Now these ones are funny. Hamlet’s third soliloquy and various other erudite texts reduced to verbiage by your ad hoc choices. Got to have a go.
Mad Libs have now got widgets. These are fantastic ways of teaching grammar and parts of speech to students (and adults) of any age. Check out the widget on the right hand side under my Library Thing widget. You get the chance to create one and then email it to someone (or yourself). They’re really hilarious and you tend to get more creative as you go. Check out the madlibs site for more of their great products.
29
Apr
Hyperfiction
As our year 11 students work through their blogging experience their teachers are preparing to take them even further into the wonderful world of the web with hyperfiction. they are going to create their own pieces after viewing several examples already on the web. A new one that I have come across is the very cool Inanimate Alice. This is well worth exploring as an accomplished piece of hyperfiction, it would really amaze those students who love visual and multimedia texts and those who love a good story.
29
Apr
Interesting articles
David Nettlebeck has some very worthwhile articles on his website about learning through technology. Lots of them have a literacy focus and are great for teachers who are interested in how technology can engage their students as well as improving their literacy and thinking skills. He has a particular focus on secondary schools and offers PD for schools as well. It’s definitely worth a look.
Here is a list of some useful sites that I’ve come across in my travels. Obviously it is not an exhaustive list. I will add to it, but there are some here that may be useful.
E-potential is a Victorian Government website aimed at encouraging and supporting teachers to use technology as part of their everyday teaching. It has surveys you can take to find out how much of an expert you are and very useful links. It also has good resources.
Intel’s teacher website is a fantastic way of using technology to engage students and to allow them to think more creatively and deeply. The resources are easy to create and lend themselves to a very large variety of subjects. Highly recommended.
This one -Create Surveys - is a useful survey tool.
Assign-a-day is useful for keeping track of upcoming work and assignments. Teachers can upload all of the work due and give students a link to it all so that they can access it whenever.
This one – smile – is good for creating online quizzes and activities for students to complete.
On a similar topic to the one above Hot Potatoes is free software that teachers can download to create quizzes, cloze activities and crosswords for students. The finished file is saved as a webpage and can be stored on any computer. This is an excellent resource.
Smartboard software for any school that has smartboards is an excellent interactive classroom resource. As well as creating great lesson activities you can record the activity on the Smartboard and save and print files for students and teachers.
Kathy Schrock and Discovery School have created literally hundreds of resources for educators. Worth checking in no matter what you’re teaching.
Teachit is the definitive English teacher’s website. So many resources here. It used to be free and now sadly is not, however it is still very worthwhile viewing.
As I said, these are only a very small amount of the useful websites for teachers available. Feel free to add more readers.
23
Apr
Second Life
Second life can help students to learn in their first life. What a great concept. I’ve been asked to explore this as something that we may look at in the future. I am a complete novice when it comes to online games so I’m in the early ‘research’ stage ( I love research!)
An online article here is a good place to start as is the fabulous third instalment of ‘Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0′ which is a really comprehensive list and commentary of ways to use the web for learners and teachers. A one stop shop really.
As far as Second Life is concerned I was discussing this the other day with my e-learning buddy at school (well really my mentor) and we were coming up with ideas for how to use it, I was thinking for English that it would be really useful to create a literary world, say Shakespeare or something that students don’t normally love as much as teachers (at least initially). You could have characters from the plays in there to interview and chat and students could walk around and experience the world and really immerse themselves in it.
I am learning to run before I walk, so more on this later. Sometimes the ideas run way ahead of reality, which is exactly what I love about using technology as a tool for school. However, I think I may need a second life just to get everything done!
Persistence – Thanks for the advice Rebecca. I’ve tried this so many times unsuccessfully and finally you suggested deleting my Sharepoint blog address first and it worked. I thought I’d be able to have two addresses in there so that I could blog to both as it suited me, but as I use this one more often I’m very happy to delete the other.
I love having student teachers, they always teach me something new.
