So from the history of the internet to this refocussing on learning – a great interview from Michael Wesch about harnessing collective intelligence rather than teaching content. He is an advocate of ‘anti-teaching’, seeking too inspire with good questions. Google becomes a tool for testing possibilities. Social media is also about learning possibilities. But don’t get it wrong – it is also about more work! more commitment! more active involvement in collaborative learning. He also raises the use of RFID on a campus, for creating learning opportunities. This I like!!
Thanks to a post from Elizabeth Clark, I’m excited to say that I agree with her that 280 slides has wonderful potential for teachers and students alike. In fact, this will become a key teaching tool for me in 2009, as I get my students away from desktop applications and into collaborative online tools.
This is a great place to start. Kids are all too familiar with powerpoint, youtube, and …..uh,oh , google images. How do we make the use of these tools more organic?
For my own presentations, and theirs – this is the go! Why?
Because 280 Slides is a free web-based service where you can “[c]reate beautiful presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world.” It allows you to
import existing PowerPoint presentations
access your presentations from any computer with an internet connection
use media from services like Flickr and YouTube
use built-in themes
automatically save and recover your presentations
download your presentation to PowerPoint
publish your presentation on SlideShare, e-mail it, or embed it in a website
create your presentations on the web in your browser without downloading any software
I totally love that it works basically the same way as blogs, wikis and nings – use a url or upload an image to put it into your presentation. You can search YouTube or Vimeo to add some multimedia, as well as uploading something.
So students can make their movies, store their images – all online – then embedd them into their presentation – and download, upload, share and …… so the online conversation continues with the power of cloud computing.
Quick read of Student Blogging from Michael Rees who is working Web 2.0 into his Web Applications course, a new subject introducing the students to the creation and scripting of interactive web sites and the basic technology behind Web 2.0, was very illuminating.
For their last blogging task he asked the class to nominate three Web 2.0 sites they find useful., I was fascinated (as he was) in the results of his survey. We should perhaps consider checking with our students a little more often too?
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Thanks to a post from 
