This blog lists blog sites that are using blogging in different ways – including a link to my Gothic blog! Some good ideas on there from other sites:
Archive for the “Uncategorized” CategoryFound this link on the edublogs forum – really good ‘how to’ blog for use in blogging! Could be used with older students, or I was thinking of running training sessions for staff in September, so would be useful for that too. http://howtoedublog2.edublogs.org/ I originally typed and printed an instruction sheet for students to use, which I still think is good – people like something concrete – but I then added the sections as individual pages on the blogs, so students could navigate to the relevant section as required. Wish I’d done that from the start as think it would have helped students get used to navigating round and using the main blog. I haven’t blogged for a while, so I’m seizing the opportunity while I’m fresh from today’s training… Today we covered: ActivVote: Now I assumed I couldn’t use this on a Smartboard, as it’s Promethean software, but was pleased to find I could. I liked the voting ‘pods’ – they were user-friendly and fitted snugly in your hand. Stuart mentioned that another type of voting system he’s been using (whose name i forget) has the potential for instant feedback on the handset, so students can see which they’ve got wrong or right immediately, which appealed – but overall I liked it and could see its use for mini-plenaries throughout the lesson, to test understanding – or as starters to stimulate debate. What I liked the most about that is that you had to stand by a view you’d made and then be able to justify it. I usually do that through ‘floor debates’ but you get the problem that students move to the same side of the room as their friends – this was more independent I think. iDVD: I’m not sure really where I’d use this in teaching, but it was nice to play with – produces really professional-looking DVD menu screens, so could be used if you’d compiled students work into a single DVD, or were making a DVD of a school trip where you wanted separate menus etc. Was also useful to discover that the slot at the side of the Mac was in fact a CD/DVD drive and not just a random hole with some foam in it! Visualisers: I was ready to be underwhelmed by these I have to admit – but was pleasantly surprised, especially by some of the smaller, lighter models. As an English teacher, the prime use I can see would be in displaying students’ work instantly on screen and I have to say that, after having a few difficulties with the digimemo, I’d much rather use this – it’s more instant and doesn’t involve faffing about with cables. For displaying work, it seemed the smaller models were more than adequate and I wouldn’t need one of the mega view-stuff-the-other-side-of-the-school jobs for 3 times the price. The other use I can imagine would be if I had something like a charity leaflet where I wanted us to look at presentational features – for example I quite often dish leaflets out and get students to comment on features – but if a group’s feeding back on a leaflet that the others don’t have, then no one can see what they’re discussing, unless you’ve gone to the trouble of scanning every leaflet in first. This would provide instant viewing for the whole class as students fed back, and has much more flexibility and speed than taking a digital camera picture and loading it up. Again, the more basic models would be more than adequate for this. Blogs: We looked at some blogs in groups – I was a bit frustrated at having to look at other subject areas, as I wanted to get into my own area – but had some time afterwards to investigate English blogs and particularly liked this one: http://fernhillbookworm.blogspot.com/ It’s such a simple idea – it looks like different staff in the dpartment have all posted a review of a book they’ve enjoyed and that they hope students might enjoy. This would be a great thing to launch at Book Week – and it could be a homework that students have to read the reviews and pick one to try reading. Or you could set up a learner blog where students had to review a book for homework, and then you could give students some time to pick one of the reviews and read the book – then another homework 2 months later could be to make at least one comment on another book review, saying what you thought of the book. This could be a great way for students to collaborate and share reading ideas – and book reviews are such a tired old staple of the English teacher’s stock-in-trade, that this would really freshen things up and, vitally, give students a real audience for their writing. We’re always telling students to think about purpose and audience, but the audience in reality is always the teacher or the examiner. Here the audience is real and tangible – and interactive, if it’s all set up right! I might use this idea as a way to focus year 12 students going into year 13 on their wider reading over the summer – get them all to read a text and review it on a blog. Even better if… Looking at all the above, I’ve yet again learnt a huge amount today, which is fantastic. One thing I think would really help though, is if some more stuff was written down for us. The first task, while difficult to complete in the time available, was good becuase it was very clear – all the tasks required were written out on a single sheet, with a clear deadline on, and some relevant instructions were attached. This I liked! I feel a bit baffled by all the different things being thrown at us simultaneously, with a general sense that we’re meant to be producing something with it all but no clear deadlines for it. It’s like the ’shout down the corridor’ homework at the end of the lesson that half the kids forget - I need it written in my planner with a clear ddeadline, or I don’t always remember to do it! I think I’d really have responded to a clear and definite task or tasks at the end of each training block – a deadline for creating such-and-such a resource, using this or that programme, and uploaded somewhere (with instructions how to do that if needed – eg the first time we were asked to upload onto Fronter). And all the above written clearly on a piece of paper (I know, paper’s so last season; call me old-fashioned, but it does help!) After a horrendous week in which we had Ofsted at school (good report but even with the new light touch it’s an awful lot of stress), I’ve finally managed to find some time to play with my DigiMemo this weekend. I’ve been a bit disappointed, as I can’t get it to pick up my writing properly. It might be the battery in the pen, though I’m a bit loath to go out and buy one of those little expensive batteries if i find later it’s not that and it’s just the way i write! My first page lost so many lines that you couldn’t really read it at all when it transferred digitally. The second i wrote on the table, in case writing on my lap wasn’t helping the pressure. That was slightly better but barely! Then i tried the online writing tool, which helped, as it enabled me to kind of ’self-correct’ as i wrote, seeing what was and wasn’t being picked up. But it still missed bits, notably the crosses on my Ts. I’m feeling a bit like if I have to fundamentally alter the way i write for it to work, it’s not going to be ideal for me – i guess i should get some kids to try it and see if it’s just the strength (or lack!) of my writing. Needless to say that with all those problems, the text recognition didn’t work on my writing at