School 2.0 in SA

The education school at Wits will be hosting another public seminar. Download the invitation from here.

I read through Tom Barrett’s little newsletter that he compiles for his fellow teachers and was intrigued by the little tool that he introduced them to, called Write Rhymes. It helps to compile rhymes (duh) and is a very creative way to get your learners to write a poem. So I tried my hand at it and this is what I came up with……

Good morning last Friday
How did you get here?
I thought you were still far away
You sneaked up on me, that’s clear!

I still had so many things to do-
A whole month seemed so vast
But you in wisdom turned the clock
And now I am left aghast

So take me back to Monday first
So that I can try again
To pick up pieces of my life
That I lost – God knows when!

Very rudimentary and the list of rhyming words did not always inspire me, but it made me think. So this little tool get’s the thumbs up form me. Why don’t you give it a try and let me know (or post below) some rhymes???

In my efforts to get more teachers (especially maths and lit teachers) to blog, twitter and embrace 21st century learning tools, I am having a free ONLINE (jip you can do it from anywhere provided you have internet access) un-workshop during the whole of August.

For more info and to register (20 people max) go here http://learnwithmaggie.ning.com/page/blogtwit-workshop-4-august-3

For reasons and examples on why you should be dabbling with social media tools in the classroom, see my Amesa conference slideshare here: http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/maggiev-220100-social-media-mathematics-class-teacher-school-classroom-socialmedia-amesa2009-july-education-ppt-powerpoint/ (Ps you can download it from there as well and go through it like a tutorial)

The aim of the workshop is for teachers to create and maintain a
focussed blog while supporting one another using twitter. We
will use twitter as our main communication channel and explore how
it can help us to do advocacy for our blog, get quick ideas and
discover the learning magic! This way we should be able to get into
the habit of “blog-twitting” and also explore how we can use it in
all aspects of our lifes, organisations,schools. The blog can be a
personal blog, school blog, class blog or a organisational blog! I
will endeavour to facilitate your journey through little steps in a
supported way, helping you over the nitty gritty little thingies of
blogging, widgets, gadgets and twittering. Hopefully we will evolve
as strong learning partners with functional blogs!! The first week
will be dedicated to twitter-ing and getting comfortable with the
notion of blogging.

Too much????!!!!

Level: Beginner blogger/twit

Skills needed: Basic computer skills (you can type (even if it
is with 1 finger) e-mail, cut and paste and navigate your way
around the internet!

Important skill: Perserverence and a longing to learn and
have fun!

Number of participants: 20 max

Cost:Free online

Tools to use: Twitter, Wordpress/edublogs, various other
widgets form photosharing sites, polls, google docs….

To make a commitment and register for this workshop, please complete the following form:

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I attended a librarians’ conference last week and at some stage we got into a discussion about wether or not reading books online will ever take off. After thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that I was in any case doing most of my reading online. I still love books and I don’t think this will ever change, but I definitely do not have a lot of time to actually read a saucy novel curled up in bed or on the sofa. The “sad” reality of my life is that I am mostly curled up with my laptop, reading blogs and articles and bookmarking them for distribution to my learning networks. The only time I get to indulge myself (and it is a specific treat for me now) is when I visit my house in Hogsback (paradise). There you just have to sit in front of the fireplace with a good book or go and read it next to the stream or something!

I am trying to get my mind around actually reading whole books online and set out to see what is available. I was inspired to find a treasure cove of goodies online. In the past I have mainly downloaded ebooks in PDF format for offline reading. I on principle never print ebooks, as it is a far more costly exercise as actually buying the book and having that fresh book smell welcoming you every time you turn a page. I must also admit to never actually reading a whole book online, just snippets of text here and there for use in papers and articles. If there is anyone who would read a book online, surely it will be me?

So I have decided to investigate some book options and am busy making a listing of all free e-book sites for our  new librarians blog (see lists there) . I could not believe the variety and depth of free e-book collections from all over the internet. You can download books in a variety of formats from audiobooks to photobooks and more. You can subscribe to get a book delivered in your e-mail inbox on a daily basis in smallish chunks and of course, you can buy a Kindle or read books on your cellphone for those wasteful occasions where you are forced to spend time stuck in a que.

While I was busy with my investigations my learning network friends @rashkath and @russeltarr shared some books with me. The one book was made by a grade 3 teacher for/by her class. I like the page turning effects worked into the site….

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

So what do you think? Should we start burning our dusty books yet?

In my ongoing persuit of getting teachers to embrace 21st Century social media tools in their classrooms in South Africa, I have mostly had to deal with severe resistance and antagonism. The best case scenarios have been amused interest, avoidance and lurking participation. The use of social media tools within school walls has mostly been banned, severely controlled or renegated for use by specialist teachers (CAT and IT). Huge amounts of money are still being spend on outdated “drill and practice” (and believe me I have also been there once) software.  School managements are “controlling” their learners’ social media habits by banning cell phones and social media networks like Facebook, under the pretence of caring for their learners’ safety.

So what am I saying?

I know about the risks. I know about privacy issues. I know about cyberbullying. I know about information overload (indeed). I know about time limatations, especially for our teachers. But this is the new world reality that we are supposed to prepare our learners for! The scary thing is that they are out there, without our guidance, embracing IT and incorporating IT into their very being in high definition colour and without constraint and thought. And yes, they are using IT at school under the tables and in their pockets. And yes, you can ignore IT, ban IT, firewall IT, suspend IT/them, but you are not going to stop them using IT!

