Final Reflection

I found the eLearning with the iLe@rn Model video interesting and challenging.  I think the challenge questions (listed below) from the end of the video are not just relevant for Sydney CEO as a whole, I can see that these are questions I need to ponder with for student in my class and questions that we can also address at a whole school level.

eLearning

Some key quotes from the video:

“eLearning is about engaging learning environments where the students want to learn, examining both the physical environments in which we learn and the virtual environments which we create.”

“At the core of eLearning is the ability to learn anything, anytime, anywhere.”

“eLearning is about developing reflective and responsible learners.”

“Networking is not about computer networking but instead about people sharing their knowledge and expertise.”

The skills to be developed to take full control of our own learning are:

·      Questioning skills

·      Communication and collaboration skills

·      Creative thinking skills

·      Reflective skills

·      Critical thinking and problem solving skills

·      Multimodal literacy skills

The challenge questions moving forward:

How are Catholic values embedded into eLearning?

How do students lead the learning?

How are students involved in negotiating the learning process?

What features are important in creating engaging learning spaces?

What professional development is required to extend the use of eLearning practices in and beyond the classroom?

How do students create knowledge?

How are iLe@rn skills assessed?

What learning strategies are used to develop the iLe@rn skills?

How do teachers model being the learner in the classroom?

Describe the whole school eLearning plan for creating and sustaining change

Blooms Digital Taxonomy

I find the Blooms digital taxonomy interesting.  I’m not sure I 100% agree with all of the digital terms (verbs) that have been mapped to the key terms, but even so, I do think that it will be a helpful planning tool.

I won’t be using Second Life with my students but I think it would most likely fit into the creating level.

I think Picasa would fit into the applying (editing images) and creating (creating photo collages or movies) levels.

Final Reflection

I have really enjoyed this online course.  I have been introduced to many new Web 2.0 tools that I had heard about (and some new ones) but had neither taken the time to investigate nor taken the time to think about how I could use them myself professionally or in the classroom with my students.  I started the course with the intention of completing a module every two weeks to give myself time to explore and experiment with the new tools being introduced every week.  Due to lack of discipline or simply because of busyness this unfortunately did not happen.  Also, when writing half-yearly school reports there was absolutely no chance of even thinking about the course for about 4-5 weeks!!  I have been wondering if spreading the course over a longer period of time may have been helpful for me, but I am not completely convinced of this.

What I have found invaluable whilst doing this course has been having other staff members from my school participating in the course as well.  I have really appreciated my colleagues’ involvement because we have been able to discuss the tools we’ve been learning about and use some of the tools (e.g. GoogleDocs) to collaborate on some work we’ve been doing.  Now we just need to convince all of our colleagues to ‘jump on board too’.

Google Docs has changed my practise.  I am absolutely a convert!!  I have used it to collaborate with colleagues at work, to collaborate with a friend for a presentation we were delivering and I used it for my report writing in the middle of the year.

One blog that I have commented on during the course was Megan Zanelli’s blog.  The URL is http://webtwomegan.blogspot.com.au/ my comment is on Module 7.

In my Module 10 reflection I wrote ‘I wonder if I can embed the Wiki in the Google Site’.  It makes me laugh out loud to read back over this and see how far I’ve come, not just the Web 2.0 tools I have experimented with but with my thinking about how I might be able to use these tools together.  Before this course I had heard about Wikis but not Google Sites and had not used either of them.  I am excited about what the future holds for my students, my colleagues and for me. 

Module 10

Wikis

Another great collaborative tool…I have found Google Docs and Google Drive which we explored in Module 3 fantastic as a collaborative tool personally, but I can see the potential of using Wikis with students and staff as well.  I have set up a wikispace for my students and would like to trial it next term with Literature Circles.  It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Nings…

seem like a good way to join or start a network focused on an area of interest.  I really enjoyed spending time researching some areas of interest and on the Classroom 2.0 Ning, to be honest I wasted (not really wasted I guess) quite a few hours!!  I’m looking forward to being accepted by the CEO Sydney iLe@rn Ning so I see how schools in Sydney are using Nings for learning.  I’m not sure if this is right but it seems like the Nings I’ve looked at are a great Web 2.0 tool for teachers, can they be used with students as well?  More research required…

Google Site

I have set up my own Google Site, now to decide…do I use a Wiki or a Google Site with my students?  Google Sites seems to have more options.  I wonder if I can embed the Wiki in the Google Site, well there’s a little project of discovery for me to follow up.

Module 9

Scootle

I had a brief introduction to Scootle at my school a few years ago.  As a staff we didn’t make it a regular ‘go to’ resource and as a second year graduate teaching Prep, I had my hands full learning how to guide and teach ‘my’ beautiful children and interact with their families…so needless to say, Scootle kind of fell off my radar.  I am very glad to be reintroduced to it as with a little more experience now (i.e. a little more headspace to look further afield for resources) I can see this will be a great resource to share and benefit from others’ input about ideas and units of work.

I have to agree with Jan (http://jan4fun.blogspot.com.au/) that it is a pity it is more difficult to get to than most websites but will take up her suggestion and see if I can add it as a bookmark in Diigo.

Social Networking

Social network sites are defined as those which are intended for a single user. Online communities are intended for use with groups. The use of collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis and nings for learning with students is recommended. Personal social network sites such as Facebook are not.

This quote from Web 2.0 tools module 9 is a really helpful distinction.  I felt uncomfortable at the idea of using social networking sites with students, particularly as I am a primary school teacher and according to the terms and conditions of most social networking sites the minimum age people can join is 13 years old, thus making it unavailable to primary aged children.

