Jul 1st, 2008 by EngageMe
This entertaining presentation explains how to use PowerPoint and Articulate to quickly and simply create engaging interactive learning resources.
It’s from The Rapid e-learning blog
Jun 14th, 2008 by alexanderhayes
Jun 5th, 2008 by alexanderhayes
May 25th, 2008 by alexanderhayes
A couple of years back it was…” excuse you ?”
Now Sydney Institute has its open Wordpress blog happening and Western Institute has kick started its wiki and so on…
It’s good to see capability devleopment having its day and that leaves us to revell in the new offerings of what “21st century” might mean. Hopefully there will be changes in templates between pages and things that resemble what web 2.0 really is about - CR 2.0.
Apr 24th, 2008 by alexanderhayes
We live in a time of flux where the disruption of the web seems to be coming into focus for educators keen to employ networked learning and digital technologies as part of the teaching>learning equation.
This “noise” is challenging systems and organisations and the very frameworks within which we once felt was an extension of our workplace…now fast becoming an integral compenent of it.
The Australian Council for Educational Research and education.au supported by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), are presenting a series of symposia to explore and illuminate the possibilities and the realities of the implementation of the Digital Education Revolution (DER).
To start my own research and investigation of the concept I’ve begun a Diigo group which explores what DER means for those interested in slipping tags and other notes to the soup of brilliance out there on the net.
To kick start the discussion I spoke with Janet (aka.lucychili) and recorded this as an MP3 for you to download about value, challenges facing educators, policy, safety online and a host of other things whilst sitting here in Orange NSW nursing a broken knee.
* Note - language warning - if you are sensitive to Shakespearean English then be aware one or two slips of the colloquial occur during this recording.
Links Worth Exploring
Learning In The 21st Century
Digital Education Revolution
StudioIncite
Graffiti Research Lab
Join DER
Diigo DER AcknowledgementsMusic included in this recording sourced from CCMixter using the following file_ends search :
East of Vienna | DJBLUE | 2006
Hear Me (ft. 21Pele & Tacet) | DJBLUE | 2007
Identity of Self (Andrew MAze mix) (ft. Hisboyelroy -) | Andrew_MAze | 2008
Black Is The Night | scottaltham | 2008
Apr 20th, 2008 by ReganHarding
Next Tuesday evening, April 29th, Get Up is inviting all Australians to ‘start a conversation and begin the process of turning reconciliation into reconcili-action.’
All Australians… Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous… are invited to attend or even host Reconciliation GetTogethers, where they get to yarn about reconciliation and “build a united country from the grassroots up.”
The process is simple… just enter your postcode, or look at a map, to find the closest GetTogether!
Everything at Get Up is simple… And effective….And able to add value to classroom discussions and experiences.
Where politics and politicians might fail to inspire young people or offer meaningful platforms for democratic participation… GetUp! can step in and allow – through user-friendly and colorful multi-media-messages – opportunities to engage in conversation and action.
Alongside providing digestible snippets and links to important information and news… It also provides users with opportunities to CHOOSE to engage in active citizenship, to hear and be heard on campaigns of importance and interest to them.
Fiercely and politically independent, it has played a significant role in many political success stories including increased funding to the ABC and also the thwarting of the Howard Government’s attempts to re-instate its policy of detaining children.
Another powerful tool and space for youth… and run by youth… is Vibewire. Again, a non-profit and non-government media organisation, Vibewire is designed to provide young Australians with a forum where they can comment on matters pertinent to their lives.
It’s simple to join and then submit articles, blogs, images, and video or podcasting material in true Web 2.0 style!
The opportunities through both these sites – to add vibrancy and participation to the classroom and beyond… (and meet many competencies) are limited only by choice!
Apr 14th, 2008 by ReganHarding
When students commence study at TAFE, it is our role as teachers and
coordinators to ensure that they have participated in an induction process.
An induction that not only identifies learning and assessment expectations,
rights and responsibilities – but also behavioral rights and responsibilities.
Specifically, students are asked to sign a document that states they have
viewed and understood the contents of a Bullying and Harassment video.
Any research on bullying will often point to Schools as one of the most
common places for this to occur… followed quickly by the workplace.
Bullying and importantly, cyber-bullying , is something we therefore need
not only be aware of but also understand our roles in encouraging
appropriate behavior online, just as we encourage appropriate behavior
in classrooms and on campus
Last night, 60 Minutes featured a story on cyber-bullying … a somewhat
typical piece with the tears, swearing and swipes at cameramen – but
also some useful tips on blocking, deleting and reporting online abuse.
Interestingly, a lot of the advice comes from a young person… Tom
Wood “16 year old Aussie boy and media and government cyber-safety
advocate.”
I believe this is useful information to consider and importantly discuss with
young people – to equip them with the skills and knowledge to avoid
unpleasant situations and then begin to handle them if necessary.
I particularly like his advice to parents and adults in warning against
over-reacting “78% of kids are worried if they tell an adult; they will be
disconnected from the computer, thus prohibiting them from admitting it.”
The young girl who featured in the 60 Minutes feature finished the story
nicely by encouraging young people to “Speak up for yourself. Don’t
hide it, ’cause hiding it just makes it worse. You need to, like, talk to people.”
