New Idea for Blogs and WIKI's

Coming from England only 1 year ago I obviously still have great connections and communications to friends and family.

Wouldn't it be great to use blogs and WIKIs to work and collaborate with different countries!! For example students can ask questions about each others countries, cultures etc through a WIKI!

I did have the idea when I first arrived about contacting my old English schools via skype in the classroom but realised the time difference is too great. But now I have learnt about blogs and WIKIs they would be a great tool to use.

Imagine the different perspectives and information you would gain. Also the students would be able to view schooling from a different countries point of view.
One thing I noticed when I moved to Australia is that many Australians have not even left their state!! What a shock that was to me!! But then I realised how small Europe and England are to Australia. It would be great for students to interact online with other students in a different country. The safety aspect for myself is that I would personally know the school in England and the students would be communicating through monitored blogs and WIKIs. I would also ensure that students are aware of web safety, and netiquette.

Just a thought! : )

Voki's

My Voki was simple to create. The only problem I had was that I was only allowed to type a certain amount of words for it to say then it stopped!

Get a Voki now!

Children would just love these. They could be used at any age. I think the best way would to record the child's voice rather than using the computer generated ones as they have trouble pronouncing the words correctly plus it would be more entertaining and personal with their voice on it. While creating their voki's or avatars the children are getting actively involved in their learning and doing it for themselves. Younger children would definitely need some guidance and assistance in the creation.

As quoted by Kearsley and Shneiderman (1999) "students must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks" All the activities you plan for your students need to be engaging. For them to be engaging you have to know your students and how they learn best. You may have student D who loves computer work and can easily access information but then you may have student G who cannot work efficiently on a computer and struggles to find the correct information. You need to ensure you plan the activities so that all students benefit. Also providing activities that improve certain skills will allow for the students that struggle to practice and perfect the correct skills.

References

Kearsley, G,. & Shneidermann, B. (1999). Engagement Theory:

A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

Distracting

This is a huge distraction for me now!!

I have never done a blog before and now I find myself changing the layouts and fonts, adding pictures, moving text, adding pages! The possibilities are endless, you can personalise it so much!

RSS and WIKI's

Hello

I found that I did not have to create the RSS Feed as I had set up my blog using a google account, so when I followed people's blogs it had automatically saved these into my Google Reader. I now need to get into the habit of logging into my google account frequently to see the update blogs.

I had heard of RSS but I had no idea what it was or did, reading the information I compared it to the homepage of Facebook (I think it is quite a good comparison) As on the Facebook homepage of recent news it show updates of people's pictures, comments, statuses etc. So when I log into my google account it now shows me all of the new posts to the blog. It's great. Like shown on the video RSS in Plain English it saves so much time, so rather than clicking through all my favourite sites, I can now save these in my google account and watch the updates. Simple!

I have just discovered that withing Blogger, you just have to click on Dashboard in the top right corner and this will show updates of the blogs you are following!

This would be a useful tool to use for older students as when they begin a project for example, they can save their favourite sites and easily access them when they are updated. It would save a huge amount of time.

WIKI's seem pretty good but I fear that people would just randomly come along and change things. But when creating my WIKI I now know that you have to accept people as authors to the WIKI, which makes is secure.

I created my WIKI, but I am still a bit unsure of the concept. http://ourreef.wikispaces.com/ I thought of it as an online meeting space for students. I would set them a project and the group would allocate certain tasks/jobs to each member. From that each member would post their information onto the WIKI. In my case the students would be studying the Great Barrier Reef and can create different pages on the facts, species, how to save it and so on! I will be teaching younger children and I do not think they would be able to use a WIKI efficiently on their own, it would have to be a class project and students would have to take it in turns to write on the WIKI with supervision. I thought you could use it similar to a blog and create diaries of their term so that parents and carers can see their work. Although this may breach some schools privacy policies. You just have to adapt carefully to the schools policies.

Technology and I

I remember the first computer I played on and that was at the tender age of 5 years. It was great fun! It was in my classroom at school and it was a clown game in which you had to count the custard pies which were then thrown in the clowns face! Brilliant! Since then I have been brought up with computers. They are no stranger to me which as Prensky (2001) states that would make me a 'digital native'. "Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet." (Prensky, 2001, p.1) When I went to college aged 16 I was in a mixed aged class, one of my close friends was 22. When doing assignments on the computer she struggled immensely, she did not know how to use a USB memory stick, she struggled to find the correct options and functions. It amazed me that with just a 6 year age gap that someone could be so far behind in technology. Again this happened at university, with an age gap of 8 years between my close friend I found that we were brought up in a totally different non-digital/digital world. I just presume people can use a computer, another example is my parents, oh the frustration I go through with them! (No offence mum and dad) Although I have to admit they are so much better now, mum even has a Facebook page!

Growing up with an easy access to the internet allowed me to use the social networking sites. I started with a Myspace, then Bebo and now I have Facebook. These sites allowed me to interact with my friends and comment on their pictures and activities. It also allowed to to connect with people from different countries. I was sensible and never gave my address and phone numbers to people, but it makes me wonder how many young children to this. You hear stories about young girls going to meet their internet 'friend', it is scary. In week 2 of E-Learning there is a section about child safety on the net. This is vital!! Especially today when it is so, so simple to create a false identity and access people's personal profiles. In the section it takes about inappropriate material for children but we should also think about the young children who are putting pictures of themselves onto these sites. We have all taken a picture of ourselves posing and used it as a profile picture. But young girls are constantly posing often inappropriately for their age, to gain attention from friends and strangers. I sometimes view this as them being insecure and need the attention and evidence of people saying positive things. Or they are just flaunting themselves and crave the attention. Cyber safety should be so much bigger than it is. The social networking site Facebook is monitored greatly for inappropriate materials, and as a user of the site you can report negative pages and images. This is great, it needs to happen a lot more. As a future teacher I will ensure that my students are given the skills and knowledge to be safe users on the internet. Although I am aiming to teach prep or year 1, they still need to learn certain rules.

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved March 18, 2010, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf