On Monday May 12th, I attended the SLAV conference “Re-imagining Web2.0 applications and implications” at Telstra Dome in Melbourne.

Will Richardson was the Keynote speaker “A web of connections: Why the Read Write Web changes everything”.  Below are some key points from his inspiring presentation:-

• Students have so many different ways of connecting and learning outside school
• The more we block (online websites), the less safe we leave our kids
• We can be so ’scared’ that we do not allow them to do anything.
• Schools need to prepare students to be ‘googled’ and ‘googled well’
• Social networking is not all bad. It can be extremely positive. Meg Cabot is a good role model for a fine example of use of myspace.
• Clarence Fisher does not moderate but teaches students what to do in particular contexts.
• Students need to learn on demand - they will not be trained or retrained once out in the workforce but they will need to do it independently
• It is important that we teach students how to use and create hypertexted environments.
• Students need to build connections to links and need to be  ‘findable’ in order to collaborate
• Connection is the real power - it gives an authentic audience. Students need to connect with people in many different ways.
• Need to change personal learning practise and prepare them for the future.
• Teachers are more important than ever before -
• Students need teachers as
• role models
• for guidance
• support
• wisdom
• their personal experience
•  
•  

My new toy arrived, one week after I ordered it. As I could not find a distributor in Australia, I ordered the flip camera from USA over ebay. Many of my twitter friends had recommended the camera and I can see lots of uses and possibilities in my classroom.

Check out my first attempt of use, after it took me 30 mins to open up the tightknit plastic casing!!!

Click on the following link and view my flip video at http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=d4935d3f6196f03f7b99

Below is a slideshare set up from a powerpoint presentation, for a local teachers conference held at Deakin University, in Warrnambool. Our experience has shown that staff need to start with something that could be useful in their own personal lives, experiment with it and use it, and from their they can start to see the potential uses and applications for their classroom use. The presenation below summarizes my suggestions for that all important question, where do we start. (nb that I talked and walked through the slides so they are not all embracing of the content of the actual presentation.)

 Collatorationnation collaborates with our nation

Students from CT, USA…..please meet  students from Hawkesdale, Australia. And so it was, that 14 students from their homes in the USA at 8:45pm logged onto the computers, whilst 12 students from Hawkesdale College continued on with their IT lesson or came in during recess time, to get to know their US counterparts.
Under the wonderful teaching authority and expertise of Mr P Bogush (@shagghill), we logged on to their class wiki, using coveritlive as our interface. Although, CT had access to a video image of Mr Bogush and access to www.yackpack.com, we were blocked out of the option, which in hindsight was better for our first time experience. Their students not having the comfort, safety and educational infrastructure of the classroom environment, were able to communicate with their teacher whilst I could remind my students of some etiquette, give prompts and walk them through any questions. My students all sat at individual  desktops, so they could follow the conversation trail and add to it.
Paul had complete control of the situation and was able to moderate the comments to ensure all was okay. His discipline was superb, and he took control, by remote control very effectively, when he at several times had to command us to all STOP NOW and wait for directions. Initially, only a few students were online and the conversation flowed with me directing our student traffic verbally, but as more logged on and curiousity got the better of all concerned, questions and answers were flying in all directions. Unfortunately, this led to discord in the conversation flow as answers to questions lost their sync and meaning.
At one stage, Paul asked if I was happy with the way it was going with students directing the conversation. My response was ‘yes this is student directed education’. They need to get to know each other first with basic questions and as their acceptance of each other grows, their interactions will take on more purposeful meaning. A quick poll ensured that each country took it in turns to ask questions. Once replies came through, a prompt asked the other country for their question.
Prior to this, we had been sharing blog posts and commenting on each other’s weekly prompts. Some of the outcomes of today’s learning included

• Different terminology and language
• Different cultures
• Various sports, school subjects studied etc

One  of CT’s questions asked the subjects our students study. A typo was made by one respondent, prompting a question do we do “whaling”. However, the answer should have been “walking” as part of our student’s” Advance” program.  So the correct answer “walking” was keyed online and a further question:-
CT “Do you walk people
Hawkesdale “no, we walk in the bush”.
CT “What is the bush?” etc
Conversations flowed and student directed learning ensued. Much laughter was to be had over misunderstandings!!
Advantages of  www.coveritlive.com

• a great live blogging platform – whose full capabilities will only be  realised with further use
• Allowed chat
• Polling
• All participants could be involved  immediatel
• Allowed the moderator full control over which comments should be published
• Can be embedded in a wiki for easy sharing
• Constraints
• No audio or video
• CT had yackpack for audio use and a real time video of their teacher to keep all on task.