all! Anyone had similar problems? I’m finding it difficult now term’s started to manage to experiment with some of the technology I’ve been given – it was pretty hard to find the time even at Easter and I’m amazed by participants like Sue who seem to be managing to try something new out at least twice a week! I’ve been reading Sue’s blog and she’s been using one of the DigiMemos we were briefly told about at the last session: http://skambalu.edublogs.org/category/digimemo/ I was taking in too much new inforation at the time to really latch onto what they were all about, but reading Sue’s blog I can see how they work and am keen to try them out if I get a chance. What I’m thinking might work is to use them with exam classes – for example, recently I did some work on how to write effectively about sentence structure in texts with my AS language and literature class. I then got them all to try and write a paragraph based on what they’d learnt, share them in small groups and then nominate some particularly good ones, which i took and photocopied, stuck on a sheet and photocopied again, before giving back to them all. This was all very laborious, especially as it involved 2 trips to the photocopy room, and also frustratingly delayed the ability to share the work collectively (we read some bits out, but many people (myself included) find it hard to focus just on words without something to look at as well and I could see the faces glazing over!) So my idea is that, as exams approach, it would be great to use DigiMemos with my 2 AS groups, to do that sort of shared writing – I’m assuming it can then be loaded onto an IWB screen and annotated to show good features and things that could be made even better. It sounds from what Sue said that you can then convert the handwriting into text, in which case it could be put into a Word document and even loaded into Fronter if one of the pieces was a good exemplar. This could be anytime in the next 4 weeks but after that wouldn’t be any good as they’d have gone. My only other idea would be to do the same with my year 10 as preparation for their summer exam, but there are 27 of them and a few more hairy characters, so I’d be more comfortable with my AS groups of 9 and 14 relatively sensible individuals! Judy/Sue – it would be good to hear your thoughts on this – knowing the equipment, whether you think that would be a good use for it – and Judy, whether there’s any scope for me having access to a set. With the numbers in my groups, a half set might even be enough.
Transformation Teachers mind map Originally uploaded by T Ware. I’ve been playing about with OpenMind today – I’m not sure if we have it on the school computers but I’m pretty sure we have FreeMind, which must be similar. I thought that if I was learning to do it, I might as well use it to map some of the software and hardware we’ve been given on the programme, so that it helped me get my thoughts in order too! It’s not finished, but I’ve used all the ideas in the quick start guide in the software. One aspect I really like is the way you can export out of the software. So this was exported as a picture and then I uploaded it to Flickr (I’ve just spotted the zoom function above the pictures in Flickr – so you’ll want to click on that to view this properly). But potentially more useful, they can be exported into Word and PowerPoint, a process that preserves the links made in the map. So in Word, it all comes out with a contents page and then expanded sections below, and on PowerPoint, each slide is a new subheading. I’ll need to fine-tune that export process, but I’m thinking students could use this for essay planning, then export, helping them to go from non-linear to linear, which many find hard. My only concern is it doesn’t then help them to see the correct order of ideas, which is the bit I think they find hardest. You can also export into Html, which makes it all look like a cool webpage – but I’m not sure how you would then put that up on the web – is that easy or difficult? I guess it relies on webspace being available, among other things. It would be great to be able to create collaborative mind maps, though I think that would be harder. I assume you couldn’t have students all working simultaneously on one map, but you could have pairs or groups filling in a different branch in turn, and adding links where they saw them. This would be logistically more difficult, but still possible. I haven’t blogged for a while, as I’ve had a bit of a stressful time flathunting and helping my younger brother do up a pub he’s just bought in Oxford! So my laptop’s been confined to its bag, but I’m feeling a bit more energised today and checking out other people’s blogs to see what I’ve been missing! It seems like the communication element of this course is one of the most useful elements, yet one that is taking a lot of my time – probably because I’m an English teacher so communication comes more naturally to me than experimenting with ICT and by the time I’ve chitchatted away, there’s no time left! But it would be a very lonely experience without the ability to learn from each other in this way, which is a strength we should definitely be utilising for our students as they sit at home, struggling with whatever task we’ve set them! A couple of questions I’m hoping someone can answer: 1. Internet. I’m still not connected to the internet on the laptop, which is partly because I’ve been lazy, knowing I can just put stuff on the USB and transfer it. But it’s starting to annoy me now. I don’t really want to crawl under the computer desk at home and unplug the ethernet cable every time i want to put the laptop on the internet – is that my only option? Can I buy a second cable and attach it to the modem using a splitter of some sort? Should I buy a wireless router and connect it to my modem so my partner and I can both be on the internet at the same time on different machines? How much is one of these? Lastly, is it safe to just use an unsecured wireless network? There always seems to be one available when I log on but I suspect it’s risky… The others that come up always require access keys which I don’t have! 2. Video. I haven’t really done any yet – well, I’ve taken some bits, just to see how it works, but nothing teaching-related. How are people using video? What ideas do people have for using it in the classroom? And where should I be putting it when I’ve made something useful? Is googlevideo the best place? Someone mentioned making a podcast using it… Ideas please! Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend…
This looks more similar to the original but still more like a comic…
This is my first attempt at blogging from Flickr. Hopefully the picture will come up – as Judy suggested, I found the filters section on Comic Life and played around with making this look more like a comic. Another one on the way if this one works! Have been playing with Comic Life and had great fun! But now I need to figure out the best way to link to it so people can see. I’ve put the result on Flickr and it’s public so other people can then see it, but I don’t know how they find it! It would be good if we all had each other’s Flickr addresses and knew how to look at each other’s pictures. I’m going to try to attach it here but it might not work – and I know you can link to a blog from Flickr but that seems a bit complicated… Anyway, if you’re reading this – go and find it! This link might work… |
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