Revisiting the Classroom Blog

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

 

EdTechSA 2015: How To Start A Class Blog

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.

 

Choose Your Own Adventure: Digital Technologies

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

My example of a ‘Fairy Tale’ algorithm

My example of a ‘Fairy Tale’ branching algorithm

My example of a CYOA fairy tale: The Three Little Pigs

What Do I Do?

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.

 

Pinning Teachers

"The Art of Pinterest" by mkhmarketing

“The Art of Pinterest” by mkhmarketing

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

 

Our goals for today are:

  • Setting up a Pinterest account (here’s a handy tutorial if you get stuck)
  • finding people to follow (you can start with me if you want – Jacqui Knipe)
  • learning how to search pinterest
  • pinning
  • learning how to pin from the web/uploads

Happy Pinning

 

 

Twitter for Beginners!

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

Sue Waters @SueWaters The Twitteraholic’s Ultimate Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter

Edudemic’s 25 Ways to Get the Most Out of Twitter

TeachThought’s 20 Most Useful #hashtags in Education

George Couros @gcouros What Should A Networked Leader Share About?

Heidi Cohen’s Twitter Etiquette

 

Some people/hashtags to follow

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.