Well, what a lot of learning for a Sunday afternoon smack in the middle of the hols!
I have heard before of creative commons and knew what they were for, but I now know how to do an advanced search to make sure that is what I am using and also how to both work out the attribution a contributor wants me to use and how to attribute (as you can see from my last upload, I found that one out by my tried and true "well lets just see what will happen if..." method when it comes to anything technical).
I'm glad I'm clearer now on copyright issues -- and even more worried about students and colleagues' free and easy attitude to this...I'm not so convinced that ignorance is bliss in this case.
Its also been good to finally have time to get into Atomic Learning: I always knew it would be good but never quite found the time to play. I think our school needs a Staff Development Day where we just play with the basics already available within our grasp but that most of us have never explored.. This has been a good module!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
extreme-ironing_04
extreme-ironing_04
Originally uploaded by b1ue5ky
I still love extreme ironing. But I now know that I found this one via creative commons and that b1ue5ky doesn't mind me using it on a share alike attribution. I've included what would usually be an embedded code because it was unclear to me what I was supposed to do with that. Next lesson I guess.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
digital natives
Talking about my students' lack of exposure to some web 2 tools has reminded me of a nagging worry. We send our students off to do new creative eLarning tasks -- create an imovie, make a blog, design a web page...and anything else we learned a minute ago. I've already said that I think our generalisation and stereotyping of this next generation make us think that they already know it all -- when the reality of my students is that they know what they know (eg facebook and myspace) as second nature but are totally oblivious to anything else. So what happens as we congratulate ourselves on how hip we are to the new technologies in setting this new assignment?
Well, it probably means that the few tech junkies in our class, or those with older siblings or parents using these tools at work etc are amazingly competent and the rest feel inadequate and frustrated and envious of those few. They can't get quality help from us because we barely knew enough to set the task and assumed these 'natives' would blitz it, and the other usual resource -- parents -- are no help at all! They rely on the good will of their cleverer classmates...Is this acceptable for an assessment task???
What I'm saying is that we should use our usual standards of frameworking and pretesting and TEACHing to the setting of such tasks. And no, I don't say the teacher has to know everything before it begins, but nor should we hand it out and say teach yourselves in a way we would be horrified about in any other area of study. We should find out what they do and don't know and then take step to fill in the gaps before proceeding for some -- and this may mean moving over and letting skilled students guest teach -- but in the name of equity all who need lessons must be given adequate teaching before they are expected to produce such tasks. (And this may also mean differentiated tasks or speed so we don't hold anyone back)
I know this all sounds a little obvious, but I do think it is a bit of a blind spot as we seek to keep up with where we think our students are...
Well, it probably means that the few tech junkies in our class, or those with older siblings or parents using these tools at work etc are amazingly competent and the rest feel inadequate and frustrated and envious of those few. They can't get quality help from us because we barely knew enough to set the task and assumed these 'natives' would blitz it, and the other usual resource -- parents -- are no help at all! They rely on the good will of their cleverer classmates...Is this acceptable for an assessment task???
What I'm saying is that we should use our usual standards of frameworking and pretesting and TEACHing to the setting of such tasks. And no, I don't say the teacher has to know everything before it begins, but nor should we hand it out and say teach yourselves in a way we would be horrified about in any other area of study. We should find out what they do and don't know and then take step to fill in the gaps before proceeding for some -- and this may mean moving over and letting skilled students guest teach -- but in the name of equity all who need lessons must be given adequate teaching before they are expected to produce such tasks. (And this may also mean differentiated tasks or speed so we don't hold anyone back)
I know this all sounds a little obvious, but I do think it is a bit of a blind spot as we seek to keep up with where we think our students are...
Module 3
It's been a while since I actually used this CEO course for it's intended purpose -- ie doing the course. Mostly I use it to communicate with other CEO people via the wet paint wiki. This has helped me get a better handle on the idea of social networking in a professional/educational sense, as well as for socialising. I believe we should keep up a web 2 forum for this in the CEO once this official course or platform goes...
Anyway, Google Docs!
I've learned how to do this before on the How to of Web 2, but the luddite in me has always felt that there is something too 'public' about publishing anything -- even privately -- on web 2. So I secrete docs (that I don't even care who sees anyway) onto my desktop and email them and save them on portable hard drives and usbs and save them into files on various computers out of this fear. The other (and probably more accurate fear from past experience) is that even if I started using this form of saving and sharing, I will either lose the passwords or somehow the powers that be out there will refuse to recognise my password any more and all will be lost.
