Module 10 - Wikis, Wetpaint, Bloom's Taxonomy, Final Reflections

After realising that the problems with My Classes are too great and upon concluding that students don't particularly like using My Classes, I intend to make my focus next year in setting up Wikis. I've just looked at class wikkis at Casimir, via my brother Grant's invitation, and some of their work is outstanding. I am also a member of the Freeman Catholic College Wiki and the R.E Wiki from my current school at De La Salle Revesby. The issue still remains with the use of Wikis, how do you motivate students to regularly engage in this e-learning activity. Often we over estimate the ability and interest level of students and can not assume that they will automatically be interested in logging onto their class Wiki regularly. Time in class needs to be made to enable them to reconnect with this learning space and to assist them in the creation and sharing of their own blogs.

With Wetpaint, we are using this quite successfully at De La Salle Revesby. It is enabling effective access to a range of school based Wikis which will continue to grow in number and in effectiveness.

In understanding Bloom's taxonomy, it is important to really engage in e-learning professional dialogue to see how e-learning activities can be appropriately matched with the ability level of the class and of individual students. For way too long, e-learning has been restricted to some of the lower order thinking skills in which the teacher still remains the instructor. The whole focus of e-learning is too shift the responsibility of e-learning to the student and to challenge them to successfully move through the different levels of thinking skills so they are being appropriately challenged. Skills such as creating is what motivates students, otherwise it's more of the same at the lower order which for some students will be no better than some of the other boring activities that they have probably endured in some classes.

Now just wrapping up this Web 2 Course, all I can say is 'the journey has just begun'. In my role as an educational leader, I have the responsibility to continue to develop my own e-learning skills and to encourage others to follow. We now the task is to continue to integrate e-learning into our curriculum as technology is dictating, like it or not, how we learn and we interact. As teachers we also need to be proactive in challenging educational organisations, like the Board of Studies, to review their assessment procedures. The question that we are all asking as we move towards a National Curriculum, is whether or not a 3-hour sit down exam is the most effective way in measuring student competence and also in enabling a valid means of externally comparing students performance. At De La Salle Revesby, our Year 10 Computer Skills results have been amongst the best in the CEO but how much this is being tapped into in enabling excellent HSC results is an issue that we are working through.

Module 9 - Scottle, Facebook, Twitter

Module 9 - Scottle, Facebook, Twitter

Ar De La Salle Revesby we decided to explore Scottle about a year ago. It has proved to be an excellent investment and has certainly enabled much greater use of multi-media across the curriculum. The old days of purchasing $100 videos or DVD's are gone and now the correct scene of an appropriate film or powerpoint can be showed and written into the program. We have also invested in Squirk, which is not a free service and is a way of subscribing to a number of multimedia companies who we previously brought videos and resource kits from. Squirk and scottle has also opened up the possibility of converting the current storage area in the library used for DVDs, videos and resource kits into another learning area some time in the future. Using Scottie also avoids the problem of struggling teachers throwing a video on for a period without the necessary work. The use of Scottle has provided significant benefits to the College. For Economics, I found Scootle limited but certainly for Geography and History there are many resources that can be used. As with any multimedia resource, my tip would be to integrate this into the lesson rather than the old mind set of put the video on and hope for the best.

Prior to completing this unit I had joined Facebook because so many people kept talking about this being the main social networking tool. To my surprise, it actually works and I now have reconnected with a few friends that I had lost contact with. Obviously, some discretion is needed about who who accept as a friend as I politely had to decline some offers from some of my students to be their friend. For a few people I found that they rely excessively on Facebook and they want to give an hourly up-date on what they are doing. For me personally, Facebook is a site that I'll occasionally log on to but I won't be doing what some people do who use this as a daily means of conveying their thoughts. Overall, Facebook is probably the most likely way of socially reconnecting with those that you may have lost contact with but a degree of caution about privacy protection and time wastage needs to be made.

With Twitter, I've head alot especially from some of the American based television shows. I've created an account but to date have only one friend which I expect will increase as an invite has gone out - if this invite didn't get to anyone reading this blog just email a message through this blog with your details. Next year I'm moving to St Patrick's College Strathfield and I will be requesting a phone with internet access. It is at this point that I expect to utilise Twitter as realistically logging onto another social network site probably won't occur too frequently. I can see the value of Twitter in terms of short messages and up-date rather than text messaging. Glad I've done this section on Twitter because I've heard so much about it.


