For some time I have been meaning to finish my Moodle course about Scratch. It has been on the back burner for at least a year! The course itself is mostly finished but has a few areas which desperately need some attention. I was hoping to finish it and put it on Moodle Commons like I did with the Web2.0 course. But I don’t think that will happen anytime soon
So here it is – unfinished and unpolished – but it may be of some use if you have access to a Moodle server and want to do some learning about Scratch with your students.
I’ve also found a new website dedicated to resources around screencasting. Check it out here: http://scrast.net It looks like it is a great place for all of your screencasting needs.
In term four of 2008 we ran an online professional development course for teachers through Moodle. The aim was simply to be an introduction to the world of web2.0 and how it might impact on the classroom. The course was undertaken over five weeks with the following areas of focus each week.
Blogging
Social bookmarking
RSS and personal homepage tools
Collaborative document creation including wikis
Digital story telling online
In addition we had weekly meetings using the Elluminate conferencing software.
Having benefitted greatly from the opensource community I am offering the course as a download, as a very small way of giving something back. You will need your own Moodle installation, or you can always get a free one at ninehub.com.
This ‘point‘ upgrade should really have been Wordpress 3.0, the changes in the interface and usability are absolutely brilliant. Check out the two minute video introduction below.
I am continually amazed at the quality of opensource software efforts. Well done Wordpress.org!
I spent number of days at this year’s VITTA conference. The theme was “Shift Happens – Technology alone will not save us!” For those unaware of the Shift Happens viral video, you should look here. There are also lots of supporting materials on the shift happens wiki.
Two of the opening keynotes presentations were focused on the role and impact games can have on education. Derek Robertson from Scotland gave a excellent keynote on day two titled ‘The Future of Gaming’. He discussed the ways in which he is investigating and researching the use of COTS or ‘commercial off the shelf games’ in education. In Scotland, they believe this area to be so important they actually have what they call a ‘consolarium’ to investigate game use in education. Derek’s blog is one I’ll be following in the future. Some of the work and a 48 page research paper can be found here.
Some the games Derek used were:
And another one suggested by the attendees Quest Atlantis
What was most interesting about his work, was the way the teachers he worked with used ‘games as a contextual hub’ for the learning. So the games were not an ‘add on’, or a reward, but were integral to the learning. More on this later, when we hope to get Derek to discuss this on the Ed Tech Crew.
Andrew Owen did the keynote on the third day and continued the theme of using games in the classroom. His keynote was titled ‘Games: Not the Educational Tool of Tomorrow, the Educational Tool of Today‘. He did an excellent job explaining how he used games to engage students in their learning. Many of the games he used were new to me. They included:
He also discussed the ‘Step It Up‘ program that he runs for work experience students. This is where students come into the workplace and work in teams all week to produce a game. The focus is on learning new skills, teamwork and producing something of value (not your usual making the coffee and getting the smoko type of work experience!)
Now all I need to do is to find some time to play some of these games – for research purposes of course!
I have been attending the 2008 VITTA conference this week and have been using “Cover It Live” to live blog the keynotes. If you are interested, check out the ‘live page’ here. The keynotes have been excellent!
The most useful part about ‘Cover It Live’ is the all of the ideas, links, comments and resources you receive from other participants contributing to the conversation. More on the conference later …
If you are a big fan of Inspiration and Kidspiration the good news is that there is now an online version called webspiration. It is currently in beta but you can sign up to give it a run. The interface is pretty much the same as the inspiration product and behaves in pretty much the same way. So if you have used any of their products, you will be instantly productive!
Some interesting features include the ability to collaborate with others in real time and uploading and downloading of Inspiration 8.5 files. One interesting omission in the product is the ability to upload an image
So for all those teachers that have wanted to use Inspiration but couldn’t get it past their school’s IT budget, go and sign up while it lasts. I couldn’t find any details of future pricing or premium services. This is oviously a response from the large number of other web2.0 services that offer free visual thinking tools – bubbl.us, mindmeister.com, mind42.com, gliffy.com and others.
A week ago on the Ed Tech Crew Podcast we came across a presentation format called Pecha Kucha, which is basically 20 slides, times 20 seconds for each slide. So you end up doing a short, and hopefully impacting presentation, in around six minutes.
This is a very interesting format that would be interesting to use with students. The combination of clear oral communication, some precise limited text, and visuals, makes this a good medium for students to communicate an idea(s), be persuasive, or make a stand on an issue in a passionate way.
While going through my delicious network tonight, I came across a link from Hey Jude that lead to me a page of educational videos where I found Chris Lehmann’s pecha kucha presentation on School 2.0. I have actually read some Chris’ blogposts on this podcast. This is a great short video of Chris in action!
Virtualbox.org has just recently posted version 2.0 of it’s virtualisation software!
For quite some time now I have been using Virtual Box, a free opensource alternative to virtualisation from Sun Microsystems who also contribute heavily to Open Office. Virtual box is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
I am also the owner of some other virtualisation software solutions for the Mac. I have paid for copies of both Parallels and VM Ware. However, I have found myself increasingly using the open source solution. It may not be quite as a polished or integrated as the other solutions, but coupled with open source operating systems (Ubuntu, Gos, OLPC and others) it gives you the flexibity to try different OS’s and software services, and also to pass them on to others. What’s even better is that you can try out open source alternatives for free, on your windows machines without having to partion disks, dual boot etc … just before you make the switch BTW it also runs Windows XP at very, very acceptable speeds!
A couple of days ago the MathTrain sent through a link about an application called Uuorld (don’t ask me how to pronounce it!) This application reminded me of one of my favourite Ted Talks by Hans Rosling where he brings vital global data to life through a series of visualisations.
Well, Uuorld turns out to be a great application for visualising data with students and adults. Once downloaded, you can choose from a variety of ‘data sets’ and then choose which countries (or the world) and the time frame for visualising the data. There are a large variety of ‘data sets’ made available through the application. At this stage you can’t import data but the future for these sorts of tools, in encouraging higher order thinking, looks good!
In additional to taking a still image of your data, you can also export your visualisation in a number of different video formats. They have versions for Mac, Windows & Linux.
I don’t often mention my other podcast ‘The Ed Tech Crew” on this blog. However, in the past week Tony and I have been fortunate enough to have interviewed Will Richardson from weblogg-ed.com. Will is one of the earliest educational bloggers that I know of, and has been pioneering learning in online spaces. He is very articulate and passionate about working with students online. If you have the time, I strongly recommend a listen. Also check out his ‘Powerful Learning Practice‘ network site. Enjoy!
I’ve just finished reading Sartz’s blog where he has been discussing the usefulness of flickr in education (and making bad horse puns!) Flickr is a photo sharing site powered by Yahoo! that allows users to upload and share their photos. Sartz explains quite a few services based on flickr such Taggalaxy, Flickrcc, PhotoSoup, Bubblr and 10 by 10. All interesting sites based on mashing up publicly accessible photos.
Which leads me to one of my flickr favourites flickr-storm. ‘Flickr storm‘ is a simple tool that allows you to search flickr based on a keyword, select the pictures from the results, and then save those results as a web page that your students or friends can access. In addition, it also adds a link to the flickr user as well as the licensing terms. My short bridge example is here.
In term four of 2008 we ran an online professional development course for teachers through Moodle. The aim was simply to be an introduction to the world of web2.0 and how it might impact on the classroom. The course was undertaken over five weeks with the following areas of focus each week.
BTW it also runs Windows XP at very, very acceptable speeds!
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