School 2.0 in SA

• Museam of humour lesson plans

  tags: school2.0, lessonplans

• The Best Resources To Learn About Copyright Issues

  tags: copyright, school2.0

• Why I Didn’t Do Homework

  Great post. A must read.

  tags: school2.0, homework

• Learning 2.0 Tutorial for teens – really fab

  This tutorial is designed so that teens can learn how to use the tools of web 2.0 for their classes or for fun.

  tags: school2.0, teens, tutorials, lessonplans

• Make Beliefs Comix For Educators

  This is just the coolest cartoon creator site: Great for digital storytelling or icebreakers…..

  tags: storytelling, comics, cartoons, cartooncreator, school2.0, digitalstorytelling

• ICT Observatory is an open knowledge-sharing resource for research on the pedagogical integration of ICT

  The Observatory is an open knowledge-sharing resource for research on the pedagogical integration of ICT. Three search functions are available: Simple Search — which allows you to view indicators from institutions in a single country, Advanced Search — which allows you to compare indicators in different institutions and countries, and Summary Search — which allows you to browse a mapping of ICT in education summaries from the institutions and countries participating in the project.

  tags: research, education, ICT, school2.0

• International Society for Technology in Education Group News

  tags: socialmedia, school2.0

• The Internet Mathematician

  Use this free, interactive tutorial to improve your Internet research skills: Tour the best of the web for mathematics. Discover how to search the internet effectively. Judge which websites are worth using….

  tags: searching, school2.0, mathematics

• 50 stimulating classroom starters (pdf)

  What are they?
  • Each activity can be completed easily in five to fifteen minutes.
  • Late arriving students can easily join in.
  • Activities are fun rewarding and educational.
  Why do them?
  • Reward and don’t punish students who come to class on time.
  • Encourage punctuality.
  • Value student time.
  • “I can’t start because there aren’t enough students in class yet,” is not an acceptable excuse to begin class late. Begin on time with a class starter, so students are immediately stimulated and ready to learn!

  tags: classroomideas, school2.0, icebreakers

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Free Science Textbooks

  tags: science, textbooks, school2.0, svula, siyavula

• Educator Templates: Your FREE education template directory

  Don’t re-invent the wheel. Download ready made templates and then change them for your purposes

  tags: templates, teachers, subjects, school2.0

• Awesome Clipart for Educators!

  tags: clipart, school2.0

• The Strengths and Challenges of Mobile Learning: A Live Discussion

  In this discussion, we will be looking at how teachers can leverage the use of mobile devices to help students learn and the challenges they and their students face in making this happen.

  tags: wshop, school2.0, cellphones

• Maths lit on your cellphone

  This site is busy building resources and tests that learners can access using their cellphones. What do you think???

  tags: cellphones, mobi, mobilelearning, school2.0

• African Digital Library

  The Mission of the ADL is to provide digitised full text resources to learners in Africa via the Internet, thereby contributing to the revitalization of education and life long learning on the continent and alleviation of the digital divide between First and Third world countries.

  The ADL was created in the spirit of the African Renaissance.

  tags: digitallibraries, school2.0, library2.0

• 10 Ideas for Engaging Learners with Cell Phones Even in Districts that Ban Them by Lisa Nielsen

  10 Ideas for Engaging Learners with Cell Phones Even in Districts that Ban Them by Lisa Nielsen

  tags: cellhones, classroom, school2.0

• Research – Students say using tech to cheat isn’t cheating (should we ban cellphones?)

  I really have to smile at this article. I have been begging teachers to take note and “get with the programme”, but instead they responded with a call to ban cellphones. Hallooo! It is not going to stop the cheating and as the report state it does not just include cellphones, it includes the internet as well. Shall we also just ban the internet too?

  I can understand that the students do not view it as cheating, they feel that they are actually being innovative (if not creative) and it is their teachers problem if they are not bringing technology into the equation.

  I think we should think about the way we assess….

