It’s always nice when someone else manages to clarify your own thoughts for you – saves a blood, tears etc. Today while scanning through my subscriptions in Google Reader I came across a post by Jeff Utech.

The line that rang true for me was “start with the idea and apply the tool”.

Because I am a “technology expert” in my school, and often for my students, I tend to try to find ways to teach them the tools (either online or pieces of software installed locally).  Instead, I should be coming up with authentic uses for these tools, so that the students can see a purpose in learning and using them.

I have always struggled with this idea because I’d really like my students to learn about IT for IT’s sake (it is a dedicated subject after all).  I know that I’d be a better (more capable and confident) driver if I actually knew how my car worked, so my thinking has always been that my students will be better “drivers” of IT if they understand more about “what’s under the bonnet”.

Jeff is right though, it just doesn’t work when you teach the tool just because you want your students to learn the tool. They’re not engaged, there’s no purpose, there’s no meaning.  Sure, it looks good. You can say “we’re blogging”, or “my students have a ning”.  But the content won’t be worth anything – there probably won’t be much content anyhow.

So, how do I come up with ideas to use the tools for? <– doesn’t make sense, because that’s not how it works. That’s like putting the cart before the horse.  I think I need to brainstorm the topics, subtopics, ideas, themes and other groups of stuff that I’d like my students to learn about (the content), then find the web2.0 tools to do this.

Jeff also says “allow the thoughts and ideas to control where you go”.  That’s pretty much my conclusion.  I need to redefine, re-establish, re-list, the thoughts, ideas, concepts, topics that I want to cover.  After all for Gen Y (both my generation, and my students’ generation) tools are irrelevant. It’s knowing how to access the tools, being able to choose which tool to use.

It’s all too easy to get stuck in the mindset of many of my colleagues.  Because the tools are buzzwords for them – they’re not digital natives – they don’t know how to access the tools when the need arises. So, they plan for the tool, not for the idea.

Diigo

After finally catching up with the weekend’s new posts from my subscriptions I decided that I should sign up to Diigo.  So many of the bloggers who I’ve subscribed to use the service that I felt compelled to give it a go.  I am impressed.  I thought del.icio.us was a nifty bookmarking tool, and it does beat the standard bookmarking tools ie and firefox provide, but it’s got nothing on Diigo.

I’m loving how I can highlight text, and add inline comments.  I now understand why everyone was raving about it and the applications it could have for my classrooms.  How cool would it be if I could bookmark a few sites for my students to visit, and briefly include some instructions right there on the web for them?  We could use the highlighting feature to emphasise note-taking skills.  THEY could use comments to jot down their thoughts right there on the web.  Quite simply I’m loving it.

Task Cards

Also, I’m working on putting together my first task card.  I’m liking the idea of generating three sets of cards (Maths, Science, and IT).  Most of the Maths and Science cards will be offline tasks not sure how to accomplish this yet, but given the limited access we have to computers in regular classrooms I don’t want to make life harder for myself.  I’d also like to make some IT cards offline activities – you just never know when there’ll be a technology crisis (eg. black out).

I’ve found some interesting Maths, Science, and General Knowledge stuff thanks to internet4classrooms, but haven’t yet found anything for IT.  This is a bit annoying as the classes I’m most likely to need task cards for will be IT classes.

A bunch of posts have piled up in GoogleReader for me over the past couple of days (I’ve been busy with Play Group and marvelling at Ben sitting up by himself).  As I was skimming through those posts this morning (gee, it’s definitely afternoon now) I found a back-post from NCS-Tech about Internet4Classrooms.  Of course I had to explore the site.  I am impressed.  No longer do I have to use Google to search for helpful websites then ditch most of the finds because they’re unsuitable.  From now on this will be the site I check first.

While I was exploring the site, I found lots of references to ‘task cards’.  I was wondering what these things were, so found out. Task cards help to organise your classroom, for those students who devour all the work you can throw their way, for those times when you need to quickly assign a relief, for a zillion other reasons. Internet4Classrooms even provides templates to get you started making task cards.  Now that’s pretty cool.

I know I’m ‘a gunna’ person.  I quite happily jump on the bandwagon of every new idea going, and find it hard to complete tasks. I need to make sure I keep working on this one. If there’s one thing that experienced teachers have over me at the moment, it’s resources.  Not necessarily access to online resources (I’m sure I’m quite capable there) but resources that they have made themselves.  All those assignments that they (rightly or wrongly) can edit and reuse year after year.  All those sheets, tricks, and tasks they have ready for last-minute relief lessons (either their own or to cover other peoples’).

I plan to create at least one task card a week until I start back at work.  That seems like a do-able target.  I know I could probably do more, but with Ben crawling, harvest only just started, and us hosting Christmas, one a week is achievable. Once I’ve achieved that, and I’m back at work I can set a new target.

I’m thinking my task-cards might be A4 pages that initially at least will be collected in a display folder.  Because I work with middle-school students I don’t think I need the rigidity of actual card, and they seem to like things that look more professional (ie. aimed at adults rather than children).

I’ve found many of The EduBlogger’s posts helpful so far. And was incredibly surprised to see that Sue Water had commented on my blog. So, I clicked on her username (as you do) to discover her Mobile Technology in TAFE blog. I hadn’t thought to check it out earlier as its name referred to TAFE so I thought it wouldn’t be relevant to me.

The current post referred to free online PD. Wow! Free online PD. Now, that sounds perfect to help bring me up to speed before I return to work next January (which, afterall is only 2 months away). Gee, that really is scary. It seems like ages away at the moment, but 2 months isn’t really all that long – especially when Ben is crawling!