So what is the answer?

There are no answers, only the persuit of knowledge for life. And our learners’ future will depend on how wisely and effectively they will be using the tools afforded to us in the 12st century and beyond. So yes, we can return to our blackboards/whiteboards/”interactive” whiteboards and teach the way we have been teaching for centuries, turning our backs on where they are now and where they will be in the future, but we will be failing our learners yet again. And this time we cannot even blame OBE, the digital divide, the government or for that matter, alien invasions. The problem lies squarely with us, as keepers of our learners’ future.

Solutions are never easy, they are brave, so….

• Accept that learners are on top of the technology- ask them to guide you (teach you) in the use of the tools, while you add your wisdom and experience as an educator in facilitating subject skills, knowlege and values.
• Instead of banning 21st century tools, use them actively in your classroom- get the kids to create and share their knowledge using their favourite tools.
• As far as the inherent dangers of using these tools are concerned: Equip yourself with the know-how of using the tools- it is the only way that you will be able to protect and guide them
• Go online, Mxit up, because what happens in real life, happens online, just faster and easier. So be there- you have to be!

So what can you do practically? Just a few ideas…

• Learn one tool a month (Mxit, delicious/diigo, twitter, blogging, Facebook, slideshare) and go and lurk in their spaces.
• Talk to the CAT teacher about how you can incorporate a new media tool into a lesson plan- once a month!
• Think about how you can incorporate cellphones into your lessons
• Read Steve’s blog on “Beyond the computer lab: Rethinking ICT for education”
• ………..

Blogging is easy, effortless (I lie of course) and fun! So whether you want to create a vibrant space for your school to show the real spirit of learning, or whether you want to post homework for parents to keep track of what their kids are supposed to be doing, or if you just want to create a showcase for your organisation, or claim your personal voice in the blogosphere, then this workshop is for you!

My context will be rooted in the educational aspects of blogging, but we will also look at personal and organisational blogging. We will not be looking at blogging for profit, but if anyone wants to bring that in, you’re welcome!

The focus of this unworkshop will therefore be the nitty-gritty of blogging from a beginners point of view and will be aimed at providing you with the skills and motivation to set up, maintain and enhance your blog. You will choose a blogging platform, set up your blog and post a blog every two days for 4 weeks. (Don’t worry you can cut and paste from your ideas/object folder). You will also be required to speed read at least 2 blogs of the people on your pathway and leave comments in order to support each other!

Start date: 10 November 2008 – 6 December 2008

Where: Online at Learnwithmaggie

Content:

• Why do we need to blog- creating an ideas folder
• Reading and commenting on blogs
• Choosing a blogging platform (The difference between wordpress, edublogs, blogger, iblog…)
• Registering for a blog
• Creating your first blogpost
• Customizing your blog
• Embedding videos,slideshows,pictures
• Inserting widgets
• Staying up to date with blogs
• Blogging safety
• Blog maintenance

To register, please complete the registration form

The un-workshop will mainly happen on my Learnwithmaggie Ning, so also go and register there!

I am busy creating a blogging learning object for use with subject advisors and teachers. It has been a great learning experience for me as I had to actually sit down and think about why we blog. Speaking to other teachers and edtech aficionados, I realised that there are endless reasons for teachers to blog. It also seems that the biggest reason people fail to maintain a blog after creation is because they do not have a clear vision of what to blog about.

I therefore decided to create a collection of reason with examples to help motivate us to blog more regularly for teaching and learning. In my quest I have stumbled upon some inspirational examples of teacher blogs, but was sad to see that there are not enough ordinary teachers blogging. It is mainly web 2.0 convertees, IT, CAT and edtech teachers going for it flat out. I am interested to see how “ordinary” (as in non IT) class teachers use blogs.

My idea list for reasons to blog has amounted to the following and I am looking to link up with exact examples. It has been quite a time consuming exercise (something we do not have a lot of) and am desperately hoping for some assistance in completing my list examples. So if you have written a blogpost that I can use as an example of the following blog post ideas, please add them to a comment here!

Post daily homework tasks (http://smithmel.edublogs.org/2007/11/12/create-a-cartoon-caption-assignment/)

• Reflect on the days teaching
• Post the lesson plan for each class
• Post educational tutorials
• Embed videos and slideshows that you want the class to watch and post comment on. (peer review maybe?) (http://class.huffenglish.com/?p=1115)
• Post newsletters
• Post parent notes (http://art-on-the-move.blogspot.com/search/label/Art%20Room)
• Post sport results
• Post a photo gallery
• Inspirational quotes
• Comment on current educational issues
• Inspiration
• Embed a school radio station
• Share teaching tips
• Share teaching resources
• Share resources and links
• …….?  Please let me know what I have left out….

Here are some of my photos from the conference:

 

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!
 

Spending a huge amount of time on your computer can be detrimental to your health! I have been waking up at night with an aching wrist and numbness in my hands. Coupled to the fact that my keyboarding skills have taken a turn for the worse, I have decided to look into the situation a bit more seriously. I have also decided to invest in a good voice recognition system to see if I can “save my hands”.

The following little slideshare gives some basic advice on how to teach children proper keyboarding skills.