Wiki's are not difficult!

A Wiki is a collaboratively-edited website which many people also view as a publishing tool. The distinguishing feature of wikis is that they typically allow all users to edit any page, with full freedom to edit, change and delete the work of previous authors. Wiki's can be utilised for most grade levels and incorporated into any KLA. Here are some idea's;

• Study guides made by student groups for themselves and peers: each group prepares the guide for one aspect of the unit or responsibility rotates: one unit guide per semester.
• Vocabulary lists and examples of the words in use, contributed by students (ongoing throughout the year).
• The wiki as the organizational aspect of your class. Wiki all assignments, projects, collaboration, rubrics, etc.
• Products of research projects, especially collaborative group projects: They can include computer files, images, videos, etc. Creating an organizational structure for the content is an important part if the project.
• An annotated collection of EXAMPLES from the non-school world for anything: Illustrations can be included for visual representations.
• Students can construct their own class calendar of learning events for the term/year.
• Articles by students who miss school for family trips, written about their travels on the class wiki, relating what they see to concepts learned before they left.
• Have students post KWL entries and continue adding questions that occur to them as the unit progresses. As other students add their “answers,” the wiki will evolve into a student-created guide to the topic. (What is a Wiki, 2009).

Wiki's as Active Learning and the Learning Pyramid:

According to Dale's Cone (learning effectiveness), collaborative discussions make up 50% of our learning retention. This is a considerable jump as apposed to the 5% of information we retain within a lecture. It also shows that audio and visual activities have a retention rate of 20%. Through the implementation of a class Wiki, students participate not only within an on-line approach to learning but construct and control their own learning. Although the Wiki needs to be monitored and guided by the teacher, learning experiences through the use of a Wiki can capture the 'hands-on' approach to learning.

Wiki's and Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs:
As I stated above Wiki's create opportunities for hands-on learning. I believe as a pre-service teacher that all students enjoy hands-on activities. If we look at Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs diagram self-esteem components such as achievement and recognition is the second highest level of effective learning. As student contribute to their class/individual wiki they can develop a sense of belonging as Maslow describes, can then anchor these attributes and result in the raising of self-esteem and satisfaction. Although self-esteem can be developed from the home setting and community I feel that all students, regardless of background, need to develop a sense of self-worth and I have found the Wiki to be most educational and a very flexible tool for developing such individual needs.




References:

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. Retrieved 16th August, 2009, from; http://www.psyctherapy.com/Enrolled/L3IndividualsMotivation.htm

What is a Wiki? Retrieved 16th August, 2009, from; http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WhatIsaWiki

Using 'Ning' in the classroom

Hello fellow bloggers: I have firstly put in a link to a U-Tube video which displays the uses of Ning and how it works as a social networking tool.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGb83rrs7WQ

So what is Ning?
Ning is a platform for creating your own social network. With Ning, your social network can be for anything and anyone. You start by naming your social network and choosing a combination of features (photos, videos, forums, events, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. You can then customize your social network's appearance and launch it! People who join your social network will automatically have a customizable profile page and will be able to message and friend each other.
Concerns for Ning within the classroom context:
My concern with Ning is the security issues that may arise, although I have not completed my research on this tool I believe that passwords would need to be very explicit and we need to consider how do we give our students access to our private Ning site and prevent them from accessing the inapproapriate Ning sites too? If we allow www.ning.com to pass through our Internet filter we might have more problems than we imagined. Are school systems prepared for this? An educator posted a message saying that he had approached his ITC technicians for access to Ning, and they allowed him access to just one page of one network, the rest remained blocked.

So I hope this is achievable as I feel this is a really good tool for KLA's such as Literacy and The Arts. Students could retell a story from the point of view of a different character. This could then be shared by the class as they add to their ning page. Another great tool for collaborative learning.

References:
http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2695

Picnik Photo Enhancer (due to the university being unable to sign in to Picnik I was unable to apply a example of what Picnik can do.)

What is Picnik?
Picnik is an easy to use online image editor. It allows you to edit images uploaded from your computer, from an online source or even directly from your webcam. It is integrated with several other online services, for example flickr. Photo editing is a lot of fun and can be used by families, businesses, schools etc.
Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames. It's fast, easy, and fun. Here are some examples of what you can do with Picnik:

1. Fix and manipulate your photos in just one click
2. Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
3. Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
4. Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
5. Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
6. Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
7. Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
8. Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
9. No download required, nothing to install

In investigating the use of Picnik for educational purposes I discovered a web site that describes a way in which it can be used for a primary school lesson. An educator posting on a web page called Open Source described her use of Picnik with sixth grade students by having them upload images and drawings into the program and edit them to make such items as CD covers. This demonstrates a real life example of the integration of Picnik into a learning environment.
This information was retrieved from
John Johnston . OpenSourceCPD. (No year listed)
http://www.opensourcecpd.org.uk/index.php?n=CpdOpportunities.Picnik

Below is an example of a similiar photo manipulation tool called Photoshop. This application could just as easily be used for educational purposes. This kind of activity would also be useful for building relationships within the classroom as the students bring in their photos to enhance they can construct re-counts or reports of the photo through the strand of literacy and then share with their peers.

Insert of photo TBA..