  I need to go blog about this…..or maybe I should just go and plagarise someones post- which will be more fun….?????

  tags: cheating, cellphones, reports, teens, digitalnatives, school2.0, assessment

• Ten Easy Interactive Whiteboard Ideas

  Here are ten “easy” ideas to incorporate the interactive whiteboard and improve your teaching with it:

  tags: iwb, integration, school2.0

• Digital Tools 4 Enquiring Minds

  Digital tools are an integral part of the Enquiring Minds approach. Here we provide some examples of the kinds of new technologies that we think may benefit learners and teachers

  tags: education, Tools, school2.0, web2tools, reference, searching

• Twitter in Education and Business

  tags: twitter, twitter4ed, school2.0, blogtwit1

• Mobile Devices within Instruction

  Discover ideas for instruction that innovative districts have developed to better leverage the increasing number of laptops, cell phones, MP3 players and smart phones that students carry. This webinar explores the latest findings from Speak Up surveys given to K-12 students, teachers and administrators regarding their views on mobile devices within instruction.

  tags: wshops, mobile, school2.0

• Teacher Resources

  A filtered collection of resources for subjects

  tags: teacher, resources, school2.0

• The Citizen: Furious MXit to talk at school

  tags: mxit, cellhones, internetsafety, cellphonesafety, school2.0

• The Open University has published a research report

  The Open University has published a research report which is now available online The report evaluates the impact OpenLearn has had internally and externally and the challenges that lie ahead in open content and establishing open learning networks.

  “OpenLearn has been a really fascinating research opportunity. We wanted to find out what the impact was on us as an organisation; how we could help other people who wanted to provide their material available for free; and perhaps most importantly, what learners got out of having access to all this open material”

  tags: oer, open-education, school2.0

• Mixed-up media at FM Tech

  The company that operates cellphone chat service MXit has lashed out at journalists for what it calls a “dangerous trend to sensationalise headlines”. This follows reports about the disappearance of schoolgirl Nabeela Omar. Does the company have a point?

  tags: mxit, debate, cellphones, cellphonesafety, school2.0

• Mixed-up media

  The company that operates cellphone chat service MXit has lashed out at journalists for what it calls a “dangerous trend to sensationalise headlines”. This follows reports about the disappearance of schoolgirl Nabeela Omar. Does the company have a point?

  tags: mxit, debate, school2.0, cellphones, cellphonesafety

• Learn Science at Nature – a new science library

  A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world’s leading publisher of science.
  Scitable currently concentrates ongenetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. As you cultivate your understanding of modern genetics on Scitable, you will explore not only what we know about genetics and the ways it impacts our society, but also the data and evidence that supports our knowledge.

  tags: biology, education, reference, library2.0, genetics, lifesciences, school2.0

• One teachers Edmodo experience with a student

  This is an example of how social media can change children’s participation in class. A very well written teacher’s reflection of a difficult student’s engagement in her class as a result of using social media

  tags: microblogging, school2.0, case, edmodo

• Great Critical Thinking lesson

  OBJECTIVES
  1. Recognize reasons and conclusions
  2. Recognize unstated assumptions
  3. Draw conclusions
  4. Appraise evidence
  5. Evaluate statements
  6. Judge whether conclusions are warranted

  tags: criticalthinking, school2.0, education, lessonplans

• National Mathematics Week

  Our activities during Mathematics Week focus attention on Mathematics and Mathematics Education with the aim of making Mathematics more interesting, attractive, relevant, challenging, rewarding and engaging to learners and the community at large, e.g. by highlighting the impact of Mathematics on our daily lives and stressing the importance of Mathematics as a foundation for careers in science, technology and managerial jobs. Mathematics Week is a vehicle to popularise Mathematics and to increase public awareness, understanding and appreciation of Mathematics.

  tags: mathsweek, amesa, mathematics, school2.0

• Social Media Guidelines for Schools

  This is a collaborative project to generate Social Media Guidelines for school districts. The goal of this guideline is to provide instructional employees, staff, students, administrators, parents and the school district community direction when using social media applications both inside and outside the classroom.

