Module 10

Great Web 2.0 journey comes to an end...but no, seriously it is just beginning. Lots of good things to say about the course: it's online and free and can be done anywhere and at anytime at your leisure, it is relevant and meaningful and interesting (wow I'm describing what we should be doing as teachers!) I will definitely recommend that teachers at my school give it a go.

Wikis, like blogs, are an excellent way to allow students to create, communicate, present and demonstrate their learnings. They can easily add content and make comments about their work and share it with other people.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy clearly links the development of thinking skills to appropriate Web 2.0 learning experiences. As a teacher, I can see how to make sure that the students are given tasks which will allow them to develop an increasingly complex set of skills as learners, eventually creating new knowledge and information. Second Life probably fits into all of the hierarchical sections of the taxonomy - it just depends what one is doing in it. When you first begin using it, you are locating info but after a while, you will interpret info then play and link it, then maybe you will experiment and finally design and construct something new. Flickr and Mind mapping (bubbl.us) probably sit on the lower rungs - not sure, though, it depends on your learning outcomes and what you want the students to achieve.

Module 9

Scootle is a resource I have used for a while now to use multimedia resources in my teaching. It has evolved a lot since the early days of The Learning Federation. The great feature is the ability to create and share "learning paths" with other teachers at your school and beyond. I often search to find if someone else has made a path about a topic I am teaching and either use it or modify it for my purposes. Then I make the resources available to students via their myclasses page.

Whilst Scootle is not very Web 2.0, there are a number of features in it that are Web 2.0: ability to track via Twitter, the use of "tags" to search for resources and the ability to create and share "learning paths" with your school, the National Catholic Education Commission and finally the public in general.

Social Networking is very much a part of the contemporary culture of our young people. It is a vehicle that gives them a voice or forum to express their ideas and opinions about their world. It enables them to connect, communicate, collaborate and create. It has positive benefits and some negative possibilities, obviously, but it can't be ignored and shouldn't be overlooked by educators. Students just need to be given the tools to use these sites carefully and safely, being aware that their "digital footprint" lasts a long time and can't be totally erased if they make a bad decision by uploading questionable images or content.

Second Life - wow! This is an amazing concept... I remember my own kids using "The Sims" and "Zoo Tycoon" and marvelling at what they could create but Second Life is so much more. If it could be used in our schools (and I haven't yet looked at the practicalities like access, privacy, cost etc) it could be so powerful in getting students to learn in new ways: experience virtually different eras, simulate events and scenarios, use their imagination to create. The list is endless and so are the possibilities for learning.

Twitter - another vehicle for communicating and connecting with the world that has relevance for some. Personally I don't have a use for it but know people who love it. Not sure it is a hit with school-aged kids and not sure how it fits educationally.

Module 8

The use of RSS feeds and readers such as Google Reader are more examples of how efficiently you can source information within the Web 2.0 framework. Subscribing to sites, blogs, podcasts and wikis that interest you saves time and effort and keeps you connected with sources of information you can easily access when you want it, again anywhere and at anytime.

I have subscribed to many sites as a result of completing this module and know that they will be useful to me both for work and in my personal life. I can see how students would benefit from using RSS feeds to connect themselves to sites which will enhance their learning for school topics but also help them organise other areas of their lives.

Most importantly, I can see the value of being constantly updated with the latest information, news, music, reviews, sport etc without having to spend hours searching the net. More time to relax and enjoy life!

Module 7

I have known of Delicious for a while but never actually used it until now, mostly because I always have my laptop with me and therefore my bookmarks. But it really is a great solution for people who might access many different computers in a day and aren't able to use the bookmarks they create on any one of them. It's a vehicle for enabling sharing of bookmarks and I can see how teachers (and students) can collaboratively contribute bookmarks as resources and even bibliographies to topics or projects then use them anywhere, anytime.

As a matter of fact, a colleague asked me the other day to transfer (export) her bookmarks on her local classroom computer because she would be moving to a different classroom. I know how to do that, but Delicious is a much more efficient solution, storing it all on the web. So I will show her how to use this application.

