PageFlakes – teacher edition!

Posted on December 6, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Another addition to the suit of Web 2.0 tools customized with advantages for K-12 educators. We’ve already got Wikispaces, VoiceThreads, WetPaint Wiki, and Ning.

Another tool I regularly promote is PageFlakes , which now has PageFlakes Teacher Edition – with a nice specialist education focus.

This is Cool! if it remains open for sharing – no strings attached.

I did a search amongst the repository and found some nice PageCasts, e.g. Middle School Literacy and Harry Potter Feeds, as example. There is a huge long list of Flakes (widgets) you can add to customise your PageCast..

The Pageflakes team explains:

You can customize this page by adding and deleting Flakes (Widgets). Click the yellow button at the top right corner to:

browse the Educational Gallery
change the layout
customize your theme
share and publish your page

By default, all your pages are private. To publish a page or to share it with your colleagues please click on “Make Pagecast”. Of course you can have as many pages (tabs) as you want.

Why not setup a private page to start with? And when you’re ready, you may create a public Pagecast (check out our Pagecast Gallery) or a group Pagecast (shared page) for you and your colleagues – great for sharing notes, news and documents.

Let me tell you about Ning! and the new bonus!

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

The big news from Ning! is that it is offering Ad-free student networks. This is a real boon.

I like Ning very much for the robust social networking it provides – it’s excellent for good discussion and group sharing, ideal for new users to social networking, and especially good for specific global projects like the Flat Classroom project, or for your own school-based projects or staff space.

But I have been avoiding ‘marketing’ it in my schools because of the advertisments.

No longer!

Steve Hargadon writes about the new look Ning! – and how current education users can request to have advertising removed. As a member of the FlatClassroom Project, Classroom 2.0, The Global Education Collaborative, Library 2.0, NextGen Teachers, School 2.0, Stop Cyberbullying, Edublogger World, and lots more. I’m not active really, just drop by sometimes – unless the group is project-based such as The Horizon Project and the Flat Classroom Project.

I especially like the way we can use Ning! to introduce groups of new teachers to the world of robust social networking – sharing information, ideas, videos, movies etc, as well as having a personal space to run a bit of a blog (for those who haven’t got time to ‘go it alone’), a way to discuss and ask questions through the forum….and more!

Now it’s time for more people to have a go! Go on, start by joining a group – I have found another that needs my attention – Ning in Education! Time for me to schedule a workshop!

What I would like is a better way of integrating all my groups FaceBook style! API anyone?

Ustream.tv

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

The twittersphere is full of excitement as more and more ed tech bloggers give UstreamTV a try this week.

Whether you broadcast live, chat live, or record your show for later, this has some interesting potential for teachers to experiment with in some way. Teachers like Coolcatteacher and Budtheteacher have a Ustream space already.

A great addition to the professional learning toolkit for global educators.

A post on Twitter, and there we all were (just before midnight) participating in some cool PD at Where the Dust Settles. Learnt about PollDaddy! Discovered how easy it is to use this tool to effectively share information and have fun!

New imagery for schools and schooling

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

I am fortunate to be attending the ACEL/ASCD conference in Sydney where I have the good fortune to be able to hear in person from some of the key thinkers in education from around the world.

I wish I had the time to share the inspiration – but I am busy helping with podcasting and interviews (follow up chats) for ACEL.

It would be hard to pin down my favourite presentation or workshop. How can we make choices when we are hearing from so many.

A highlight of day two was a very reflective talk from Peter Senge. He used narrative as a way to help us reflect on the changing shape. You know, it’s not about education any more – its about changing society, and changing the way we support our young people to grow in knowledge, competence, understanding and responsibility for a safe and viable future world.

John Connell followed with an excellent keynote presentation, which also captured the pervasive media world of our students, and the imperative that we allow creativity to drive change and development. Drop over to John’s highlights of the conference, to see how vital the discussion at this conference really has been.

The final sessions of the day were a particularly fine opportunity to hear Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan debate the future directions in effective school development – where we maximize the capacity of teachers and leaders to create relevant and authentic learning for each of our students.

A comment at the end from Andy reminded me of one thing that was of interest to me at this conference. Andy reminded us that we don’t know just how the technological and social networking dimensions of our student’s online immersive lives will influence the shape of the education delivery in the coming years.

Lets not lose sight of this, inbetween the new school structures that we are building. It seems that with the exception of Greg Whitby, John Connell and Westley Field, we have inadequate coverage of Web 2.0 as platform, of social networking, of creativity in the real world of our students.

I hope that those in senior educational roles do not lose sight of this while they are discussing assessment, ‘effect size’ measures, curriculum mapping management styles, leading learning etc.

Overall a great conference – yet a starting point only for re-shaping schooling for 21st century learning.

Lets not forget that that some of the social networking tools that are driving our student’s experiences were developed by young people – out of school, and as an aside to the learning that education seems to be involved with. Lets meet online in these spaces for the next ACEL conference 🙂

Photo: Valley between buildings.

Top 100 tools for learning 2007

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day is a ‘must read‘ to add to your RSS feeds.

