The Classroom 2.0 Live Shows are such a great resource. Even though participating live would mean being up at 3am (and I couldn’t guarantee the quality of my input even if I could stay awake until then) I can access the recorded show on the Classroom 2.0 Live site. In addition, each show is supported with links to many resources.

The show on October 10th was all about Weebly the ‘drag and drop’ web site and blog creator. The guest presenter was Dan Veltri the founder of Weebly who clearly explained how it all works including the new “Education” features. The questions from the teachers who participated in the live show answered the questions that any teacher thinking of using Weebly would ask. All in all I found it very informative and helpful.

The shows are recorded in Elluminate so the links load the file and open in Elluminate on your computer. The presenters provide a short Elluminate tutorial at the beginning. Once the show has loaded into the Elluminate window you can drag the player around to where you want to be in the recording which goes for over 2 hours.

There’s nothing like learning something new to remind you of what your students might be feeling or to refresh your pedagogical practice. The post below is linked to the Wikipedia article for Constructivism (learning theory). I wrote the reflection first and was surprised that my learning experience linked easily with the article’s explanation to the nature of constructive learning

LEARNING JOOMLA

I decided to teach myself how to use the Content Management System, Joomla for a number of reasons – I needed a new way to present the school web page, it fits in with my Master of Education studies in Online Education, I was curious how Content Management Systems work and it gave me a chance to be involved in active learning.
For me it has been a typical learning experience (responsibility for learning) in that I experienced the whole range of feelings and thoughts when faced with a challenge:

• at first it was all too hard
• I doubted the point of it and wondered if I should change topics
• I struggled to find the right information
• I had to change my preconceived views of what I could do (background and culture of learner)

As my daughter walked past and heard me exclaim “This is too hard!” she repeated  the message I had always told her while working on her maths problems “If it is too hard then maybe you are going about it in the wrong way.” My experience was that math problems have a way of working out if you are on the right track so if it is too long and complicated you’re probably barking up the wrong tree. As it turns out, it was good advice and along with this blog (quoted below) that helped me see that I was trying to change something that wasn’t meant to be changed.

“Joomla? Getting the right modules (in Drupal “blocks”) in the right place on template can be nothing short of a nightmare, especially if you get things set up in one template and then decided to try another template.”

I had to “accommodate” my approach and look for a simpler way to start to get to know Joomla. I stopped trying to change  how Joomla should look (at least for now) and concentrated on the content.

Gradually as I learned to place content I learned more about Joomla in total and I developed a better understanding of the other features. I felt I was beginning to make progress, but with each step

• I needed to practice it more than once,
• I needed a lot of instruction (online tutorials)
• repeating it helped me to understand the concepts and relationships
• success led to more success
• as I mastered certain aspects I really wanted to share that knowledge. (It reminds me so much of my classroom where the students want to share everything they have done which is one of the reasons why it is important to have class blogs).

MENTAL MODEL – LEARNING CURVE

My mental model of the  “learning curve”, is that it isn’t a curve at all. It starts pretty much as a steep cliff face where there is lots of input that doesn’t necessarily make sense and so progress is very slow. You need motivation, perseverance and stick-ability at this stage to keep going. The  next stage is a little less steep but progress is still slow and input at the “zone of proximal development” is required. Eventually however you reach the stage where you get some momentum and you move along much more quickly and the knowledge you have already acquired is useful in learning new modules.  Finally you come to the top of the learning mountain where you have enough skills and background to use intuitive learning to add new knowledge quickly.

I think it is important to have mental model of learning so that you know what to expect and understand the range of feelings that a challenge will evoke. It is important to know that if you keep going the odds are that you will learn.

Why Do We Need to Have It?

When I find a blog that interests me I inevitably check the “About Page” of the author before I decide to subscribe. It’s the same for Twitter. I will not follow someone who doesn’t have a Bio of some sort, and preferably a link to their blog. Why is it important? I think it is about trust. I’m letting people into my Personal Learning Network and connecting to their network. I want to be associated with credible, interesting and talented people or at least people with similar interests and careers. The “About Page” is the social chit chat before you get down to business.

What Should Be On It?

Once you have shared a little bit of information about yourself – a balance of professional highlights mixed with smidge of personal interests – so that you start to create a connection with your readers, then it is time to move on to the  purpose of your blog and the sort of things you will be writing about.

