Mad Mondays

Mondays are crazy or mad days for me, as I teach every possible lesson ie 6 periods for the day. After lunch, I have the Ping music project, where I have the two year 7 groups combined. The students who have attended our school since primary school are conversant in technology use and web2.0 tools, but 1/3 of them are new to us this year, and have limited or basic expertise. This means that I need to be super organized and cater for all skill levels. Before each class, I list on a tick sheet what the students need to complete for the double session, with spare activities at the end to challenge those students who complete their work quickly.

Today, was not so ‘mad’, in fact so many interesting developments took place. In period 1, my year 11 class experimented with xtranormal One of our students completed the movie and it successfully embedded in his blog. Perod 2 was year 11 accounting and as the cd that comes with the text did not have the correct case study, I had to quickly think of an excercise that  students who had finished their work could work on. Budgeting was our theme, so students worked on an xtranormal movie to explain the concepts of budgeting.

Scheduled for the pod and working with my year 12 class for Information Technology Applications, we had a fascinating lesson today. Studying virtual teams as part of their set coursework, I set up a data projector and speakers to show them some of the  virtual teams that I work with. First site was twitter. People quickly responded from various countries and many of them from Australia. One interesting response came from @susanwrites who is an author.  @susanwrites @murcha Hello to year 12 students from an author in California. 7pm in the evening here, it’s still light out and perfect spring weather.

When I explained that we were studying virtual teams, Susan responded with:- “You and your students might want to check out freshbrain.org It’s all virtual – technology, leraning and fun, kids 13-18 ” Before I could blink, students in my class who did not have a twitter account, were registering. Next minute this tweet came up on the white board:-774melbourneCFA launches http://www.cfaconnect.net.au/ 

One of my students said to me that she was part of the pilot program for this project. How amazing was that, that the tweet came up at the very time we were online! It must give her satisfaction in that the ground work has now contributed to this launch and she was part of it. Plus, she heard of the launch as soon as the media release went out.

Then came my double year 7 class after lunch. I had  been rung up that morning to ask whether we could videoconference with some student teachers in Parkville, Melbourne and as Ajax was with them (our Ping organiser) we used this session. This is the first time that we have used skype or videoconferencing with another party in Australia!! As we were in the computer lab, my facilities are limited. I used my laptop and its inbuilt camera. It was placed on an old printer that was placed on a table at the front. This would allow a view of the classroom for those who were participating.

External speakers and a usb mic were used for a start but we had to revert to a headset and its mic. My laptop worked on wireless internet which was not quite strong enough to keep both videos going. So, we turned the video on for the people who were talking. Again, I was amazed, that the most challenging of students volunteered to come up to the microphone and talk to their skype audience. These students often struggle with written media and literacy but confidently speak to an unknown audience. Questions were asked and a number of students went to the web camera to speak about where they live and what they enjoyed about Ping.

The rest of the double lesson was used for writing a story without pictures and words. Julie Lindsay from Qatar academy is working with the same topic ,as her students have WWW – a week without walls. Some students are off to Italy, London and Turkay. Those students who remain behind are completing an alternative program which includes music sessions in the lab. Julie’s students will also produce ’stories without pictures and words’, featuring Middle Eastern instruments. The best will be uploaded onto the Ping blog for us to share.  My students will try and compose a story with an Australian influence – where they live, their favourite holiday destination, the outback etc How exciting is that?

Twitter – back in time and forward in space!

Having holidays at the moment, allows me to spend some precious time online. So, I have been able to watch the updates on twitter. How cool are these for teachers? Following them must  bring some great teachable moments.

I like the idea of museums and others being on twitter. The migration history centre is on twitter and below is their latest tweet.

MigrantHistoryObjects Through Time showcases significant objects, collections & places that tell the story of NSW migration history.

The next is a really fascinating one – follow the tweets of an astronaut whilst  in space. He is @Astro_Mike who will be one of the space astronauts up in space. See article

Follow MarsPhoenix for the first updates from another planet. I enjoyed reading this post on 10 extroadinary twitter updates.