My Video

This is a very small example of a movie which I made at university. As I was shown this process Iwas surprised to see just how easy and quick it was. We had a basic digital camera and a small sound recorder which I believe can be bought for about $40. I then was shown how to link the visual and sound recordings together to make my movie. The whole process took about 30 minutes. Initially I had the presumption that movie making would be time consuming and complicated for primary students. Since making my own movie and conducting research on schools which provide opportunities for students to make movies, I decided I wanted to see what KLA's this technology would be effective in terms of student success and engagement.

I have found that making movies with students is a highly motivating activity and it can access all curriculum areas. I am assuming that the majority of my students would be have a interest in movies so a unit of work involving movie-making would value student’s existing knowledge of film genres and styles, and involve students in a range of literacy processes.

I then thought that it would assist in developing social skills as collaborative learning would be a strong focus due to time and resource availability. Connectedness to the real world is also a benefit as students can transfer their new knowledge and skills of movie-making to many areas of their lives. It can be a small, quick project or a longer, more complex activity and uses resources already existing in most schools.

Making short, simple movies as a cross-curricula activity can benefit from the following intended outcomes:
• Engages and motivates middle years students and supports multiliteracies
• Supports collaboration and strengthens professional links across schools
• Uses higher order thinking skills and actively involves multiple intelligences
• Develops ICT skills and film production skills for both students and teachers
• Helps students develop their understanding of curriculum units across many KLA’s, making sense of the world and students place within it
• Encourages the skills needed to analyze the media and foster appreciation of the art of movie making.

It also gives students the opportunity to see their creativity and skills develop from inspiration to performance.

I am questioning however, whether many teachers are savvy with this technology? Whether they are brave enough to embark on a totally different approach to learning opportunities? also Do teachers realise just how easy, with particular planning of course, it is to make a movie?

I would be very keen to implement a learning opportunity such a movie-making within my classroom and who knows maybe it could lead to the children participating within a short film festival! How exciting and collaborative would that be! As stated above Higher order thinking skills are a strong attribute in this sort of technology project and this has been examined below.

Critical and Creative Thinking - Bloom's Taxonomy
What are critical thinking and creative thinking?
Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hyphothesizing, and critquing. Creative thinking involves creating something new or original. It involves the skills of flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, forced relationships. The aim of creative thinking is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence.

How are the domains of learning reflected in technology-rich projects? Domain Attributes: interpersonal relations, emotions, attitudes, appreciations, and values accept attempts challenges, defends, disputes, joins, judges, contributes, praises, questions, shares, supports, volunteers

Here you will find some teaching resources, strategies, ideas and examples, as well as solving any small technical problems that arose for a school who implemented movie-making. Mark Richardson collated these resources on the Macintosh School’s Network web site, (http://wmr-msn.williamstownps.vic.edu.au/ictcurricideas/dvpd/dvpd.htm).

Resources:

Teacher Tap:Professional Development Resources for Teachers and Librarians: Retrieved 11August 2009 from: http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm

Theories Of Instructional Design

I found this slideshare relevant to our journey of E-Learning.


Reference:
http://www.slideshare.net/share/blogspot/999750

Theories Of Instructional Design

View more documents from Jordan .

Activate your students' minds',

What is EDHeads?
Edheads is an animation/simulation application which provides free educational activities for your classroom.
Edheads helps students learn through educational games and activities designed to meet state and national standards. Edheads partners with various school systems in the United States, which help them research, design and test activities every step of the way!
Not only do teachers and students appreciate the free activities, Edheads has been recognized by almost every major award on the Web for their excellent educational content!

So how can Edheads be incorporated into the classroom planning?
Here is an example of the Edheads tool being used for the planning of a science or Technology lesson for year 5 students.

TechnologicalDesign
Students can revise an existing design used to solve a problem based on peer review. Following this students then explain how the solution to one problem may create other problems.

Scientific Inquiry
Students can evaluate observations and measurements made by other people and identify reasons for any discrepancies. Then using their evidence and observations to explain and communicate the results of their investigations. Following this students could explain why the results of an experiment are sometimes different

Reflection:
I recently completed a unit on weather for my students on prac. Throughout this unit I included a guest speaker (weatherman) and provided a kit for the students to analyse how clouds are formed. This was a lot of fun1 Following this the students then wrote a report for their local paper to advise of their new information on the formation of clouds.

However, after investigating the tool 'EdHeads' I am wishing I knew about this tool before this unit of work. What a great tool for analysing and predicting the weather. Here, I would have wanted the children to use their evidence from their cloud data tool to explain their findings by creating their own Edhead design. This is a great rich task in completing a unit and i know the children would have had a lot of fun so they would be engaged throughout the whole unit.

Below I have posted the URL for an Edhead activity...However, a child's imagination and peer collaboration, in my mind, is where this tool really has an advantage.

http://www.edheads.org/activities/weather/frame_loader.htm

References:
http://www.edheads.org/activities/weather/frame_loader.htm

Demonstration of Voice Thread Tool

Hi Bloggers
Take a look at this video demonstration of Voice Thread. The second URL is fantastic! It shows 17 strategies of encorporating voicethread into the classroom. These are really worth a look, so enjoy and share!


http://voicethread.com/share/409/

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_245f2nkv3g3


References
Barrett.T. (2009),ICT In my classroom. Retrieved 3 August 2009 from:
http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/