Web 2.0 Showcase TSoF (21/9/06)

Wikis - Graham Wegner

"Wiki are simple websites that can be edited from within your internet browser. Knowledge of applications like FrontPage and Dreamweaver are no longer needed to create a purposeful website. Wikis also allow for multiple authors and maintain a history of every page change so errors are easily reversed. With high quality sites like Wikispaces, PBWiki and WetPaint offering free accounts, an education based project is quick and easy to get up and running. Add the fact that multimedia like images, audio and video can be embedded and this powerful tool is ready to make a big impact in education."

Note that some wikis will remove adds for educators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
http://danarichardson.pbwiki.com/
http://mylu.wikispaces.com/
http://pbl2006.wikispaces.com/
http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com/
http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/cegsa2006/cegsa2006
http://www.wetpaint.com/
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html

Blogging - Al Upton

"Blogs (web logs - great for online collaboration) are easy to establish and maintain.More than that, they engage and motivate ... they excite! Professional learning takes on a new meaning. Student learning becomes personally relevant with r-12 cross-curricula applicability. Bloggers record, publish and share their learning online. They read and contribute to other learners locally and globally. Connection, networking and reflection within learning are paramount in 21st Century online education. In a session of 'just-in-time’ learning (for ‘tomorrows lesson’); witness examples, management tools and strategies that promise to respect existing commitments and limitations."

Al said to feel free to contact him.

http://alupton.wordpress.com/
http://alupton.wordpress.com/resources/web2-showcase/

Podcasts, Flickr & Mashups - Mike Seyfang

"A recent Pew study shows that 57% of teens create/share some form of digital content. This segment will take you on a whirlwind tour of some of the things they are up to. Podcasts - what are they, how to 'catch' them, listen to them and create them. Flickr - what is it, how to find images, how to upload images and why its called 'social software'. Finally we will play a couple of 'mash-ups' that show how stories can be told using a new kind of literacy."

Mike was creating a podcast of his talk and was going to load it up when he got home. I am not sure on which of his blogs it was going to be though.

http://bloglines.com/public/mseyfang
http://edublogs.org//
http://flickr.com//
http://wholesalemeatmusic.com//
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/btn/
http://mseyfang.edublogs.org/2006/09/18/net2blazer-demo-script-draft/

Social Bookmarking - Yvonne Murtagh

"The most popular of the social bookmarking services, del.icio.us, is an amazingly simple but powerful tool that makes your old Favorites (or similar) bookmarks look decidedly old fashioned! Using a simple interface, del.icio.us, allows you to bookmark sites and tag them with key words for easy retrieval. However, the power of social bookmarking comes to the fore with its powerful collaborative features, accessing what others are tagging, sharing your bookmarks or tags and comments with the global community or a local group/team/cluster and tracking a particular tag in real time. The ability to create a network of trusted peers significantly enriches the experience. Start your own del.icio.us account and have your own digital library, accessible from any internet-connected computer."

Mentioned RMIT guide for podcasting and sixteen ways of thinking in web 2.0? Maybe some of her links. Advised us to make sure we make a note about what the article is about when you post it. Yvonne also commented about del.icio.us tags being embedded into a blog - must check this out, look into RSS and aggregator. She also suggested watching for conferences (links in deli.icio.us).

http://del.icio.us/vonnie?settagview=cloud

Personal start pages - Graham Wegner

"It can be tricky keeping track of all of your Web 2.0 applications spread across the internet – that’s when a personal StartPage comes in. Sporting names like SuprGlu, Protopage and PageFlakes, these portals enable the user to “house” all of their online connections in the one place. Using RSS feeds and URL shortcuts, your StartPage can be customised to your own taste, include searches for relevant information and can be as private or public as you wish. So, keep all of your web accounts and links in one place and sign up today for your own personal StartPage."

Personal start pages pull together everything you are using on the internet. They become your own one stop shop. Examples are PageFlakes, Net Vibes, Protopage, Web Wag (only 3 weeks old!), Super Glue (more blog like/aggregator, eg, Plunkers e-learning).

