What is Literacy in this day and age.....

So, after conducting a mini research project, well I my be exaggerating a little, by posing a few questions to my family members, for example what does literacy mean to them, it was interesting to here their perspective.
My husbands answer was quite deep and thoughtful for the type of answer I would normally receive if a posed a question like this to him! "Literacy is all about Communication and all the ways in which we communicate," he responded. I agreed with him and left it at that, because although that is a great response, from my reading on the definitions of literacy I now know there is so much more to literacy.
My mother and father in law were a bit more responsive in their answer. Their response was that literacy was about reading, writing, speaking, grammar. This answer is very much in line with the generation they were bought up in that to be literate you needed to be skilled in these main areas.
What would be interesting is to get a perspective on what my 6 year old would define literacy as. Unfortunately he is in bed so I cannot find out right now but will fill you in on his response in my next posting. I'm sure it will have more to do with being computer and internet literate.
Stay Tuned....

QR Codes

40interestingwaystouseqrcodesinthecla 110724032613-phpapp02 from Amy Slefendorfas

My QR Code for my wiki, I created this using KAYWA QR Code

 

ipads in the classroom

iPads, ipods and iphones are very rapidly becoming a successfull and popular ICT tool for classrooms. Beyond the immediate benefit of engaging students, iPads can improve education efficiency and standards.

I believe, if iPads are used correctly in the classroom by teachers they can develop children's creativity. It is vital that teachers know what skills the iPad can be developed, otherwise it's use in the classroom could be wasted. Technology now needs to be central to children's learning in the classroom with creative well planned teaching. The list below explains some great ways the ipad is being used in schools today.

NURTURE CREATIVITY WITH STORYTELLING PLATFORMS
Educators at Ringwood North Primary School in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, created the Epic Citadel Challenge to foster storytelling, creative collaboration and individual initiative. Students used their experiences in the virtual landscape to tell a story in the medium of their choosing.
CONVERTS WORDS INTO RAPS
The Holy Family School in Ashland, Ky., is taking advantage of teacher and student-friendly apps that convert educational texts into engaging material for students. For example, AutoRap will take your words and turn them into a rap and Strip Designer enables the creation of comic strips.
GO PAPERLESS
Jackson Christian School in Jackson, Tenn., has virtually paperless classrooms. Students no longer carry binders and textbooks, while teachers administer tests on their iPads.
ENGAGE THE DISENGAGED
Educators at Manor Lakes P-12 Specialist School in Wyndham Vale, Victoria, Australia, found that the iPads were most effective in prompting their most disconnected students to interact in the classroom and have fun while learning. For example, the iBooks and Marvel Comics apps were used to engage students in reading.
ENHANCE PHYSICAL EDUCATION
SPARK, a health and physical education program, has an app for PE classes. PE teachers at Eastlake Middle School in Chula Vista, California use SPARK to record student’s physical activity and show them how to refine their movements.
GRAPH DATA
Julie Garcia, a teacher at Innovation Middle School in San Diego, California, uses the iPad to show students how to graph data and look for correlations.
TURN IN ASSIGNMENTS
Leslie Langham, a seventh-grade English teacher, uses Dropbox, a free file sharing app, to post homework assignments. Students turn them in using the app and she then grades and returns them all on Dropbox.
TAKE NOTES
Christina Weltmer, a science teacher at Garden City High School, was actually taught by one of her students on how to use Notability, the iPad app that enables the user to take notes, record lectures and annotate PDFs.
ASSIST SPECIAL NEEDS LEARNING
Warringa Park School, a special needs institution in Hopper’s Crossing, Victoria, Australia, has a list of apps which have been particularly successful in teaching students who have special learning needs. Proloquo2Go aids students who have trouble speaking. Mad Addition, Mad Subtraction and Mad Multiplication help students learn math and have fun while doing it. Red Fish 4 Kids assisted students in learning how to spell.
Similarly, First Words Animals aids with letter and word identification. Jack and the Beanstalk Children’s Interactive Storybook helps keep students engaged as they learn how to read. Whizzit 123 and Toddler Counting helped students with numeracy. Likewise, the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia allows teachers to maintain a group learning environment even with students who cannot leave their hospital beds and do not have fine motor skills.
DECREASE EXPENSES
While iPads are often seen as a luxury, a study by Oklahoma State University reported that iPad implementation actually decreased costs for students and schools because they reduced the need for physical textbooks.