  tags: guidelines, policies, aup, socialmediaguidelines, socialmedia, school2.0, saschools

• Global classroom south african wiki

  So glad to discover a local classroom wiki. Will be following it withy interest!

  tags: southafrica, wiki, school2.0

• WatchKnow- over 820 Mathematics videos in categories

  tags: mathematics, videos, school2.0

• Details last edit Mar 10, 2009 4:07 pm by markdwagner markdwagner – 24 revisions hide details Tags edit * Type a tag name. Press comma or enter to add another. Cancel Edit This Page Blogs, Wikis, and Google Docs: Which one is right for your lesson?

  This wiki was created to support a 20 minute CUE Tips session at the 2008 CUE conference and was updated for CUE 2009. Blogs, Wikis, and Google Docs can be powerful and easy to use tools for educators, but their features are overlapping and it can sometimes be difficult to know which one is right to meet a given need.

  tags: googledocs, wikis, blogs, school2.0

• Shahi – A visual dictionary

  tags: visualization, dictionary, flickr, reference, vocabulary, school2.0, library2.0

  • Interesting site. This might make an interesting exercise for students–to have them explain why photo is/is not a good visual for the word. – post by lisahuff_teacher
  • Fantastic tool. Images are great but they don’t match perfectly well with definitions.
    As an example: HOUSE has a lot of definitions but images not even show a traditional house in different countries. – post by susanacanelo

• Technology Integration for Teachers

  The purpose of this site is to take an extensive list of websites that are considered high quality, reliable, and valuable and organize them in a way that even “non-techy” teachers can utilize them. It took around 10 years to collect these resources, but new ones are found every day. All of these websites have been recommended by other teachers and educational organizations and qualify as “the best”. You’ll find support for all core curriculum areas. In addition, you will find lesson plans, multimedia, and primary sources to enhance your students’ learning environment.

  tags: teachers, integration, education, school2.0

• Use BUBL to find websites catalogued by the Dewey Decimal System.

  Selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas according to the DEWEY system.

  tags: reference, searchengines, search, school2.0, library2.0

• Great Mathematics Educational Resources from the NSD Library

  tags: mathematics, school2.0

• So what do students think about their school? (pdf)

  A research report: the Speak Up National Research Project has collected and shared the ideas and views of more than 1.5 million K–12 students, teachers, parents and administrators on education and technology

  tags: reports, 21stcenturyschool, school2.0

• A free Webinar: Using Mobile Devices for instruction

  Are you interested in how innovative districts are leveraging the increasing number of laptops, cell phones, MP3 players and smart phones their students carry? This webinar explores the views of of K-12 students, teachers and administrators regarding the use of mobile devices within instruction from Speak Up 2008. The webinar is scheduled for August 18th from 12:00pm -1:00pm PST.

  tags: webinar, wshops, school2.0

• 12 best places to get free images for your site or blog

  tags: images, clipart, free, school2.0

• 5 places to learn how to touch type – for free

  tags: typing, touchtyping, school2.0

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I always look forward to Tom starting another “interesting ways” collaborative presentation. This time I actually found some lovely search engine ideas and in fact search engines that I have not used before with some great practical ideas for the classroom. See what you think and if you have any ideas on how to add to the collection, please let me know or ask @tombarrett to give you access to the collaborative google presentation.

Today I am giving a talk at the Education week on using social media in education. I will be using my learning communities (that is all of you) as casestudies.

My metaphor that I have chosen for the occation is the burning of books. Most of the teachers, officials and curriculum advisors present at the talk will propably not be able to access any of the wonderful tools that I will be presenting. Most social media is banned by the departments and are blocked by the school firewalls, hence the metaphor in the title of my talk. It would be great if everybody can join me online at 04h30-5h30pm (GMT+2) to help change the policy makers and firewall guardians tho will be present’s mindsets about opening social media for teaching and learning and inspire them with what you are doing in your classroom.