Could be used to create a class page for a topic, get students to decide what it is going to be. For example Graeme created one on oceans (see pageflakes link below). "Here is my sample IWB page on the topic of THE OCEAN. There is a Flickr feed with the key words ocean, sea, underwater, fish, a del.icio.us feed on the tag seas, a Google News feed on oceans and 2 PubSub web search feeds on Sea Life and Oceans (no results coming through at time of compilation)."

http://plunkers.suprglu.com/
http://www.netvibes.com/
http://www.pageflakes.com/wegner.graham.ashx
http://www.webwag.com/

Where to from here? - Deanne Bullen

"The Times They Are A-Changin’ – the alphabet, written script, the printing press, the ball point pen, film and television, the computer, the internet, Web 1.0, Web 2.0…. Each technological development has influenced literacy and literacy practices. The conclusion to the Web 2.0 showcase provides a brief overview of how new technologies rely on both old and new skills and understandings."

The following text is reproduced from the handout supplied by Deanne Bullen:

The challenge of new literacies

Assisting learners to be creative, critical and constructive viewers and producers of the Read/Write Web who can use information dynamically to construct their own understandings and perspectives that is informed by audience and identity.

How do we do it

• Keep focus on the learning not the technology
• Incorporate and model collaborative learning into the classroom
• Make sure learning is student-centred
• Make sure we are teaching students about critical literacy skills
• Connect students globally.

Features of blogs to assist with teaching and assessing in the classroom:

Blogs:

• are often centred around a theme using the authors own voice
• use persuasive writing as a key element
• invite conversation with others
• use the skill of summarising
• get right to the point
• use associated links
• often connect to other blogs
• borrow on the words of others
• are a mix of personal opinion and summary of other people’s work

Teachers who have used blogs in the classroom note that they:

• provide a trail that show a trail of knowledge built over time
• show a record of links, commentaries and analysis of a subject

Examples of how other teachers are using Web 2.0:

• Using blogs to post questions for experts in an area being studied
• Creating a wiki in an area of study to gather knowledge: e.g. Planet Math http://planetmath.org/ teachers compiling information about known mathematical concepts, with experts and others adding their thoughts
• Creating collaborative stories with each contributor adding to the story
• Posting reports and sharing data from around the world to research a problem
• Students podcasting, e.g. ESL Student podcasts http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Student_Projects/
• The South African government has begun putting its entire high school curriculum online as a Wiki http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/South_African_Curriculum
• Collaborative projects - The Museum of Museums – collecting links to the sites of any museum from around the world, from the worlds largest to the most obscure http://www.museumlink.com/

What are the actions educators can take:

• Create communities of practice
• Become connectors of information
• Model collaboration with students
• Guide students to become readers and creators who engage in critical literacy practices
  - what are possible meaning of the text
  - what do I already know how does this information relate to it
  - how does this information relate to other information
  - what alternative are there and where do I find it
  - who can I talk to about the information
  - what voices are silent
  - what actions should/can/will I take.(Modified from Freebody and Luke 1990)
• Understand that the pace of advancement is rapid and unforeseeable.

The Barriers

• Access to computers
• Professional

Deanne also handed up some brochures from www.educause.edu/eli, eg, 7 things you should know about videoblogging, 7 things you should know about wikis.

NB: Text above in italic describing the speakers topics reproduced from TSoF site.

LearnScope Start-up Workshop 7 (22/9/06)

Chat about chat

We all reflected on our experiences with the chat session we had with Michael Coglan. Everyone really enjoyed the chat and I think we were all suprised at how valuable an experience it was. I think the other suprising thing was how quickly the time went. I naturally was the only idiot that wrote down the rules! :-) Still, I thought they were very good rules and set up the expectations for everyone. Now, if only I hadn't put them in a safe place ... from memory they were as follows:

• don't worry about spelling mistakes
• when Michael typed something in CAPITAL LETTERS we all had to shut up
• have fun!

