Module 10 and Final Reflection

Well Bloom's is becoming technological - and I love it!

I remember learning about the taxonomy at university, and devising lesson plans that would coincide with these different understandings, so as to engage my future students with the ability to take control of their own learning.

Following a school wide programming approach of Understanding By Design (UBD), has allowed me to create meaningful learning sequences that enable me to critically assess my kids' ability to remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create! Now, I can use technology to engage my students, which can become incredibly difficult to do with Year 5 & 6 students!

And it has been fantastic to begin using these Web 2.0 tools in my programs. Wiki's have been a godsend! I've never seen my students so interested and motivated in researching and sharing their knowledge. They definitely look at Science in a new light - I can't wait to start using blogs, bubbl.us & podcasts next year across all Key Learning Areas!

So, what a great way to further our professional development. Being able to work through the modules at one's own pace, takes off the pressure. Friends and colleagues of mine made it our Thursday morning ritual, and were able to help each other become familiar with what seemed like such a daunting and sometimes overwhelming experience. Being members of an online sharing community has also aided in the improvement of teaching and learning experiences, and I am now much more confident using a wider range of tools to achieve student outcomes.

Module 9

"Scootle"

After conferencing with colleagues, I too feel that I don't yet use Scootle to the best of my ablility or use it to the best of it's ability. But....hopefully that will change!

Spending time downloading and exploring the Scootle Guide enabled me to become familiar with the abundance of resources it has to offer. The already established learning paths were sensational. I really like the idea of colleague sharing and peer teaching.

"Second Life"

Not yet convinced...I think it's great that we, as teachers, are learning the ways in which we can educate our "21st Century Technologically Savvy Students", but I worry that this sort of make-believe world may take away from living in the real world. We are already worried about the growing obesity epidemic and how children these days are spending too much time on computers - this is essentially adding to this problem. Whatever happened to taking the kids outside, lying them on the playground and allow them to reflect using all of their senses???

I do however recognise the advantages of learning through "Second Life". It allows the students to travel through time and to countries that would otherwise be unattainable. This gives students the opportunity to role play, as well as interact with each other on a different level. But I doubt this would be an achievable outcome for primary students, let alone infants - much more geared toward high school students.

"Social Networking"
As a frequent user of FaceBook, I can't really bag the phenomenon of social networking sites...but Twitter?????

C'mon - I really don't need to know what people are doing every second of their day (nor do I care) and I am in no way wanting to let others know what I'm up to every second of the day. Plus when do people find the time to be continuously updating their status?

And unlike what some people post and upload, I'd be very careful, as not everything can be completely private!

Module 8

Lee LeFever - this guy is great...I love everything in "Plain English" - and it's no different this time round as I explore RSS feeds and Google Reader.

A Rich Site Summary, wonderful for easily staying informed about the updated content in the sites I'm interested in. Sounds good, so I set up a RSS feed on Google Reader - I see all those orange icon thingo's with the white arches that remind me of visual sound all the time, so I figure this will be easy - I begin embedding all my favourite sites - hmmm "no feeds detected" "no feeds detected" "no feeds detected" - ahhhh none of the sites I regularly visit have the little orange icon thingo. Need to find me some of those.

Done...however I'm not keen on the whole subscribing idea. I actually find myself getting extremely annoyed when I get sent an email, with some sort of newsletter from a website that I possibly, accidently visited once, and then need to unsubscribe by trying to find a tiny little link at the bottom of the page which then requires me to send a return email.

So I find myself asking, why would I want a whole website dedicated to annoying web feeds?

But then I think more like a 21st century learner and realise, that it's actually a great tool for saving time because I don't need to visit each site individually. I can also now see that my privacy is ensured by not being obligated to join each site's email newsletter.

So I would definitely use this in an educational context for the above reasons, but as for all my other favourite sites...

I love how my Mac homepage directly comes up with twelve of my most recently visited web pages, along with a folded down little star

to indicate any new information.