Collaboration (or team work as we sometimes call it) on the other hand is an important part of learning together and learning from others (zone of proximal development).  As our world becomes smaller and smaller (in a perceived sense) the ability to collaborate with others near and far is going to be high on the list of skills employers look for.  Within our classrooms and year levels where I work we value collaboration highly, this Web 2.0 tools course is challenging me to investigate facilitating my students’ collaboration further afield.

Second Life

It was interesting to watch the Youtube videos about Second Life.  Fron what I saw I think this maybe aimed a bit more a Secondary students.  In the first clip the narrator was suggesting that students could act out and Elizabethan play in front of a ‘live’ audience in Second Life.  As a primary school teacher with kinaesthetic learners and ones who love drama in my class I would probably have my students act out the Elizabethan play in real life in front of their classmates.

It feels like Second Life gives the opportunity for a bit of a disconnect between what a person is doing and real life feelings/emotions and consequences.  I can understand that this may be beneficial for some extremely shy people to practise something virtually before they have a go in real life but I feel uncomfortable with the possibility of people living in Second Life and not in real life. 

I can see the benefits of Second Life for trialling or modelling something for no cost that you would like to make.

Facebook

I have a private Facebook page that I use to keep in touch with friends and relatives overseas and in other parts of Australia.  I am super conscious of keeping my Facebook activity private so have set very tight privacy settings and although I check what is going on with friends and family regularly I contribute infrequently. 

I would never accept a friendship request from a student, school parent or colleague.  In fact I did have a school parent say she would try to find me on Facebook and I had to be very up front about the fact that if she sent me a friend request I would not accept it.  Not because I did not like her but because it was a professional requirement and because my Facebook activity was purely personal.  She accepted this without a problem.

Twitter

I set up my Twitter account some time ago and when I did Module 2 I refreshed my interest in Twitter.  I follow a few people now and find there is much ‘out there’ to keep a person busy, researching and reading.  @langwitches is a prolific tweeter and has pointed me in the direction of some good educational articles.  I don’t really tweet myself at this stage and that is a challenge for the future.

In conclusion, I found these two quotes combined informative and challenging.  As

Celia says in the second quote it might be time for me to stop ‘lurking’ and ‘jump in’!

‘What is explicit in any idea of a network is its connections. And in every case, the more connections there are, the more useful a network becomes. This is commonly known as “the network effect.” A social network’s value, for example, scales exponentially, because you can have groups of many different sizes as well as more individual participants.’  Andy Havens, From community to technology…and back again, Next Space, January 2013, http://www.oclc.org/publications/nextspace/articles/issue20/fromcommunitytotechnologyandbackagain.en.html

‘You will only benefit if you contribute in these worlds – lurking is common but it only lasts so long before you need to jump in and contribute as well.’  Celia Coffa http://ccoffa.edublogs.org/web-2-0-online-course/ 

Module 8

I had heard the term RSS feed previously but had no idea what it was.  The “RSS in Plain English” clip was very clear.

RSS is definitely a time effective way to be constantly updated with news and information from your favourite sites, blogs etc.

The “Using RSS in Education” slideshare made explicit some ways in which RSS can be used with students.  This is not something I will be trialling with my students in the near future but with blogging ‘on the cards’ it may make a lot of sense.

Until next time...

Module 7

I investigated Diigo instead of Delicious as I had looked at Delicious previously and did not make very good use of it possibly due to lack of understanding and time…so I decided to try something new.  These Web 2.0 tools are definitely easy to use and time effective for busy teachers. I found so many interesting and relevant articles via Diigo that I could easily spend days reading, investigating and pondering how to change my practice.  The ‘My Groups’ and ability to pursue a topic via ‘Tags’ makes searching for interesting content super easy.  My interest is piqued by quite a few articles I have bookmarked and I am keen to keep ‘mining the gold’ in the groups I have joined.

The ‘time’ factor continues to plague me, I would dearly love to ‘shut the world out’ for a while to investigate and explore but that seems to negate the whole purpose of Web 2.0 tools, i.e. collaboration.  I continue to feel the challenge of keeping a healthy work/life/learning balance.

Module 6

I found Picasa Web Album and The Picasa Application were fairly intuitive to use.  I have done some basic photo editing using other applications so Picasa is another option.  I like that Picasa integrates with Google Drive and Google Docs so easily.  It was also pretty easy to work out for myself how to insert images from Picasa Web Album into my blog…am I learning??  Maybe just a fluke!!  Until module 7...

Module 5

Bubbl.us is a good mind-mapping tool.  I use the app ‘popplet lite’ (free) on iPad with my students or on iPad or my phone personally.  I was wondering if Bubbl.us allowed for real-time collaboration, which would make it an extremely powerful (and free!!) tool.  I found my answer on Rebecca Buerkett’s blog ‘The Learning Librarian’…

“I wish it [Bubbl.us] allowed real-time collaboration (wiki-style) like MindMeister or FreeMind (Adam and Mowers 24), rather than only one person being able to use it at a time.”  http://rbuerkett.edublogs.org/2009/03/08/reflections-on-bubblus/

This at least gives me some great leads on real-time collaborative tools.

It looks like after signing up for MindMeister it is possible to collaborate in real-time but I’m not sure if it is as flexible as Bubbl.us in terms of choosing the position of cells etc.

I was happily working away on creating my glog, feeling that this was going to be a very useful classroom tool when a box popped up saying Glogster was requesting permission to store information on my computer!!  That was the end of Glogster!  At least they asked permission I guess.

I really enjoyed playing around with Prezi.  It definitely has a better look as a presentation tool than PowerPoint and Keynote.