Module 10

ah at last...the journey into the realm of technology comes to a closure. Although I have clocked numerous hours discovering many new sites I had no idea existed, I can't help but feel that I still have not really touched the surface of what is truly out there. What's even scarier, is that by Term 1 of 2010, a lot of what we have looked at will become the 'old version' of something that is newer, more entertaining, more exciting, and of course...more confusing!!!!

I love the idea of blogs - or to make it sound more educational - 'learning journals'. Giving children the opportunity to reflect on their work independantly - and even as a smaller community - sharing ideas and thoughts on topics could potentially help them gain a better understanding, and potentially even foster higher thinking. The only concern however would be whether or not children were sharing information that was accurate, misinteptreted, or simply just wrong. I love the idea of blogs for high school students and even all the way up to a university component. This 'freedom' of speech would no doubt encourage some students to voice an opinion - or at the very least attempt to sound intelligent to lure the opposite sex.

Blooms is permanently lodged into my brain from my days as a university student. My Method Teaching teacher drilled us about the benefits, usefulness, practicality and so on....I must admit I never did pay a lot of attention to his rants, but I can see the importance of Blooms. The Educational Origami is a fantastic site jam packed with useful information and application of Blooms in the classroom. As a practicing primary teacher however, the language can be hard for a lot of Year levels. However I often try to incorporate Blooms into my teachings with Year 5/6, but not with the lower classes that I also teach.

In applying Blooms to Web2.0 tools I have learnt about - Second Life, Flikr and Mind Mapping - my personal suggestions would be:

Second Life - Seems to have a place in every aspect (in my opinion) of Blooms, and although a fantastic concept that Second Life is, it simply redirects children from what they should be doing - learning - and into a highly dangerous world where they could be subject to bullying, harrassment, coercion and even advertisements of inappropriate material. At the end of the day I believe the benefits have been considerably outweighted by the enormous 'unknown' factor that comes with 'online life'.

Flikr - Mostly into the applying section where students can apply knowledge they have learnt. On the other hand, used with other stimulus in addition to the picture, Flikr could touch on all levels of Blooms where children have to compare and contrast, create products, evaluate courses of actions ect.

Mind Mapping (glogster/Bubble.Us) Again this could touch on all levels of Blooms depending though on the type of activities children are expected to do.

At the end of the day however, applying these sites into Blooms is all limited to the child's understanding of the concept/s and whether they can push themselves to all levels of thinking. In most cases though we will find they can move through 1 or 2 levels with ease and then from there need clarrification and assistance.

Module 9

Scootle
My school is familiar with Scootle and we have all used it for a little period of time. I have found Scootle to be wonderful with Kindergarten where it was used a lot at the start of the year for letter recognition in a wonderful game of shopping for letters. If I had to be picky, I would say that there are WAAAAAAY too many activities in different languages!!!

Second Life
WHOOOAAAAH NELLY!!!!!!! Now if there is a site that could lead teachers down the path to countless parent phone calls....this would be one. The website is quoted as saying "Second Life is a playground for your imagination", as teachers we do encourage creativity, imagination and critical thinking....however, having an imagination in such a "playground" has many faults and concerns. No teacher - knowing the ramifications of the site - would allow their students to unsupervised engage and partake in the site. Yes it is a wonderful idea, but I think it is at the moment, years from being safe and practical from an educational stand point.

Facebook/Twitter
Do social networks REALLY provide more benifits than negatives? Surely the line comes where children stop interacting educationally and start interacting socially. In essence Facebook is similar to a MyClasses blog. The main difference being the openess that facebook has. Giving children the opportunity to engage in written text, post pictures, complete quizes, tag pictures and engage with a wider audience. MyClasses is a lot more limited allowing children only to engage in written text. Sounds boring I know, but at the end of the day it is the safest option, and the one option where you KNOW that children will do what it is they're supposed to.

And my Final Thought...
*Scootle is designed for educational purposes, making it a great teaching tool (especially with the Smartboard)
*Second Life seems to be for individuals who enjoy the online social life, a great tool for chewing up time, but it has no place in the classroom or for educational purposes (unless the class was titled: Unsafe practices for individuals...STRANGER DANGER!!!)
*Facebook/Twitter is a fun way for children to interact and stay in touch, but at the end of the day its design is for social networking rather than educational practice.

Module 8

RSS feeds give internet users the opportunity to stay up to date with the latest information that a website has to offer. Long gone is the time we have to click REFRESH just so that we can see the latest information, wasting precious time as a page reloads. I'm sure we all have memories of sitting back and waiting for a page to reload. Our eyes scanning the green bar is it slowly....s l o w l y...loads.

From an educational standpoint, the use of RSS would give students the latest and most accurate information that a website has to offer.

Module 7

I found this module to be a fairly easy one - compared to module 6 which was a nightmare!!!!!

Delicious to me is the exact same thing as the Favourites/Bookmarks section we have on the internet explorer. The main difference though is that delicious offers its users a more simple/easy way to store and remember the sites you have visited. If I had a dollar for every time I visited a bookmarked site that I THOUGHT was the one I needed...I'd be a millionaire!!!!! or at the very least have a spare $50. The use of tags is a great way to remember WHY you stored the sites you did in the first place. I havent saved many sites, but I have included a few.

http://delicious.com/chrisingrati

Another extension of the traditional bookmarking/favourites feature, is the opportunity to share sites that friends/acquintances have. Delicious allows its users - us teachers!!! - to share sites and in a way, save our time. schools could use this site and have teachers who are in charge of various KLA's source sites and save them to a user page. With all KLA teachers doing this, the school could have a database of their very own filled with many educational sites that are subject specific. Of course there would be some slack teachers (most likely myself) and those teachers who just don't have the time. In essence though, another site with great potential....now if only we could increase the day to 26 hours and decrease teaching time to 3 hours!!!!

Module 6

I LOVE IT!!!!

This has got to be one of the BEST web pages!!!! Think of all your students who are introverts who could express their ideas on any KLA using this web page. For example students could complete homework tasks mind mapping what they have learnt...lots of potential in this one!!!

Top marks for this site!!!!!