Michele Martin from the Bamboo Project Blog has an excellent example of an about me post and a separate post on what to find on her blog.

Another interesting post written by Skellie  How to Write the Perfect ‘About’ Page (by Numbers) is quite helpful if you are at all in doubt about what to write.

And finally the QuickSprout blog lists 4 essential items for an “About Me” including a picture of yourself “no matter how ugly” you are!

It looks like I should take my own advice and update my “About Me”, which up until now has been a short paragraph in a text widget in my side bar. The text widget is a nice way to keep and extract of your bio but it probably should link to the “About Me” page which has all the extra important details mentioned above.

Photo: Flickr – Tony Hall

Blogging like anything else has protocols and “political correctness” that you become aware of once you are part of the environment. Linking is one the big must dos, not just because it is the right thing to give credit if you have used others ideas and writings, but for self interest because it helps people find your blog as well.

Others have written about this in a far more eloquent way than I have so the following links are ones that I have found practical and very informative.

This post from the Problogger clearly explains why you should link in your blog and how it can help you develop an audience.

The Edublogger tells you how to link to other blogs and gives the following reasons for linking

1. A person’s blog if you mention a blogger.
   
2. The post if you are talking about a particular post on a blog”

Linking is an important part of blogging but do it for the right reasons. Don’t overlink or it’s a bit like crying wolf. Readers will only follow your blog if you have genuine content with relevant links.

Photo thanks to Flickr

I started my blog about a year ago – in fact it was the first birthday of  “My ICT Journey” on March 10th!  I remember at the beginning that the concept of blogging was completely strange to me. Now, it would be completely strange not to have a blog (or two). You know that feeling you get if don’t have your mobile phone or you forget to put on your wrist watch – that’s what it would be like if I couldn’t have my blog.

With this in mind I thought I would compile the resources that helped me get my head around my purpose and understanding of blogging. I am in no way an expert especially compared to the “pro bloggers” who I read and admire, but this short list might help the beginning bloggers of the world.

I started by listening to podcasts about blogging. Blogging Vox Pops was one of the first podcasts that helped me understand why or why not I might blog: It goes for about 20 mins and is easy to listen to while you are driving or doing the housework. E-Learning Insights has a number of podcasts about blogging that are helpful.

The next thing I did was to read blogs. The more I read the more I was inspired to write. Writing was not one of my preferred past times, a hang over from being a terrible speller as a child, but blogging is short and sweet and usually illustrated – so it fits all my criteria for writing. One of my favourite blogs to read at the time was not an educational one but Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project. Michele’s blog is

“… dedicated to helping individuals and organizations use best practices and social media tools to construct life-long learning and career development systems…”

The last thing on my list would be to take part in one of the blogging challenges. Challenges such as the  “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” help to improve your blog with tips and behaviours that only other experienced bloggers know.

You can really only understand blogging by blogging. Take baby steps and write for yourself but try to post regularly. Be professional and only write/publish what you be happy to have your future employer to read. A blog can be an excellent digital portfolio.

Flickr 1st Birthday Photo:

This is the workflow to create the following Voicethread.

It is a work under progress but now we know the process from start to collaborate.

Step 1

Students each hand-drew a picture of themselves. (They could have just as easily drawn it using drawing software on the computer, saved it as a jpeg and then we could have uploaded it directly)

Step 2

I used the digital camera to take a photo of each picture and uploaded the pictures to the computer which was quicker than scanning.

Step 3

Open Voicethread and chose a picture to upload which represented the topic (Friendship). We used clipart for convenience but you could use photos or student art just as easily.

Step 4

Add the new identities of the students by uploading their pictures that they drew of themselves.

Step 5

Have the students practice what they are going to say for their comments

Step 6

Connect a microphone and have the students take turns to record their comments on one computer. Don’t forget to switch identities for each student

Step 7

Add titles etc.

Step 8

Use the Share button to send the voicethread to collaborators or copy the link and email it to them. Use the code provided to embed your Voicethread on your blog.

This is the final blog of a series about using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. This section looks at  our school’s “practice run” using blogs in the classroom and the lessons we learnt.

BEGINNING BLOGGERS

We had a clear purpose, and support from the school leadership to move forward on the weblogs. Once we started our blogs, eleven in all, it became clear that we needed some guidelines to define the tone and purpose of the class blog pages. One of the surprising comments from teacher who looked at the work the others were doing but wasn’t actually a participant was that “this could be used by parents to compare teachers.” Clearly this wasn’t the tone that we wanted.

