For my presentation this year at EdTechSA’s state conference I decided to revisit a previous presentation and reflect on my growth since that time. In this prezi, I examined how my practices have changed as a blogger, what learning experiences have worked really well for my students, and what challenges I still face.
Here are the notes and live links from this presentation
At EdTechSA 2015 I presented a workshop on the journey my class and I have taken as we went about creating our class blog. As part of this workshop I created this prezi which I am more than happy to share.
Watch this space for the sketchnote of the discussion we had about interesting elements of a class blog.
In term 2 of 2014, I had the pleasure of working on a new concept with the year 2/3 class that I teach as part of my role as ICT specialist at Modbury West School.
This was the concept of branching. Branching is defined in the Australian Curriculum as:
Branching occurs when an algorithm makes a choice to do one of two or more actions depending on sets of conditions and the data provided.
Now this might sound rather dry and boring, but the way we approached this new concept was very engaging and my students now have a solid grasp of some basic concepts covered in the Digital Technologies curriculum and how they can be applied in the tasks we undertook.
Resources
This is the unit planner that was developed for the “Choose Your Own Adventure” topic
I have been asked to present to the first year pre-service teachers who are visiting our school at the moment. When I asked our AP what they would like me to present on about ICT, I was told to tell them about what I do.
This posed the question, what is it that I do?
How have I learnt (and continue to learn) what I know about ICT?
I have put my thoughts on this into a prezi about Educational Technologies and it has been an interesting experience pulling together all of the different facets that make up this area I am so passionate about.
I have decided to work with Pinterest as my main curation tool at the moment simply because I love the visual nature of this tool. I can organise the links I have into easy to understand categories and arrange these boards in the format I want them to be. Best of all I can see at a glance what links I have filed and Pinterest even tries to remember if I have already saved that link before!
So what is Pinterest
According to Pinterest itself it is
visual bookmarks for good stuff you find anywhere around the web or right on Pinterest.
Pinterest is a place to discover ideas for all your projects and interests, hand-picked by people like you
The main benefits that I see for Pinterest are:
saving links in an organised and visual way
following people of similar interests
having access to links that have already been tried and tested
Here is a link to a great website I found that has lots of ideas for educators who are starting out on Pinterest
I would love to share with you all about the benefits I have found from using Twitter, the connections I have made and the people I am able to learn from and share my learning with.
For me, Twitter is all about
knowing what is going on, nationally and internationally, in areas that interest me
having resources shared with me that are tried and tested by other teachers
connecting with other people who inspire me and challenge my thinking
sometimes meeting the people I tweet with in “real life”
I found this to be a great video for a quick overview as to why Twitter is great for educators
If you want to read more about how Twitter is good for educators, I suggest reading George Couros’ blog post and the comments on this post Does Twitter Improve Education?
So What is Twitter?
Officially, Twitter describes itself as:
At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters long, but don’t let the small size fool you—you can discover a lot in a little space. You can see photos, videos and conversations directly in Tweets to get the whole story at a glance, and all in one place.
It is a microblogging site, which allows you to share your ideas and resources, in the form of Tweets, with your followers or people following the same #hashtag as you.
This video was a great way of describing different aspects of Tweets and Twitter
Anatomy of a Tweet
This is a great post that breaks down exactly what can be found in a tweet.
A dictionary for abbreviations and terms you might see on Twitter
Getting Started
Getting started on Twitter is as easy as going to the Twitter website and signing up for an accout
The way I started was to follow people who interested me and yes there were some celebrities in this mix too – I’m not all about work completely. Use the search function in Twitter to look up the person you are interested in reading about and see if they are on Twitter. Sometimes when you find someone whose Tweets you enjoy reading, it pays to look at who they follow to see if there is anyone there you might be interested in following too.
#edchat – this #hashtag ticks over incredibly fast but it is definitely worth a look as the main education # in the world
#ozedchat – the Australian version of #edchat
#aussieED
@EduTweetOz is a reasonably new account which has “Australian educators from all sectors share their ideas, experiences, questions & passion.”
Sue Waters maintains a list of Australian educators on Twitter – this is a good list to start looking at for Australians sharing great ideas
@JAKnipe – blatant plug for my own Twitter account! 🙂
I hope this brief rundown has been of help and that you take those first steps and be brave enough to put yourself out there and try something new.
At CEGSA2012 I gave a presentation on “Comprehending IT”. This highlighted the fantastic work teachers at Modbury West School are doing in the area of Comprehension in Reading and how this is supported by my work in ICT.
Here is a copy of the Prezi that I shared with conference delegates.