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Module 8 Reader Google

I can see that this function would be a great way of checking on breaking stories within chosen areas. Being an Economics teacher I have created a Folder titled Business and this will be a good way to scroll through the main stories of the day from the 4 or 5 web-sites that I have subscribed to. I can see that by then sharing this with my students they too can just scroll through the main postings within these web-sites. For example, I've subscribed to the Sydney Morning Herald and I read a number of journalist articles, particularly Ross Gittins. By scrolling through the SMH new postings I can pause at Ross Gittins new articles and read this and to ensure the students from my class also read this. Without having done too much as yet, I can see that instead of logging onto these 4 or 5 web-sites regularly, which invariably you don't do because of time restrictions, the key stories can come to me and I can decide which ones I'll read and what time. There is enormous potential with reader Google because it doesn't matter how many times I ask the students to check key web-sites, they simply won't do it.

Module 7 Delicious

I was fortunate enough to have Simon Crook, the Southern Region elearning Co-ordinator, do a Professional Development session at a recent HSIE Meeting on Delicious - thanks Simon. I have already been using Delicious but to have Simon guide us through reinforced and enhanced my understanding of this service. To have the flexibility of accessing my favourite web-sites on any computer at any time is invaluable and is just another way of having greater mobility and access to the IT services that I've become dependent on. I went back after Simon's session and tagged each saved favourite site and with each new favourite site I'll just continue tagging these. This certainly makes it easier to sort through the growing number of saved sites that I have and to more quickly access the site I'm looking for. I also enabled most of my sites to be viewed publicly and I now invite anyone who like to access my public sites to respond to my blog with your details. Similarly, I'd be keen to build up my network base and to track particular topics like Boys Education.

Overall, a module that will save time and will enhance my access capability and also to become aware of other new sites that people in my network group have found useful. In total, another very useful social networking tool which I would highly recommend.

Module 6

I found the bubbl.us site to be really useful. Mind maps are a really useful form of summarising and explaining to students the connection between different factors. In teaching Economics I often find students fail to see the relationship that exists between different variables and therefore struggle with the higher order questions where concepts such as explain, analyse and evaluate. In the diagram I quickly constructed, I drew a diagram of the relationship that exists between different levels of staff leadership within the College. I intend to extend this diagram and to use this at our Information Evenings at the start of next year. Many of our new Year 7 parents from our feeder schools don't realise who they should go to for particular issues and often will attempt straight to the Principal. The functions of bubbl.us in constructing mind maps is enhanced by the colour scheme and the sharing of this with members. It will be enormously beneficial for small group work and for catering for the visual learners and for the diagrammatic construction of summary notes.

With the glog site, this was a bit of fun in terms of playing around with the web-cam and creating a video and audio link. There is definitely potential here for small group work on an allocated topic. It would be easy to have as part of the assignment,to create a glog including the use of audio, video & photo. As with all other modules, take care in making this a private site. I accidentially forgot to do this and within minutes of creating my glog profile I had invitations from all around the world for them to be my friends.

Module 5

There is no doubt the selective use of podcasts is a way of engaging students and capturing their interests. I explored and joined a number of sites including podcasts.com, teachertube and wingclips. The wingclips site I found really useful as you can put the theme into the search and the clips will be outlined along with some details of that podcasts. Being an Assistant Principal I give assembly talks every fortnight to 650 students and 50 plus staff. By integrating a 1-2 minute clip from a well known video will help to engage students in the topic I'm detailing. The video clip that I will use at the first assembly back is from the movie 'We are Marshalls' and the theme will be motivation. I probably won't be creating too many podcasts but I will certainly be using podcasts that are accessible at assemblies and also with my Economics class. In having one hour lessons and having a multimedia unit, I'll be accessing relevant video clips more often into my teaching. For the visual and audio learners, I'll also be storing these onto My Classes for access by the students for their revision.

Module 4

Have worked through Flicker and created groups and am now sharing photographs with family members within this group. I can see emormous potential for the use of flicker in sharing and storing photographs and labeling the details, which can be added by the members. Worth double checking that you have limited access of your created photographs to members that you have sent invitations out. Some learnings as I worked through this which included there is a limit to the number of photos that can be loaded up free of charge and that photographs have to be on flicker before being added to groups.