Thank you Mr P Bogush, students of CT and their respective families, for allowing us to connect and be part of a wonderful,  incredible experience.

As I am a member of www.projectsbyjen.ning.com, a recent discussion by @kimcofino re a request to list student blogs allowed me to meet Paul Bogush (@shaggyhill). He was looking for student bloggers to work with his students at Collaboration Nation. We had just set ours up, so I volunteered my year 9 and 10 group as they really enjoy blogging. After collaborating on posts, we decided to chat live. However, time zones are always a problem. They are EST and we are gmt +10. Paul felt that his students would be willing to be online at home, when our students were at school early in the morning. He suggested that we use yackpack which is embedded on his wiki. As I am not at all technical, I felt I could handle that. However, then I received an invitation to join http://coveritlive.com - a live blogging tool. That was a lot more stressful! (for me)

Today, we had a trial run, 9am our time, 7pm their time. First skype worked, (our distress line), so I could let Paul know that I was ready. We then logged onto the live blog at the given url and it worked beautifully. We were in instant chat mode, with three of his volunteer students online as well and some of my year 10 students. However, our school has yackpack blocked and despite the technicians unblocking it, there must be futher filters blocking its appearance on collaboration nation’s wiki. (That has to be rectified before Friday when we have our real session together, sharing our teenage lives, cultures, school, country etc)

My dependable colleague Jess McCulloch, (thanks a heap Jess) helped me through it (and did a trial run the previous day). After the test run, we decided to test it with my year 10class. This has given us a sounding board for the huge potential that this tool may be used for. Click here to see the results of that live blog where basic questions were asked re their ownership of various technological gadgets and online presence. Note the way the polling results come up. Arent they great and so easy!!!

What we liked:

• moderation capabilites - the moderator has the power to allow, disallow or block unwanted material before it is published.
• Moderator has a full panel of promt tools, but paricpants only have a text chatting window
• Moderator panellist sets the questions or prompts. Students can immediately respond via text
• Polling ability - with easy formatting. Students may be prompted for a yes/no answer or a comment or ???
• Can share music, images and video immediately for audiences or evaluation or polling
• Can be finally published, edited and shared on website
• Despite some ‘crashes’ with the computers, it allowed students back in and prompted them for the poll that they have missed out on when they had to restart.
• Students worked well with this technology

Possible uses (full capabilities will only be determined over time)

• great live collaborative tool for powerful, media rich blog
• Sharing of media for polling, evalutation, opinions etc
• instant results for surveys or polls
• students interacting in real time
• educationalists can work collaboratively for a powerful blog post. Comments and contributions are instant
• powerful learning and educational tool

Any other suggestions would be warmly welcomed.

My blog as a newspaper

<href=”http://murcha.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/feed-journal.jpg”>

 I would like to sincerely thank @MrKp for ‘walking’ me through this interesting adaptation for blog posts. From @MrKp’s capable instructions, I have converted the last 6 week’s postings for my blog into newspaper pdf format. Check it out.

1. Copy rss feed from you own blog 
2.  Join www.feedjournal.com
3. Delete old rss feeds on there
4. Then add your own feed in, click the articles you want to include and generate the paper. This can then be saved as a pdf. Save the file to your desktop or usb.
5. Then go to issuu to publish the pdf onto the web. Embed code in your blog or add link.

Teachers should never under-estimate the ability of students. As all grade 6 students now have individual blogs, the ‘baby steps’ of introducing blogging are now showing fruit, with the grade 6 teacher Marg Murnane   commencing a personal blog . With Heather Blakey’s help , a techno6 class blog is now ‘work in progress’. The class was asked what they would like to see on this blog and their comments can be found in the word cloud above. Aren’t they great ideas?

The next step will be to determine which ideas should be categorised posts, pages, text widgets etc. Watch their class blog  to see how it develops over the next few months.

Nb I tried to embed a text cloud into the wordpress post, but had great difficulty. So, I created my own, by inserting individual text boxes into MS Powerpoint, saving it as a jpg and then inserting the image into the post.

