Facebook

1st post for a while. Just joined up Facebook! Was inspired to by an ex-student (from many years ago) who invited me as a friend. He got me off my behind to have a look at it. Have been meaning two for a few weeks as I've noticed mention of it in the regular media. Seems a very myspacey type of social networking. what I cannot believe is the founders knocked back the billion dollars they were offered for it. I can see Facebook being vogue for a short while then superceded by the "next" innovation. By then the founders might have missed the boat!!

Hooray assignment finished!!

Hooray my 2nd assignment for FLE finished. I'll let it sit for a couple of days then re-read and edit before submitting it. I don't know about others but I actually completed in a more formal way as I found the structure easier. I hope that sits ok. It was good covering a variety of readings in relation to social software to support the learning task that Liang and I had created. Now that I've put in the hard yards from Friday evening to now I'm going to enjoy the public holiday tomorrow with my beautiful family!!

Mashups

Read an interesting article found in Cathy Chen's blog titled Mashups: The next major new software development model? As I replied to Cathy, I think it was interesting that the author stated that rather than the business organisations being at the leading edge of developing Web2.0 that 'the much larger community of the Web as a major source of innovation and leading edge behavior that subsequently moves across' This has repurcussions for us as educators as well- Are our students at the leading edge and we, the teachers, are just catching up?? Perhaps not so much for the primary students that I teach, but this certainly might be the case for those teaching middle and upper secondary students. Also interestingly there seems to be two different types of mashups- those that are being developed by the general community that's on-line (wikis etc) and also now a growing body of tools from commercial software vendors that also try to bring the apparent advantages of mashups to the business world, both on the Web and in our intranets. Will the 2 come together or will the general community prefer to go their merry ways without the cost of the extra tools created by vendors?

CamStudio in use!

Camstudio is very useful and practical to use in a teaching environment. In yesterdays class I created a demo on how to use the address book for our email environment. When I played it for the gr 4 children they were very attentive and listened well w/o being distracted by me using the mouse or keyboard. I then had it looping for the rest of the lesson for them to follow. After the lesson I have shrunk it to email size and posted it to the grades' myclasses page (an LMS environment). As a result the children can access the demos from home and show their parents what they are learning in Info Tech lessons. I have uploaded the compressed movies for those who'd like to view them. Let me know what you think!

All this new software.....

It has been great using all this new software and doing a number of varied activities. It's been great learning about blogs, creating my own and reading/commenting others. I've loved some of the new software I've been introduced to that I would not otherwise have used or known about in any detail. The latest two I've had a look at and used are Audacity and CamStudio. I used Audacity to record Where the Wild Things Are for the FLE assignemnt I'm doing with Liang Soon. I was really pleased how it sounded prior to passing it onto Liang Soon. This was nothing compared to improvements Liang Soon made still using the Audacity program (try it @ http://fletls.podomatic.com/). I showed it to teachers at school and they were impressed with the possibilities for literarcy. As an ICT teacher of primary children CamStudio is great(thanx Ted). Quite often after demonstrating something to students they need to be shown again once they get down to work. By using CamStudio prior to the lesson the demo can be pre-recorded and after a 'live demo' this can be played (looping) on the large instructional screen (plasma, i/active white board, data projector)for reinforcement/assistance. The recorded demo can also be placed on in the on-line learning environment (myclasses in my case) for children to go back to later and/or to share with their parents so they too can see what we are doing in class. If you want to try CamStudio try this link for version 2.0 (later versions require a licence code that is difficult to obtain)ftp://ftp.freenet.de/pub/filepilot/windows/multimedia/video/camstudio20.exe .

Social Bookmarking- valuable?

I must say that I'm not convinced by the phenomenon of Social Bookmarking.
"But you can access your bookmarks from any computer!" I hear you exclaim. Yeah, but if you have a personally customisable, web-based software that allows teachers and students to share school related content which includes bookmarks then social bookmarking is superfluous.
"Ah what about the tagging?" You reply. Well, there are no strict or widely accepted conventions and more to the point those people / organisations that would use the web for material gain or inappropriate activities have begun to use some of the most common tags. I would prefer to use my own web-based software for collaborating, communicating, organising, document storage, and information management. It is available anytime, anywhere, making home to school activities and school communications easier without the risk of students being exposed to inappropriate content.

Ning

Ning
http://ning.com/
...an easy way to create your own social network by allowing you to create the profile questions, upload all types of media, and more; use a private social network to create an interest inventory for the students in your class!

Heaps of Private networks to choose from (or create your own). An interesting one that had relevance to me as a teacher was the classroom2.0 room @ http://classroom20.ning.com/ as it says "the social networking site devoted to those interested in the practical application of computer technology (especially Web 2.0) in the classroom and in their own professional development. "

Have a look, tell me what you think.
Andrew

Learning Objects defintion & r they passe?

