Jane’s Blog

I found the following on Ramneek’s Blog (from the International Bloggers Directory).

They could grab student’s attention and open up discussion about the Fibonacci Sequence.

Photos from Ramneek Kaur’s BubbleShare.

Here is a link to a TeacherTube video by Rachel Boyd about why we should let our students blog. The pictures look like mainly K-6 but the message is the same as if they were years 7-12.

Here is my “Wordle Summary” (Wordle is a fun easy tool)!! But I cannot paste in the URL as an image for some reason…

I wanted to try to make my own video and learn how to put it onto my blog.

I created the video with my webcam on my laptop. Then I editted it using Acer Arcade Deluxe to create an mpg3 file (if you use MovieMaker you would have made a .wmv file (Windows Media Video)).

Then I had to find somewhere to store the video and was recommended Blip TV by Matthew Kearney. You sign up and then bliptv will store your videos for you, just upload them (free).

Then I copied the embedded code and pasted it here…

The content is not to do with technology – I made a Maths Resource with cardboard and a set-square, a ruler and string – but it was an interesting process to create a video to be used for demonstration (”instructionist”  use of technology to be used to inspire construction) and learn how to share it.

So this is not a mathcast (see Madhu’s blog post and my prior post) as it does not involve an interactive whiteboard but does it classify as a Vodcast? It is “video on demand”.

When I was on Prac, my school gave lessons via SmartBoard and emailed marked up copies of the lesson to any students who were away. They were not mathcasts as they were not videos of the interactive lesson but were SmartBoard files that the student could read. Mathcasts sound like a useful tool if there is no teacher available.

I found an article about “mathcasting” (digital recording of on-screen writing & voice narration to explain maths concepts or problem solving).

TeacherTube is a good place to host your mathcast once you are teaching and you can share it with your students using a wiki, blog or Moodle. The article recommends using mathcasts as an informal assessment tool as when the students do their own mathcasts it helps you understand their thought processes better.

The article recommends using graphics tablets such as InterWrite.

Some links: Mathcast Wiki – a mathcast wiki site with sample Scratch games for students and lessons in numerous topics eg. Algebra.

Multimedia & Internet Schools reviews educational software in every issue.

Here is an article about one, DOMA–Diagnostic Online Math Assessment (MultiMedia & Internet@Schools; Mar/Apr2008, Vol. 15 Issue 2, p43-45)

It “adjusts to the skills of each student by programming questions in response to” performance. It is US-based and so assumedly follows the US curriculum. It is just an example – maybe useful for revision activities before exam time.

I found these from a journal article written by Mary Ann Bell (have to have EBSCO access to see), some blogs she recommends:

Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed – the blogs about blogging. eg. EduBlogs info you can now use a plug-in the make EduBlogs only visible to registered EbuBloggers.

If you want to be added to the International Edubloggers directory ….

10 Things Doug Johnson wished he knew as a “First Teacher”.

I have looked at a few other blog sites that Dr Bell recommended and I now realise that we should categorise our posts if we are going to keep adding for years or the blog becomes unmanageable – 15 pages of uncategorised blogs. Weblogg-ed is catalogued and it puts a list of categories with the number of blogs relating to the category on the side bar. You can filter by category.

I found another interesting PowerPoint with a brief coverage of many current technologies.

It has a brief introduction to Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Twitter, del.icio.us, Google Docs, Surveys, Wikis, Slideshare.net.

It is from The Whiteboard Blog.

I followed Chris Betcher’s blog (address is on the UTS Online Digital Learning Staff bubble) and got to Danny Nicholson’s blog.

I have attached a slideshow about Blogging in Schools – he has some very valid points about using blogging with your classes. There are some guidelines about not displaying any personal information, using first names only, etc. and examples for blog use eg. Journals, school trip logs.

The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald today talks about a trial use of ICT (mobile phones) in exams.

You just have to read the online comments on their blog to see how controversial this topic is.

I think it has pros and cons.

You should not have to memorise literature in order to answer exam questions. Is this the new “Open Book” exam?

What is the purpose of the exam? Are you trying to test whether the student has learnt what has been taught?

How do they manage the situation where everyone is in an exam room together and some are using phones – how do the students, who are thinking, concentrate with all the noise (or are Net Gen’s used to noise?)

How about students who cannot afford the technology (the Digital Divide, see earlier posts)? Would the school provide the technology for all?

For a fun 4 and a half minutes of education about blogs vs wikis…

“Ask not what your wiki can do for you, but what you can do for your wiki”!!

This is a very clever, amusing form of education.

Made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Available at: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3064/2542066071_46498bf537_m.jpg

Here it is…