Today has been a great day!

I have organised myself for school for Term 3 and had some precious time to work on developing wikis and blogs to get my students started in their online study. I have set up some Wikipedia pages on their texts so we are all ready to fire up in the online world.

 I found two great links today – one to help me and students develop wikis – I just love this link:

http://jaxinteractive.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/common-craft-vids-in-plain-english/

I also found this little offering for teachers on YouTube:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw

Whilst the creator clearly thinks our students are visual, the implication or realisation of ‘our generation’ being a little less of the ‘digital native’ variety seems embedded in the colour scheme and written component of the text.

The film clip suggests that if we could get a little bored reading so much – and it is interesting, even if we are being knocked over the head about our reticence to try anything new – so much more are our students.

For me, anything goes – I can teach verbs, nouns and adjectives at the same time as I teach netiquette.  I can teach students how to create internal and external links and how these links create and explore intertextuality. I can teach adverbial phrases that will have students writing the most scintillating content for wikis and blogs. I can easily have students create lists of work they need to complete and develop study guides they share for group projects – and I don’t need a lab – just a whiteboard, a laptop with wireless and a data projector – just use what I have and in the most interesting way possible.

Don’t forget to check out my main Studying English Online Blog for the links to my favourite teaching and learning websites and hotlinks on the web.

I am really looking forward to the term.

Pamela

Join me here to reflect on conferences and Web 2.0 learning that can enhance our teaching and learning.

If I have learned one thing over the past five years of developing ICT resources, it is that I am a lifelong learner. I love learning!

I recently represented my school, Carroll College at Broulee on the Eurobodalla Coast, and attended the Catholic Education Commission  Learning in an Online World Forum in Sydney ( July 3 2007)  as a presenter. I was also privileged to attend some excellent sessions on Web 2.0 from teachers and CEO staff who are excited about, and committed to, developing exciting elearning environments for students.

I presented two Web 2.0 sites that I have found very useful with students in recent months.

A favourite with students is Mindomo. www.mindomo.com

This web mindmapping tool is exceptionally user friendly. The site is intuitive and the novice becomes an expert in minutes. The site allows for a  very professional mindmap to be designed, using colour, integrating images, sound, hyperlinks and text. The tool has an ‘Insert Notes’ feature that presents excellent opportunities for students to expand on their research and ideas. The notes can then be exported as either an .rtf document or as a PDF file. The mindmap itself can be exported as an image.

The other site I presented on was www.readwritethink.org.

This excellent resource provides a wide range of resources for students and teachers. The resources are primary based designs and yet, my secondary students are thoroughly enjoying the use of the more sophisticated tools such as the Essay Map and the Persuasion Map tool. I urge all teachers to examine the site for some handy ideas such as CD Cover Creator , Book Cover  Creator, Bio-cubes for biographies and autobiographies etc. Many of the tools are cross-curricula and have many possible applications.

One if the most interesting presentations was on the 2007 NECC Conference in the US by Gary Brown.   I encourage you to read his blog of the experience.

The most exciting resource I saw and will use was www.bibme.org .

A fantastic bibliography tool.  

Overall I came away from the forum with an eagerness to develop new learning enviroments including some wikis and blogs – hence this blog. Check out my class blog at ccb2007.wordpress.com for more about what I am doing in my classes at the moment. 

Pamela Cohen