch of www.edulists.com.au, another great subject or interests list.
www.classroom20.com This fabulous site has forums, discussion groups etc on a ning based website. It is a must and was the real impetus to me successfully web 2.0 due to the networking presence. Found many friends here to work with on collaborative projects.
www.education.ning.com A result of classroom20.com for those interested in working on ning sites for educational purposes.
http://del.icio.us An online social bookmarking site. I have established a network of people to follow. Allows me to see what they are bookmarking and keep up with some of the latest additions to web 2.0
www.twitter.com This is the latest one that I have joined, and possibly my most time consuming one (if I should allow it) and yet , maybe my most valuable one. Twitter has become increasingly popular as a website where short tweets (messages) of no more than 150 words are posted online to be read by other people on twitter. A network is established by following people and than having others follow you. Hopefully the following match the followers so that real collaborative teamwork can proceed and engaging conversations maintained. Websites, blog postings, general advice and just plain banter are shared. Comments can be acted upon immediately. My tweeter colleagues have provided me with a caring sharing community and introduced me to many important contacts, educational pedagogy and web 2.0 references.
http://curriculum.globalteacher.org.au/Â Magic Garden Project Has led me further into cyberspace, starting with Australian global teachers and then onto meeting others who are not teachers but experienced bloggers, digital artists, poets etc.
edtechtalk Is an online radio type program produced in the USA where discussions of all thing web 2.0 and emerging technologies take place.
I firmly believe that social networking will be the key to success in using the emerging technologies and to encourage more and more educational staff to come on board the web 2.0 journey.
Reflecting on the past year, as one usually does when the old year ends, it is time to write up some of the observations that have been made on the impact of web 2.0 in the classroom. Associated with this are some of the highlights experienced in both teaching and learning.
The school year started in its usual manner, with the complication that I had lost an accounting class (I was devastated at the notion as I love teaching accounting) so instead, and as we are a prep to year 12 school, I picked up grade 3/4 and 6 IT. IT classes commenced and progressed as usual, with more advanced skills in using MS Word and Excel being taught to the higher levels and basic skills to the younger levels. Some Dreamweaver, Flash and other multi media software skills also commenced.
……Enter the world of web 2.0 in June 2007…….
My classrooms changed, necessary skills taught took on a different nature, our classroom walls started ‘crumbling ‘ before our eys, software types were now often online and motivational levels increased dramatically. Below, is a summary of some of the impacts noted.
Del.icio.us started the web 2.0 journey. To our surprise and delight, google picked up one of the grade 6 girl’s page and had it on their first page when a search was made on “Penshurst and volcanoes”. This really motivated students and boosted personal confidence of those involved.
Our backyard blog was initially created with grade 6 students. Comments were made on their work by unkown people in the USA, Hawaii, Australia etc Suddenly, there was an authentic audience for their work, not just a teacher assessing assignment work. Excitement with, and pride in their own work increased amazingly. Students researched some of the geography and history associated with these comments and self-learning became real. Motivation levels ran high and students were off taking digital photos of their backyards or scanning existing photos into their blogs. Parents and community members also became involved.
Year 9 boys, (our most difficult motivating group) actually leapt out of their seats to help experiment within our school, the use of skype. They were utterly engrossed for 110 minutes in helping our staff who had not used skype before, learn the processes.
The fantastic work that year 9 boys will produce when there is an authentic audience and a global one at that!!! Skype continued to excite when in the last weeks of term, we used this for videoconferencing with Korea. See my previous posts skype is the limit and bluetongue lizards, vegemite and cricket and skype is so exciting.
   Year 8 students, a rather ‘mottled lot’, also leapt out of their seats period 5 on a Friday, and as a group and yet quite independently of my assistance, produced clips to create a video to show those ‘Los Angeles’ kids what ‘footy’ was to the Aussies.
I am harrassed and almost “bullied†at various times as I walk down the corroidor by students, often students who normally take little interest in school work or who rarely produce work of high quality or who suffer low self esteem, wanting to know if I have put their blogs, movies etc online yet. I even get queried when I am out in the community!!!
Learning from students who are 9 and 10 years old!!!! When we got our webkinz Patch, my grade 3 and 4 students worked with me as a class, using a datashow and website projection, on getting started with our virtual world. They were actually teaching me even though they had no experience in virtual worlds, themselves. These, surely are our digital natives. See the collaborative blog. The walls of our classrooms have started to crumble, so students are talking using vokis and wikis to students in other countries and producing videos of our school, area, farms, towns etc and sharing them via a ning website with those students. We have ’seen’ inside the walls of various other global classrooms and homes, sheds and backyards. No textbook could have the same impact.
Skype will continue to have an amazing impact on our classroom walls in 2008. When we started video conferencing with Korea, we simply asked questions of each other in the 50 minute blocks but by the fifth day, we were showing them vegemite, cricket demonstrations, aussie meat pies, blue tongue lizards, and in turn, we saw a snow clad school yard, complete with man sweeping away the snow from the school paths, Korean mobile phones/technology and Korean school uniforms. This is such powerful learning, despite the language barriers.
Virtual and online teamwork with other enthausiastic staff in other countries is now the norm. No longer am I a lone teacher in a reasonably remote rural school, struggling to keep up with the latest in technology but am able to update and communicate with global colleagues via blogs, social networks and ning sites.
Grade 6 and year 7 students show no hestitation in emailing me either for advice or thanks for uploading their work or getting them involved in projects. I even got emails when I was on long service leave in Europe from grade 6 girls, asking for help with their video editing software and I was able to duly respond overnight, to allow them to continue on.
A renewed excitement and revigoration has returned to the classrooms with an overlap into other subject or class areas. Other staff are showing an interest and starting to come on board and it is hoped that this will continue and expand into 2008!
