Another way of learning (and teaching)

One of the things that I find challenging when supporting the development of teachers understandings of ICT and their applications in the classroom is offering simple explanations of what many of the applications are. It's all very well to suggest that a teacher create a blog to get their students to record a project, or create a wiki so that they can collaborate. Harder still is to explain how RSS feeds might be a very effective way to track how students are working on their digital portfolios or why podcasts might be a new way to let parents know about the history of their school community. I constantly have to remind myself that wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasts and many more are for many teachers still techno gobbledy gook and as such, cause angst and feelings of unnecessary inadequacy.
Today via a mailing list, I came across a very cool site called CommonCraft that explains Web 2.0 applications in simple yet entertaining. The appealing thing for me I think is that it uses little props such as drawings and cutouts to visually represent a group of ideas. Very useful for both teachers and students. They are even available for downloading onto the school's local server from Bliptv or YouTube.
Here's one that explains RSS.

John Pearce- an inspirational teacher

I attended the VITTA conference last week and if I say so myself I managed to choose some pretty amazing and inspirational teachers to listen to. One session that I really enjoyed was presented by John Pearce, a primary teacher in a Victorian school. Earlier in the day John had been presented with the VITTA Primary Teacher of the year. You know the deal, they start to read out the things that the winner has done and I must admit as soon as I heard things like this person has created some wonderful science resources, keeps a number of blogs, has his students create blogs and wikis for sound educational purposes that are recognised all over the world...well you know the drill. I reckon by the first sentence I knew it was John who was the winner. and it's well deserved. So I was very happy to go along and listen and watch him show lots of inspirational examples of how he has used these web 2.0 tools to engage and inspire his students. John very generously provided us all with a CD with many of his resources and ideas. I haven't yet had time to check it out, but it's on my list of things to do. There were a couple of little gems from John that I'd like to share. In explaining RSS feeds John used the analogy of a postman. In 'the olden days' we used to have to go down to the post office to get our mail. (without RSS feeds we have to go to the website, blog or wiki to get any updates.) And then they employed postmen. Now people didn't have to go to the post office. Their mail was delivered to them by the postman. (RSS feeds are the online equivalent to the postman) A cool analogy that is simple and easy to explain to teachers and kids alike.
Another great little gem was when John was talking about online etiquette and safety. He talked about the fact that he always posts the code of practice on the student blogs before they begin their online activities. He said that he used the "grandma rule" which is the idea that students should only post things that they would be happy to have their grandma read. How cute but cleverly in it's simplicity and clarity.
Finally the last gem I'll add here is that John uses RSS feeds for all his students so that he can be informed when students make changes to their blogs. This inspired me to do this with our students wikis. There were lots more fantastic ideas from John...thanks for sharing. Perhaps when I get to the CD I'll be able to add more.

Flock is great

After getting hooked on Flock, a couple of weeks ago it became corrupted and no matter what I did I couldn't download it again without the corruption message returning. And boy did I miss it. After some problem solving I finally found a little file that was causing all the problems, got rid of it and downloaded Flock again.
Flock is a great browser for anyone who is into online social networking community as it has so many cool little tools and widgets that you can add. For example, instead of having to go to my blog and log in to post something new, I can simply click on the Blog Editor within Flock and begin to write. I can also check out all my images in Flickr with the Media Minibar. I can upload new photos within Flock using the Photo Uploader and get all my RSS feed with Feed Reader. I'm sure there are lots more things that I will discover as I continue to use it.

Blogged with Flock