Images!

Posting images online is easy and effective.........but what about PRIVACY? It is so important that these days each student has parental permission when a mentor teacher/adult wants to take photographs with their child in them. Uploading images online can be really effective for students to see themselves when they were working hard, at Under 8's day, on an excursion or simply just painting in the classroom however it is important that these photos are only posted on private websites- websites that online parents and the school community have access to. On the other hand uploading images of concepts, tools, themes and topics onto a class website is a great idea! This gives students visual aids to assist in learning and to stimulate learning. Students love colourful, effective pictures of animals, planes, space and much more and what better way to get students learning than to create a website full of images and informative text!

Has anyone out there witnessed a privacy issue with images? or has anyone seen images being used effectivly on a school community website? If so what are your ideas and feelings towards images?

"[Using digital images] has revolutionalized every aspect of my teaching" David Domozych, Professor of Biology, Skidmore College.


'Faculty (from the Liberal Arts Institution) were asked to evaluate the reative importance of ten aspects of features of teaching with digital images, by marking them "very" important, "somewhat", "not very" or "not at all" important'.

(On page 26 of the article below you will find the figure related to this discussion)

If you want to see more about this article on teaching with digital images head to: http://www.academiccommons.org/files/image-report.pdf

Prezi.com

Prezi's are cool! They are so easy to use. They are fast and effective and I could think of so many uses in the classroom for this! They are web based presentation applications that can tell a story. This 'presentation tool' uses a single background instead of many slides and you can upload pictures, files and type words that look so effective. It has a movement that feels 3d almost when it moves from one section to the other. Children would love to either use one of these to create their own presentation or watch one that the teacher has made. Teachers could use these to explain an assessment piece to the student or even just to get across a specific concept. It's also free! This is another great element to Prezi! Teachers are always spending so much money on resources and powerpoint is $40 plus so this gives teachers a good insentive to get online and create a fast, fun and engaging presentation for their kids or get the kids involved- either way!

Powerpoint

Hi All!

I am about to talk about my good old friend- Mr PowerPoint! He is fantastic, when used appropriatly, the power point can be used for many uses. I have used power point to run Drama lessons, Art lessons and even Maths! Children love to see the big screen slide show, however, when teachers think that just using a slide show can tune your class in for 30 minuets, they are wrong! Teachers need to find appropriate uses for power point and not over use it. It is a great tool to use when explicit teaching is taking place (10-12 mins) or to give examples to students or to even set as an assignment task for students.

I have enjoyed using power point during university and will continue to use it in school when it is appropriate.

'The uses of power point seem to be endless. Almost any presentation can be enhanced through visual and sound effects, and this application has become the standard tool to do so. Unfortunatly it is missused and almost everyone at some stage in their life has experienced the dreded "death by powerpoint" - WikiAnswers.com

Wiki

Hi Guys,

I made my own wiki and had a play around on the website. I found making a wiki was very time consuming as It took me half an hour to find how to edit my page. I find wikis very confusing and not user friendly for someone like me who dosnt have extensive computer knowledge and skills. What did everyone else think? Did you have a different experience than I did?

I think if I could navigate my way around my wiki, and do more research on what you can do with a wiki, I would probably use it to both my learners and my own advantage. Again, I feel as if I would have to keep a close look on the information and advertisments that come up, but if I do this and create an engaging and good use for a wiki I would use it.

Has anyone ever seen a wiki at use? If so, what can the students do with wikis in the classroom? I am eager to find out!

Blog soon!

Weebly Websites

This website was made using weebly.com. I had a play around on this site and it took me only a short time to navigate my way around the site and create the layout as above. I found that learning how to use this tool is very useful as it took my fear away from making a 'website'. I always thought that creating a website would take hours of frustrated time just to create a home page, however, using weebly I have realised that this tool is fast, effective and fun! I will use this tool in the classroom to create websites for different units of work, for assessment, web quests and fun, classroom activities. I would recommend this site to any teacher to use as it would be beneficial for all learners to gain interactive knowledge and understandings using a well created website. What are your ideas on creating websites? I have seen a website created by a year 5 teacher who created an Indigenous Australian website for students to use.

Concept Mapping

Hi All,

I made my very own concept map! It was so easy and looks so effective. I used bubbl.us to create the above concept map and as I was playing around with it I realised it would be such an effective tool to use for any age group in the classroom setting. The fact that you can edit its colours, layout, content and ideas is a great factor for for teachers who want to incorporate concept maps into their classroom. It can be used for any unit, lesson or as simple as a class brainstorming activity. I found that I would defiantly incorporate this tool into my future classroom as it is engaging, effective and visually appealing.

Blogs & Wikis

Hi All,

At first, creating and designing my blog seemed tough, although the You Tube clips ‘Plain English’ assisted during my process. A blog is an online, website that individuals build by creating regular blog entries on particular news or comments about a specific topic. Readers and other bloggers make comments about this specific news and usually certain blogs and followed by other bloggers with the same interests. www.blogger.com is a user friendly site that allows bloggers to modify and design their individual blogs. I feel blogging would be educationally successful when incorporated into the middle/upper year’s classrooms. I am currently in a year one classroom and students still need full support with typing, turning the computer on and navigating their way around the desktop, however, with the older students this online tool is very engaging and could be used as an assessment task for students. Students could build blogs around ‘Australian Animals’ or ‘Out of Space’. I feel that using blogs and wikis will assist in my future as a learning manager as I will be able to confidently use these both in the classroom, with staff and parents. In my future I will create a wiki or a blog so that parents can stay up-to-date with what is happening in the classroom.

A Wiki is a great idea as it is a webpage (similar to a blog) that focuses on one topic or idea. It was again, user friendly, and allowed me to set it my individual page up in three easy steps. A wiki is an open source collaborative server technology that enables users to access, browse, and edit hypertext pages in a real-time context. Bo & Ward (2001); retrieved from The Wiki way: quick collaboration on the Web on 10/07/2010. This indicates that a wiki could be highly useful in the classroom setting, however being an open server allows anything from the world, wide web to make its way onto the wiki. I feel as though a wiki, could be beneficial in the older years, however as a teacher you must be on top of the site and discover correct and incorrect information. As students are becoming more technologically savvy, the wiki is a great tool use when learning about one topic or subject where students can add similar websites, images and digital tools on the site.

Week One

Hey Bloggers!

After week ones lecture I felt very confused and overwhelmed with the idea of making a blog, however, after playing around with the computer and opening my mind to a world of ICT's and technology, I am starting to find this very interesting and enjoyable. I am eager to learn about technology, how I can incorporate ICT's into the classroom and I am also looking forward to use the tools on the moodle website.
I strongly feel that children gain so much more out of learning experiences when ICT’s are utilized.