Module 7

Sharing bookmarks with others - great idea!
Why it's referred to as Delicious - no idea!

"Adding sites to Favourites" "Bookmarking"...all are words familiar to me. However, I never really used them.

Instead of saving the places which I visited most, I simply began typing the first couple of letters of a site and the drop down menu would give me an abundance of options. Simple.
But what about when I used a friend's computer or a public one? The most visited sites on those machines, were not always my most visited site - so search engines were the next step to finding a place I couldn't remember off the top of my head.

So although I could see the benefit of saving sites as a "Bookmark" or "Favourite", to me, my way, was just as easy.

But then, once again, I am introduced to a way in which I can share all of the great information I might find and "tag" it too!

Now I'm sure not every one would be interested in the sites I visit most - So You Think You Can Dance; Cirque Du Solei; Sydney Trapeze School;

But, as many of my colleagues have already noted, I'm sure there would be people interested in many of the sites I find that make teaching that little bit easier, or those resources that little bit quicker...
http://www.sparklebox.co.uk

http://www.abcteach.com

or visit my Delicious Account
http://delicious.com/lauramjkerr

So in conclusion, the building of online communities, and creating and sharing not only information, but one's learning, is DELICIOUS...mmmmm - I can only imagine how many people have used this play on words - oh teachers, we're definitely one of a kind!

Module 6

Creating and Communicating online...I'm starting to get a slight case of brain overload now - I thought I was on top of everything, until I discovered this module - there is just a plethora of information, ideas, concepts, tools and technological equipment, that I feel like I can't keep up! I get the hang of one thing and before I know it, it's a "thing of the past" and something bigger and better is put in place!

All of these discoveries are definitely fantastic and I can see how wonderful these are to help with teaching the 21st Century Learner - but I feel like I'm only one step ahead of the kids, if that!

The next purchase for every classroom should definitely be a SmartBoard, and I know I would use it for so much more than just an expensive overhead projector. Once again, time and facilities are such huge contributing factors to getting all of these Web tools taught and understood.

Bubbl.us - I becme familiar with the inventive brainstorming tool last year and used it quite extensively...but like some of my colleagues, I was simply a visitor, and unable to save and edit my concept maps. Now I'm a member!



And I love how you can create an online ScrapBook and post it to your Blog - very impressive!

Looking forward now to our next Module!

Module 5

Digital Story Telling - "The modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling"...I like that quote - very much intended for the 21st Century Learner. And I think we'll continue hearing that phrase thrown around for the next few years or so - we, as teachers, need to focus our teaching on that of the "21st century Learner"

...and I loved the "Hefelumps" - what a great way to satirically display many teachers anxieties and apprehension when teaching with computers. As they say - "it is the way of the times".

Once again, I refer back to my trusty MacBook, when I say I have used digital storytelling in the past. iMove and iDVD have been great tools for me in terms of displaying photos, creating movies and composing music. I spent hours last year creating a digital photo story for my Year 6 class to take away with them as a final farewell to primary school, only to be presented with the incompatibilty of Macs and PCs - unfortunately my kids missed out and I learnt my lesson.

Since this occassion, I am yet to give it all another go - however, the amazing Year one team at our school have created some excellent retells of Fairy Tales through Microsoft Photo Story.

The only problem I can see arising though, is, as usual, time constraints.

Photos need to be scanned and uploaded before calling up each individual child to record their voices in to the one microphone, before then having to wait for your classes IT Lab time to then all be working on the custom animation of their story - where have the teachers found the time to teach every other KLA spelt out in the Term's program?

So definitely, the benefits of Web Tools are extensive, but as I'm only learning all of this now, I think it will take time before all schools are equipped with the resources and professional development in-services necessary to accomodate the "21st Century Learner"!

