Webquest- question answered

"Ultimately your QUEST is to determine the most effective way of sharing this new knowledge and resources about one innovation to bridge the gap between those who 'know' and those that 'don't know', in particular your colleagues in the course and faculty members"

This QUEST was achieved in our class presentation of the Web 2.0 innovation 'Scratch'. To 'bridge the gap' for this innovation we took everyone through the program in a step-by-step process but also allowed for them to 'play around' with the program whilst doing so. This meant that everyone was not only being fed direct information about the program through our presentation but also building their own knowledge about it through paly. This meant that those who 'know' did not become frustrated and rush ahead (as they were able to play whilst waiting for others), whilst those who 'don't know' were able to raise any concerns or problems they were having and have them rectified before moving onto the next steps.

We also created a Scratch Wiki page which contained further information about Scratch along with numerous Scratch resources including video tutorials and links to help pages. This wiki was created with the intention of enhancing and detailing information given in the presentation some background informaition about the program and information about the future of the program and its uses in the classroom. All of this information was gathered and documented with the intention of also helping to 'bridge the gap'.

Edmodo- the virtual classroom

Edmodo is baisically facebook for teachers and students (in fact it was around BEFORE facebook was). However it not only allows teachers and students to communicate privately online with one another, but also acts as a virtual classroom where you can share notes, links, files, attachments and homework.

Edmodo is free, simple for both teachers and students to follow and use, and sdoes not require students to have an email account in order to sign up.

It can be used in the classroom:
- to send allerts about upcomming events

- to send assignments to teachers

- as a means of record keeping (for any online tasks)

- as a means of communication teacher-> student or student->student

and lastly my favourite...

- Edmodo leaves no excuses for students who NEVER hand in a piece of homework! (By posting the homework online children cannot lose it and once they’ve uploaded their finished homework, they can forget about it until it’s time to review the work in class)

Of course with everything good, there are some downfalls, namely children not remembering to check the site and an increased workload for the teacher, however I think Edmodo will rapidly evolve into an excellent tool for future classroom management and discussion.

VoiceThread- be heard

VoiceThread is similar to an online version of power-point. It is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice, text, audio file, or video. And, like Jing, VoiceThread allows you to draw on images whilst commenting.

VoiceThread is simple and free to use. It also can download files much faster than Jing, however only a maximum of 3 voice threads can be stored at one time.

VoiceThread can be used in the classroom:
- to communicate with individual students as well as the whole class,
- to develop speaking listening, reading, writing, viewing skills,
- to create an e-portfolio of students work,
- as a means of self assessment- students can record themselves reading,
- as a tool for students to narrate their own stories.

Personally if i were going to use such a tool as this one, i would prefer to use Jing however Jing does require you to download it's program whereas VoiceThread does not.

Hot Potatoes

What a brilliant educational tool for teachers! Hot Potatoes is an easy to use program which enables teachers to create and record worksheets online. It includes five applications where you can create online exercises such as multiple choice, gap completion, crosswords, a non graphical matching exercise and more!

Hot Potatoes promotes interactive learning and allows teachers to:
- compare and print student results
- track student progress
- comment on work (students can also comment on their own work for the teacher to
see)
- create different classes to cater for different learning needs
- and more...

I think Hot Potatoes is a fantastic tool and I am excited about implementing it into my classroom in the furutre.

Game Maker

Game Maker is, as the name suggests, a free to download program for making games. Game maker is basically the same as Scratch as it too offers a program which does not require users to learn complex programming language in order to create an animation/game. However, much like Scratch, this program is also very difficult and confusing to use and would not only be difficult to teach to children but also does not really have any place in the classroom.

Personally I did not like using this program, I found it confusing, complicated, frustrating and 'messy' to use. The only way that I feel this could be implemented into the classroom would be as a reward.

Glogster- poster yourself

Glogster is an online interactive poster. It allows you to upload photos, songs, text and other stuff, drag it around and be creative. Glogster also allows you to share your posters with others, so in a way it is also a social networking site.

Glogster is free to use and does not require any additional software to run it.

In the classroom Glogster can be used to:
- Create interesting posters for Science, Maths, English etc..
- Demonstrate and use artistic flare
- Develop computer skills.

Glogster means you can kiss good-bye the messy task of students creating posters by hand- good-bye glue, scissors and texta's; hello to click and drag movies, photos, graphics and text. I think Glogster is a fantastic tool which will allow students to create some amazing posters which I'm sure they will thoroughly enjoy doing!

This is my Glog...
http://s004.teacherlorraine.edu.glogster.com/Ingrids-Glog/

Scratch- imagine, program, share

Scratch is a program designed to make it easy to create your own animations. It is a visual programming system which allows users to import 'actors' (sprites) and program them by connecting a series of commands- much like pieces of a puzzle. Scratch also allows you to upload and share your creations with people all over the world.

After extensively researching Scratch my partner Kendall Hill (blog site: Scratcher2) and I found that we were extremely dissatisfied with Scratch. We found it to be time consuming, complex and to try to implement such a complex programming tool into the classroom would be a nightmare!

The only benefits we found with Scratch was the ability to download other people's animations (this includes an extensive range of classroom suitable games and tools) and the potential to use it as a 'reward' in the classroom.

Overall we were really disappointed with Scratch. We started off so enthusiastic about the program but slowly became frustrated with the complexity and lack of explicit instruction and support for the program. That said, those who enjoy programming will most definitely fall in love with this program!