Please squizz through the presentation and tweet me @maggiev or @ariellah (my wonderful backchannel asssistant) with thoughts about the tools and challenges you face in using these tools to support your learners. If you add #edweek09 to your tweet we should be able to track it on the big screen. So come and say hallo to the teachers here in Johannesburg and join in the conversation. Please feel free to leave  messages here on my blog, or via a tweet during, before the time if you are in a different timezone.

• Sarah Davis’s Top Ten Tools 2009

  tags: web2tools, school2.0

• Reference, Facts, News – Free and Family-friendly Resources

  A wondeful site filled with lots of reference resources calculators and more!!! Going onto my favourite list!

  tags: reference, search, research, school2.0

  • single biggest source for facts – post by adaeon
  • Refdesk is an index of quality Internet sites since 1995. – post by schergr
  • Refdesk is an index of quality Internet sites since 1995. – post by sciphex

• An awsome blog of resources: See Reading and Writing Mathematics

  An awsome blog of resources

  tags: Mathematics, blogs, school2.0

• It’s SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites

  “From uncles wearing skinny jeans to mothers investing in ra-ra skirts
  and fathers nodding awkwardly along to the latest grime record, the
  older generation has long known that the surest way to kill a youth
  trend is to adopt it as its own. The cyberworld, it seems, is no exception.

  The proliferation of parents and teachers trawling the pages of Facebook trying to poke old schoolfriends and lovers, and traversing the outer reaches of MySpace is causing an adolescent exodus from the social networking

  tags: facebook, cyberkids, teens, school2.0

• Templates for teaching maths and writing with social media

  “I’m exploring ways to teach core subjects with social media. Please check out our first templates for math and writing and let me know what you think. ”

  tags: Mathematics, socialmedia, school2.0

• An Educatorʼs Guide to VoiceThread

  Voicethread is a great tool for storytelling and this is really a great guide!

  tags: voicethread, school2.0, storytelling, library2.0, guides, tutorials

• Learn Web 2.0 with Maggie – Join me on my Web 2.0 learning journey!!

  Currently running a blogtwit workshop for teachers

  tags: maggie2.0, web2.0, school2.0, elearning, pd, wshops

• Host Your Own Webinars

  I am soooo glad to see this. I have always liked elluminate as a webinar platform but as it was expensive and as the free version allowed you 3 people, I did not use it. Now I can REALLY go and play!!!

  I think I will try it out in my blogging course.

  tags: conferencing, elluminate, school2.0, webinars

• Wikipedia for schools

  Welcome to this Wikipedia Selection. This 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a DVD with good size images) and is about the size of a twenty volume encyclopaedia (34,000 images and 20 million words).

  tags: wikipedia, resources, education, school2.0, reference

• Copyright friendly and copy-left images and sound – Annotated

  Most of the media in these collections are attached to generous copyright licensing. Though you may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing on the Web for educational purposes, you should cite or attribute these images to their creators unless otherwise notified! If you see any copyright notices on these pages, read them for further instructions.
  Note: always check individual licensing notices before publishing on the Web or broadcasting!

  tags: copyright, creativecommons, photos, clipart, media, music, resources, wiki, school2.0

  • I’m learning that there are lots of categories for using audio, video, and images… as well as text. We have at least these categories: Public Domain, Creative Commons, Copyrighted, but used with Fair Use, AND inlline linking. The final category allows us to use media in our work by linking it into our work instead of saving it onto our servers and importing it. – post by paulallison
  • The media used on this site is very helpful in making engaging presentations. – post by rightbrainer
  • Most of the media in these collections are in the public domain or are attached to generous copyright licensing. Though you may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing on the Web for educational purposes, you should cite or attribute these images to their creators unless otherwise notified! If you see any copyright notices on these pages, read them for further instructions.
    • Joyce Valenza is an expert librarian. Take advantage of her expertise. If you are using copyrighted materials for school projects, the important thing is to give attribution or credit to the creator. Link back to the source and don’t give the impression that the work is yours.
      Mrs. Burns – post by burnsk

• ibiblio: the public’s library and digital archive

  ibiblio’s goals include expanding and improving the creation and distribution of open-source software; continuing UNC programs to develop an online library and archive; hosting projects that expand the concepts of transparency and openness; and serving as a model for other open-source projects.

  tags: library, reference, opensource, oer, school2.0

• Learning Footprint – is your learning costing the earth? A cost calculator

  Have you thought about your organisations learning footprint?
  By reducing or even eliminating the need to travel for staff training, you could see a dramatic reduction in your organisations carbon emissions. Learning Footprint is a website dedicated to helping organisations mimimise the environmental impact of their training and development programmes through the use of E-Learning.