Module 4

Hmmmm Flikr....I became familiar with this online tool about 5 years ago when I started Flying Trapeze. A friend that I made there, from England, gave me a website and said "go look at my photos". So, whenever we wanted to see photos of ourselves flying, we'd just jump online! It was cool, because anyone could look at them and prospective employers could check us out - I was actually casted for a "Levi's" advertisment and a QANTAS one because of Flikr!

But now that I am such an avid FaceBook user and I swear by my Mac Book, I now simply edit my photos in iPhoto and upload shots onto my profile. I think it will probably be difficult for me to go back, now that I find this way so easy - but I can definitely see how using Flikr will be a great tool in the classroom!

The main reason why I would stay with FaceBook for myself and Flikr for the kids, is the simple fact of privacy. I definitely don't want my students asking to "be my friend".

Unfortunately nowadays we can't be too careful when it comes to online predators. Obviously, a lot of direction from the teacher would be needed in order to ensure that students are only uploading photos necessary to the work they may be undergoing in class.

Although I haven't been as impressed by this module as I have been by the introduction of Google Docs, I definitely want to give it a go! Now that my students have started adding their research to our Science Wiki, my next step is getting them to upload and edit photos of their work through Flikr!

By the way, this is what I do when I'm not runnning after kids!

Module 3

Ooooooooooooooooo...I like Google Docs - my favourite new discovery so far!

It wasn't until I watched the YouTube video showing just how "messy" sending and re-sending documents through email can be, that I actually recognised how often I have been in a situation where work could all be collaborated by a whole bunch of people, on the the one topic, on the same document - programming with grade partners initially came to mind.

I was also this week in the process of editing one of my cousin's uni assignments. We were attaching different ideas and sending them to each other over days and days. There was colour coding, italics and inverted commas everywhere - extremely difficult to keep track of! How fantastic had I known about Google Docs sooner.

But I needed to think about situations where it could be used in class? I know earlier in the year, working on Narratives, that the most time consuming task was conferencing and editing with the students on draft peices of paper (which, suprise suprise, were often lost, ripped, thrown out, stained...you get the idea). If I could introduce this online editing tool, I feel that a lot more constructive work would be achieved.

So, I wanted to get into it straight away - Talent Quest Time! Last year myself and one of my colleagues organised a Talent Quest with the Student Representative Council. "As part of the process, the SRC made up sign on sheets for people wishing to audition. Not only did we have over 40 people sign up, but the complete Sign On sheet was a mess - students crossing out other people's names, names scribbled onto the piece of paper. We both had a hard time trying to work out who was on the sheet and for what reason" (Thanks for your words Rena) ;)

My colleague then had a thought - we could create a Sign On Sheet online using Google Docs. All the students had to do was sign on electronically and not only did we have a neat, clear record of the auditions, we:
a) saved a lot of time having to type up audition names
b) could instantly see the list merged with all of the students' names on it.
She created a document and sent it to me. I edited it and am now in the process of talking to the students about it. A tough task ahead!

Module 2

Blogs. Blogs. Blogs. I kind of got the novelty of MySpace. Then went overseas and was "forced" to join FaceBook. Which I am now slightly addicted to. But it seems as if everybody just likes updating information about themselves. Sometimes I really don't care if someone is a fan of "cuddles in bed", but each to their own. And Twitter? No idea.

So, from what I can gather, creating a Blog, is just another way of using technology to tell people how you're feeling and what you're thinking and where you're going and why you're doing that and when you're doing this.

I guess it's not all bad. I can definitely see this being a great tool in the classroom. More so for high school though. As a primary school teacher, with a class of year 5 students that are all from non-English speaking backgrounds, that find it difficult to remember their passwords, let alone be able to communicate through postings, I have no idea how infants classes will be able to use this tool! Practice. Practice. Practice.

But I've created a WikiSpace for our upcoming Science unit on the Environment - visit! - https://environmentmatters.wikispaces.com/

Module 1

I'm starting to get a little overwhelmed with all of this! After looking through other people's posts, it seems like I have a lot of work ahead of me...still getting my head around Wiki Pages, but am looking forward to the rest of the modules!!!