Thunder

Wikis, originally uploaded by stevebeard73.

One of my highlights of SLF08 was Neil Winton’s presentation on wiki’s. I have followed Neil’s exploits in Perth for several years now, probably since the first teachmeet I attended in 2006.

Neil was going to talk us through his experience of using Wiki’s at Perth Academy and how they can be used to support the Curriculum for Excellence.

You can check out his presentation here.

Points that stood out to me:

1) Difference between a ‘typical teacher network’ and the ‘networked teacher’. I wonder what the split is for our teaching profession?
2) How could I not mention his movie…. What do you get if you cross the death star with a can of alphabetti spaghetti? Wikipedia (it is better in the presentation)
3) There are a variety of wiki platforms out there, Neil recommends Wikispaces - sign up for free as an educator and avoid the adverts.
4) Examples of wiki’s used in his school:
4a) Caves of Mull (thecavesofmull.wikispaces.com/) - text based adventure games, each cave is has its own wiki page, make choices on which route to take while navigate you through the wiki.
4b) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (midsummerdreaming.wikispaces.com/) - used by students studying the book with the same title, I would recommend looking at ‘Aunty Flo - problem page’
5) Why use a wiki - ‘engages pupils, enhances learning, real world experience’.

Following several negatives comments about Twitter on the NAACE forum I decided it would be worth revisited Twitter (twitter.com).

Over the last couple of days I have picked up some great tips via people I am following, for example

• Monolingual - MAC OS X application, this app removes all unnecessary languages from your Mac freeing up hard drive space, I gained 3G of space :)  Thanks Doug (twitter.com/dajbelshaw) for pointing this app out to me.

The problem I found with twitter was that I really only keep up to date with the people I follow, and they are generally people I know so I wouldn’t stumble upon other interesting tweets from people I don’t know.  Then I found Summize (summize.com/), Summize allows you to follow ‘keywords’ in tweets, for example with Apple’s WWDC later today I can follow all tweets that contain ‘.WWDC’ (summize.com/search?q=WWDC) this search has an RSS feed that you can then subscribe to.  To me this really adds value to twitter, it certainly answers a question posed by Trina last week about searching Twitter.

If you would like to follow me on twitter my username is tarannau20.

Every wondered what the weather is like 15km south west of Melbourne? Probably not, unless you live 15km south west of Melbourne or are planning to travel there.

Anyway, if you are interested in the weather at that particular place then Westall Secondary College have just installed an automatic weather station.

If you are looking for a way to share your powerpoint presentations with your students then authorSTREAM might be a solution (see details on left).
I came across authorSTREAM on Joe Dale’s MFL blog, it is encouraging to find new ways of teachers sharing their existing content in a way that students might find easier to digest.

Has Google Docs had an impact on teaching and learning inside or outside of your classroom?  If so, Google would like to know how you use it and what changes you would like in the future?

Further details can be found on the Google Docs blog.

Last month I attended, and spoke at, a virtual worlds in education conference at Birmingham University.  The delegates were all educators from the West Midlands, it was great to hear what other educators were doing and to be able to create partnerships.  Following the conference I have made contact with Mark Taylor from the prison service, we are looking at building a virtual prison on our teen island and to run several projects based around it.

For further details on the conference follow this link.

Where? - Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire
When? - 1 - 4 April 2008

What you will learn -

“In the age of digital literacy and creativity, educators need to seek out best practice in the use of the tools available.  Now is your opportunity to develop the ideas you have already had about digital creativity, to see how others are using these new tools with great benefits in learning gains, and to understand the pedagogy that underpins the excitement of digital media. You will learn in an environment where you are given the opportunity, inspiration, space and support to be creative with like-minded colleagues. All learning on this unique course will give you a thorough background in digital media but is carried out in relaxed and friendly manner so that newcomers to the areas covered will not feel intimidated”.

At this event, you will investigate a range of activities that focus on di!erent digital media:

• Digital storytelling
• Podcasting
• Creating content using digital video cameras and editing software
• Exploring the use of still images, music and animation in multimedia projects
• Methods for sharing digital projects on DVD and the Web
• Sharing of experiences, action planning and portfolio development
• Development of skills in subject/age group relevant project

Find out more at www.apple.com/uk/education/ati, (website to be updated by end of January 2008)

Cost - £500, (ex VAT)

Register your interest -
To receive a booking form to reserve your place at ATI 2008 please contact Fiona McGlashan of Impact Exhibitions:

By phone or Fax: 01223 237426
By Email: impact@appleshack.com
By Post:
Impact Exhibitions (ATI)
6 High Street
Oakington
Cambridge
CB24 3AG

Shropshire LA are looking for 2 keen and enthusiastic ICT specialists to support the roll out and development of their new learning platform, the posts will be full time for 2 years.

Further details of the post can be found here.

Feel free to send me an email steve [at] it4L.org if you would like additional details about these posts.

I received my ASUS EeePC just before Christmas and have tried out the machine as delivered. I have been really impressed by the pc and I believe that it can do 90% of what 90% of educators/learners require of a pc in school. After demonstrating the device to my advisory service colleagues many of them are now asking for one for their day to day use.

This appeared to be the message at BETT, where the ASUS had a high profile on several stands. The chaps from RM gave a good overview of the device at Teachmeet08.

Today, following a call from Harvey at Sundorne I am investigating installing software onto the pc. After going to settings tab and then add/remove settings I found several updates for the preinstalled software, I have now installed all of the ones that I recognised. In the list there is one that I am not sure about ‘EeeAP” after searching the web (ASUSTeK forum) I can’t find out exactly what it is or if I should install it. It appears that it might be a range extender for the wireless network, maybe I need to find someone else with an EeePC and see if we can get them talking to each other.

I still haven’t managed to sort out Harvey’s question but have now set up Skype and MSN and they are working well.  I will post an update when I manage to install Audacity to the machine.

Yet again, the people at TED continue to inspire and amaze me. I have just finished watching this video: