Dispatches from Downunder – catching up with Alan

Posted on October 27, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Saturday has an exciting edge to it for me. Alan Levine has finally made it back to Sydney on his travelling tour Australia, which he has been documenting in his flipped version of his blog at CogDogRoo!

Alan is an inspiration to many of us, so if you haven’t added his blog to your RSS feeds, then you’d better catch up now! CogDogBlog is Alan’s place to bark about cool technology, web X.0 hype, weird web sites, photography, and other targets big and small.

This is my chance to say thanks Alan! Thanks mate!

Alan is a pretty important guy really 🙂 as Director, Technology Resources and Member Services of the New Media Consortium (NMC) as well as the Vice President Community and CTO with an international group of colleagues. In Second Life everyone knows he’s a dog (CDB Barkley)!

I met Alan recently ‘in world’ during a NSW Learnscope seminar being hosted on Jokaydia Island (where I have the good fortune to regularly meet educators from Australia to talk the good talk). In fact we had a good gathering at HeyJude Hall last night (that’s my place in Jokaydia and I’m Heyjude Jenns ‘in world’). Thanks to Sue Waters (Ruby Imako) for managing all the introductions! Phew!).

I was so excited by the whole ‘in world’ seminar that I didn’t stop to talk or ask questions. Today its different. A bunch of us are meeting up with Alan for shopping, movie and dinner – somehow I think we’ll all be barking furiously for a piece of the action.

Later: From left to right – Angela, Judy, Alan, Westley and Lynnette.

Write your thoughts….or stream that news!!!

Posted on October 22, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

I’ve been playing around with the possibilities offered by tools such as Tumblr. I have to say, I think this little application rocks!

Yes, I know that some people are using it very effectively as their ‘cut down’ blog, others are using it for creating a compilation of information sources through the power of RSS. Both good and very handy.

But what about the option of using this as a blogging tools for kids?

It’s quick, easy to use, and possibly a better starting point for teachers new to the blogging game and great to use for individual projects or themes.

Obviously this is not as expansive a tool as regular blog platforms – but a cool tool nonetheless. I set up my test at Yellow Submarine. First of all I tested posts, links, images and videos, then set up an RSS feed of my delicious links which stream very nicely into Tumblr.

Kids can blog really easily with Tumblr, making it ideal for primary age students. And imagine the value of packaging information for students or staff this way for the library, or for anything really. And what a neat way to share information being complied in your delicious links. We should be talking more about the possibilities of this clever little blog tool.

Tumblr has text, photo, quote, link, chat and video tools. I really like the flexibility of being able to change the name AND url of your Tumblr blog too! Just a few templates to choose from – but for the more experienced, you can custom design your own if you are used to fiddling with the template as we had to do in the original blogger version.

For anyone thinking of using Tumblr as a way of providing a news feed or updates from the web, you’ll love the “share with Tumblr” widget that you can install on you browser nav bar, or equivalent dashboard widget for your mac. Find something interesting or fun – just hit the button, and quickly send the post to your Tumblr blog. That’s just what I did a couple of seconds ago on my test Tumblr blog Yellow Submarine – and it took less than 30 seconds!

Now here’s a cool solution for ‘time-poor’ teachers. Well worth experimenting with. Don’t ever say you haven’t got time to run a blog now 🙂

Photo: Wee Waterfuls

Cool class project

Posted on September 25, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

I’m really enjoying reading The Thinking Stick at the moment, mainly because Jeff pushes the boundaries non-stop. I love these thoughts from I don’t want to integrate it, I want to embed it.

What I want..is technology to be embedded into the classroom. Into the learning environment. I am tired of trying to integrate it into a process, a classroom, or a curriculum that was never made to integrate technology to begin with.No, what I want is to start at the very bottom and embed technology tools, skills, and standards into lessons, our classrooms, and our outcomes……What if we truly acted like technology was just part of us, part of education, part of educating students today. What if we start embedding it and stopped integrating it?

Jeff models this every day for us. What about this coll class project – Teen Tek.

Perhaps you have some teens who would enjoy this too. Or perhaps you can adapt this idea for your own students in some way.

Library Thing…. on WordPress

Posted on September 18, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

We love to customise our online spaces, don’t we?

After a request for help to find a way to display a book selection in the sidebar on an edublogs wordpress blog, I went hunting. WordPress doesn’t support the Library Thing widget right now, but that’s what we wanted to use.

Thanks to some code from the Library Thing forum and a bit of fiddling, we ended up with a My Book Collection widget on Danni’s The Butterfly Effect blog.

It has a static book jacket, and a random feed from the the profile’s catalogue. Basic for now, but does the job. You could do your own edits. Substitute your LibraryThing account name where I have inserted ‘accountname’, and of course your own image from your flickr account.

Code below:

Soaring high above the clouds

Posted on September 16, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Amongst all the great bloggers who work tirelessly to share good information and provide inspiration – there are some who help us soar high in the clouds by the specialist nature of their collaborative conversation.

I like the information that Larry Ferlazzo brings to the conversation with his focus on Teaching ELL, ESL and EFL.

I’m also proud to announce the ‘arrival’ of a local colleague, Danni Miller, with her focus on a “new, powerful conversation on body image, self esteem and outcomes for girls” at The Butterfly Effect.

