Claire at GSNS and I set up Skype on her classroom computer and laptop last time I visited. This visit we revisited Skype and the wiki that Claire made last year. We discussed using a page on her wiki to present her action research, keeping a diary like a blog on this page.
Claire will be videoing two pairs of students interviewing one another at the end of their current inquiry topic. Next topic she will get the students to do this again, next unit, she will actively teach questioning skills and interviewing, the class will use Skype to interview experts etc to get more information during their inquiry.
Claire will be able to listen to the videos and measure how many questions are open and how many a closed before and after her teaching about questioning and interviewing.
The most difficult challenge Claire has at the moment is finding experts to Skype, we have found a few contacts, one problem is many people don't have Skype themselves, so Claire might have to spend some time convincing and assisting the people she wants to Skype to set it up. Many of the connections she makes will be a great resources for the cluster and it will be great if Claire can share that with us all at the end.
Some ideas or places to start to make Skype connections
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Independent learning
Today I worked with Natalie at GSNS, this is her third ICT contract so she is very familiar with action research. She is a confident user of ICT and made a comment that I hope everyone in our cluster makes in their own time. She said that she is quite happy now hearing about or being introduced to something now, and then just playing around with it and working out how she might use it. What she really wants are ideas, she might change these ideas to suit her purposes, or develop them further or in a different direction but she is at the stage where having a network of places to get new ideas is the most important thing.
We are all at our own stage of the journey, how comfortable we feel, how happy we are to take risks, but eventually we can all feel that independence as ICT users. As Natalie said, you don't stop learning or changing but you start to seek that out and are confident you will be able to achieve new learning. Independent learning is not about doing things on your own but it is about making decisions about your own learning and what you need to do to take control of this.
Natalie and I looked at lots of things that related (or didn't but were interesting) to her action research. I left her with lots of lins to follow up and get ideas. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does, she is keeping a blog to record her thinking as she goes, she will be able to present her action research from this blog at the end of Term 3 without extra work. Her journey will be recorded on her blog.
Allanah King on Sheryl Nassbaum- Beach's wiki
Links to all of Allanah's stuff
Rachel Boyd's blog
Rachel Boyd's wiki
Suzie's Links
Suzie's wiki of web 2 and software stuff
--
We are all at our own stage of the journey, how comfortable we feel, how happy we are to take risks, but eventually we can all feel that independence as ICT users. As Natalie said, you don't stop learning or changing but you start to seek that out and are confident you will be able to achieve new learning. Independent learning is not about doing things on your own but it is about making decisions about your own learning and what you need to do to take control of this.
Natalie and I looked at lots of things that related (or didn't but were interesting) to her action research. I left her with lots of lins to follow up and get ideas. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does, she is keeping a blog to record her thinking as she goes, she will be able to present her action research from this blog at the end of Term 3 without extra work. Her journey will be recorded on her blog.
Allanah King on Sheryl Nassbaum- Beach's wiki
Links to all of Allanah's stuff
Rachel Boyd's blog
Rachel Boyd's wiki
Suzie's Links
Suzie's wiki of web 2 and software stuff
--
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Sacred Heart online
Paul the principal at Sacred Heart has been working on a few ideas for his Action Research. He has been looking for something that is a real need and won't be additional to his busy role. Paul has decided to set up a school wiki, to communicate with the community, upload newsletters and have information for prospective families. He will survey the community first to see how they feel about communication currently and then at the end of his action research he can resurvey them to see if the wiki is a worthwhile use of his time. Will it make a difference?
We set up the wiki and Paul was able to move most of the information straight from various resources the school already uses in hardcopy. He made lots of pages covering the main information about the school just in that afternoon. We have the wiki closed down for now and a family password can be made for families to access the wiki, later we can open this up or open up part of the site with school information and password the sections with information that is primarily for the families. The advantage of having the wiki for this is that Paul and the staff can control so much about what happens with the wiki, the school will have real ownership of it.
Paul has been thinking big, seeing the possiblities for the school, if the school wiki links to class wikis, blogs, etc. I sent him a few wikis from other schools to look at how other schools have done this.
Paul is working on the wiki between now and when I go back putting up all of the content he wants. I'm looking forward to going back and getting into the next stage.
We set up the wiki and Paul was able to move most of the information straight from various resources the school already uses in hardcopy. He made lots of pages covering the main information about the school just in that afternoon. We have the wiki closed down for now and a family password can be made for families to access the wiki, later we can open this up or open up part of the site with school information and password the sections with information that is primarily for the families. The advantage of having the wiki for this is that Paul and the staff can control so much about what happens with the wiki, the school will have real ownership of it.