My class was all a-Twitter

It has taken 18 months  using twitter for personal  use, to realise the power it could have in my class with students!! Twitter provides untapped opportunities for use in the classroom with students, that will only be fully utilised with time and experimentation. Potential uses include:-

• teachable moments
• research and quick answers to questions on all manner of topics
• learning, in real time, of world events as they occur
• sharing work, blog posts
• establishing student networks etc

My year 11 and some year 10 students are part of the netgened project, where students are studying the future of education. One of the topics is the “Personal Web”. As students are struggling to add to the wiki and to come to grips with some of the concepts, I decided to show them my experience with twitter two weeks ago, when I experienced the Melbourne earthquake, in real time, with my Melbourne tweets. Students were genuinely fascinated and one curious girl immediately went onto join twitter. To my utter amazement, it was unblocked. (It has been blocked for over 8 months).

So, sensing a teachable moment, I asked my twitter PLN  to say hello to my students. To their amazement, responses came in from Thailand, USA, Sth America, Portugal, England, Canada and NZ. Some added snippets about the time of day and the weather. Discussions turned to the potential of twitter in their class and ensuing education. Spot all the teachable  moments that exist here.

• jplaman@murcha I think every student should begin building a PLN. Twitter happens to be the first thing I turn to in the morning to learn.
• emapey2@murcha Greetings from Uruguay , in South America
• mbarrow@murcha Greetings from England. It is 40 minutes past midnight here and I should be asleep rather than twittering. Hope you’re having fun
• edueyeview@murcha Love Twitter! Hello from coastal Maine, US. Welcome to the conversation!
• lnitsche@murcha Hello from Chester Springs, Pennsylvania USA where is felt like spring today at about 65F
• damian613@murcha Hello from Perkasie, PA, USA! It’s about 8:30pm here and 13 degrees C.
• classroomqueen@murcha Hello from a very, very cold Regina, SK, Canada. It’s warmed up to -21C or -35C with windchill. This am it was -47C with windchill.
• Inpi@murcha Hello from Portugal! It’s 22 past midnight here, I can’t introduce my students!!!
• nzchrissy@murcha Hello fabulous students in Victoria from Bangkok Thailand where it is very hot at the moment
• chetty@murcha Hi Vic. Nice to meet u. I’ve just realised we can use iGoogle + twitter app to tweet from NSW. What are you working on?
• jeffwhipple@murcha a chilly evening to you and your students from New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada…twitter is about connecting and learning
• MelissaShultz@murcha Greetings from America via twitter! I love AUS! Especially those Collingwood Pies!!
• KarenJan@murcha Greetings from Boston, MA, USA!So, the students sensing a learning moment, asked me to tease out help for them on the semantic aware applications and geo-everything in education.

Some responses started to come in and here is one really interesting one:-

• ajep@murcha learning games to change the world http://tinyurl.com/bh4nvm

Unfortunately our bell went but it gave me much food for thought. What if the students were studying climates, or Portugal or Thai cultures etc?  Imagine the real time response that could be gleaned from Twitter colleagues and self directed learning that might occur. My students will come up with some queries this week to try and tap into the global knowledge and expertise that exists and is now accessible 24/7/365 for them to complete their pages on the netgened wiki.

Have you used twitter in your classroom? If so, I would love to read  your comments or any comments that anyone may have on this post.

Postscript: Upon going home that night, I tweeted that my gmail was down, and was anyone else having problems. I got the solution to my problem from a fellow tweeter – my curious student, who had joined twitter after the class!!?? Technology never ceases to amaze me.

Some interesting twitter related sites discovered this week:-

• top ten twitter tips for higher education
• Storytelling using twitter = story tweeting
• twitter fan wiki with interesting applications for twitter
• why you should follow everyone who follows you on twitter

See also this great post learning with twitter by Steve Wheeler

Victoria – where it all happens ‘naturally’!

Friday night is shopping night. It is also an opportunity to call upon my mother-in- law and check upon her status  and wellbeing.  However, being tired from a busy week at school, we decided to come home early after getting our groceries.

This gave me a chance to logon to twitter and see if any interesting snippets of information were being divulged.  (I have neglected twitter of late). A tweet by Clare @craff2008 caught my eye, saying she had experienced earth tremours, amounting to an earthquake. So,  I immediately responded.

Continuing on I read the preceeding pages only to find most of my online Melbourne twitter friends had experienced an earthquake. This was approximately 9:05pm. By 9:30pm, the radio 774 had broadcast the event  and by 10:30pm pm the TV had a section on it. However, well before the broadcasts, my twitter friends had informed me of all sorts of information :-

•  who had experienced it, where and how!
• the size of the earthquake
• The tweet updates to @774melbourne came from everywhere.
• The location of the epicentre in Gippsland on google earth, tagged with a  pin.

