edna.edu.au

Festival of Laptop Learning Interesting Data

Including:

• Average number of participants per session 14 (high 33, low 1)
• Approx 1900 instances of participation (a school in a sesion)
• 54 different sessions delivered
• 106 Schools (including the presenters)
• 6 DER Representatives
• 5 Senior Curriculum Advisers
• 8 CLI Representatives

 

 

Sessions with most participants

1. 20_Sess3_LIA_Careers
2. 20_Sess3_LIA_OneNote (students)
3. 18_Sess3_LIA_Mathematics
4. 18_Sess4_LIA_Maths
5. 26_Sess1_LIA_sciencesoftware
6. 26_Sess3_LIA_OneNote
7. 24_Sess3_LIA_PDHPE
8. 20_Sess2_LIA_TASSoftware
9. 24_Sess4_LIA_IWB
10. 17_Sess5_Key_English

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Tags: laptops dernsw videoconferencing
Posted at 11:44AM Sep 14, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

Festival of Laptop Learning - Facilitating Conversations

Our requirments

• A space for uploading links and resources
• A synchronous space for asking and responding to questions within the session
• An ongoing asynchronous space for teachers/students
• A way to get updates to whichever device you select

Desktop sharing

• Bridgit - we are using this as it is installed on all the Connected Classrooms so it is the most readily available and widely tested desktop sharing solution.  Known issues include a slight lag, not being able to use with the laptops. 

In session collaboration

• My Webspiration - we will be using this tool as it allows for synchronous chat, whiteboard and even file sharing.  An alternative would be to use Edmodo which is more text based.

Professional sharing and discussions

• Me.edu.au - we used this tool because it is easy to communicate across a broad audience, single sign on to share resources and ideas on a variety of topics.
• Teachers can also request an email digest by emailing concetta . gotlieb@det...

Student sharing and discussions

• Edmodo - we used this tool because it is private for student sharing, it allows sharing of files, links, embedding, etc.  Contact me for the simple tag.  It also allows participants to get notifications of new content, including RSS.

 #DERNSW Active online spaces

• Search Twitter or even the hashtag #DERNSW in twitter
• DERNSW Forum (students/teachers)
• Sydney Region Forums
• Other spaces?

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Tags: professionallearning dernsw collaboration laptops
Posted at 03:38PM Jul 31, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

Festival of Laptop Learning Questions

It has been a very busy few weeks.  Rewarding because in a relatively short amount of time we have been able to pull together an innovative new way of sharing information about laptops.  The DER NSW Festival of Laptop Learning is for teachers, students and anyone else who is interested. 

Some things I'm interested in finding out through the festival:

• Does using the video conferencing equipment for teacher to teacher discussion increase feelings of self-confidence amongst teachers?
• Does the amount of interactivity in the video conference have any affect on the sucess of the learning experience?
• Does the type of support offered to the facilitators affect their confidence in using the video-conferencing equipment?

Click here for the session listing (limited to DET NSW teachers and schools)

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Tags: festivaloflaptoplearning laptops macict videoconference
Posted at 01:24PM Jul 20, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

DER NSW Laptops - 2 weeks of learning

Learning with Laptops VC Program  Register Your Interest Now  !  Participate or present.
 
The Macquarie ICT Innovation Centre is planning two-weeks of activities designed to motivate and inspire teachers to embrace laptops. We are organising two weeks of activities designed to provide teachers and students with an opportunity to consume, create and collaborate on the topic of technology and laptops in learning.
 
Over the next week we would like to collect as many ideas (and presenters) as possible and value your schools opinion on how we can make the Festival an exciting event for everyone.

Please help us answer these questions.  How will we use these laptops to motivate and engage students?  What questions do you have?  What help do you need?  What could you contribute?
 
Click here to go to our website and find out about the creative ways you can add your voice and ideas to the discussion.

Alternatively click here to complete a simple survey.

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Tags: laptops macict
Posted at 11:45AM Jul 01, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[2]

Adobe Captivate Resources

Great presentation from Stacey from the Centre for Learning Innovation today.

Here are links to some of the resources created using Adobe Captivate:

•  Cultivating Art
  

What I like about Captivate:

• You can basically build an entire website using Captivate - but it's even better because you can also cultivate interactivity.
• Students are able to build quizzes and learning sequences
  

Her tips:

• Think about the storyboard
• Get started, then have a look at your design, then edit or start again
• Keep testing your design until it feels right
• Timing is important when you are hiding and revealing things
• Get the kids to use it for projects, presentations etc
  

I also noticed Captian Captivate on the Adobe website.  Once you get started you can dip into this online space to get support.

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Tags: macict features captivate tips laptops adobe
Posted at 04:46PM Jun 17, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

OLPC Laptops at our school

It's only been a couple of weeks using the OLPC laptops at our school but we are already seeing a glimpse of the potential results of putting laptops in the hands of kids with intellectual disabilities and emotional disturbances.  Here are some comments from the class teacher:

• They have an impact on behaviour management and engagement
• The kids are really enjoying using the laptops
• They are enthusiastic to learn
• Exploring by themselves (this is a really exciting point)
• They have been pairing up with each other to achieve a goal (another really exciting point)
• If they are playing a game they'll try to find out from a classmate where it was etc.

For me the trialling of these laptops in our school could have a significant impact on how we understand creating individual education programs both in schools like ours but also how we can provide support to all students to achieve educational goals that inspire them to keep learning.

Some ways that we could use the laptops/technology to support students with special education needs:

• Video conferencing with home schools and other schools - both for teachers and students
  
• Working collaboratively with students in home schools in a secure environment to enable demonstration of
  
• More student control over choice of activities eg choose 2 from column A and 2 from column B
• More engagement in activities that require rote learning such as sight words
• Provision of alternative ways of communicating and finding information - the inclusion of more audio and video to give students who find text based activities difficult
• Provision of more tailored education programs in mainstream schools
  

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Tags: primary feedback laptops olpc
Posted at 07:45PM Feb 10, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

OLPC Orientation

Today was my first day trying out the One Laptop Per Child laptops.  Those little green and white ones with the airals that twist up.

• It opens from the bottom
• The applications are simple and very useful
• I still can't work out how to insert a picture into a document
• You connect to the internet via the Neighbourhood page - one of the first row of keys on the keyboard.  It can take multiple tries to connect to the internet.
  
• It can surf the internet like a regular computer.
• Video is ok.  The sound is pretty good but the actual video capture is not great.  Like skype but a little bit worse.
  

I think the best thing about them so far is that you can see this is the kind of computer that will get kids to work or to games they enjoy learning from rather than just playing with menus and trying to work out how to use the computer.

Activities we might start with:

• Tux Maths
• Tux Typing
• Video/audio/images/text diary

At this stage it looks like we will be doing a very small trial of one class (our classes are 8 including teacher).  The first phase we really be getting into routines and and observing how the students interact.  We'll also be getting familarised ourselves.  More updates to come.  Thanks Pia for allowing me to have this opportunity.

 

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Tags: ict technology olpc laptops
Posted at 08:52PM Jan 21, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[1]