Module 10

In my understanding, a Wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of information on web pages via a web browser. A Wiki allows a user to join in a multi-user situation to collaborate on an area of joint interest or work. A Wiki allows users to create and edit work. Wikis encourage group social interaction and collaboration allowing users to contribute and support each other at a time, and from a place that suits them.

Wikis can be a useful tool in an educational setting allowing differentiation in the classroom setting and facilitating groups to work collaboratively to create information and develop understanding. It allows for pupil centred learning where students are actively involved in the construction of their knowledge, enabling students to guide their own learning and allowing them to develop new channels for communication and collaboration. As more material is added the information available grows. It allows for everyone to build on what they know and gain more information.

A Wiki in the classroom situation can be used for a variety of purposes including story writing and research sharing. It allows interactive learning and support on that journey. Everyone brings their own slant to the forum and hopefully everyone learns benefits. The Wiki enables changes in the document to be tracked. It is possible to see who has made changes and when they occurred. It is important that information is checked, so that incorrect data or facts are not included. The collaborative effect of a group working together, needs to acknowledge this weakness and regularly check on co-workers information.
A Ning is an online platform for people to create or become involved in social networks usually related to a common interest. Sites are focused on an area of particular interest, as diverse as web 2.0 for teaching to scrapbooking for dummies, and allow members to contribute to the site, comment on contributions already made, ask question to be answered from the audience of the Ning and give support and assistance to readers and contributors.

At the primary level such platforms may not be suitable for the student but highly beneficial as support for the teacher where it allows membership to a focused, highly motivated group ready and ever present waiting to collaborate and share on the area of interest. Teachers have to be learners more so now than ever before as the technological changes expand and multiple rapidly before our eyes. We have to stay in touch. As a learner being a member of online communities assists in the task of staying up to date and head of the game in our efforts to guide the learning and assist in improving learning outcomes for all students in our care.

Students lap up opportunities to learn and explore new and different applications available online. Students find this motivating and become engaged and excited when using various products to enhance their work. This is what teaching is about: opening doors to new worlds and expanding horizons. Wikis, blogs, Glogster, Flikr and Bubble.Us are a few of the many tools that students can benefit from as they open up opportunities for all learners to experience success. These applications can inspire and motivate students by giving them other resources to present their ideas.

The use of web 2 tools not only enhances learning of our students but also as professionals our learning must also be geared along the same lines.

Module 9

Through Scootle, you can access, view and share interactive learning objects, images, audio files and movie clips. It is fabulous site where all these resources ready and available. You do have to spend some time looking through the resources but there is an abundance that are well developed and very appropriate. It is a great way to allow access for the children to great educational resources which can be used at school or home. This could make homework more exciting and perhaps even more meaning. Individual learning paths can be created for subject areas and for areas for further development. Students are able to work independently and on an individual learning paths that makes learning more enjoyable and interesting. It also allows for easy tracking of the children’s work. The big plus is that kids love it!
Social networking on line allows the user to develop relationships and links to others users with things in common. You can make friends on line and those friends can be from anywhere in the world which adds diversity to ones experiences.
There are variety of websites where people gather to interact with other like-minded individuals. People are given a forum where they have the opportunity to meet others, to chat, network and participate in events. There has been a huge growth in social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, particularly with our youth. Up to 90% of 15 -24 year olds have visited a social networking page in the last month. That is significant! It's the way the 21st century communicates today!
There are dangers associated with social networking, the most worrying involves online predators or individuals who claim to be someone they are not. Our youth, particularly must be educated to make them aware and alert to these activities.

Twitter is another online tool that allows you to write any small thing that you may think is interesting and want to share with your royal followers. It allows you to share short updates and you can follow the updates about people that matter to you, if you could be bothered!
We can be overwhelmed with networking tools. We are definitely social creatures.

Second Life
I will really have to invest a lot of time into second life. It looks amazing, simulating life experiences in a 3D virtual world and from looking at the video educational sites has many applications to the classroom situation. Won’t the children be fascinated by this!

Module 8

RSS Feed and Google Reader! This allows quick and easy access to the regularly visited sites. It gives notification of updates. A definite time saver. Finding the time to click through your favourite sites each day is nearly impossibile. But having that information come to you in one place makes is time effective and convenient. Plus you can organise your information into folders. Creating an account with Google Reader simple and the site was easy to navigate.