So, I’ve done a little bit of exploring around at some other sites and will look further into it later in the week. I really want to get back up to speed. Before I left teaching I felt like I was on top of things and was just starting to do some really cool things with technology like The INGOTS. If I don’t do anything about it (and I guess I have started to do a little about it) I’ll be 18 months behind! I can’t exactly back myself as the school’s technology expert if I’m behind the game.

Interesting stuff I’ve found

This is a bit of a list of interesting things I’ve found in the past day or so. I hadn’t realised there was such a community of people interested in technology in education or tech-eds as I just read. I know I could (indeed should, and probably will) bookmark this stuff on del.icio.us, but one of the reasons I started this blog was to log my research because I know that I just won’t go back and look it all up on del.icio.us.

• Human: for fellow teachers
• Learn 4 Life
• ICT in my classroom
• Tania Kennedy at UTS
• Teaching with Technology: Practical ideas for using Web2.0 in the Primary Classroom

Also, after having spent some time looking at edublogs (reading other peoples’ blogs), I’m loving the look of the pages. This is because edublogs is powered by WordPress, and therefore is themeable/skinable. So, my next task (once I’ve read those blogs a bit and got some more ideas) will be to transport my blog over there.

I am really glad I shifted my blog to edublogs. There are so many interesting blogs hosted here, the interface is so much more user-friendly, and I got to choose a theme for my blog. I might not stick with it, but for now it’s better than the standard theme. I guess that’s something I can tick off the blog-checklist.

Wow. I’d like to say that I’m speechless, because that’s how powerful this should be… but I’m not speechless I’m so amazed that the words are just zooming out of me!

I stumbled across a link to Dave Truss’ “Do not go quietly into the classroom” and I LOVE it

His slideshow “Brave New World-Wide-Web” makes it really obvious just how useful and empowering web2.0 really can be for education.

I will keep this slideshow “up my sleeve” for next year. It might be parents, community members, students, or colleagues or maybe all of them, but I just have a feeling that this is a resource that will make my life easier when I start doing some exciting Web2.0 stuff.

I’ve been wandering around edublogs becomming more and more enthused about blogging, and about the possibilities for my teaching next year. On my journey I came across this post from tilgnas:

Blog Design Checklist
Check this list to make sure you included all the items. To get an “A,” your blog must have all these features.

-Pick a theme – you can’t use the default (the original theme).
-Your theme choice must have at least one sidebar.
-You must create a new title for your blog.
-You must have a quote under your blog’s title (or in a widget).
-You must have all the required widgets (you decide the order, add more if you want to):
o Pages
o Links
o Recent Posts
o Archives
o Recent Comments
o RSS 1
o Meta
- You must create and upload an avatar. Go to the LMSResources wiki (http://lmsresources.pbwiki.com) and click on the “For Fun and Learning” page for links to avatar sites.
-Your blogroll must have at least two links:
o a link to Beginnings (http://lmsilgunas.edublogs.org)
o a link to LMS Resources (http://lmsresources.pbwiki.com/)
- You must have erased all the default items.
- You must add your first post.
- Leave respectful, thoughtful comments for the people in your group.

I think this may come in handy if I use blogs in my teaching next year, and if I don’t at least it’s something that I can aspire to with my own blog

Also, I found Dave Truss’ post on Blog Rules which may be handy.

This is the second post I wrote at me.edu.au:

10

The other day as I was wandering around the Net I found Tom Barrett’s blog over at edublogs.org. That’s the sort of thing I’m intending to achieve here in my blog. The description he uses to describe his blog is “Space for me to explore my ideas and experiences of ICT in my classroom.”

I’m really liking the idea of using blogs in my classes. I’d like my students to use the blog at least once a week, probably every double lesson, as a journal. I’m thinking of giving them a list of suggestions of things to blog about. Which may include some (or all) of the following:

• Reflect on what you’ve learnt/achieved so far
• Describe what you would like to learn/achieve
  • within the current topic/project
  • within the umbrella of the subject
• Reflect on how you have worked with others
• Reflect on how you have worked so far.

I’ll come back to this list at a later date (maybe find a resource about journalling before I go much furthur with this idea).

I also found a very interesting page over at edublogs about how/why to use blogs in classroom settings. Maybe I can find some other sources for suggestions like this.

Apart from journalling I’m sure we could find other uses for blogs (as edublogs suggest). It might be a useful tool to help my students collaborate.

Tags: thought blogging
Posted at 10:42AM Nov 05, 2008 by Claire Adams

I started writing my blog at me.edu.au, the social networking aspect of edna. But I quickly discovered that most of the blogs I was reading were hosted here at edublogs. This, along with the appeal of edublogs being powered by wordpress, drew me here. I also decided that if I do use blogs with my classes next year that it would be useful if I understood and used edublogs myself.

So, here’s my first post:

The first

Well, I’ve been doing lots of research and reading. I’m actually quite excited about returning to work next year. I’ve found lots of ‘potentially’ useful things around the place, and noticed that lots of them popped up on blogs. This got me thinking, really thinking. I knew I couldn’t rest until I’d begun the journey of blogging myself.

I’m really keen to write down my thoughts about my research and teaching as a way to further think through, rethink, critique and analyse it all.

I’m not sure what subjects or year levels I’ll be teaching next year, but I hope to incorporate IT into whatever it is. I’m particularly interested in doing some work with online tools (which may be tricky given the hardware I’ll have available) but it seems easier than installing new software.

I’d like to maybe use edublogs to facilitate some collaborative work amongst my students. I’ve also seen some really cool ‘wall display’ ideas tonight that my students could construct as assessment pieces (yay for authentic assessment).

Tags: thoughts
Posted at 11:13PM Nov 03, 2008 by Claire Adams