Click the link below to see the MindMap as a slideshow – much easier to read

4 Delicious Ways at School

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Bookmarklets (Buttons) are links you add to your browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar. They are an easy way to post and view your bookmarks on the Delicious.

Planning week has been a perfect time to get staff on board with Google Docs and Delicious. Staff can share their Inquiry Plan online and make changes together. Add to this that the Specialist staff members can also add to the document with the hassel of email or the worry about which is the most up to date document.

I look forward to getting to the stage that our school can use Google Docs with the students. Tom Barrett’s blog, “So can I use Google Docs at home? “ (http://tbarrett.edublogs.org) about the way he is developing the use of Google tools with his class demonstrates how powerful and useful they can be as a teaching and learning tool.

We (our school) will have to change the way that we access the Internet because at the moment Google is blocked for students! I think it is the beginning of a culture change too because we have not encouraged students to sign up for online subscriptions, in fact we positively discouraged it.

Staff now have the Delicious Add Ons so that they can bookmark easily. It is a pity that the Delicious site has dropped out twice now just when staff were about to see how clever it could be. I am encouraging staff to have an account for their grade as well. They would then be able to direct their students to their Delicious account to use the sites with a certain tag.

We have begun our Web2.0 journey but have such a long way to go….

When I first read the title Digital Footprints I thought the topic was about our use of technology and its impact on environment. Wrong of course because it is about how we can be identified by our digital presence in Web2.0. I wonder how or why “Footprints” was chosen rather than “Fingerprints” because we all know that forensic investigators dust for fingerprints to identify the suspects. Then again maybe its footprints because it is about the tracks we leave and how we can be followed on the Web. A combination of the two, being identified and followed is the important issue.

The important thing is that your identity on the web is a bit like an identikit picture. The way that people come to see you, is a construct of all the entries with your name. Your features and assets are decided by what can be “Googled” or searched for on the web. Your followers may never meet you but they develop an understanding of where you stand on issues, your philosophy, and sense of who you are by reading your blogs, bookmarks, and looking at photos and videos that you post. You can also be identified by what others put on the web about you. Photos can be tagged with your name, and there are the collections of documents that have been written by others about you.

So you can just let it develop accidentally or take charge and be proactive.!

Footprints photo by James Jordan licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Alias Fatty by Vacacion licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

THE project is over and all the files have been emailed or sent home on CD or USB drive. Another huge component of the whole exercise – so would I do it again?

Yes I would. The learning for students, teachers (including me) and even parents was considerable. Teachers learnt about network structure, managing files, photos, photostory, email attachments and staying calm while under pressure to complete the project in time for Father’s Day. You can imagine that when there is an emotional investment in a project with young children and their parents that the intensity is magnified. In addition teachers supported each other and worked as a team.

Students had similar learning experiences, photostory, audio, coaching and supporting their buddy with recording, email- but also in resilience and patience while their frazzled teachers found where they had copied the mssing photos, helped edit photos that had been sent in a composite image, tried to download email attachments with strange formats and so on. Some students learnt a lesson about the cost of not being organised which would not of happened with a regular project and assessment. The real evaluation was the students satisfaction and sense of achievement in creating a unique gift for someone in their family so it soon became obvious to those students who weren’t putting in an effort that they were missing out. This was a project with authentic purpose.

The one extra bonus of the whole exercise was the rise of some students as mentors and experts to help other students when time was running out to complete their projects. They became experts in all aspects and part of the team pulling together to get the job done.

Feed back from the parents was fantastic. And yes it would be a project I would do again but with a lot more communication and a couple of extra weeks up my sleeve.

My last multimedia project has involved between 300 and 400 students. The students were required to bring a short series of photos from home to use as digital images as part of a digital story. The students were told of all the ways that they could get the photos to school, memory stick, cd or real photos to be scanned.

It wasn’t long before the enormity of this project began to dawn on me. In reality it was the huge range  of the technological skills and understandings of the adults involved, parents and teachers that made the project soooo big.

Clarity of communication – parents did not understand how much work it was if they sent along their photos for us to scan. Teachers equally needed to understand that part of the expectation was that they would learn how to scan the photos for their own class. I felt the project was in danger of failing if I didn’t support the teachers with this but it was a huge commitment. Thirdly, in retrospect, the project was excellent and met so many VELS/ICT skills but it was the first time it was done and it would have been better if it was planned with the teachers commitment from the beginning. Once they saw the finished products they understood but it was already well into the project.

This is the dilemma of taking hold of a great idea and running with it, balanced with time to plan, consult, and communicate with a team before moving forward. The team approach is the ideal method but not always possible if you are hoping to cease the moment- so then you have to be prepared to fill the gaps and support those who haven’t quite got on board.

We have so far to move in technology before we can expect a consistent experience/expertise from our community. Here we are talking about online communities in our classrooms yet we have teachers, students, and families who are ot familiar with the basics in handling photographs, using USB memory sticks, or transfering files.  Education is incredibly complex when you think of the background each student, family and teacher brings to the equation.