Paul has been thinking big, seeing the possiblities for the school, if the school wiki links to class wikis, blogs, etc. I sent him a few wikis from other schools to look at how other schools have done this.
Paul is working on the wiki between now and when I go back putting up all of the content he wants. I'm looking forward to going back and getting into the next stage.
Comic Life and Kid Pix
Jennie at Sacred Heart wants to use Kid Pix for the students to respond to work with. She plans to use photos of the children and have them write and draw on these and save the files for her to put together as a slide show. She can also have the students record their responses verbally.
We talked about some of the difficulties for very young children to tell a story using Kid Pix, to make a slideshow involves a few steps which can be a bit tricky, it involves quite a few steps, including careful saving of files which in the excitement that students have in making their story can be forgotten. Then they are disappointed at the end when they come to put their story together and can't locate the files for their slide show. Obviously with teaching and time the students would manage this. But we looked at Comic Life as an alternative, if students were wanting to put a story together.
At the virtual syndicate meeting yesterday (8th June) we looked at work done by children using Comic Life. We discussed the benefits of using one tool very well and not using a programme and then saying 'that's done' next thing. There is so much learning possible in Comic Life and in many programmes and ICTs, we need to ensure we make the most of this. Dave has put together a great resource on the wiki for Comic Life. We talked about showing students quality examples of work and really helping them to understand what is possible with the tools we are asking them to use. I have blogged before about compound learning, if you put the effort into teaching students to use a tool, letting them do something with it, you should continue to let them push the boundries with this so you get the learning benefit out of it, for the teaching effort you have put in. Too often we move on to something new instead of capitalising on what we've done.
This is often called deep learning, this happens best when you get students to transfer their learning to another context or problem, usually a rich task. So working with the same content but in a different way, perhaps getting students working with a novel you have read through drama, then taking pictures of this and having them use the pictures (in Comic Life) to retell the story in a different way. In doing this you give students two experiences to compare, this is where they would draw rich reflections on their learning. Just because you have used this teaching/ experience sequence once does not mean you wouldn't reuse it. If something works well we should reuse it. Obviously you need to add something fresh so things don't get tired but I think that if you are constantly doing new things, things get hard and we can focus on elements of activities which are not really meant to be the learning focus. In Queensland Government's New Basics Curriculum, assessment is based on these types of learning experiences (rich tasks).
We had a few timing and technical issues this visit but next visit, Jennie and I will nut out what she can measure, so that she knows that these learning experiences are making a difference for her class.
We talked about some of the difficulties for very young children to tell a story using Kid Pix, to make a slideshow involves a few steps which can be a bit tricky, it involves quite a few steps, including careful saving of files which in the excitement that students have in making their story can be forgotten. Then they are disappointed at the end when they come to put their story together and can't locate the files for their slide show. Obviously with teaching and time the students would manage this. But we looked at Comic Life as an alternative, if students were wanting to put a story together.
At the virtual syndicate meeting yesterday (8th June) we looked at work done by children using Comic Life. We discussed the benefits of using one tool very well and not using a programme and then saying 'that's done' next thing. There is so much learning possible in Comic Life and in many programmes and ICTs, we need to ensure we make the most of this. Dave has put together a great resource on the wiki for Comic Life. We talked about showing students quality examples of work and really helping them to understand what is possible with the tools we are asking them to use. I have blogged before about compound learning, if you put the effort into teaching students to use a tool, letting them do something with it, you should continue to let them push the boundries with this so you get the learning benefit out of it, for the teaching effort you have put in. Too often we move on to something new instead of capitalising on what we've done.
This is often called deep learning, this happens best when you get students to transfer their learning to another context or problem, usually a rich task. So working with the same content but in a different way, perhaps getting students working with a novel you have read through drama, then taking pictures of this and having them use the pictures (in Comic Life) to retell the story in a different way. In doing this you give students two experiences to compare, this is where they would draw rich reflections on their learning. Just because you have used this teaching/ experience sequence once does not mean you wouldn't reuse it. If something works well we should reuse it. Obviously you need to add something fresh so things don't get tired but I think that if you are constantly doing new things, things get hard and we can focus on elements of activities which are not really meant to be the learning focus. In Queensland Government's New Basics Curriculum, assessment is based on these types of learning experiences (rich tasks).
We had a few timing and technical issues this visit but next visit, Jennie and I will nut out what she can measure, so that she knows that these learning experiences are making a difference for her class.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
North East Valley Normal School
Today I was at NEVN working one-on-one with the teachers. They have just got netbooks in their classes, which are really hard for adults to use ( I felt like I had giants' hands when I was trying to work on them). I did get used to them, makes you think, how difficult is it for young children on adult sized laptops?