Michael was very organised and had a definite structure to the exercises:

1. Complete this sentence (brainstorm): ......
2. Next exercise - a shor t answer question for everyone......
3. So the next , and perhaps obvious question (for everyone) is......
4. Does anyone have a specific issue or question about .......... they’d like to ask the group? (time was spent here discussing everybody's individual questions)
5. De Bono's six hat exercise (see http://cispom.boisestate.edu/murli/cps/sixhats.html) where we were all assigned one colour and had to respond to a statement Michael posed to the group
6. Debriefing on six hat exercise
7. One word feedback on chat experience
8. Goodbyes - they take so long, you never quite know when to log out in case somebody is still typing something.

Only problems we had with the chat was sometimes the screen would freeze in Moodle. I ended up going to both scheduled chats because my screen kept freezing the first time around and I couldn't type anything. Sean bless his heart was typing text I had sms'd him. :-)

Digital Stories

John and I showed our digital stories. John's digital story went through the steps people had to go through to get their security license. I thought it was really well thought out and was very clever putting in photos of the actual places you needed to go. This would be very helpful for people.

Interactive Ochre

Marlene showed us this sensational new toolbox. It is really spectacular - oh how I would have loved to work on that project!!!!!!! We also saw a digital story presentation from Jeff Hunter who was the project manager. I would love to get this toolbox just to show the IT students what is possible.

Exploring Web 2.0 Technologies

We got into groups of two and then each group picked out a slip of paper from a bag Elena had. On the slip of paper was a web 2.0 technology for us to explore in our groups. After we had finished we all had a couple of minutes to present the technology we had investigated. Sylvia and I explored Writely - http://www.writely.com which is a web word processor that allows you to create, publish and store documents - it is like a cross between a word processor, blog and wiki.

Protopage

Protopage is a personal start up page that can be used to collate your favourite things on the web. Marlene demonstrated it and then each of the groups had to add a sticky note describing the web 2.0 tool we explored - http://www.protopage.com/learnscope. For homework we have to find another tool and to add it to page 2. This will be very useful to refer back to.

Podcasting

This is the third time I have seen Sean's presentation and I STILL want a bloody Mac and to create beautiful presentations and video podcasts of my own!!!!

Moblogging

Marlene demonstrated how to moblog by taking a photo and then sending it to her moblog. Amazing stuff, so fast. Requires 3G phone capabilities. Would be very useful for students who are out on a field trip, for example, find a OH&S risk etc. Costs $1.00 per photo to send. Marlene uses it to post photos when she is away on holidays and not near a computer to download her photos. Very clever!

LearnScope Start-up Workshop 6 (8/9/06)

Your Project - Rippling Outward

1. Do you think your project will grow and be sustainable into 2007 and beyond?
2. Who needs to be on board?
3. What needs to happen?
4. How does your organisation stack up when compared to others?
5. How can you influence the changes?

Organisational Change - an individual perspective
(Guest speaker: Alison McAllister)

• (powerpoint available)
• Leadership models: strategic, organisation-wide, teachers as leaders
• When looking for support align your project with the strategic plan, eg,
• (1) SA’s Strategic Plan: www.saplan.org.au
• (2) New Times New Ways New Skills: www.dfeest.sa.gov.au/dfeest/files/links/WDS2005.pdf
• (3) Better Skills Better Work Better State: www.dfeest.sa.gov.au/dfeest/files/links/nw.pdf
• Managers like hard data, eg, benchmarking - see
  http://e-learningindicators.flexiblelearning.net.au/
• Priorities: innovation in teaching and learning (including e-learning), creative capable people
• Culture: relationships, eg, bump spaces, program area morning teas, newsletters, people receive reward and recognition
• Life Based Learning
• Strategies: champions (interested in something), links/research, guest on discussion forum, quizzes, bump spaces (staff coming together in a casual manner)
• Rewards: good managers

A Handful of Pebbles - a group brainstorm

We all had to write down one idea on how to keep e-learning rippling out into the organisation. Once we had written the idea down on a piece of paper we then scrunched up the paper got around in a circle and "threw our ideas around". We then got into pairs and combined the two ideas we had ended up with into one idea.