I have exported and uploaded all of mine now, as well as adding several people to my network because 3 brains are better than one!

Module 6

I love the fact that developers are now making Web 2.0 apps that we can use for free and not have to load software on our computers to use them. Mind-mapping software for students to use in schools is very expensive to purchase but "bubbl.us" solves the problem. Sure, it is not as sophisticated as Inspiration but it doesn't really have to be in order to be educationally useful.

I would use bubbl.us as a tool for teaching and learning for students to visually present, organise and demonstrate knowledge, to make connections between what they already know and what they would like to know.

Glogster is great fun! Students and teachers can use it to display work, understandings, to create new material. It is inspiring and can help to motivate those who bore easily because it is interactive and very visual. I loved the "Shakespeare Parodies" because the glog was able to bring to life what is normally a dry and often tedious section of the English syllabus. The Glogster EDU version makes the whole experience safe, private and easily able to be monitiored by the teacher which is a big concern with some Web 2.0 stuff. I am going to give my students accounts so they can create Christmas glogs to share with each other and collaborate.

I made my own quick Christmas glog so click and have a look.

Module 5

This Digital Storytelling module was great because it opens one up to the myriad of ways to tell a story in digital form. Although pod and vodcasts are fantastic, they do require some expertise on the part of the teacher.

But you can create digital stories really quickly and easily with students (especially K-2) using applications that they may already familiar with, such as Photostory 3 and PowerPoint. They can create stories about:excursions, a unit of work they are currently doing, a maths or science activity showing what they learned and so on. All you need is to have the students (or teacher) take photos while they are doing the activity and then make the photos available for them to insert into their Photostory or PPT. Then they can either narrate the story or write captions or both and add music for effect and of course, share and enjoy their own and others' work.

When the kids are ready for a more involved digital story project, you can teach them (or they can teach you) how to use Garageband, iMovie or Movie Maker. This can involve still images again or video footage. It is amazing how motivating it is for students to work collaboratively towards producing their own "story", then watch each others' and even share them on a blog.

I have recently worked with students to produce podcasts based on an ordinarily "dry" Year 4 unit on British Colonisation". The kids wrote storyboards and scripts, produced artwork to illustrate the podcast, recorded their scripts, added effects (all in Garageband) and then shared them with each other, other classes and from the class blog, shared with their parents, friends and relatives (some from other countries). We must have watched those at least 20 times each! Favourite thing to do during a wet lunch...
Since then, we have created videos of interviews the students have devised on topics such as Plant Growth, Mini Vinnies, The Gold Rushes etc. I believe it is easier to create all this if you have a mac or two because the iLife suite of programs allows you to seamlessly bring in your photos, music and video clips. It's quite a bit more fiddly using a PC.

Youtube, Teachertube, Google Video etc are fantastic resources for making learning more visual and engaging for students. It is so much more exciting to introduce a concept or a lesson to kids when you can show them a well-chosen clip. At the moment we are doing a unit on South East Asia and I am using Youtube clips to give the students an up to date "visual" about the countries, their cultures and current issues affecting them e.g. forest fires in Borneo, quality of life in East Timor, environmental impacts of deforestation etc. These are free and current resources unlike expensive and out of date dvds. Of course a word of caution...anything you are going to show students MUST be previewed beforehand right through so that inappropriate images, language, concepts are avoided.

Module 4

This is a photo of mine that I have uploaded to Flickr. (You can see more at the bottom of my blog). It was taken in January off the coast of Krabi, Thailand. Great scenery!

I like Flickr mainly because it is easy to use for uploading and sharing pics but also because it is a good source of copyright free images for students and teachers to use in their documents, presentations, websites and blogs. The Creative Commons licensing detail is very useful and you need to check this out before use.

I would caution students and teachers to be aware of their "digital footprint" and to be careful not to upload anything personal or unsafe. Privacy is very important when dealing with images of people and you should not upload and share photos of yourself or other people (especially without their permission).