Many people define a learning object as a piece of information that is uploaded onto some sort of site. I do not agree with this. The salient word is learning. A piece of information in itself is not necessarily a learning object. For a piece to be a learning object there must be an intention to assist learning- what is the purpose to assist the student's understanding/learning. As a teacher or facilitator one needs to have an aim and objective for the learning object and have thought through how its effectiveness as a learning object is to be evaluated. Also how is one to assess the student's learning is also an important facet. If no learning objects are to be assessed or evaluated what's the point of them in the first place? Learning objects therefore do not need to be reuseable to be classified as such as long as they meet my aforementioned critieria (however once developed it is obviously useful if they can be reapplied).
Again it is offered that learning objects are past their use by date. I do not think so necessarily. It almost smacks of digital snobbery- that LOs are old hat. If they are well designed with a specific purpose trhen they can be more than useful to assist student's learning.
AndrewLL

Scibd

I found this: Scribd http://discoverymail.com/a/hBF-lEgAJcM3mBBJMt1A$odB1OH/ks301...a very useful Web 2.0 online application which allows you to upload a file in common formats (i.e. PPT, DOC, TXT, XLS, etc.) and an Adobe Flash Paper version is created in a player. You can easily embed the player and the content on your own Web page or blog, you can have the item viewed and even read-aloud right from Scribd's site, or you can download the uploaded file in PDF, TXT, and even the read-aloud file in MP3 format for putting on an audio device.
What do people think about using this site?
Are some of the posts from others a turn off from using the site?
Andrew

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards

The Boss is interested in.....

I've been discussing the various platforms we've been using for our on-line seminars with my school principal. She's the co-ordinator of an international educational leaders group. when they want to get together to discuss issues/ share knowledge etc. they have to fly half way across the world. We see that software such as skype & elluminate offering the oppt for people internationally located to regularly meet in a real time discussion ( and face to face of sorts) of educational matters whilst keeping the cost down.

Web 2.0 is really mainstream now!!

Web 2.0 is really mainstream now.... South Park on Monday parodied 2nd life.
It was interesting that it portrayed those that want to spend their waking hours in this virtual reality (what is reality anyway?) as junk food, pus & sore ridden slovenly losers. The graphics for the virtual world were quite good by the way.
Andrew

Response to Comments on Web 2.0

Thanx for your comments. The Web 2.0 certainly allows us to engage in more of a 2 way i/action across the web. As a result I agree that it provides exciting opportunities to engage students of all ages in learning. It is also noticeable that this concept of web2.0 is now entering the vernacular of the mainstream... interesting article in the insight section of Saturday's edition of 'The Age' (more about that later). However I don't resile from the point that as educators we also need to carefully and attentively ensure the safety of our students. An example of this was brought home to me this week in one of the educational on-line resources that I subscribe to that was presented as a web2.0 initiative. It was for a site that "...a very useful Web 2.0 online application which allows you ...embed the player and the content on your own Web page or blog,.." Unfortunately it had in it numerous risque articles unsuitable for listing with primary educators/students. So lets use the wonderful opportunities with our students that web 2.0 offers but not take our eyes off the ball in regards to their safety.

Defintion of Web 2.0

After reading through numerous and varied discourses on the Defintion of Web 2.0. It seems to me that Web 2.0 incorporates existing and new innovations that allow people to interactively connect with one another! what do you think?

Reflns on- Social software: E-Learning beyond learning management systems

The differentiation between LMS and personal tools is not as black and white as the authors would have us believe. In the Victorian Catholic Education system our own private network combines both through the myinternet account system which includes the LMS as well as the personal and collaborative tools aspects. Myinternet has 3 sections: mydesktop, mymail and myclasses. It is in the myclasses section that many of the personal and collaborative tools can be found. such things as topic specific myclasses pages, forums, discussion rooms, notice boards, on-line polls, events calendars, files boxes, personal and collaborative journals and eLFs. An e-Learning Folio (eLF) is a means of managing (collecting, organising and presenting) activities, lessons and resources that support varied approaches to teaching as well as the designated learning outcomes of a class project or unit of work. It provides educational context for learning objects provided by the teacher.
The pedagogical approach advocated by the authors is really just the same used for many years by primary teachers for their integrated curriculum, and now with advent of VELS, inquiry topics. The approach is called the inquiry approach and has been championed in Victorian schools through the adoption of the integrated curriculum approach promoted by Kath Murdoch of Melb. uni. It does as Dalsgaard states in his article- allows students to develop tools to solve problems.
A word of warning is required regarding the personal tools the author wants the students to use. For younger students there are a number of security issues to be concerned with. What access to they have to the extended internet? Who can access their particular pages? What safeguards and supervision has been initiated? Is a private network better suited to primary students.
To conclude it is reaffirming as a primary teacher using ICT that many of my pedagogical methods have been supported. It is also challenging to view how other tools such as wikis can be incorporated. Finally as a teacher of primary children it is important that students e-learning is still carefully supervised and supported in their undertaking of self-governed, problem based and collaborative activities.
AndrewL

Welcome to my new blog

Hi!! My name is andrew and this is my blog for the Flexible Learning Environments subject I'm doing at Melb Uni.