Do you have a specialist read that you would like to share?
I’d like to list them in this post.

Karen Janowski’s Teaching Every Student blog focuses on assisting students with disabilities.

Photo credit: Kites and Clouds

Inquiry-based learning with Web 2.0 mashups

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Keeping right on my theme of promoting some good things from Downunder for BlogDay2007, I would like to share this great presentation from Paul Reid, of Digital Chalkie fame.

Thanks Paul!

BlogDay 2007 from Downunder

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Today it is BlogDay!! an event to foster more connections between bloggers and a way to get to know other bloggers with other interests from other countries.

Thinking about the global context, I thought to myself “if there is only one blog from the whole world that I am allowed to read for the next 12 months what would I choose?”.

Without hesitation, my choice was John Connell, because he keeps me in touch with a diversity of things – culture, history, society, philosophy, technology, news, ideas, creativity, and just good fun. Thanks John.

However, since I blog downunder right here in Sydney Town, I’ve decided to highlight 5 blogs (so hard to choose!!!) from Australia rather than other countries, to promote our emerging culture, point of view, and attitude in the global conversation, and to say ‘thanks’ the the aussie bloggers that I have added to my reading list this year!

Drop by (if you haven’t already) and enjoy the read.

Sue Waters at Mobile Technology in TAFE has done a stunning job promoting mobile technologies, e-learning and m-learning tools and strategies, is always investigating new and challenging ways of incorporating Web 2.0 into the education experience.

John Pearce at My Other Blog teaches in a primary school in Victoria, but his work draws on the global conversation to drive his thinking and practice in his own school. As John says, the whole Web 2.0 scene is moving so rapidly it is only via that web itself that you can hope to keep up.

Melinda Phillips at The Parramatta Learnscope Team blogs with a special purpose – to challenge her project team to explore Web 2.0 for professional learning and teaching in a ’21st century’ way. Great guidance and good reading. Melinda is a great person to work with 🙂

Chris Betcher at Betchablog teaches in a school in Sydney, does great professional development sessions, and runs From the Virtual Classroom podcasts which are a bit of a hit.

Cindy Barnsley at Thinking 2.0 teaches in country Australia and dreams (and writes) about technology to enhance students’ learning, with a focus on blogs, wikis and digital storytelling. I love her quote that drives her blog:

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler

There are MANY blogs in Australia and the world that we all love dearly. I couldn’t survive professionally without them. THANK YOU 🙂

Technorati Tags: BlogDay2007

Blogging that collaborative continuum!

Posted on August 28, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Thanks to a post by Janet over at Fusion Finds I was reminded that the third annual Blog Day is August 31, 2007. (I missed this last year!).

BlogDay is an event to foster more connections between bloggers. A way to get to know other bloggers with other interests from other countries. On Friday the 31st, write a post describing 5 blogs you recommend. Preferrably blogs that are different from yours in culture, point of view, and attitude. Notify these bloggers and tag your post with BlogDay2007. This is a great way to connect with other bloggers and pass along some link love.

Go on, join the power of the crowd!

Better still, visit Fusion Finds: Educators Integrating Technology. I discovered Janet’s blog as a result of a comment on Heyjude – see the power of comments? I love the workshops, the ideas, and the models that I can adapt to my own needs here in Australia. I think I will use these ideas to build further on Judy’s Web 2.0 notes for my new learners. What will you find to excite or enjoy?

Blogging across the curriculum

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Not to be outdone, students in Year 5 were busy today setting up their various group blogs ….. lots of giggles, ohhhs and demands to get started NOW!

Kate is taking a different approach with her students, setting up a shared blog space for groups working on different topics, such as: Visual Ventures (electricity); Safety First (issues for different scenarios); New Concepts (cool maths problems to try and solve); Riddles & Poems; Religion (World Youth Day – the latest on the cross, and living the message of Jesus).

I wish I could share the looks of wonder and excitement that I saw on these faces in every group. The focus and interest in getting further involved with blogging is interesting to see.

Five Green Specials and all the students blogs are just getting underway, though it will take a few weeks to get these properly underway – as a new teacher is taking over from Kate soon who will be at home with her new baby!

However, the kids in Riddles and more for English already have a couple of podcasts on their blog! Great work kids! I have a feeling that we will see (hear, watch?) beaut things happening on these blogs as the year goes on.

But seriously, we have been able to explore quite a few different dimensions of blogging with Kate’s and Elizabeth’s class. It is great to be able to set up learnerblogs safely using gmail accounts that are an alias of the main account the teacher has set up to manage her classes blogs.

It’s been very rewarding working with Elizabeth and Kate on establishing and expanding blogging ideas for their school – thanks for letting me share in the learning fun 🙂

If you want to set up learnerblogs, and don’t want to let students loose on this using their own email addresses, then simply create an account e.g. myaccount@gmail.com. Then you are ready to create learner blogs with email alias accounts by using the plus (+) sign and name e.g. myaccount+student1@gmail.com; myaccount+student2@gmail.com. All the authorization and management matters related to your students blogs will come to the gmail account that you have set up.

Read Doug Belshaw’s post about 8 things I like about Edublogs (and learnerblogs) to get some ideas if you are new to this. Doug also has a nice way to enter his teacher and student spaces at Mr Belshaw.co.uk– explore further to build your own ideas.