@mrpbps Retweeting @774melbourne: Google Maps approx epicenter of Melbourne earthquake http://bit.ly/HQQ8S + USGS on 4.7 quake http://bit.ly/5NuwH 

The fact that the Herald Sun published an online article within 30 mins (but did not publish anything on it the next day)

ldumicich http://bit.ly/reqq5 Herald Sun has article on earthquake

 My good friend Julie Lindsay,  from Victoria, now teaching in Qatar but presenting in Londonat a conference,  was following it all from London.

@julielindsay Reading tweets from people in Melbourne, Oz….are you OK after earth tremor

Soon, a tweet appeared informing us of a volcano erutpion in Indonesia and next my friend @Durff told us of an earthquake in Greenland of 6.6 in severity. Within a month, Victoria has experienced bushfires, galeforce winds, financial difficulties and an earthquake. It was time for me to go to bed!!

Some profound tweets came through re the power of twitter and social networking and they speak for themselves:-

suz01wow, earthquake or something in melbourne strongest Ive ever felt..

suz01still feeling tremors

elearningnews They earth just moved for me! Earthquakes in Melbourne?

michele_berner earth tremor quite strong – south east suburbs

mysterbey Bushfires, earthquakes, what next? Krakens?

SueJ1@taniasheko Yes, tremor went through here too .. 25+ tweets from Melbournites in twitter search.

bookjewel Looking for news on earthquake/tremor in Melbourne

pamelaj Yes Tania. I’m in Upwey and was talking to my brother in Croyden and he felt it too

   suz01 just shook my glassware up, no danger at all. funny though, they are so rare here I didnt even think of moving into a doorway….

bookjewel I’ve experienced a few and that was the worst yet! My whole house shook for what seemed like ages 

helenotway Yes the earth did move…. I thought it was my dog under the bed! My girls thought it was dodgy building works at home!

ldmicich Man that was a bit scary earth tremor     

hbailie@taniasheko Did you notice the earth tremor? I didn’t!

  Lilylauren 3AW saying power is out in a few suburbs

edubeacon The central heating hasn’t exploded – it was an earth tremour. Quite strong

fatticus 96 km (59 miles) SE (137°) from Melbourne, Australia — USGS #melbourneearthquake

ldumicichRT @abcnews Volcano erupts in Indonesia: Interesting!

mrpbpsRetweeting @774melbourne: Google Maps approx epicenter of Melbourne earthquake http://bit.ly/HQQ8S + USGS on 4.7 quake http://bit.ly/5NuwH

geekscape(uɐɥıuʎoɯʞɹɐɯ@ ɹoɟ ʇdǝɔxǝ) ǝuop ǝƃɐɯɐp ou ‘xɐlǝɹ #mebourneearthquake12 minutes ago from web

taniasheko@hbailie yes, I was sitting on the couch and I was moving a little for about 5 or 6 seconds. The bookshelf behind me was creaking.

hbailie@taniasheko Neither of us noticed a thing here. My couch must have good suspension!

taniasheko10.27 pm first time channel 7 reported Melbourne earthquake!

says Thanks to @rgesthuizen for seizmic image of last night’s earthquake http://tinyurl.com/dgghlf http://plurk.com/p/iit6f

 

 

Just been caught by a big phish!

I am yet to write  a post on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly as part of my reflections for 2008. However, I am going to write about the UGLY in this post. As life has been so busy over the past month, my time on twitter has been extremely limited. Imagine my surprise and then horror when I started to get a lot of DMs (direct messages) with the craziest of messages – the first being “Hey, look at this blog with your photo on it” When the link was clicked, it took me to the twitter login where I consequently entered my user name and password. I was then back in twitter!  Strange and so I tried again.

To my absolute horror many more DMs came along and fortunately some good ones, informing me that I was part of a phishing scheme and should change my password immediately. However, it was 12 hours later, that I realised the impact and changed it and many of my twitter friends had by this time got bogus DMs from me. All seems resolved but tweets have been coming in all day, telling others that they are now part of the scheme and to change their password.

Whoever, set up the scam, has chosen a target that can get ‘phished’ very easily as twitter is such a popular PLN.

Twitter have set up a blog post to inform their members on what to do and below are some of the DMs.

One little tweety bird!!

One little tweety bird sitting on an e-fence…….