In retrospect and for the future the main philosophy /guiding principals should be:

• The class blogs are collective blogs to give you and your students a voice and a way to communicate with the local and global community. For example if you browse through “ejourney with technokids” you can see the opportunities that Web 2.0 has opened up for communicating and collaborating. According to the interview transcript shown on the blog, the students particularly enjoy talking to students in another country.
• The class blog is an avenue for students’ to construct meaning through reflection and sharing their learning with an authentic audience. TaNuj^’s Weblog is an excellent example of a student reflection. It is also for teachers as can be seen by Dean Groom’s response to the student blog.
• The blog can add impetus to the Inquiry Process through collaboration with experts in the field. [In M3’s blog on Sustainability the students each give their ideas in their own words adding to the knowledge of the individual.
• It is an opportunity to showcase your grade and the work that you and your students do, and to keep parents and the community informed.

However the impact was immediate. The communication about classroom work in the first few blogs was far more than had gone home in the past year. It was visual, informative and varied according to the class, just as each class is different each blog had an individual feel to it and the added bonus was that the first comments were from students.

Conclusion

My initial idea sounded like a simple solution to a problem. Now I understand how complex it really is and how much work there is still to do. I also understand that it was absolutely necessary to take this step…leap, …plunge into web 2.0. In fact I find it difficult to image a classroom that should not be using the web 2.0 tools in some way. I am inclined to agree with Hargadon when he said it was bigger than the printing press

One last example of web 2.0 in education, and perhaps my favorite, is an infant grade in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in Canada. The students have pre-service teachers as blogging buddies. The student teachers follow one child’s writing in Mrs. Cassidy’s blog throughout the year, responding to the child’s blogs, but noting the development in writing over the year. A win win situation all around. In an interview Cassidy explains what she does in her classroom and how each student has a blog, which is an online portfolio, and how blogging buddies work with her students. (Cassidy, WOW2 Show #91, 2008). Clearly Cassidy is an outstanding educator with very good technological skill. She has many awards to her credit, but Cassidy has shown that student age is no barrier to using Web 2.0 tools with students and how powerful it can be for communicating, creating and collaborating.

Additional Helpful Links
http://deangroom.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/the-3rs-are-now-the-3ts/

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2006/09/posting_student.html

Below are the links to the sites I have made so that you can compare them for yourselves. Leave me a message and tell me what you think.

Scratch and MicroWorld’s sites
Blog – http://loisath.wordpress.com/
Wiki – http://scratch-n-microworlds.wikispaces.com/

IWB@BLPS
Blog – http://loisath.globalteacher.org.au/
Wiki – http://berwicklodgeps-iwb.wetpaint.com/?mail=1124&t=anon

The following site gives a summary from some students’ perspectives that I think sum up the key differences.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-students-compare-and-contrast-wikis.html

“Synopsis of their posts
The most meaningful point that they have brought out for me is that they see wikis as a place to share information and they see blogs as a place to share opinions and discuss.”

MY EXPERIENCE
It was while I was completing my major project that I started to realise the WordPress blog site was not quite what I wanted. I didn’t so much want a blog that would be mostly my ideas but a place where all teachers could contribute equally. By this time however (because I was quite excited by the new found possibilities) I had already started a second blog for the Interactive Whiteboard Team at our school. This time I was using a blog for educators – globalteacher.org.

Increasingly I was becoming frustrated with trying to upload files. The first blog was difficult to upload video files, the second refused to upload Smartboard notebook files. SO I decided to try out a wiki instead.

It wasn’t difficult to copy and paste the blog pages into the WikiSpaces wiki. I was in fact very pleased with how easily all the files transferred across. WikiSpaces doesn’t look as flash as the WordPress site but it was very user friendly. Now that I was confident that wikis’ were the way to go for collaboration, sharing, and uploading I decided to transfer my Globalteacher site to a wiki as well. This time I thought I’d try a WetPaint wiki. I had just happened to see one at the ICTEV conference, that another teacher was using with his students. This time copying and pasting wasn’t quite as easy. There were some pages on the WetPaint template that I would like to delete and can’t. I’m not convinced that the WetPaint Wiki is as flexible and user friendly as the WikiSpaces.

Of course there are still new wikis to try. It is amazing what is out there for free especially for education. If you email the administrators of the wiki sites they will take the ads off your pages as well.