17
Apr
Blogging in the new VCE
Well, this was an interesting (is this a synonym for frustrating or annoying in this case?) day as far as getting students to blog at school. It wasn’t my class, so it was probably less frustrating for me than the teacher who was trying to get the whole thing running. I got a call for help and came in to find a teacher who was unable to get her kids blogs started because the server at school had blocked them. I later found out that they were filed under ‘private web pages’ for the security on the server and this was stopping access. We tried several ways around it to no avail and then had another teacher come in to use the lab so we had to move. To the teacher’s credit, she took it with equanamity and we calmly moved on. We had our e-learning co-ordinatory investigate and fix the problem, but he was actually teaching a class at the time so by the time it was fixed the class had finished.
Well, in the end we got kids started with their blogs, and of course we all know with any lesson involving technology you never know where it can go, but this was a practice SAC and the stakes were reasonably high at this point. It highlights the need to try things out well in advance, which in this case the teacher was unable to do because of limited access and time. I still believe that we have to try to work around these things and I hope that the teachers that I’m asking to do this as well don’t curse me for this!
It is vital that we encourage our kids to use technology for learning. The world that they inherit will need them to have some familiarity with this, it also encourages ( which is more to the point) problem solving skills, interpersonal skills, design skills, written communication skills, and I might add patience (!)
Thanks so much to all of you teachers who are doing this, you know who you are. I really appreciate your passion and enthusiasm and (the watchword of the day) patience. The kids will thank you for it even if you do get grey hair!
15
Apr
Engaged????
This blog here says it all really. Why bother using technology in the classroom? If we can’t get students thinking then there’s not any point to using it.
This is an insightful synopsis of why we should be using technology in the class room. I’ll let you read this instead of repeating it here.
I did some searching to see whether I could actually use blogs, wikis, etc. for students to demonstrate the outcomes in VCE English (see comment below). I did some checking and found this lot in the VCAA assessment handbook:
Work completed outside classMost assessment tasks will be completed in class. This does not preclude students from completing work associated with the task/s outside class time, providing that the teacher can confirm that all work submitted for assessment is the student’s own. Students should be advised in advance as to the conditions under which tasks are to be completed and submitted.
Authentication
Teachers should have in place strategies for ensuring that work submitted for assessment is the student’s own. Where aspects of School-assessed Coursework tasks are completed outside class time teachers must monitor and maintain records of student’s work.The teacher may consider it appropriate to ask the student to demonstrate his/her understanding of the task at the time of submission of the work. If any part or all of the work cannot be authenticated, then the matter should be dealt with as a breach of rules.To reduce the possibility of authentication problems arising, or being difficult to resolve, the following strategies are useful:· Ensure that a significant amount of classroom time is spent on the task so that the teacher is familiar with each student’s work and can regularly monitor and discuss aspects of the work with the student.· Regularly rotate topics from year to year to ensure that students are unable to use student work from the previous year.· Where there is more than one class of a particular study in the school, early liaison between teachers on topics, cross-marking and sharing of draft student work enables earlier identification of possible authentication problems and the implementation of appropriate action. Teachers should develop assessment programs for Units 3 and 4 that:· include both formative assessments, for diagnostic or monitoring purposes, and summative assessments, for determining achievement that contributes to the final coursework score· include a variety of assessment tasks and conditions· provide an appropriate balance of short and extended taskstake into account the workload for students Assessment tasks should be completed mainly in class and within a limited timeframe.
Designing the assessment task
Teachers should develop an assessment task that allows the student to:
· create a text or texts appropriate to a chosen form, audience, purpose and context
· demonstrate an understanding of the ideas and/or arguments relevant to the chosen Context and presented in the selected text/s; and draw on these in the creation of own text/s
· review and edit written work for expressiveness, fluency and coherence
· discuss and analyse in writing, using appropriate metalanguage, choices made in regard to form, purpose, language, audience and context in the creation of own text/s
· have the opportunity to demonstrate the highest level of performance.
This leads me to believe that I can do this as long as I give students the same type of experience that they would normally undertake when sitting a SAC a more traditional way. This means that as long as they sign authentication records they could do some of their written pieces on a blog or wiki. I’d really like to try this and I think I’ll actually contact VCAA to triple check.