Two weeks ago, I  seriously pursued using twitter, but immediately felt just like the little bird in the cartoon above. I did so want to be part of the action now, immediately!! There were so many interesting conversations going on and at best I could just “listen” or watch the action.
……….Reflecting back to Sept 2007
Sitting at the staffroom desktop, I could hear Jess laughing away at her desk. Upon enquiring about the reason for her mirth, I discovered that it was the result of a comment on twitter. Not wanting to be left behind, I immediately registered a twitter account and followed 2 other people. Over three months I added 5 tweets and thought it was rather a waste of time.
………Forward to the present day
In my school holidays, I looked more closely at a discussion started by lizbdavis in classroom2.0 where so much enthausiasm was displayed for this web 2.0 telegraphy. Finding some usernames there, I entered them into the ‘find folks’ window of twitter.
Once in, I could see that short conversations of 140 characters were in progress. There were blog sites, various web 2.0 software evaluations and replies to requests for assistance. Often friendly banter took place. Initally, I followed 25 people. Some, I found by clicking on someone’s avatar and looking at who they were following. It was then possible to look at their followings etc. I was selective as I wanted an edtech twitter group not just a general public one.
However, only a few followed me, so I felt like that lone little tweety bird. A teacher Kate, from Wisconsin, USA,  started at the same time. At least we could converse with each other but both wished for interaction with the others.
Fortunately one of my chosen ‘following’ Sue, is a very caring, sharing experienced tweeter and blogger at emerging technologies in TAFE in Perth. She emailed me a list of 10 people who would be good to follow and would follow me back in return. These were such valuable contacts. From there I actively  pursued an edtech group.
Now, I have 89 people whom I follow and 61 people who follow me. This is a comfortable number at the moment. Twitter has a had an enormous impact on my social and professional network. My twitter friends now come from Australia, NZ, USA, Singapore, Israel , England, Bangkok etc So, come tweet with us, you wont be on the fence for long, if you wish to seriously participate.!!

10 Tips for newcomers
· Find someone who might be able to jumpstart you with a few good people to follow.
· Look on your favourite blog sites to see if a twitter username or icon is given.
· Do not expect to part of the fold immediately.
· Watch and listen so that you get an idea of the proceedings
· Join the conversation when you can with a prompt or a reply.
· Explore the site thoroughly. Click on avatars and wander around.
· Remember that the most popular tweeters may not be interested in following more people.  However it is still useful to read their conversations.
· Find a level you are comfortable with and move on when ready.
· Once comfortable, be pro-active in seeking more to follow.
· Take care as it can be extremely addictive!!

Some great tips at 10 easy steps for  twitter beginners.

Life is all a Twitter!!!

 Twitter has a had a large impact on my social network and personal professional development. It can be used as a social tool to keep up to date with friends, share concerns and enjoy banter or it can be an educational tool for the establishment of a social network that  shares  resources, urls and ideas. (my personal use of the network). My twitter friends come from Australia, NZ, USA, Israel, Singapore, England, Bangkok etc

In this post I will outline how to use twitter in its basic format. There is much more but that can wait for another time.

Register with twitter and activate the resultant email. (Some people have several twitter names.)

Search for people who you know are in twitter and click follow. Add as many as you can and return to the home screen.  Tweets by  people you are following should show up on the screen.

Key in what you are doing at the moment and press update. Just keep on tweeting until someone replies or simply watch everyone else’s tweets.

Click on an avatar, go to next window and a direct message link will show up on the RHS side bar. Key in a direct message to that person and it is then kept private from the general tweeters and goes directly to their email account.

To add more interesting people, click on one avatar and look at who they follow. Choose some of these people to follow. Some of the experienced users will take a very caring and sharing approach if they know you are a newbie. Many will suggest some good people to follow. If you join in, people will want to follow you.

A person can be removed or blocked from your list if the need arises. Click on their avatar and look for the links.

140 characters is the limit to a tweet.

Uses in education

Powerful social networking tool. I started with 3 people I followed and one week later have 89 and 58 following me. Some of the most popular tweeters state that 150 is a good number and may not wish to follow more. However, unless they are selective, you can still follow their comments and learn.

A blog in a minute.

Quick communication and feedback tool.

Follow sites like edtechtalk and be informed when their live shows are on. (Highly recommended.)

Possibility for classroom uses.

There is so much more to twitter but give it a try. However, careful, it can be very addictive.