There are always a few problems setting up new gear and getting it all networked and working as it should. It is quite exciting what the teachers and students will be able to do with these new resources. It made me think about how important it will become for teachers to have resources that can move with them, such as wikis and blogs etc. When you change classes, schools etc it is bad enough having to physically move so many resources but if you have painstakingly set you computers up with games/software it is another job which will only become more frustrating with the more computers in each class. With web based resources all you need to do is set the internet up to your own web resource (wiki, blog etc), your resources can easily move with you. Of course there would be software you would want but most of your resources can be linked together on the web.
I spent a bit of time with Fiona sorting out a few issues she was having with Picassa http://picasa.google.com . This is a great tool for bloggers, you can make slideshows and collages with Piccassa and load them up in one hit onto your blog, rather than doing these one and a time.
Karen is linking her blog and wiki together, she is putting some help sheets on her wiki for parents to learn to leave comments on her blog. They will be able to link back and forth without noticing they are leaving the blog and Karen can take advantage of the properties of both tools.
Tracy is working away on her Reading wiki and will be adding some podcasted stories to her wiki. She will be using a nice easy but effective idea from Tania (Outram's wiki).
The senior classes have been working on their word processing skills and are ready to start their writing blog. The children will write in word and then cut and paste their story into the blog. There are ways of blogging offline, but small steps and understanding the process is an important part of getting to that stage. Eventually each student will have their own blogging login and will be able to independently blog. At this stage the process will be teacher controlled.
Michael's action research will be of interest to many people who are working with a screen, projector or interactive whiteboard for the first time. He is challenging himself to use the screen in his room as many ways as he can over the year and keep a diary on how he is using it and reflecting on the benefits students got from it. He is trying to ensure that he doesn't use this tool just for lecturing but that it enhances engagement and learning in his class.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wiki Users
Kelvin at DNI made a wiki last year. It is really impressive. He was thinking about doing several blogs this year, one for each of his topic. After looking at the reason for having the blogs it seemed that he could just as easily extend how he is using his wiki, to include children to have own logins and wiki pages to manage.
Kelvin will set up a username and password for each child in his class and give them either their own wiki or pages on an additional wiki to work on and take ownership of. This way the huge amount of work he has done on his wiki is not at risk of his class accidentally deleting or shifting things around (although it is easy enough to fix these issues, it is an added hassle).
Kelvin can control what students can do within the main class wiki and on their own. He is taking his wiki to the next level, it’s pretty exciting stuff.
He has also been busy making movies for the DNEye version of ‘Stars in their Eyes”. He has been filming interviews with the students using a green screen background which he plans to change to flying stars etc as the contestants are interviewed. He has these shared on his wiki too.
Kelvin will set up a username and password for each child in his class and give them either their own wiki or pages on an additional wiki to work on and take ownership of. This way the huge amount of work he has done on his wiki is not at risk of his class accidentally deleting or shifting things around (although it is easy enough to fix these issues, it is an added hassle).
Kelvin can control what students can do within the main class wiki and on their own. He is taking his wiki to the next level, it’s pretty exciting stuff.
He has also been busy making movies for the DNEye version of ‘Stars in their Eyes”. He has been filming interviews with the students using a green screen background which he plans to change to flying stars etc as the contestants are interviewed. He has these shared on his wiki too.
Compound Learning
I worked briefly with Jackie at DNI on comic life today. Some of the children in her class showed me the amazing work they had done in paint and then used Comic life to put together little cartoons.
Jackie was surprised by comic life, although it takes a bit of fiddling around with to learn the skills used in Comic Life were the same skills she was had learnt in word using call outs and inserting pictures and text boxes. We discussed the transferability of ideas/ skills from one programme to another programme and how the learning in one compounds and increases your entry level into another programme.
That is one of the arguements I would have for someone who didn't feel they have enough time to learn new things and investing their time in new ICT learning, the benefits are continuious it is not a task that is an end in itself. Learning something new often saves you time when you are working on things in the future. Compound learning, investiging time at the beginning saves you time, or even gains you time in the future.
Jackie was surprised by comic life, although it takes a bit of fiddling around with to learn the skills used in Comic Life were the same skills she was had learnt in word using call outs and inserting pictures and text boxes. We discussed the transferability of ideas/ skills from one programme to another programme and how the learning in one compounds and increases your entry level into another programme.
That is one of the arguements I would have for someone who didn't feel they have enough time to learn new things and investing their time in new ICT learning, the benefits are continuious it is not a task that is an end in itself. Learning something new often saves you time when you are working on things in the future. Compound learning, investiging time at the beginning saves you time, or even gains you time in the future.
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