Blog Title: Di's blog - ICT in Education

Directly relating to the integration of ICT in education. Includes files and videos that may be used by classroom teachers to scaffold the integration of ICT into their classrooms.

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Common Craft videos

Common Craft have put out a great new video about Google Reader:

Cool Planet

Cool Planet is from Oxfam and is a site for teachers and students. Each part of the graphic has links to use.

For example I clicked on "Milking It" to go to an area where students are asked to compare the lives of two dairy farmers in very different countries.

How are they affected by international trade rules?
Who makes these rules?
What can we do to change them?

There are activities for the students to do as well as resources for the teacher. Great site for classroom teachers.

Educators and ICT usage

In Australia a report was commissioned, using McGregor Tan Research, to provide informed data to enable the development of new products and services relevant to educators and its key markets.

This findings from this report would, I suspect, be similar to one done in New Zealand.

Key findings include:

85% of participants use the internet daily but
41% said that they experienced barriers or blocks to effective use of the internet
a lack of investment in providing teachers with the techniques and strategies to use computers in their classrooms.

Free online mindmapping

Here are some videos showing how to use different online mindmapping.

Bubbl.us

Gliffy

Storm in New Zealand

Last week I was in Nelson to teach the students up there. During this time a storm hit New Zealand. A few doors from where I was lecturing a tree was uprooted nearly hitting a passing car. Someone videoed the scene as it was happening and posted it on YouTube.

I am pleased I was not outside at the time!

Portal to media literacy

Michael Wesch has a new video on youtube about 'portal to media literacy'. This is a great video giving ideas about what people are learning in the classrooms - he asks the students! He then continues about what is happening in the classrooms. He makes some very interesting comments about questioning which is so important in our classrooms. While he is discussing a university campus most ideas are relevant to all areas of the school.

He talks about Web 2.0 and its impact on education. Some really interesting view points.

Tim Berners Lee on the Semantic Web

Very interesting video from Tim Berners Lee about the semantic web. I do wonder a lot what is going to happen next and how this will fit into our education systems.

Graphical online dictionary

Visuwords is a great online tool for educators, writers, students etc.

You put the word you want to use in an area at the top of the page and press the "go" arrow or "enter".

"A network of nodes or 'synsets' will spring out from the word that you entered. A synset is essentially a single concept that is represented by a number of terms or synonyms. Synonyms are words with different spellings that convey the same idea. For example when you lookup "seem", you see that the word is connected to four synsets each represented by a green circle. Green denotes verbs so all of these synsets represent verbs. Two of these synsets have the lone word "seem"; one has two terms: "appear" and "seem"; and the third has three terms: "look", "appear" and "seem". Each of the four synsets has its own definition. Hovering over a node with the mouse will reveal all of the synonyms for a given synset as well as its definition. Some synsets will also show a few examples of usage. These synsets link to each other and to other synsets according to entries in the WordNet database.
You can zoom the model in and out by rolling the wheel on your mouse. You can click the gray background within the applet and drag the mouse in order to shift the whole model around so you can explore. You can grab any node and pull it away from the others to clarify connections."

By hovering over any word a dictionary meaning will be displayed.

Wonderful tool for the classroom.

21st century skills

Wesley Fryer has made an interesting video which is on his blog 'Moving at the speed of creativity' (love the name) about the skills our students will need to develop to enable them to take their place in society.

He lists the keys as helping learners of all ages to "regularly create, communicate, and collaborate with digital technologies as they further develop their higher order thinking skills."

Social Media

Another great video from Common Craft which describes the basics of social media. Social media allows everyone to be a producer and allows everyone to have their say.

Web 2.0 Projects

Terry Freedman has put together a series of projects that have been used in schools using Web 2.0 tools.

This is well worth classroom teachers having a look at to see how others have been using Wikis, blogs, podcasting, Google maps, social networking for example.

I will be using this with my students to give them some ideas of how these tools can be used in the classroom.

This is such a great idea to have these all together and share these stories. With the way all of these ideas have grown so quickly (and will continue to grow) it is so important that teachers do collaborate and share with each other.

Thanks so much Terry!!

Yenka software

Yenka software is:

"Yenka is a new range of modelling tools for schools, which let you simulate concepts and create content easily.
They are designed for use either by teachers or by students, on whiteboards or on individual computers."

They are now offering free Yenka home-use licences to students and teaching staff at recognised schools, colleges and universities. There's no need to purchase anything, and it's not time-limited. A teacher needs to register. Then, they provide licence codes so that both teachers and students can install Yenka at home.

Well done Yenka, great offer for students.

Online mindmaps for collaboration

Great tool that I am using with my students to create a collaborative mindmap is Online Mindmeister.

We have a free account which gives access to a limited number of maps each month. There is an option to purchase a premium membership which gives greater access. The free account allows for:
Up to six mindmaps
Ability to share and collaborate on maps
Ability to import mindmaps from Freemind
Ability to export maps as a PDF or RTF Ability to publish maps to blogs or websites
"MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the
web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global
brainstorming sessions.
Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map - and see each other's changes as they happen. "

Cool schools: where peace rules

Curriki, a nonprofit collection of open online curricular materials, has available for downloading free of charge a computer game called "Cool School: Where Peace Rules". It features animated characters, in situations at school, that ask children ages 5-7 to select an action for resolving a potential conflict, such as others crowding in line, refusing to share, or treating playmates disrespectfully. The game is designed to teach children about conflict resolution in an entertaining and appropriate context.