References

D. Savenije, "18 Ways ipads are being used in the classromm right now" 2011 retieved from website
http://edudemic.com/2012/11/18-ways-ipads-are-being-used-in-classrooms-right-now/

Group 4 Technologies Reflection

Museumbox

SWOT Analysis

Strengths ·         Easy to learn and navigate ·         Bright and colourful ·         Allows you to add links, images, video’s and text ·         Searchable database of images and sounds	Weaknesses   ·         Found that pictures, video’s and file must be uploaded, they can’t simply be linked. ·         It would not let me access the program without paying a subscription fee
Opportunities   ·         Would be a great tool if it was free ·         Can be used for research and it would be great for your visual and auditory learners. When a student submits a box, a teacher can look over it, make edits, and return it to the student for further editing.	Threats   Time consuming

Google Earth

SWOT Analysis

Strengths ·         Google Earth is completely free to download and use. ·         Google Earth allows a user to zoom and see images of the planet in great detail. ·         Numerous layers of data are available to enhance the Google Earth experience. ·         Google Earth is updated on an ongoing basis over the Internet, so it is generally up to date information ·         The Google Earth community is constantly adding fascinating new and free content to Google Earth.

Weaknesses   ·         Google Earth has so much data, you need a high speed Internet connection to use it effectively. ·         If you view many layers at once on Google Earth, your view as you zoom may be jumbled. ·         The side bar has many choices and can be somewhat cumbersome to use.

Opportunities   ·         One of the main features I liked from Google earth was its ability to bring places and things in text books alive, and make them real to my students. ·         The program is capable of covering a fast array of topics for your students and many great lesson plans can be found online. ·         Helps to create global citizenship amongst your learners

Threats   ·         Some of the user-added Google Earth points of interest are useless or incorrect. ·         Some areas of the planet are not available on Google Earth in high resolution or high detail. ·         If appropriate scaffolding is not used, I feel that students may get lost and too time consumed with other great features of this program.

Online Concept Mapping

Concept maps can also be used to make student thinking visible. When students construct and submit their understanding of key concepts and their linkages through a concept map, it becomes clear whether in fact the students understand the conceptual framework around a topic of study.
SWOT Analysis

Strengths     Concept maps help students focus on the "big picture", enabling them to devote more of their time to conceptual understanding rather than rote learning   Concept maps encourage students to make valid connections among concepts   They enable students to represent graphically their knowledge, and to share it with the teacher and other students   They shift the emphasis from isolated facts to theoretical frameworks of related concepts

Weaknesses     Comparisons among students are more difficult because concept maps tend to reveal the idiosyncratic way that students view a scientific explanation, as a result...   Evaluation can become more time-consuming for the instructor, especially in large classes, unless some variation (such as Select & Fill-in) is adopted   If you score maps, you must use a consistent (and tested) scheme

Opportunities   In addition to their role as assessment tools, concept maps offer a useful way to help students "learn how to learn"; they also serve as useful vehicles for course development and as graphic organisers.

Threats   Students who have developed a strong facility for rote learning of verbal knowledge sometimes find concept maps intimidating   Constructing concept maps is a demanding cognitive task that requires training

This is my unfinished (purposely unfinished for my students to expand on) Bubbl.us concept map.

An Audio lightbulb moment.

Audio source: Shimmering - music composed for movie "Wszystko Płynie/Flowing"

After reading Jackie Russell's blog on audio files I followed her link to the creative commons website to get some help and inspiration for my audio files I could use without breaching copyright laws. I absolutely love this site, and it has been a light bulb moment for me with the amazing audio I can incorporate into my web presentations. I will be highly recommending my students to use this site when creating presentations as it does not breach any copyright laws as the music is covered under the creative commons agreement.

My Space Glog!!

Taa daa, here it is! Love, love love this web tool, I can see it is going to be very useful in my teaching in both a teaching centred approach and more importantly to allow my students to take control of their learning using this fun and interactive web tool. My favourite aspect of using glogster was how quick and easy it was to create am informative lesson and to add files and worksheets for further learning for my students. My frustrations over the past 2 days with the other web tools we have engaged with has been mainly due to the time consuming effort of getting to know what I can and can't do with the program. Glogster in comparison seemed so easy to understand and it did every function I needed it too!! It even copies the right sized embed file to embed it into your wiki or your blog, some of the other programs seem near impossible to do this. My above Glog, which I have created for my grade 5 class on the Moon and Space was so simple to create, the you tube videos are accessible directly through the program so it saves time on copying and pasting embedding files. The only main limitation with this program is its audio function, it would be great if we could grab files straight from our itunes library to make it more time friendly.