Results of 'our' group brainstorm - thanks to Judy Forbes for collating.

1. Involve 5 people in a survey on e- learning and ideas of improving website…present findings of survey as basis for funds
2. Communicate and demonstrate new training methods to engage commitment and to implement new strategies
3. Promoting e learning across the organisation by encouraging the pooling of resources to benefit all
4. Utilise benchmarking as a way of highlighting good models to encourage other people/groups to implement as a strategy of best practice and providing quality
5. Networking either internally or externally to ones’ organisation to get ideas, feedback and support
6. Implement computer training by introducing a mentoring system in the workplace for staff using a planned and spontaneous approach

Lines in the Sand - a personal brainstorm

In this activity we used Mayomi to create a mind map of what we could each personally do to create more e-learning ripples in the organisation.

Digital Storytelling showcase

We got to see two digital stories - one from Chris and Deb introducing their project (very funny and really well explained) and another beautiful one from Judy who used Moviemaker this time (makes the voiceover much more fluid because it is not just image by image). They really are a great way to communicate.

LearnScope Start-up Workshop 5 (18/8/06)

Instructional Design

Anne Davenport: Instructional design = Learning Design, Designing for Effective Learning.

Continuum between activity based learning and content based learning.

Activity based learning

• search out information
• real life learning
• work based learning
• practice firms
• developing content through activity
• learn by doing
• constructivist approach (particularly with online learning)
• teacher is facilitator, ie, encouraging students to reflect, and to be active and involved
• internet driven
• content designed around things to do
• (note to self - is this a webquest????)

Content based

• teacher centric
• chalk and talk
• more passive
• chunked into manageable bits and then quiz at end

Scenario based learning

• case study
• presents student with a problem
• have to make a choice - give options

Software

• QUANDRY - use full version
• Moodle uses branching
• can do using powerpoints.

Check out http://designing.flexiblelearning.net.au - go to the tab "Learning Design" (same as instructional design) for ideas for elearning.

You can use content based materials but use activity type methodology, ie, discussion forum, email, phone conference.

Copyright & IP

Peter Schultz, Ph: 8226 4307, schultz.peter@saugov.sa.gov.au

• Protecting intellectual property - copyright, trade marks, patents, trade secrets.
• Also must be aware of licences and how resources are licensed.
• Should be using non-disclosure agreements, auditing IP, registering & managing IP

Sources of Help & Information

• Flexible Learning Australia: www.flexiblelearning.net.au/copyrightkitchen
• IP Australia Toolbox: www.ipaustralia.gov.au
• Copyright Council: www.copyright.org.au/
• AEShareNet: www.aesharenet.com.au

Online classroom debrief

We had a group debrief about our experiences conducting the online courses. Common thoughts included more organisation needed and more time meeting up with other facilitators needed. Lots of comments on how much time it took and also how much was generated from no content whatsoever! Elena to collate our comments - should copy here!

Digital Storytelling

We need Media Player 10 to run any digital stories and Photo Story 3 to create them. Marlene demonstrated for us - looks very easy. What a fantastic tool. I will get students to create their own digital stories in the Capture a Digital Image competency I teach in Term 4.

An Aside

We were asked not to blog for the main speaker today and I have made two observations when writing my notes up today. (1) I haven't written in my blog since - lost the momentum there somehow and (2) When checking other blogs today to make sure I didn't miss anything in my notes I notice that most other startuppers don't have anything recorded for this workshop in their blogs. Moral of the story - (1) Make a regular time to blog as Marlene suggested all those months ago and (2) let students blog if they want in class despite how distracting the typing can be!

What the !!!!!

I can't believe it is two months since I have updated my blog. So much has happened since then and life has been frantic with work and moodle classrooms and new training packages. I will try and put all my notes in some sort of logical order in here. Luckily I have kept written notes but they would be much more useful in my blog where I can access them from anywhere. I have also been to the CEGSA conference and eDayz since I was here last and have so many links and notes from those events not to mention of course Startup. Only one more to go I am devastated to say. :-(