Concetta Gotlieb's blog

Friday Oct 02, 2009

Blogging on the road

Ideal requirements:

Ability to geotag pics/video/audio/text
Abililty to see those posts on a map
Ability for myself and others to edit the proposed travel route
Ability for students to interact with me and each other
Ability for me to update friends and family

Notes

http://snaplog.com/ (Fuzzyshot http://fuzzyshot.com is better because it goes straight to a google map but it's blocked for the kids because of the commenting features.)
Put a google mymap on the iphone http://adlr.info/mymaps-iphone.html or http://my-maps.appspot.com/ and can also save these to use offline by using the 'readitlater' app.
I think I have decided to create a google map with all the routes I'll be taking and allow both friends and the school kids to view and edit this map.
For communicating with friends and adults I'll be posting on Fuzzyshot and then updating FB, Twitter and emailing.
So finally two weeks later I have found the app I need. iBlogger works with all different kinds of blogs, allows you to tag, put location links etc.
You can also geotag your tweets.

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Tags: macict twitter geotag googlemaps blogs maps
Posted at 09:31AM Oct 02, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Friday May 08, 2009

Learning Through Blogging

I think blogging is a powerful social learning tool in the education community. By reading and interacting with other bloggers you can learn lots about a wide variety of relevant teaching ideas ranging from how to implement technology to what books you should choose for Year 4 boys.

Here are some links to example of teaching blogs
Here is a link to the guidelines for using blogs and wikis. You should also read the DET Communications policy on the Portal.
Here are instructions on how to get permission to publish student work
Here is the link to unblock a blog or wiki

You can also find lots of great information and examples of ICT in education practice on the MacICT Wiki .

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Tags: blogs macict permission privacy
Posted at 12:11PM May 08, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb | Comments[2]

Thursday Feb 05, 2009

Back to the blog

This is an exciting year for me and blogging. Talking to many more teachers about blogs and also helping my mum setup her blog for the 2nd year. We had a lot to think about:

Should we roll over the blog?

We decided not to because we wanted kids to see the full journey. The professional blogs will continue but every new class will get their own. This blog post by Sue Wyatt that helped us make the decision.

Which blogging platform?

Stu Hasic explains the different blogging services available to educators here.

Will we stay with Edublogs? It's been a little bit of an adjustment but for me technically with the new supporter rules etc but the Edublogs community is still really a warm and fuzzy community to belong to and the kids understand that they are part of that community.

Student permission

Is this the blogging & internet permission form that everyone is using? Stu Hasic provides more details about blogging in the classroom as well as an blogging permission form.

Still need convincing?

Here is a video I took with the kids last year explaining the benefits of blogging.

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Tags: ict integrating technology blogs
Posted at 10:48PM Feb 05, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Sunday Oct 26, 2008

Christmas Carnival of Learning

I've been inspired by different online festivals such as the Student Blogging Challenge, the Comment Challenge, the Digital Storytelling Carnival and other educational community building activities to use an event to inspire sharing and communication. Christmas is a great time for having fun, sharing and finding cool resources. Let's help each other and our students use Web2.0 tools and our online communities to really connect with each other this Christmas.

You can upload or share your links using your existing blog or you can create a teaching blog here at me.edu.au or a student blog using edublogs. Then add your links to the Christmas Resources community. By adding the Christmas community to your profile you'll be able to see whenever new things are adding just by looking at your profile. You can also tag your Christmas stuff in delicious or Diigo with Christmas and add your feed to your me.edu.au profile.