• At a recent teaching and learning meeting, it was recognised that some staff may see no need, nor have time to learn and introduce it into their classroom curriculum. This applies especially at senior levels, where there is a set curriculum to adhere to, SATs to complete and exams to be sat.
• Some staff including the physical education staff saw no real need. (We, of course, could argue against this, but there is no point at this stage.)
• It is too hard and time consuming to take on board
• They feel they have ‘missed their opportunity’ to come on board, and will never catch up now.
• Don’t know where to start and then, what to do with the tools.

Current uses of ICT and Web2.0

• All our teaching staff have registered for a http://del.icio.us social bookmarking account as they can see a ‘need’ to have such an account.  So, we do have 100% use of web2.0 for this use, (if it is used at all).
• most communications are by email and all our reports are completed on a computer, using the software markbooks.
• An intranet has just been set up by our technician using MS Sharepoint
• All teaching staff, but one retired part-timer, have a personal laptop, leased through the department.
• 80% or our primary school staff, are blogging and have got involved in global projects.
• 50% of our total 34-12 staff have created blogs with most posting now.
• A grade 6 classroom blog has been set up
• One aide has commenced blogging
• Other office staff, science lab assistants, library assistants and other SSO staff are showing interest and have asked for after school pd sessions etc
• It has taken ‘baby’ steps to gradually get staff on board. The air of excitement and notable keenness  of students using blogging has created an interest in other staff, and allowed them to see a need, niche and use for blogging.
  What we need to do:

• Continue with 10 minute spot pd’s at staff meetings
• ‘Walk in walk out’ Wednesdays (offer our time for 1 hour after school, for staff to come in with any questions, concerns, needs or just to have time to work on computers and leave at any time)
• Approach staff on an individual basis to seek out their needs, inhibitions and potential uses.
• Direct staff to possible social networks who may be able to help them use these tools
• Encourage participation in global projects.
• Set up resources, links and tutorials including podcasts on our school intranet

In our goal, with the support of our school leadership and teaching and learning team, to ‘lay the eplanks for a virtual classroom’, we are looking at the following elements of the conceptual age:-

• connectivity
• creativity
• communicate

After speaking withTrish Butters, our current prep teacher, Trish was of the opinion (and I tend to agree with her), that there is little use for web2.0 in her classroom.  It is felt that preps (5 year olds) need to connect with each other and their teacher in this important formative year. Connections outside this realm would have no meaning or impact. 
 Despite, many of them going to Warrnambool to shop (a 30 minute trip), they still have no concept  of it being Warrnambool. If a map of the world was shown to them, it would have no meaning either. Even basic ICT and computer skill use is lacking. Some students still have had no exposure to a mouse or computers, and need to learn computer basics. So communication skills will be built upon within the classroom only.
This leaves creativity and my suggestion to Trish, that she might set up a class blog, where a collection of their activities, writings, art work could be stored online etc. Some interest was shown in this, but time is an important element. It would basically cover communication as well.
Any comments on this issue would be welcomed!!

To encourage staff to use web2.0, we have started with what they may find useful, personally

What we have done:

• all have opened up a http://del.icio.us account (social bookmarking)
• pd sessions on resizing and maniputlating images, using www.irfanview.com
• using photostory for digitalstorytelling

What we are doing:-

• 10 minute spot pd at each full staff meeting eg using skype, ms communicator, ipod demos, using clickview videos, getting the best out of search engines etc
• ‘walk in, walk out Wednesdays’ A suggestions by Jess McCulloch, based on an idea of @kimcofino whereby we make ourselves available in the computer lab for any staff to come in, work on their needs and ask us for help where required. Starts tonight, so I shall update this after the session.

Reflections on first session:

Constraints: Notice of session was only given in the morning, so due to other commitments and Jess’ absence in Aararat, we had two staff.

However, this worked well.  Advice was required on

• email downloads, signatures on forwarded emails,
• grabbing music from a usb and placind into suitable format on the network for Powerpoint use and
• location of files for student retrieval

The three of us worked together on using our newly established intranet with MS Sharepoint and on further required developments on the site. Despite the low attendance, it was a very wothwhile endeavour and if you checkout Sue Waters comments below, we shall see about providing some food for participants in future. Hmmm…..now whose budget should that come out of………………?