The learning benefits of using globster are endless. The main benefit I found in using globster is that it allows a student centred approach to learning. Your students can take control of their presentations and can also do the learning activities that you may have attached to your glob at their own leisure, so the fast learners will be able to move onto activities without boredom. It also allows for learning to occur through many different mediums to cater for the various learning styles in your classroom.

•  audio for your learners who learn best through listening to the information being presented.
• visual for your graphic learners.
• video which combines the previous two learning styles together.
• hands on approach where you can attach worksheets for your learners to open and complete, and
• best of all you can allow your students to create their own glogs on research topics in the area your are studying.

Another great benefit of using glogster is that it gives you access to a huge library full of other teachers glogsters all made public to you. These can be edited to suit your students knowledge on the topic. You can then embed the glogster into your blog or wiki like I have done here with this fantastic glob on the topic of fractions posted to my wiki.

So what are you waiting for check it out here!!

Learning with PowerPoint

So I didn't think this week would be too difficult, all we had to do was learn and explore with PowerPoint. Finally a tool that I was familiar with, as I had made many PowerPoint slide in my high school and undergrad uni days. Whilst it was still very user friendly and set up the same as my ancient PowerPoint, I was happily surprised to see many great templates and features added to PowerPoint. Unfortunately for me that meant relearning what I thought I knew and more time and effort was put into making a PowerPoint on fractions for my grade 5 class. I'm sure they will appreciate the colours, images sounds and motion I have embedded into what could have been a pretty boring fractions lesson.

Check out my fractions PowerPoint on my wiki.

On my search to to make the best PowerPoint possible i come across some great sites for future PowerPoint presentations. heck them out here.

Our second Engagement Activity was scaffolding our learning by introducing interactive ways of using PowerPoint. I really enjoyed the use of the organisation chart to help our ideas on the topic flow which in turn would help the flow of our PowerPoint slides. Check out my chart in wiki which I have created in preparation for my slide show on Geometry.

Then I converted my outline from my word document into a Powerpoint. This I just loved as it was a much quicker way of inserting the text into my Slides. Check it out here in its basic form.

Moviemaker experience....

I finally got this posted to my blog at 11:15pm on Saturday night, couldn't think of anything better to be doing on a Saturday night!! This weeks web tools I found to be very challenging. Especially the final task of creating a movie in moviemaker. The most time consuming task was getting audio onto my movie as I did not have any audio files suitable for my movie. I had a great deal of difficulty trying to use itunes music for my music in moviemaker, as the files where not compatible. I eventually overcame this by using my sound recorder on the computer to record my music from itunes, which I though was pretty creative on my behalf!! Once I had my movie made this process to post it to my blog, wiki and web page was very quick and easy for me, and I really like the fact my students will be able to upload their work onto the web with such ease and quickness for my assessment. (No more excuses of I left the CD at home or saved it to my home computer.)

For the purpose of these task I used my 5 year old son who is in prep to help with the making of the movie and to see if he could use and understand the movie making process. He absolutely loved the process and especially the finished product which he watches over and over again with pride, as he created it. This would be a great project for many learning areas and many grade levels. My task for my grade 2 class would be to loan an ipad and take photo's of their pets at home (if no pets then they can make pet rocks or find pictures of pets they would like). They would then add the photo's to movie maker. Next step is to find background music for their movie and add it to the movie. The focus and learning outcome of the project is poetry and rhyming poetry. My students would then use the pictures to inspire them to come up with rhyming poetry to add to the slides of their pets. I would then get the students to add their movie to our class wiki page to view others work and ideas on the project. This project using moviemaker is a great example of using student centred learning as the students are creating their own learning based on their interests and ideas, relevant to them . By sharing their work on the wiki and watching other classmates movies they are learning about different concepts that the other children have created.

Other great ways of using video for learning include digital storytelling, other forms of poetry, maths- geometric shapes, campaign ads, project based learning and social studies. This website readwritethink has some great ways of using moviemaker in the classroom for great learning. It also goes through the processes for children of using moviemaker to gauge what they are capable of doing with the software. A great slide show that explains the learning benefits of video in the classroom can be found here.

Video allows our students to be creative in a way that pen and paper cannot do alone. By the use of audio and visual we are using sensory modalities and  catering for our digital learners to understand in a higher order processing way the material that is being taught. If we use a sound pedagogy with instructions for the use of creating movies for learning it should allow our students to summarise their findings and then evaluate the videos of there own and also importantly others video material.
Video seems to be a good example of constructivism model of learning.  Social constructivist Vygotsky (1962) explains that social interaction has a large influence on learning, and that individuals learn within a zone of close proximal development. He suggests that learners move beyond what is already known through the support of others. By allowing our students access to fellow classmates movies on a wikispace they are able to learn as a social network using one another findings in their videos to enhance their own learning and understanding of the topics.