  Use the free calculator to estimate your learning footprint and see how much carbon you could save by switching a percentage of your training to E-Learning. You can even download a PDF report of the calculation to include in your next business case.

  tags: footprints, learning, environment, school2.0, calculators

• 25Tools for learning professionals

  A network to talk about the tools we use

  tags: maggie2.0, web2tools, school2.0

• Using Blogs to Enhance Critical Reflection and Community of Practice

  Using Blogs to Enhance Critical Reflection and Community of Practice

  tags: cop, blogs, blogging, school2.0, criticalthinking, teachers

• See how you compare to other students with this Timms database questionbank

  So, how do you compare with students nationally and from around the world?

  Pick a subject, a grade and how many questions you want to see (500+ currently in database), then click the Show Questions button below.

  tags: timms, questions, school2.0

• Policy | Centre for Educational Technology

  The purpose of this document is to make explicit UCT’s position on educational technology within the institution. The document also suggests how the principles expressed in these position statements may be put into practice.

  tags: policies, aup, school2.0

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

0001 Blog Twit Workshop Summary

Goodbye Jeanne

I only heard this morning that one of the valuable members of my personal learning network has passed away. Jeanne was an inspiration to me and I first got to know her as part of the group of conference hosts for the e/merge conference. She was always cheerful and lived her life in such a positive way that I was quite taken aback when I found out in the beginning of this year, that she has been struggling with a debilitating disease, an antibiotic resistant strain of bone infection, since 2001.
One of the great learning tools that she was co-responsible for creating is “Facilitating Online” an online open source course manual , which can be used and downloaded from here: http://www.fullcirc.com/wp/2009/05/22/facilitating-online-curriculum/ She does indeed leave behind a learning legacy which will be of great value to us all!

She joined my online blogging workshop and started a blog called Choosing an Enabled Life to share with us her journey of recovery. She also started a fundraising and advocacy blog, http://pagetherapytosouthafrica.blogspot.com/ to raise awareness and funds for her recovery and to lobby the government to bring Phage Therapy to South Africa. She created a Facebook group to assist her in her efforts. I was so proud of her embracing all the social media tools to help her fight the good fight and make sure that she does not have to go through all this alone! It is ironic that I am starting another blogging and twitter course this week and will be dedicating it to her.
But sitting here now reading through her blog posts I realised that I could have done so much more. I bookmarked her posts to get back to later and I never did. I feel like social media did in fact fail her here. This is  therefore a reminder to value my learning network more and to make sure that I make those blog comments, and pass on those positive vibes and messages of advocacy while I can.
I am asking everybody to celebrate her life by making a contribution towards her cause and to help her family cope with the heavy burden of her hospitalisation costs.
The trust fund for making a contribution is:
TRUST FUND: LOUW DU PLESSIS (lawyers managing the fund)
Payment reference: J SMUTS
Branch: SOMERSET WEST
Bank: FIRST NATIONAL BANK
Account number:53680945972
Branch code: 200-512
NB: Your reference: Please add your name, telephone number or email address. If its an overseas payment please add Swift Code F I R N Z A J J
Dear Jeanne, thank you for the learning moments we have shared and for touching my life in such a positive way!

I was pointed to this great little twitter visualisation tool that creates a photo mosaic of your twitter network by alanmills405. I have created one of the wonderful people, news feeds, teachers, librarians, mathematicians, social media experts, weather reports……

Get your twitter mosaic here.