The net, with forums, blogs and other social networking platforms is an
Ideal medium to support teaching and learning about the internet and
responsible use of online and digital technologies.
**Check out a CD Rom available through Australian Teachers of Media
(ATOM) – CyberSafeWorld that aims to empower communities, schools,
and families to raise responsible, resilient, and ethical digital citizens…
complete with lesson plans about internet safety and lots of other resources
and tips…
Apr 6th, 2008 by ReganHarding
I’ve shown this video quite often to classes of young students - to stimulate conversations around body image and the media… however also felt a parallel duty to discuss sensible diets, lifestyles and choices (there’s a big difference between striving to be a thin model and a healthy human!).
This ‘parody’ video came hot on its heals and helped do the job! There’s at least a few lessons and exciting (vital) discussions in these two vodcasts…
PS. Did you know that ‘body image’ is the now the number one concern for people under the age of 25 - followed by the environment and ‘family issues’ - according to the results of a 30, 000 strong survery undertaken by Mission Australia late last year (Callaghan, The Weekend Australian Magazine/ April 5 - 6 2008, p. 14)?
Mar 30th, 2008 by ReganHarding
The Le@rning Federation develops free online curriculum content for all Australian and New Zealand schools and last month released a paper: Multimedia Tools and Applications using Digital Resources.
This is a great directory featuring an A-Z list of possible multimedia creation tools that allow the importation and customization of digital resources. There’s many free, open source, applications and then a range of others for purchase.
I’ve examined many of these and quite a few meet my 4 F’s (for tools to use with young people in particular)… Free, Fast, Fun and Flippin Easy!
CamStudio and FreeScreen Recorder are open source free video streaming software programs that allow you to record screen and audio activity and create AVI video files. These are great tools for making how-to demonstrations and digital stories.
With the CD Brochure Builder you can simply drag and drop your content files to create your own multimedia CD information resource that will display your content in the sequence you require. The program design and operation are very simple and absolutely no programming is required. Scroll half-way down the page!
Comics, picture albums and how-to’s are just some of the applications available in Comic Life – which has a 30 day free download – long enough for some fun lessons! Pictures, speech balloons and captions can be dragged and even web cams can be used…
PhotoStory is a good old favourite that allows users to capture movies, create slideshows with photos, add special effects, sound tracks and narration and save all of this in small files. It’s a free download through Microsoft.
VoiceThread allows users - using microphones or phones - to make annotations and comments about photos. This is a very user-friendly application, with very simple steps to follow, although you might need it hit ‘refresh’ when you first arrive due to some problems with old cookies.
Hot Potatoes is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions. The suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and cloze exercises.
Quia is similar in that it also allows you to create educational web pages, games or tests – immediately accessible.
Descriptions of all learning objects released to date are available in the following catalogues. Some catalogues also list samples from our digital resources and collections ranges.
Happy exploring!
Mar 24th, 2008 by ReganHarding
This and other questions such as “Does this count towards anything?” are no doubt all too familiar to any practitioner working with youth. I think these are very smart and prudent queries and ones which we all find ourselves asking as our lives become increasingly busy and complex.
Unless we can identify the worth of a task in relation to our responsibilities and/ or goals… Then why do it?
The question has been asked: “Did the students visit the wiki voluntarily between the weekly classes, or did you have to provide some sort of “motivation”?
A great question and hopefully one any teacher would contemplate before designing a learning tool or task! What motivation is there, or could there be, for students to do this??
For the Byron Community Campus (BCC) blog, primarily used as a tool for students to engage in public debate, there was a very obvious motivating factor. It counted towards meeting the performance criteria for units in which they were enrolled.
However for using this, and also the Get Skilled blog, the motivators were not so concrete…. moving more towards the abstract… A mirror of the journey the adolescent brain is embarking on itself.
Growth towards metacognition.
The motivation came from us – together as teachers and students - understanding the blogging platform as a useful metacognitive tool – to assist us in monitoring and regulating not only our thinking, but also our behavioural processes.
Online blogging provided an immediacy and answerability quite powerful, yet comfortable for the young people. (I do think this had a lot to do with most of the students’ regular use of MySpace – their commenting and blogging through this platform).
However, given what is researched and understood about brain development and the other changes taking place in the young adolescent, it has been shown that teachers can improve student learning by doing the following things:
1. Present limited amounts of new information, to accommodate the short-term memory.
2. Provide opportunities for students to process and reinforce the new information and to connect the new information with previous learning. (Encourage students to talk with their classmates about the new information; have them debate or write about it; create small group discussions.)
3. Provide lessons that are varied, with lots of involvement and hands-on activities. Brain stimulus and pathways are created and made stronger and with less resistance if they are reinforced with a variety of stimuli. (Create projects; use art, music, and visual resources; bring guest visitors into the classroom.)
4. Provide lessons and activities that require problem solving and critical thinking. Brain growth is enhanced and strengthened through practice and exercise.
(Taken from Brain Development in Young Adolescents -Good News for Middle School Teachers)
Blogs do all of this – so clearly there’s more than one motivating factor!
