School 2.0 in SA

Can’t believe it is almost a week since the e-schools conference in Cape Town and I have not yet reported back on day 2 and 3. Maybe it was because I was mostly busy presenting and then  aslo struggled to get into soem of the more popular talks in my area of interest. Thank goodness there were a few twitterers thatb helped me keep track of some of the presentations that I missed out on. So let’s see if I can make sense of what and how people twitter about a presentation, which could possibly answer the question if we can use twitter to summarise meetings in a meaningful way. So let me start

Eugene has attended the session by Angela Stott on Project-based learning examples. She explained that learning have to start with an interesting problem in the beginning and end off with the learners presenting their solution, with some scaffolding in between. One of the examples Angela presented was were she uses   where the kids research the size of the planets using an Excel spreadsheet which are then automatically graphically represented so that her learners can SEE the relative sizes. She uses various scaffolding tools like a free solar simulating software programme (http://openuniverse.sourceforge.net/) along with powerpoint templates, which the learners then adjust and change. Another scaffolding tool she uses is Think.com ( http://www.thinkquest.org/en/) where the learners unpack the information and bring it all together in a logical argument.

Eugene also attended Ron Beyers presentation on web cams and smart boards. He created a science lesson on the fly using the smartboard software and a webcam, where after he edited the video lesson using Movie Maker which comes bundled with Windows. Ron emphasised that we should get the learners to video important lessons and publish them online. He pointed to Super as a super way to convert between video file formats (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SUPER) (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html) (http://tinyurl.com/2col6e) Ron conlcuded by pointing out that smartboards are there assist learners to learn and not help teachers to teach.

I attended the Thutong national portal session where Joy showcased the new look, web 2.0 enabled, zany new site. The portal has been broken down into areas with subject specific spaces where you can upload material, contact curriculum advisors, and have discussions about your subject of choice. There are also public and private e-mail discussion lists as well as all the curriculum documents and LTSM textbooks lists specific to each subject. I have also suggested to some of the delegates that a great way to save your material online is to use the user friendly upload tool in Thutong, which attaches the resources to specific learning outcomes, assessment standards as well as topics whereafter you can link to the exact resource from you blog/school website/community network. by bdoing this you will not only share your hard work with other teachers nationally who may not otherwise have had access to your resource, but also have a direct link to it, saving on hosting space.

During our web 2.0 presentation we encountered some technical hitches as we struggled to get audio from Tom in London. He shared with us, using skype, how he uses Google Docs with his learners and introduced Voicethreads as a very useful tool to use in the classroom. Talking to Tom highlighted that we are truely part of a global classroom where we can learn from one another!  I showed off my favourite web 2.0 tool, twitter and pointed everybody in the direction of my Twitter (micro-blogging) and Delicious (social bookmarking) tutorials on Slideshare, where you can upload slideshow presentaiton which can then be embedded as I have done above. Carolyne showed us how she uses wiki’s in her junior school classroom.

Pam shared with us how she uses her blog to sahre her classroom reflections, CAT material, and tutorials. She is truely an institution and inspiration! Eugene showed us how to get onto the Saschool wiki where we will look at firewalls, cellphone policies, software, ICT issues in our local context and tools to use for effective teaching and learning. Time ran out much to quickly. We did not get a chance to talk to Wilna in Johannesburg who was going to show us how she uses Facebook with her learners. I will defintely ask her to write a blog here about it!
 

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