Visit our Wiki page at http://curtineducation2009.wetpaint.com/page/Scratch for more information.

Twitter- to Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Twitter is an instant messaging, social network where people post short bursts of thoughts, information and their whereabouts. It is similar to Facebook whereby the people who are your 'followers' (or friends/contact list) are immediately updated with your posted information.

Twitter can be implemented into the classroom as a tool to update parents on what the students are learning or to send reminders for school photo money etc. However I feel that sending an email is just as effective and most parents already have and know how to use email.

I am a person who values face-to-face contact so Blackberries, Facebook, Twitter and alike are tools that I choose to avoid. What ever happened to having lunch together where we actually talk? No Blackberry, no Facebook, no Twitter zones? This does not mean I am ignorant of the new technologies that are available to us in this day and age, I just much prefer using mobile phones or meeting people face to face to have a chat. There are many new innovations out there that I enjoy, just not the ones that involve people making contact through text, I want to hear what people have to say not read about it!

I also feel that Twitter is really for self-serving reasons. I feel that Twitter fails to provide you with any useful information. I don't care if you are on your way to the shops or you just saw Jude Law walking down the street!

Jing- talk less, say more!

Jing was first launched in 2007 by TechSmith Corp. Jing enables users to share what they are seeing and/or doing on their computer screens.

Jing allows you to capture whole or certain parts of a screen which you are currently viewing and working with and create an instructional picture or video which can then be shared with others.

In the Classroom Jing can...

- Improve online conversations by adding visuals

- Allow teachers to observe the methods children use to solve maths problems through videos

- Aid in making instructions explicit

- Take screen shots of specific screen areas

- Allow teachers to give students tasks which can be completed and recorded

- Provide a visual aid for students

I think Jing is a fantastic innovation which (after watching the presentation in class today) is simple and easy to use! The possibilities for classroom integration are endless. However, I am not sure how the lower primary aged students would go using this software...

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free program that allows you to share and create word documents, spreadsheets and presentations collaboratively online. It is similar to creating a wiki.

In the past, creating collaborative documents with others involved sending thousands of messy email attachments back and forth for people to edit. Google Docs now lets you attach an email to a document rather than the conventional way of attaching a document to email. Google Docs allows you to turn offline documents into online documents.

You can invite up to 200 people to view a particular document and up to 10 people can be online editing the document at the same time!

In the classroom Google Docs can be used to:
-Promote group collaboration
-Facilitate writing as a process
-Monitor students work in progress
-Comment and aid students with their work as they go
-Share findings of experiments, class thoughts and discussions on topics and so on with other local, state, national and international schools
-Keep an online record keeping system that is accessible anywhere anytime,
-and much more!
An added bonus of this program is that it is free from viruses and you eliminate the risk having a program which will 'crash' due to an overload of information.

Google Docs is definitely the way to go as far as creating collaborative documents go. It is simple to use and available to anyone, and if you get stuck their website (which is almost the size of another world wide web!) will have ALL the answers!

An issue I am concerned with which arose in the class presentation (not by fault of the presenters themselves) was the fact that documents can become very hard to keep track of and edit when there are several people editing the same document at once. For instance, lines that I wrote were being 'edited' seconds after I had published them. This could become a huge problem not only in the classroom but also in the workplace. Being able to edit/update documents this quickly means that other team members could miss out on reading and evaluating what a particular individual wrote all because one person did not like what they read so they 'edited' that part of the document. Google Docs does however does keep a record of the document each time it is updated, so you can look back at what the document looked like before it was edited last.

Check out this awesome video which explains the benefits of using Google Docs over emails!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIgHmjKymlU

My Bitstrips Comic

Bitstrips

Bitstrips allows you to create and share your own comic strips online. You can bitsrip anything from funny jokes to politics and the best part is you don't have to be an amazing drawer to do it! Bitstrips is a creative, user friendly, fun way to animate your stories online.

I feel there is a real opportunity to use bitstrips in the classroom as an ENGAGING educational tool (bet you'd never thought you'd see those two words together!). By introducing Bitstrips into your lessons you are allowing children to engage and develop skills in:

• Technology and Enterprise- creating meaningful comic strips using a which can be shared with the world,
• The Arts- creative thought and design,
• English- writing dialogue,
• and much more....

It is also a fun way to visually display classroom rules and alike. The possibilities are endless with this tool!

Wiki Wordle

This is a word cloud containing words about Wikis...

Wikis

Previous to starting my studies in the 'Using Computers' unit I had no idea what a Wiki was...Wow have I learnt a lot in the past few weeks or what!?

These editable, collaborative, online documents allow you to create your own website easily and quickly. Wikis can be viewed and editied from any computer, anywhere, anytime by anyone (providing the creator of the wiki page invites you to join their enterage of followers).

Wikis generally focus around one topic and invite others to join in on blogs, adding videos and pictures and so on.

The only downfall I have found with Wikis is their lack of credibility. As these documents can be editied by anyone there is a possibility that some of the infomation contained within a Wiki page is false or misleading. Thus Wiki pages cannot be considered a reliable source of information. Nevertheless they do provide you with interesting topics, comments, links, pictures, videos and alike.

I still have a lot to learn about Wikis but they appear to provide a source of endless opportunities for online document creation and collaborative learning.

Blog Wordle Cloud

After viewing a number of Blogs I created this Wordle Cloud with words that are related to blogs.