Also available to download are the instructions as well as teacher lesson plans and handouts for the class.

Boolify

Boolify is a fantastic search engine designed for children to use. It helps them develop their information literacy skills by becoming familiar with Boolean searching.

It illustrates how each change they make changes their results. These results are filtered through Google's Safe Search STRICT technology but as they say "no filtering technology is 100% secure".

There are also some Word documents to download and use in the classroom which have some activities about evaluating web sites, basic Boolean searching and refining search results. Currently being developed are documents about Venn diagrams.

Study about how children use media

The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) have launched a report, 'Seen and Heard: Children's Media Use'. 600 children between the ages of 6 and 13 were interviewed as well as their primary caregiver. The focus of the research was how New Zealand children use and respond to television, radio, the internet, and cellphones in the home.

This report is of interest to us as teachers as it gives us real data to show what children are actually doing. It tells us what they like, what they find disturbing and if the caregivers have any rules in place in regards to these. It is very interesting to see that many children are using the Internet on their own (53% mainly use the Internet alone). 29% of caregivers whose children have cellphones have no rules on how these are used. However children say:

When it comes to cellphone use, the most frequently mentioned inappropriate
behaviour is text bullying or playing pranks on other people (30% of children
mention this). Older children are much more likely than younger children to
mention this kind of behaviour (55% of 12-13 year-olds mention specific risk or
prank behaviour, compared to 39% of 9-11 year-olds and just 7% of 6-8
year-olds).

Relating to what disturbed children when using the Internet:

Sexual content or nudity (16%) most commonly upset children who have access to
the internet. Eleven percent mention internet-related risk areas that bother or
upset them, such as YouTube or pop-ups and advertising. Sixty-three percent were unable to mention anything that bothered them.

A very interesting report.

Learning to Change-Changing to Learn

An interesting video on YouTube. It is adult perspectives but very interesting and worthwhile to view. A great idea now would be to get student's views...

The Mystery Curriculum

Jamie McKenzie has written an interesting article on the Mystery Curriculum. This is particularly of interest to us here with the new curriculum that has come out. His article points out about the call for numeracy and literacy skills while such things as having the 'ability to manage ambiguity, wrestle with paradox and entertain mystery' are lacking. This all provides food for thought for educators as to what we want to achieve for our students.

Classroom blogs

My students and I have been looking at examples of classroom blogs made here in New Zealand. It is great to see just how many teachers have a blog which their students are using.

This graphic (showing part of a classroom blog) was put into Motivator (create your own motivational poster online - free). Students can then save their poster to add to their blog another great Web2 tool for students to use.

APA referencing

I get lots of queries about APA referencing. I receive another one over the weekend which prompted me to add this into this blog.

A fantastic web site I found is 'Son of Citation Machine'. I have used this for ages. It was previously just the Citation Machine but was used by so many people it crashed! They rebuilt it (thankfully) as the son of the citation machine. You just click on the APA referencing and then select what sort of material you are wanting to reference. You then enter the relevant details and click the submit button - this will then return your apa reference as well as how to cite in the body text.

Convert flv files to another format

I have been looking for a free converter to convert flv files to other formats as students often want to use these files in their multimedia projects.

I found a great program - Super © v.2008 - it is freeware and works like a dream.

I have made a flash movie to explain how to use this software and have embedded it into a PowerPoint presentation which is uploaded into my resources black box (left hand side of this blog). When it first appears you will just see a blank slide - it will play when you play the slide show (go to Slide show on the menu bar and down to View show). Feel free to use this.

Mindmaps and critical thinking

I have just been reading:

Twardy, C. R., (2004). Argument Maps Improve Critical Thinking Teaching Philosophy, 27:2

This is very interesting although is discussing a particular piece of software to create argument maps his main thrust can be applied to other software that does similar things. At first he was sceptical about whether the use of argument maps indeed improved critical thinking skills but...

He found that students needed practice and that the three major components are argument mapping, quality practice, and scaffolded, structured learning.

"Practice is clearly important: argument mapping without practice would not much improve critical thinking. Likewise, clear structure and expectations will improve any subject. Nevertheless, I suspect that argument mapping is the key ? that if a traditional critical-thinking class matched the amount of practice and graduated structure of the Reason!(software package) method, it would not show the same level of improvement." (p.13)

I suspect that many teachers using mindmapping software do not use it as fully as it is intended but just as a quick brainstorm. Many of these packages have templates to help teachers to use them to encourage higher order thinking skills.

Community Engagement in Education

Dr Cheryl Doig facilitated a CPPA workshop in Engaging the Community in Curriculum. Notes from the day have been uploaded to a wiki. This is wiki available for anyone to use as it does not have a password. Cheryl has uploaded files in here which suggest ideas for:

engaging parents and the wider community
student engagement
using technology to enhance community engagement
engaging with diversity

Voice thread

I love what Susan has done with with VoiceThread. There are lots of comments and thoughts about how this could be used in the classroom (click on the faces to the left to see/hear comments about VoiceThread).

Lookybooks

Love these and I am sure that children will too. They are from Lookybooks

Click on the pages to turn them. What a great activity for children both in the classroom and at home. Only problem is that you can't take it to bed! (unless you are using a laptop etc)