References

L. Vygotsky, "Social Development Theory" 1962 retrieved from http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/social-development.html

My first podcast!

My first podcast!

Learning with Podcasts....

So now I am confidently able to embed images from flickr and my desktop, its time to analyse my findings of podcasts and their use in the classroom. After going on a massive podcast hunt through itunes and other podcast sites, I would have to say I'm not a huge fan yet!! Unless I am just unlucky with the podcast I choose to listen to, I found them to be time wasters with a lot of unnecessary chat at the introduction to each podcast. I do hope that the more research I do, I will find the appropriate podcast to assist my learners in the classroom. From my knowledge of learning process, I do see and understand how beneficial this learning tool would be for auditory learners. They give your students another voice to listen and learn from rather than your voice day in day out. Even though myself personally cannot switch on to a voice without visuals (my brain just wanders to other places) I can see the benefits of this tool for my learners. I would only use podcast with an slide show or animation as I feel it could get mundane for my learners and they could possibly switch off also.
One podcast that I have embedded below would be a great idea to help engage children into interesting stories in lower primary levels. By the use of this podcast the enthusiasm of the readers voice would help to engage the student in the reading experience. It also allows for each child in the classroom to have different podcasts read to them at the same time and this would cater for children's different interests in books.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/the-little-engine-that-could/id207671602?i=13740166&mt=2

This next podcast I found would suit my pedagogy in that it has a visual aspect whilst the students demonstrates his findings in mathematics fractions. These podcasts could be used as a great way for my learners to find relevance to the maths they are learning as most of the podcast are real life problem based questions. They also have children the same age as my learners answering the questions which makes the learning more student centred.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/math-4.1.2.1-representing/id513361084?i=136009208&mt=2

Creating my own podcasts and allowing my learners to create podcasts for each other is a great tool to allow student centred learning. It is a great resource that can be used in a huge array of learning areas and it allows our students to act as they teacher, which we know from past research helps with their own understanding of the information. Student created podcasts would definitely be used to help learning within my classroom!!

Here is a podcast I created with audioboo

listen to ‘My first boo hoo!!’ on Audioboo

Podcasts can either be student create; working independently or in a small, collaborative groups; or a finished project which students can engage with, reinforcing learning whether at school or at home.  I feel podcasting can be tailored to any learning area. Some of the learning areas that are most often associated with it are: ICT, citizenship, languages speaking and listening objectives ands communication. I would use podcasting in my classroom as a tool for reluctant writers or those with reading difficulties as it allows activities to be tailored to individual children's requirements.

There are a number of sites that have 'podsafe' music which can be used without infringing copyright. These are two examples put here are many more available www.podshow.com and www.soundrangers.com.  AS with other technology it is important to protect the identity of our students who use podcasts. I would inform my students to only reveal one piece of personal information about themselves in a podcast to help protect heir identity.  After much searching of the web I finally found a great website that showed me 50 great ways of using podcasts in the classroom check it out here.

 

Harlem Shake

Video Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQZilpwqkbg permission for publication from Mark Slefendorfas

Images for learning

This week we have been meddling in the world of digital images and how they can be used in a constructive way to establish deep learning. We were introduced to a a great tool that allows us to resize our images to a size that is easily upload able to our web spaces. Mobaphoto is a great free tool that we used this week to resize our images. The image below is one such photo that i resized using Mobaphoto.

This awesome photo was taken by my 5 year old son, who loves Thomas the tank engine, so in order to entice him to the top of Mt Oberon, Bertie came with us and we took some marvellous photo's from the top!! This is a great image to teach students about the concepts of size and how although some things can seem small in some instances, in others they can appear quite large. The use of imagery in teaching this concept is very helpful as the concept can be seen and understand visually much easier than it can be understood in written text.

Reflection on my experience of creating a website

I must say I really enjoyed making the website, it was my fav out of the 3 tools we have used and evaluated this week. For me it won out over the others because of two reason, firstly the amazing amount of multimedia you can put in the page and secondly a more personal reason was that it was just "my" site and no one can edit it without my permission, not even comments! Being a very organised and neat person, I found the website design process complimented my teaching style, as opposed to the mess a wiki can become.

THIS PMI Chart will show my reflection in a neat, organised way.

