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:

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!

“Unlearning” and the future of education

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

In my workplace we are undergoing a sort of major change as the leadership work to shape a new direction for the learning frameworks in our schools. I’m pretty keen on seeing these changes. Recently, at a two-day workshop, we heard some great stories from three schoosl – Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti, Summerland Primary School, and North Loburn School, all in New Zealand. Nice one Vince, Luke and Mike! Personally I would like to hear more from Australian schools, and Australian teachers. I know we have some fabulous innovation going on right here in Sydney……..but?

Never mind – the global collaborative to the rescue (no business flights required)

A post in the social networking site Classroom 2.0 lead me to the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education from the KnowledgeWorks Foundation and Institute for the Future 2006-2016. Check it out or grab the pdf, and then think about what you’ve seen on the map and discuss it with colleagues.

Will Richardson wrote recently about The Steep “Unlearning Curve”, and lists 10 things we need to unlearn to make ‘future’ schooling come to life. What Will talks about resonates with us all who are trying to create a shift in the way schooling happens. It IS about seeing the possibilities.

The “aha” moments in life delight us. We suddenly gain an insight, experience a profound joy, or realize something important for the first time. That’s learning! That’s why we have to push further into the future of learning than our NZ colleagues took us recently.

How far and fast we can go is picked up right here in Sydney by Westley and his MLC girls, busy building Skoolaborate in TeenSecondLife.

This for me is real innovation, and leaves our NZ colleagues for dead. Me? I wish!

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 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.

Procedure packs a punch! Cool Year 1!

Posted on August 3, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Language learning is the most critical component of young students learning experiences. Jamie, Co-ordinator of the Literacy and Web 2.0 project, teaches Year 1, and decided to bring Writing Procedures to life!

Enter ‘cooking’ and loads of fruit, bread, juice, butter, cinnamon and more! Yikes – so much preparation, and all essential for embedding good understanding of writing procedures.

So today’s work was about using technology tools to enhance literacy learning, and was the culmination of a very busy week. Jamie showed them the steps, carefully engaging the students, so they understood the steps. Then each child was able to navigate the computer, and do their own sequencing and recording. Photos, narration and publishing made Year 1 very happy little people – and this was just their first time!

All the teachers are sharing their digital resources in a number of different ways – wikispaces, podcasting, and videosharing on Teacher Tube, which allows teachers to create their own groups space, and share videos about the topics that the student is working on. The ongoing blend of Web 2.0 tools are important – and these teachers will continue their exploration of many different Web 2.0 tools.

The great thing about the project so far is the diversity of tools, both Mac and PC, that are being used for the first time, and in a co-ordinated fashion across the school. While the students are experiencing different learning opportunities – so are the teachers! Just you keep ‘packing a punch’ Jamie as you keep working with your fabulous team 🙂

You smoke! You die!….for literacy.

Posted on August 2, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Literacy is still the focus for our project work at Good Shepherd this week – today it was Year 6 using Photostory to consolidate their learning about ‘smoking’.

After doing their research from the Cancer Council about the dangers of smoking, Megan asked the students to create a poster representing a key aspect of these dangers for an anti-smoking advertisment campaign. Students created a storyboard for their work, and were then able to record a supporting statement for each poster. Put these together – and bingo! a podcast of their own about the dangers of smoking. This was all ‘first time’ for these students – and the integration of visual, text and audio literacy skills were the bonus learning experience. Love your work Megan 🙂

That literacy beat really rocks!

Posted on August 1, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

We knew it was easy – but our students proved it to us today! It was Matt’s turn to share his class with me as we explored another learning experience with the kids. Year 4 is working on poetry ….. enjoying poetry now after inspiration from “Matt the Muso”!

Just a couple of weeks ago Matt was introduced to MacBooks, and the musician turned teacher discovered that there really is great scope for (garageband inspired) musical influences in his classroom.

Today his students “met” MacBooks and GarageBand for the first time, and armed with a poem they were ready to take up this muso’s challenge. The students very quickly chose a drum beat for their backing track, recorded their audio track (matching the poem to the beat), and then chose sound effects.

This was just the beginning of their creative experience, and will lead to podcasting and sharing of media files with parents. Great learning …. and what a buzz! Thanks very much Matt 🙂

Here is just one sample to enjoy –