Teacher Tube

I came across a post by Anne Bubnic who is a Tech consultant in California. She has a blog called Tech Savvy Teacher and writes about the way technology is changing teaching and learning. In this particular post she talks about the newly established Teacher Tube and how it was established by brothers Adam and Jason Smith. They have come up with a fantastic idea which I hope will establish a really positive environment for schools and teachers to share their videos. I haven't tried it yet but I hope that we will be able to embed these videos into our wikis and blogs just like we can with Youtube and Google Video.
But congratulations anyway to Adam and Jason for recognising that as we continue to recognise the power of Web 2.0 applications we need enterprising educators to lead the way.

Teacher Tube

While researching for a workshop for Intel Education in Brisbane this week, I came across this cool little video that Vicki A Davis has made and uploaded to Teacher Tube. I subscribe to Vicki's blog called CoolCatTeacher using Bloglines which has lots of great ideas and reflections about using technology in teaching.
My understanding is that Vicki is regarded as one of the leaders around the world who is using her blog to promote and share great thoughts and enthusiasm for the art of teaching. She was a finalist in the Teacher blog of the year and her class wiki won Edublogs Best Wiki in 2006
You may need to watch this a couple of times...I did...but it's message and design is very clever.

Digital Portfolios + Wikis

Last week I conducted a workshop for all staff and considered the question of how we are going to use wikis as the basis for student portfolios in Years 7, 8, & 9. The initial challenge for many teachers is to understand the concept of a wiki as an online website that can be created and edited by teachers and students, or anyone for that matter. And the second major concept is the potentially complicated notion of a digital portfolio as more than simply a repository for excellent work. Part of the workshop was to use the Intel Education Visual Ranking tool to rank different purposes for digital portfolios. The main purpose was to have staff discuss how they see portfolios being used with their classes and what learning, assessment and evaluation they might support.
The challenge is to create a shared understanding of what a portfolio is, how it is structured, how and what it demonstrates about student's learning and how it is used in parent/teacher/student conferences. The Victorian Education Department has some excellent online documents that support the understanding and development of portfolios through templates, documents and weblinks. For teachers in the department they access them through their department login although I believe that you can view some of the material as a guest. Try searching from this link for digital portfolios.

Creating our WikiFolios.

Now that students in Years 7, 8 & 9 have created their wikifolios the time has come to talk with teachers about how they might have students add to their portfolio.
This is obviously the much more challenging area of digital portfolios. What does each subject add to it to ensure that students and parents find it a valuable source and record of student's learning.

A change is as good as a holiday

Why change the title from Educating Anne to Think, Wonder and Learn with the Web? 'Cause I can I guess.
I'm thinking that this year will be a new opportunity to explore what is out there in www land and to create new opportunities for the teachers and students at our school to think, wonder and learn. It's funny, I was just thinking that I sort of think of the web as something separate, it's out there, it's removed from us.
But of course it's not. It's constantly referred to. Every business, every media outlet, every educational institution to name a few, would be mad not to have an online presence.
It makes me wonder about those who don't or choose not to have access to the web.
As time moves on will it be harder and harder for them to function comfortably with no knowledge of how to get to a website, how to send email, how to buy things online?
But in order to learn you have to use it.
And to use it you will probably want or have a need.
Part of my role here at school is to create that need for both teachers and students.

Working with Wikis

This term we have hit the ground running after a few trials late last year of using wikis as an online precence for students and also for class programs.
This year I am team teaching Year 7 & 8 IT classes. I am also currently supporting the development of ICT and higher order thinking skills in three other grade levels, Prep/One, Grade 5/6 and Year 9.
The wikis that we have created so far are all linked through our main wiki for Wedderburn College.
From there teachers and students can link to their class wiki and their own individual wikis. Through the generosity of Wikispaces we have been able to create these wikis as private so that only the student and those that they invite can see it. They will be without advertisements because Wikispaces deems them educational. As an added precaution I have asked students to create their log on and their wikispace with their Cases number which is a series of letters and numbers unique to each student. That also means that if I as a teacher want to see any of them I know the url. It does mean that students have to invite their classroom teachers to be a member of their wikispace but that isn't hard and is a good exercise in itself.
We have decided to call them WikiFolios. I'm not the first one to think of that term. Although I did Google it and came up with only 16 hits in English which is pretty amazing. So maybe I am a bit of a trail blazer after all !!! :)

Lost without my Laptop

Now that I am back in Australia after my amazing experience in Korea and in Bangkok I now have time to reflect on what I did. I have the time but not the technology.
when I left Bangkok my laptop, mobile phone and palm pilot got left behind at the hotel. It wasn't loaded into the transit van and I didn't realise until I got to the airport. By then it was too late to get it delivered to the airport.
So in between many many phone calls to Bangkok and to the courier in Australia, I have now been without my laptop for a week.
It has made me realise how much I do depend on it to do my work but also to function in my every day life.
With no laptop I have no address book for my emails, I don't have recent work (although thankfully I did back up important work before I left)
I don't have the regular software that I use in my teaching classes. I can't easily connect to the interactive whiteboard because I have to borrow a laptop.
It seems that everything that I do has added time and organisational things to be done.
It has made me think and reflect on just how much I do depend on it for my every day work.