Many NZ schools have interactive whiteboards/smartboards, or are considering purchasing them. Discussion invariably centre around new and innovative ways they can be used, and I came across a podcast today - the Smartboard lessons podcast - that provides a regular report on the subject from Canadian teacher/bloggers Joan Badger and Ben Hazzard. They say “the goal of this podcast to share lesson ideas that use technology to engage students in learning with a focus on SMARTBoard Interactive Whiteboards between educators.” You can find the podcast and subscribe with a search in iTunes, and they are asking for contributions from other educators who would like to share their lesson ideas with others. A Nth American focus, but another place for ideas nonetheless.
TAGS: jedd edublog smartboards
With the large media files that often need to be transferred over the web, it’s worth checking out the various file sharing and file transfer services that are available. I have a (free) yousendit account that I’ve found to perfect as I don’t exceed the limitations of the free account. These are (to quote);
“Try our free service to send photos, mp3s, artwork, and even videos to your friends and family. Use an address book to save time and maintain contacts. Up to one hundred people can download every file, giving you plenty of room to spread the word. Give your recipients a week to download your files, send files up to 100 MB, and we allow up to 100 downloads of every file.”
To transfer a file you simply enter the recipients email address and your own, browse for the file and send. They get an email with the URL of the file, and have 7 days to download it. Great way to share a media file under 100MB with a group of colleagues.
TAGS: ictpd edublog filesharing
Darren Kuropatwa has posted a lengthy and useful article on the distributed teaching and learning model he uses in his classroom. Good practical points on using blogs to support and extend learning including the use of a scribe, RSS Feeds, pedagogy and audience.
“Each day a different student is responsible for the daily scribe post. This is worth 5%-10% of their class mark, everyone who writes a scribe post gets their marks — non-blogging students don’t (it’s their choice). They end their post by choosing the next scribe. Over the length of the course these scribe posts grow into the textbook for the course, collectively authored by the students; one student at a time, one day at a time.
Worth a read, and check out the links to his class blogs too.
TAGS; blogging rss teachinghacks edublog
From Andy Carvin; A Washington state school district has announced plans put its entire curriculum online for public access, following the lead of higher education???s open courseware movement.
The Bellevue school district received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop an online tool that will give the public access to all curricular materials from each class and each grade. According to a Seattle Times article the site allows teachers to post lesson plans and ideas for each school day, and allows other teachers to rate how well they thought the lesson plans worked. Students and parents can also access the site and see what is being taught, and even watch video clips of a teacher giving the lesson.
TAGS; elearning onlinecurriculum educblog
One of the biggest hassles in recording podcasts is the varying volume levels that usually exist if you record two people, or combine interviews from several locations. Software that can solve this common frustration and reduce the amount of time it takes to deal with levels now exists - Gigavox has created The Levelator.
The Levelator is a Java-based application that automagically adjusts the volume levels in audio files. Essentially, the software examines a WAV or AIFF file, looks for volume inconsistencies and fixes them.
It’s a combination compressor, normalizer, and limiter - all with a drag-and-drop interface. You drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto the application window, and a new version is created and saved as a separate file. The software runs on both Windows and OS X and is free for personal non-commercial use. If editing audio has been a hassle, I recommend giving this a trial; it actually does make it simple to sound great, as the site says.
TAGS: edpodcast levelator
Henry Jenkins and three colleagues recently wrote a white paper for the MacArthur Foundation on participatory culture and media literacy. On his blog “Confessions of an Aca/Fan” Jenkins has published “general thoughts” on the paper.
In addressing the question how do we ensure that every child has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant in the social, cultural, economic, and political future of our society?” the writers identified a “set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire if they are to be full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging participatory culture”.
Play — the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
Not too sure about the term “networking” for what are in effect the skills typically associated with information literacy, but this is an extensive collection of skills and competencies that doesn’t map easily onto existing or draft New Zealand curriculum in any obvious way. However there are individual schools and educators who are experimenting with new media technologies as well as the “collaboration, networking, appropriation, participation, and expression” associated with the use of new media. Also the growing implementation in this country of inquiry-based learning set in authentic contexts provides opportunity for students to ” generate and share multimedia, assess digital documents, write for authentic audiences, and otherwise exploit the resources of the new participatory culture.” The white paper has a great deal of useful writing that can inform school discussions around meeting the needs of students.
TAGS: newmedia participatory culture 21stcenturylearning
k12onlineconference: The first 7 or 8 presentations have been announced on the conference blog. The first two I checked out were more presentation of resources and tools than an opportunity to collaborate and participate. TakingITGlobal, a Canadian charity focused on empowering young people to learn about and take action on global social issues, has put together a set of tools “to help educators introduce the concept of social networks for social good to their classrooms.”
I also had a look through Lee Baber’s presentation on audio, and her new media guides website is a useful resource covering all aspects of using audio on the web for those who need to know more than the basics. Incidently I quite liked the mobatalk free voice message facility she had on her site, and have since added it to the blog - and received a few messages already.
Then I explored Kathy Cassidy’s presentation. Kathy is a grade one teacher and this is her third year of blogging with her class. Last year they also used wikis and began podcasting. It is well worth taking a look around the links posted on the conference site. The class has links with NZ’s Our Lady of Lourdes school in Palmerston North, where there are a number of blogging teachers and students also worth checking out.
TAGS: k12online06 audio takingitglobal
Over the last 3 days the 2006 Global Summit has been taking place in Sydney. This is a summit for international and national educational leaders, thinkers and teachers designed to promote the strategic development of technology connected futures, and is hosted by education.au
Discussion has centred around the themes of elearning in education and training, careers in a connected environment, designing educational web services, understanding transformation in education, and emerging trends in a connected world.
The good news for those unable to attend is that many of the discussions or presentations are available throught the education.au blog as podcasts. Included amongst those already posted are George Siemens (who outlines the theory of connectivism, highlighting the changing nature of knowledge and the impacts this has on learning), Leigh Blackall from Otago, and Robert Cailliau.
TAGS; conference globalsummit2006
The K12online conference is underway, and David Warlick???s keynote video is now available for viewing. This is the first of over 40 presentations in the next two weeks that will be posted to the conference blog, and David???s video is a great way to get prepared to participate. The keynote is worth a look - David recorded it during a day at work and he stopped and made observations, including nice metaphors for learning, at various times in the day.
As an added feature, read his keynote virtual handout which he has added to his expanding CoLearners wiki, where David records his virtual handouts, and is gradually compiling a rich record of articles, links to people and events, and individual pages for conference attendees.
TAGS: educblog k12online warlick conference
Under the umbrella of twit.tv there are a dozen or more different shows (netcasts/podcasts) covering some aspect of technology. It’s well worth checking the range of netcasts now available, and of course subscribing to those of interest. I’ve been a fan of This week in Tech (TWiT) since it began.
For anyone keen to keep up with new developments in media, try this week in media or TWIM, where Alex Lindsay and other experts in content creation and the media get together to discuss the week’s developments. Recent topics include google/youtube merge, the global market for media talent, Movie transfers to DVD, kids and blogs, and podcasting… For podcasters go straight to episode 21, where commentators and podcasters Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne, John Foster, and Kenji Kato “breakdown some of the various methods they have for Podcasting - a hardware and software discussion”.
TAGS: TWiM podcasting TWiT
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