I now, after watching the vids on how its used in education, would use it for specific purposes of collaboration with colleagues and students -- but the careful horder in me would still probably not use it more generally yet. Still! Small steps for major breakthroughs don't you think? (I say, assuming I'm speaking to thin air or myself as you do on a blog...Anyone out there?)
PS -- addition to MODULE 2: I didn't really comment on the use of blogs. I'm a fan, and have used them for regional writer's workshops etc for students. It is interesting to note here that certainly amongst my girls in the Shire, blogging is relatively unknown to them. e think because our students use MSN and facebook as second nature that the tools of web 2 are also theirs in general. Absolutely not so. In my experience they know nothing of blogs, wikis or even flikr, delicious or twitter. It doesn't mean they won't take to it -- but don't be fooled into thinking you are joining the world they already inhabit with these tools. They do need to be shown how to use them and what they can mean before they fly and go places you didn't imagine with them.
I also think Primary school children respond positively to wikis and blogs more quickly than secondary students do. Our region has a wiki attached to online gifted learning programs (e~TASC) and to see the way primary students communicate with each other and offer the most amazing online tutorials in web 2 tools has totally freaked my secondary students (who do not know the first thing about it and are very tentative about learning skills) out.
Anyway, Google Docs!
I've learned how to do this before on the How to of Web 2, but the luddite in me has always felt that there is something too 'public' about publishing anything -- even privately -- on web 2. So I secrete docs (that I don't even care who sees anyway) onto my desktop and email them and save them on portable hard drives and usbs and save them into files on various computers out of this fear. The other (and probably more accurate fear from past experience) is that even if I started using this form of saving and sharing, I will either lose the passwords or somehow the powers that be out there will refuse to recognise my password any more and all will be lost.
I now, after watching the vids on how its used in education, would use it for specific purposes of collaboration with colleagues and students -- but the careful horder in me would still probably not use it more generally yet. Still! Small steps for major breakthroughs don't you think? (I say, assuming I'm speaking to thin air or myself as you do on a blog...Anyone out there?)
PS -- addition to MODULE 2: I didn't really comment on the use of blogs. I'm a fan, and have used them for regional writer's workshops etc for students. It is interesting to note here that certainly amongst my girls in the Shire, blogging is relatively unknown to them. e think because our students use MSN and facebook as second nature that the tools of web 2 are also theirs in general. Absolutely not so. In my experience they know nothing of blogs, wikis or even flikr, delicious or twitter. It doesn't mean they won't take to it -- but don't be fooled into thinking you are joining the world they already inhabit with these tools. They do need to be shown how to use them and what they can mean before they fly and go places you didn't imagine with them.
I also think Primary school children respond positively to wikis and blogs more quickly than secondary students do. Our region has a wiki attached to online gifted learning programs (e~TASC) and to see the way primary students communicate with each other and offer the most amazing online tutorials in web 2 tools has totally freaked my secondary students (who do not know the first thing about it and are very tentative about learning skills) out.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Extreme Ironing
Sorry--I've been playing ...I may have jumped ahead of myself.Extreme Ironing
Originally uploaded by philpox
I have become very fond of extreme ironing. But I just want to do it by the Loire or Lake Bled or Lake Como or while eating chocolates and flemish stew and pomme frites and Belgian beer in Brugges -- now thats extreme
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Module 2
It just took me forever to hyperlink my blog url to the wiki...
Wow ...I look back at that sentence and wonder when I started speaking in a foreign language!!
This is what troubles me about my web 2 journeys, now and in the past: time just gets sucked away. Simple things take a long time until you work them out and you get lost in the process. Time seems to freeze while you wrestle with the problem at hand ...and then moves into fast forward with a vengeance when you look up to realise that the family hasn't been fed or the husband went to bed hours ago. The world of web 2 is in its own twilight zone!
Grumbles over -- I'll get onto educational thoughts next time. Night!
Wow ...I look back at that sentence and wonder when I started speaking in a foreign language!!
This is what troubles me about my web 2 journeys, now and in the past: time just gets sucked away. Simple things take a long time until you work them out and you get lost in the process. Time seems to freeze while you wrestle with the problem at hand ...and then moves into fast forward with a vengeance when you look up to realise that the family hasn't been fed or the husband went to bed hours ago. The world of web 2 is in its own twilight zone!
Grumbles over -- I'll get onto educational thoughts next time. Night!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