Module 7

Delicious is a way to store (and share) your bookmarks on the internet so no matter where you are, as long as you have computer access, you also have you bookmarks. I guess this is a good thing. It is like carrying your filing cabinet with you. Of course it still has the human factor of limitations as any filing cabinet - how did I file that one? The tags of course do help, and as long as you have an organized brain then finding your sites should not be too much of a problem.

I have always used the school website as the place to put sites that I want to keep. It seems to have worked for me so far.

The advantage of Delicious over using just the school site is the social part of Delicious. You can share your bookmarks easily and access other peoples favourite sites. So someone else can do the work - a definite plus for time poor teachers who are always looking for better ways to present and to motivate the children. And I think most of us are more than ready to share anything that we find that is useful. A two way street.

Perhaps this is the place to do it. I guess I will find out now that Delicious is in my browser.

It is easy to access and easy to use.

Module 6

What fun bubble.us is. Using this software mind maps can be quickly and easily made. How motivated would the children be to make"another mind map" if they could do it using this software. It is a pity their certificate has expired. I wonder if they will renew it or if the site will go down. In the nmeantime it is a neat application that could very easily be tranferred into classroom use.

Glogster is an interesting tool. This could be used in a variety of ways. It could be a good get to know you exercise for the beginning of the year where to children make a glog about themselves. Again the privacy issue comes in but that could be solved by using the educational glogster rather than the ordinary one. It could be used as a part of HSIE - telling about a country, or an event in history. The children would quickly master the concept and would enjoy adding their information in that format.

I had a go using some information related to what we are doing.

It is basic but a start. Here is the address.

http://stephanieharrison.glogster.com/edit/glog-first-try-stepharry/

Module 5

I am already somewhat familiar with podcasts and vodcasts. The children at our school are experimenting with them and the year 6 students last year produced some remarkable examples.
I have used Youtube quite a bit in the classroom and last year with my gifted group when we were looking at Macbeth. There are some great examples. A point of note though, they do need to be viewed before showing the class. One of the witches scenes (Polanski) was not suitable for those young minds, as fabulous as it was.
We have also used youtube clips with our unit on tornadoes (also needing previewing because of some colourful language!). I have also just found a couple of very useful examples of the poem ‘The Highwayman’ which I am using in our poetry unit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjfUT9KKAPg

http://www.strimoo.com/video/12158890/The-Highwayman-A-Tragic-Tale-MySpaceVideos.html

So easy and so quick! YouTube is a great resource for teachers adding that visual aspect that our kids enjoy so much.

I also use itunes and an ipod for my music. I am fairly new to these but am finding out more and more. The podcasts in the itunes shop seem endless.
I did like Storynory. It could be quite useful even in upper primary as they are good examples both of the narrative form – very topical at the moment – and good oral reading examples.

Still lots to explore.

Module 4

Things have not gone completely smoothly this module. I started to do the module at school with a few other colleagues and we all had trouble uploading our photos. They just would not load. I gave up and went home after about an hour and a half thinking we were doing something very wrong.

Wrong! Once at home I uploaded with ease. Must have been the server having problems! Phew!

Any way I have had a bit to do with flickr before as a recipient, with the family sending me photos via a link on my email. It is a great way for siblings who live in different cities and even different countries to exchange photos with each other. I have to admit that I have always let my partner recipricate with our photos. I have never explored it myself before and having had a fiddle, which I really enjoyed, I know I have so much more to learn here. But I like being able to do what I can do after a short time. The photos can be uploaded very quickly and easily, and shared with a quick email link. Seems simple and as an added bonus, a good place to store a back up of your photos.

Using Flickr with the children as a classroom tool could be fun, however privacy and security would have to be carefully dealt with. There would be many times when flickr could be use and the photos shared with class members and with parents - excursions, sporting events, science experiments, liturgies, etc. The description tool could also be fun with the children writing their own captions. The kids of course would pick this up very quickly themselves and we could have photos everywhere. This would be ok as long as the privacy issue is clear to everyone.

Here are some of the photos I used on my photostream. I got them all from flickr in a creative commons search. All my own photos are of family it seems on looking, and since these ones were to be shared I thought it best to use the copyright free examples.

Cupcakes seemed like a good idea at the time. I also learnt how easy it is to take photos off yout photostream!