Activity ideas:

Create a Christmas animation that other students can use or copy from using GoAnimate Post links to any cool animations on your blog or in the Christmas community.
Get students to create a Christmas game in Scratch
Send a school in a different state a Christmas message using email
Get your students to create an end of year video message about what they've learnt this year. Upload it to Blip.tv or Teachertube and share it on your blog or in the Christmas community.
Get your students to create a video to send overseas at Christmas telling them about Australia. Upload it to Blip.tv or Teachertube and share it on your blog or in the Christmas community.
Look at Christmas in other cultures using ...
Participate in a Christmas web-quest
Share songs you like to play at Christmas on your blog or make a playlist to embed in yoru blog
Christmas craft ideas - upload your pictures to Flickr when completed. You can also use flickr.com groups to get ideas. Check out this Christmas Gift Project group.
Helping other people at Christmas time. Improve your vocabularly and give people rice at Christmas by playing this game.
Write a Blog posts for Santa. I might even set up a Santa blog to reply if there is some interest.
Find favourite Christmas foods and recipe videos or post recipes on your blog.
Find blogs or information about other things that are going on in the world at this time of the year.
I'll be adding more to the Christmas community as I find things.

There are lots of other ways of sharing, posting ideas on Twitter, Edublogs or any of the other Educational communities around. Or you can just add a comment on this blog.

Christmas is an awesome time for using technology that helps us communicate with each other let's really make the most of it.

Thursday Oct 09, 2008

Australian educators blogging

After just a few months blogging within the me.edu.au community I am already getting a sense of how it's can be different to be involved in an Australian community of bloggers. We have similar curriculum content, we use similar jargon, we deal with similar departmental policies but more than anything we all share a similar context. At the Olympics we cheer the same athletes, Indigenous issues are similar, we have different social issues and we have a slightly different way of using language. I think we as Australian edubloggers have a reason to communicate with each other. It's interesting to see what other Australian are using their blogs for.

Maria Marshall is using hers to communicate with staff at her school including IT updates, howtos and tips on navigating the department website.
Peter Austen is sharing multimedia resources he has created on education.
Pru Mitchell is sharing resources on libraries. She's also passing on links to technologies such as Wordle.
Allison Hall is blogging lots. Sharing opinions, resources and ideas about teaching and technology.
Catherine Comiskey is writing about her school holidays.
Alison McAllister is blogging from a conference so we can all benefit from her attendence. Pick up the lastest on education in the VET sector. This is a great use of resources.
Shane Hoy is a great resource for understanding using games in education. His writing is considered and thoughtful.
Robert Beckett's blog is quick two sentence updates on what he's doing and thinking about at the moment.
John Gardiner's blog is one post linking to one article.
Penny Taeuber's blog is the thoughtful musing of a university student. She has a very interesting post on hand-writing vs type writing.
Jan Sutton is also a student. She is thinking about Inquiry-Based learning a pretty hot topic at the moment.
Miffy Farquharson's is a librarian who talks about books she loves.

Whether we are new to teaching or have been teaching for a long time we have lots to learn from these educators. I know I have taken away great teaching ideas or ideas communicating with other teachers. It doesn't matter if they write a lot or a little bit, if they're young or old, experienced or just starting, me.edu.au makes it easy to search for and find these amazing Australian educators.

Now I am definately not saying that we should stop reading international stuff or contributing in international spaces just consider how the spaces are different. As a NSW educator who will be trying to integrate the Connected Classrooms program into my classroom in the future it's important to have a space to talk to and learn from other Australian educators.

To those of you who are already blogging in Australia you are truly making my life much bettter.

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Tags: search blogs me.edu.au
Posted at 10:18PM Oct 09, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Sunday Sep 14, 2008

News Reporting Using a Blog & Wordle

I'm always impressed with the kids work on my mum's blog Wormbins. This term the students have been commenting on a news topic for homework. Some interesting things about doing homework this way:

You can see when kids do their homework - straight after the news, 10.30pm or 3.30pm on a Sun
The kids get to read each other's homework. We can see this via google analytics. There is usually a big spike in the last weeks post the day the next week's homework is posted.
You can use tools such as Wordle to summarise the main themes discussed that week. This is great for building understanding of writing with intention, focusing on key messages etc.

During Week 4 students were asked to discuss sports related news. This is the Wordle they created.