She gathered people’s favourite Top Ten Tools for Learning from 100 educators around the globe. Over 400 different tools were named in total, but the final list was created in order of popularity. The top 100 tools received 3 or more (positive) mentions. The results can be seen here in a neat comparison table with links to sites providing the tools.

It’s a great resource for anyone looking at their knowledge working environment and wondering where to improve.

Choose several different tools to get things done in your knowledge working landscape – tools for gathering, processing, networking, sharing, and scheduling because Learning is a Conversation and learning (not schooling) is our context.

Photo credit: Sweet reality, sweet fantasy

Inside a dog….it’s too dark to read!

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Thanks to Andrew and his pointer to another fabulous website that I haven’t taken enough notice of … so perhaps you haven’t either. 🙂

This is a website for young people about books.

Here you can:

read and write reviews
meet our online author-in-residence
win stuff
preview upcoming titles
read interviews with authors
keep up to date with all the latest bookish news
listen to podcasts and audio Chapter Ones
talk about books on the forum

Insideadog is also the home of the Inky Awards – Australia’s first Teenage Choice Book Award. It all starts with the longlist – 10 Australian books and 10 International. Then the panel of 6 judges will whittle it down to a shortlist of 3 Australian and 3 international books.

Voting opens September 24! See if you can join in!

This is another great Australian resource!

Scratch media lab of your own from MIT

Posted on September 1, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Thanks to the ICT Guy’s post about their professional learning day with Scratch – Creating Games with Scratch – I have been reminded to look into this great creative tool.

SCRATCH is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Scratch is available free of charge, go to Download, and there are support documents available to get you underway.

Help turn your kids from media consumers into media producers, with their next Scratch project!!

WHAT a photography toolbox!

Posted on July 4, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Photos are everywhere on the web. From sharing with friends, to editing, printing, buying, selling, searching, remixing and free hosting, we’ve lined up a plethora of resources for photo fiends.

Following up from my post about What a Video Toolbox, here is one I should have included on photography – once again from the Mashable team.

90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources

You use Youtube? so you’re cool?

Posted on June 29, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Working with a group of teachers the other day, I was inspired to reflect upon just how much things have changed in just 6 months!

Of course the workshop was about Web 2.0, and we had some attendees who were at the ‘big toe in the water’ stage, as well as Bob, Martin and super enthusiastic Deputy Principal John. What a great school to have such a passion to move on through Web 2.0. Bob at McAuley runs a blog to support their ‘Focus on Learning’ project (which is about Web 2.0) and which will represent money well invested by the State in this school! Bob has joined me on FaceBook, and we had some interesting discussions after the workshop about the value (or otherwise) of Facebook for teachers. The answer? Not much value right now, but we will keep our eye on it 🙂

Bob & Martin, along with some teachers from a number of our other schools, are also involved in a Learnscope project – once again around the use of Web 2.0. My young geek friend Melinda says:

The focus in this project is to acquire sound evidence on which to base future organisational decisions about communication and networking processes.

This will be done through investigating the use of web 2.0 tools:

to support VET teachers and students as learners

to facilitate workplace communication about VET teaching and learning issues

in supporting industry and TAFE networking opportunities.

What’s different then you ask? Well, not just the fact that it has become ‘mainstream’ to undertake specific projects to investigate and integrate the best possible use of Web 2.0, but that through Web 2.0 we can reclaima teachers prime role of mentoring, nurturing, modelling or even teaching! students with technology that is online, intuitive, and embedded into the framework of learning and teaching.

The difference now is the existence of Web 2.0 as a framework for social networking and social communication; and Web 2.0 as a state-of-the art technology that is more and more intuitive rather being an ‘add-on’ to the core business of learning.

I’ve hear someone at work say a few weeks ago: “Web 2.0 is out there – we don’t need to do anything special to incorporate it into learning.”

Oh dear! – of course those of us ‘on the road’ and working with teachers know that the story is very different. . and that we are lucky to have so many projects to help people make the transition to Web 2.0 learning and teaching!!!!

So what WAS so different yesterday?

Not the workshop, but what happened afterwards. The staff attending the workshop didn’t all just pack their bags and run. A bunch of us gathered around and watched some videos that Bob has collected in his EventHorizon VodPod!! Were you doing that 6 months ago? A year ago?

We watched the amazing TED talk about Photosynth. We topped it off with some comedy! before driving home on a cold winter’s afternoon.

Create + Learn + Broadcast = L3RN

Posted on June 25, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

A very impressive Web 2.0 presence from Seattle Public Schools who have clearly got a great lead on integration of social networking into their learning frameworks!

Know as L3RN – Learning equals creating, learning and broadcasting, A visit to their fantastic portal is a must. School libraries have their own area for News, tips, resources, and help from Seattle Schools’ libraries.

The portal has browse, video, audio, docs and channels in its suite. Fantastic.

Thanks to Awapuni for ‘links for you’ through Del.ici.ous!

[Cross-posted from: iLibrarian because it is too important to only post in one place!]