Tech Talk Tuesdays – Connected Classrooms

Tech Talk Tuesdays commences its series of webinars for 2013 on Tuesday March 5th, with Mel Cashen as guest presenter, speaking about Classroom Connections.

When: Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 at 4pm, Melbourne, Australia time (gmt+11) Check your day and time zone with timeanddate

About this session: Learn about the different ways connections can be made to open your classroom up to the world and provide authentic opportunities for learning.

In the 21^st century our classrooms are fluid, vivid and exciting places, where we can create, collaborate and communicate with others easily. Technology allows us to connect students to their learning by providing real life experiences.

See how Skype was used to hear stories from around the world during book week or the power of twitter in setting up connections with classrooms for procedural writing.  Look at collaborative blogs, which have ben set up to connect students and develop writing skills. After being inspired by these connections, learn how to use tools such as Twitter, blogs, Google+, Skype and Blackboard Collaborate to access and create these connections.

About our presenter: Mel is an Educational Designer interested in making technology, empowerment and connected learners the norm in education. You can  follow Mel on twitter

Here is the link  to the recording of this exciting presentation. Please join us and share in the conversations.

Tech Talk Tuesday: Exploring the Virtual Classroom

eT@lking – a pic that says where are

When: Tuesday November 20th at 4pm (Melbourne, gmt+11)

About this session: This session will explore the nature, purpose and potential of a virtual classroom. As more and more online Professional Development activities occur and after the great success of the recent Global Education Conference, it is important that people feel comfortable with an online webinar environment and discover the potential application for the classroom.

The features of Blackboard Collaborate will be demonstrated with interactive, ‘hands on’ activities given for participants. It is hoped that a group of 20 Singapore teachers who are in a workshop with @shamblesguru (alias Chris Smith ) will also join us.

Please come along and explore the exciting power and potential that the online classroom can provide at a local, national and global scale.

Here is the link to join this session.

Students from USA & Australia draw on whiteboard

When is a Mouse not a Moose?

The question was posed”What is your favourite food?” to a combined class of students from La Lima Cortes, Honduras and Hawkesdale, Australia. These students were in a virtual classroom using Blackboard Collaborate. Most of my students added expected responses in the chat or on the whiteboard: “pizza, pasta, roast etc” and then I saw the word ‘mouse’. Spinning around to my class, I  wondered who the smart alec was! Almost in that same breath, Jose Popoff, the teacher from Honduras questioned Australian’s eating ‘mouse’ as a food. I spun around to my students, who could sense my wrath and mounting anger!

A quiet voice in my physical room replied saying “it is chocolate mousse”! To correct his spelling, the student then put ‘moose’ into the chat. That made us all laugh!

But…. how important is spelling and the presence of typos that might occur in the chat when students from two different countries get together in a virtual room or backchannel?

And so brought to an end a connection of 45 mins with Jose and his students. It was a mystery session where my students had to work out what country Jose was from. Jose shared some photos of where they lived and students asked questions of each other. They were all 15 or 16 years of age – all curious about each other and wanting to know more of each other. It was Thursday 2pm in Australia and 10pm Wednesday night in Honduras.

Here are some student reflections on the linkup:-

1. Indi Linkup with Honduras
2. Rachel’s Linkup with Honduras

Yesterday, we tried a linkup using spreecast – a new software tool to me. Several students from our school came in during morning recess to talk to Jose’s students but bad weather in Honduras meant that we dropped out after 15 minutes.