You may like to look at a blog just started for a year 7 history class in Victoria. The owner of the blog, Glenys Lowden has set it up ”to disseminate information, have discussion when appropriate for tasks and to include media content.”
For anyone who is not sure what a blog is, please take a quick look at the wikipedia article.
Prezi is an online presentation tool that allows you to zoom in and out of your main page. This page can contain words, images, videos and links. Prezi has just announced free student/teacher licenses which allow 500MB storage online. There is a short video explaining prezi on the site. This can be an alternative to a powerpoint presentation.
The final post for the 2009 school year is about copyright. Copyright agreements have been made for Catholic Schools with copyright collecting agencies. Licence fees are collected and paid back to the copyright owners. Schools are chosen at random to participate in a sampling survey. Data collected in this survey is used to allocate the amount paid to copyright owners. Quite complex!
The best site to answer all your questions about copyright is Smartcopying – The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE. The site contains information about the various licences, FAQ section, downloadable information sheets, short videos and information about Creative Commons.
For staff using Moodle please go to Copyright Implications of Content Management Systems: Schools
Format shifting describes copying content from one form to another, e.g. from VHS to DVD. Unfortunately schools only have limited rights in regard to format shifting. Detailed information can be found on the Smartcopying website.
For VET teachers using the Australian Flexible Learning Framework please look at Copyright Kitchen.
Please take a look Smartcopying and become a little more familiar with what you can and can’t do with material you use and make available for students.
Wallwisher is an online noticeboard maker, where students can post messages. It is very easy to use and there is no registration required. Ask a question in class or ask for an opinion and student responses appear on the wall. There is a 160 character limit. Lance has used this with his year 9 multimedia classes and offers this suggestion. “ I found out it is important that you get the students to sign on and give details so that they cannot hide behind anonymity.”
The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This free conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. A primary goal of the conference is to help educators make sense of and meet the needs of a continually changing learning landscape. During a two week period commencing 7th December more than 50 presentations will be posted online. There will be both live events and downloadable presentations.The conference schedule can be found here. Watch the conference teaser produced using Animoto.
Wordle is an online application for making word clouds from the words you provide. The more times a word appears in your text the larger it becomes. You can change the appearance of your wordle by changing the font, colour scheme and layouts. Take a look at Forty-three Interesting ways to use wordle in the classroom. The wordle below illustrates Princess Diana’s Eulogy. This speech forms part of an option in HSC English.
Google squared is an experimental tool from google which allows you to select a category and then build a square of information around the category. A search for elements reveals names of elements with a description, boiling point, atomic number, symbol etc. When you hover over one of the squares of information, the source is revealed. If the search reveals more than one source, low confidence answers are noted. Add and delete columns according to what information you require. The data can be exported to either a CSV file or google spreadsheets.
As a member of the school’s technology committee, I have decided to start a blog for staff here at JPC. Each week I will have links to useful websites or Web2.0 technologies. Please feel free to comment if you find these posts useful. Let others know how you have used them in your class.