Plus	Minus	Implications
Content and structure belong to me and nobody else can edit or add to it.	Not interactive so students cannot add work to it, only the one author can.	Can be frustrating if don’t have full access to all multimedia available on weebly
Can use your website to link students to the world	Need to upgrade with $$ to get all the benefits of creating in Weebly	Students have no contribution to their learning so it is not very student centred
Using a site like weebly makes it very easy to design by allowing you to insert place holders.	No pedagogy used if just asking students  basic questions and not doing anything with the content
A huge amount of multimedia can be added to you site, which allows for an array of learning designs to be established.	Depending on the scaffolding used it can have limited success on teaching the learning outcomes
Will enhance communication between yourself and students	Links can get outdated

I feel that to  create a "significant" web site, one that will ultimately benefit students, a great deal of thought and time is required. Like any effective teaching plan requiring time and resourcefulness, it is no different when you create a web site for your students to access. However, if you have an extensive, well organised plan, the computing part is easy and getting easier everyday as I found with weebly. If you are looking for a great website that explains what is needed to have a successful and interactive web page for your learners click here.

Reflection on my wiki experience

So the next part of this weeks e-learning journey required us to create a wiki and deck it out as best we could . I believe I accidentally made my wiki whilst participating in last week wiki activity as I mistakenly thought we needed a wiki account to participate in this!! Turned out to be a bonus as I had already done the boring part of setting up the wiki space, the fun part was left which was to decorate my space with my own content.

Anyway back to the point of this blog posting which is to explain my findings and understandings on the learning potential of a wiki. One issue I had with this weeks activity in setting up the wiki was the scaffolding seemed very broad and was not very specific as to what content was needed in our wiki. I could now ramble on about all the issues (and the wonderful thing) I encountered while using the wiki in boring essay format, or use some of the wonderful analytical tools we have learnt about this week. (I choose to do the later!!)

A SWOT analysis will help lay out my findings on my wiki experience:

Strengths Very easy to use. Anyone can edit. Great tool to share ideas, information and knowledge amongst students. Supports group collaboration effectively.	Weaknesses Students can abuse trust of using a wiki by deleting others contributions or adding inappropriate material Cannot accommodate multiple, concurrent users .
Opportunities Classroom resource for students to look back on when they wish. Creates an online community encouraging student relationships. Motivates students to participate and collaborate together. Students learning from each other.	Threats Copyright and plagiarism. Anyone can view content. Threat of spam or vandalism. Erased content.

It is extremely important to ensure that when working in a wiki are students are working safely , ethically and legally. When using Wiki's with my learners it is my responsibility to teach my students the correct behaviours in respect to ethics and legallacy. Even as a primary teacher my students would need to learn how to link information the have posted into the wiki back to the original source. If implementing a wiki activity, one of my most important instructions would be explaining the importance of trust amongst students in the Wiki.

It is important as teachers to educate ourselves about the challenges and risk of using Wiki's in the classroom. Smart copying http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go is a website dedicated to educating people about copyright in all Australian schools. It gives as access to the National guidelines, FAQ's and Fact sheets that can be accessed online. The site also contains excellent information about creating ICT's and what is possible within the law.


Cyber smart http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/ is the Australian Governments Cyber Safety program providing. It provides “activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teens and parents safely enjoy the online world.”.
Ethical safe and responsible practises when working with ICT’s along with operating efficiently and safely is also covered across every year juncture in the Student ICT Expectations Document. Click on this link for more information. http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/strategy/dp/studentict.html

Wiki's illustrate that this is the future of education and the goal of producing digitally literate students is high on the agenda from an early age. We should however be educated about those risks and challenges and we should also educate our students about how and why they should take these issues seriously.

At all times we should model ethical and legal guidelines to our students and encourage them to do the same. The opportunities ICT’s in eLearning can provide far outweigh the risks, and it is my opinion that those risks can be dealt with through information and education.

In comparison to my first wiki experience the setting up of my wiki this week was a tad more difficult. I believe the main reason for my difficultly this week was the lack of scaffolding around the design of the Wiki. Only when reading the least question posed to us in Engagement Activity 3 which ask us 'to consider in our reflection that it is not just you, but more importantly your students, who will be working in the wiki space' was I able to figure what was and was not appropriate for my Wiki space.

With this new insight, I went back to my SWOT analysis and looked over the opportunities I could create in my Wiki for my students. Then I was able to edit (a great strength of the wiki) and put some of the great learning opportunities into my Wiki.

References

Education Queensland. (2011) Student ICT expectations. Smart classrooms. Department of Education and

Training. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/strategy/dp/studentict.html

Smartcopying. (2008) The official guide to copyright issues for Australian schools

Cybersmart (2009) Australian Communications and Media Authority. Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved
from http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/