I love PageFlakes

I know that I have written about PageFlakes before and raved about the convenience and value of it as a personal homepage and repository for regularly visited webpages, links and much more. This morning I opened up my pageflakes to see that it's been revamped again with lots of new widgets and flakes and a whole new look. There is even a flake now called Anything Flake which is one that anyone can use to design and create for themselves.

"The new Anything Flake lets you add any type of content from text to images or even build custom HTML applications. This Flake can be used to personalize pages and Pagecasts even more fully.

For non-technical users, its WSYWIG editor lets users write text, add images, or grab URLs or other content from the Web and drop it in. Essentially, If you can use Microsoft Word, you can make a Flake. For example, a new mom or dad might copy images from their digital camera and paste them into their Pageflakes page or Pagecast.

Advanced users can take the Anything Flake much further using HTML and Flash components.

COOL !!!

VideoJug

It seems that everywhere we turn these days someone is mentioning YouTube and the incredible way good videos on YOuTube can be spread across the world by work of mouth (or email) in a matter of what seems like minutes. In my experience most teachers still do not use the power and the ease and the accessibility of video to support, teach, enhance, influence, engage etc etc in the classroom. I have blogged before about Teacher Tube and the great things that are on it. Today I came across another site called VideoJug that is basically life explained on video. vidoes are tagged according to group or topic. e.g. How to clean your house the green way or How to put out a candle without blowing it.
People can even post requests for things that they would like to know and they then hope that someone will post a video to answer the request.
There is a whole section devoted to education with some amazing historical footage Check out in particular the section on learning.

Working with teachers and blogging for blogging's sake

I have been struggling my health a little bit lately, hence the blogging has suffered. But each time I think about it and not post, I realise that I'm losing the momentum. And I don't want to do that. The stream of thought that comes with blogging is really important.
So to keep things going I'm going to be a little kind to myself and rely on the generosity ( and brainpower) of others to ensure that I have something reasonably interesting to post.
Chris Betcher recently blogged about Bryn Jones 11 Things that make a difference in using ICT to improve learning.
Briefly they are
1. Emotional Support
2. A shared pedagogical understanding.
3. A constructivist philosophy
4. At least 4 computers per classroom
5. Help to access appropriate material
6. Just in time technical skills and support
7. Reliable infrastructure
8. Access to professional development(but not necessarily participating in it)
9. Links from home to school
10. Leadership
11. Flexible Learning Space
All of these factors ring really true to me in my role at school. For me personally I would add another couple. One is persistence. Most days I try to be like the blow up clown that is weighted at the bottom so that no matter how hard you hit it, it will keep bouncing up. I must admit lately I have really felt like staying down. But any change takes a long time and so in my role I have to accept that I just have to keep bouncing back, presenting ideas and encouragement over and over again until someone takes up an idea. (or until they are so sick of me they do it to shut me up)
Another is time. I am extremely lucky in my job to be able to devote a lot of time to learning and exploring exactly what is out there. (and I get paid for it!) If I was a full time classroom teacher I know I would still be passionate about technology but I wouldn't have the time to learn as much. I know I'm slightly twisting Chris's intent here but in Chris's post called The Challenge of being a Life Long Learner he talks about the relentless aspect of lifelong learning. And it's true. The nature of the web makes it even more so. So what teachers need is time to explore, to learn and to practise.
I'm sure there are lots more but that will do me for now. Thanks Chris and Bryn. You don't even know it but you are helping me through a rough patch.

Where do we go from here with WikiFolios

Years 7, 8 & 9 students all have their wikifolios created and I believe the biggest challenge now is how to support teachers in our school to feel comfortable and confident enough to create opportunities for the students to populate their wikifolios with examples that they have chosen that illustrate their thinking and learning. Last week in a PD meeting we brainstormed ideas of how we might do that. Teachers came up with lots of great ideas but the biggest challenge is still (I think) the organisation and preparation that goes with using technology. At our following staff meeting on Monday I tried to support that concern by showing some links on our school wiki to a couple of very useful and easy to use applications that can be embedded in the wikifolios. One is called SlideShare and it allows students to create Powerpoints, to upload them to the web and then embedd them into their wikifolios. And the second is called PhotoBucket. It allows students to create simple pieces of video and mash them with images, audio and text to create a cool little video which can also be embedded into their WikiFolios.

I need some advice

I have been thinking about the power of blogging and the way we use it in schools and as a reflective tool and collaborative tool for teachers and students. But I have been grappling for a while with the dilemma of where to place my blog. Until now I have been using blogger and have been very happy with the tools and ease of use. But my problem is that in many schools blogger is blocked and I wonder if this is not going to be an ongoing problem.
Edublogs on the other hand, is unlikely to be blocked in the near distant future and so I'm wondering if I should move over to edublogs. But what happens to all the posts that I have made up until now. What about the cool little add ons that I have on my current blog such as the flickr widget and the clustrmaps. I really love those things and would want to know that I can have them as well.
I think maybe the best thing to do is to contact a few of the regular edublogs users and see what they think about the value of edublogs and then do it. If you are reading this post and you have some thoughts I'd appreciate your input.

This is what happens when you get busy...the less pressing things gets let go. Notice that I say pressing rather than important. This process of reflecting and sharing and creating ideas is important but perhaps is the thing that gets dropped off the list when there are things to do.
But I'll try to get to it more regularly if I can.
But here is something that caught my eye and prompted me to comment.
One of the things that I rely on most is the community that is out there who are willing to share their ideas.
A leader in the learning community for many years (I think) is Bryn Jones. ( sorry Bryn if you are a young gun) He runs the very successful company, Atomic Learning which provides online tutorials for teachers and ICT educators all around the world.
It's great to hear that he has now entered the world of blogging. See Bryn's Blog. I'm sure his thinking will be worth following.-
A case in point is one of his first posts which shares a very clever video creating an analogy...no I'll let you enjoy it and take from it what you will.
Enjoy!

The challenge is how we respond...

This video link was sent to me from a colleague, Dyane Smokorowski who is a fellow Senior trainer in Intel in Kansas USA. It challenges us to think about how the web has developed and how it is changing the way we think, work and play. I will show some of our staff at school this although I wonder if it is still a little too foreign and new and will end up confusing rather than supporting their understanding. On the other hand we have to challenge and recognise that this is all happening under our noses and if we don't choose to understand we will do so at our peril.