edna.edu.au

me.edu.au blogging tips

A few tips on how to make blogging easier and more effective in me.edu.au.

1. Save frequently, by clicking 'save as draft'
   
2. Fix messy formatting by 'avoiding html issues'
3. Turn off comment moderation
4. Visit the 'About Me' blog
5. Join the 'me.edu.au' community and share your tips

Tags: blogging communities showme me.edu.au
Posted at 09:35PM Feb 10, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[1]

Moderating comments

Commenting is an important aspect of blogging.  It's a good idea to turn comment moderation off on your me.edu.au blog so that users will be able to see their comment on your blog.  This also means you don't have to remember to check your blog to see if anyone has commented so that you can approve them.  To turn off comment moderation:

1. Click on the 'edit blog' tab
   
2. Click on the 'preferences' tab
3. Click on 'turn of comment moderation' in the comments section
   

Tags: showme comments tips me.edu.au
Posted at 09:18PM Feb 10, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[1]

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.

Tags: video blogs coi community christmas carnival ict integration showme sharing ideas technology learning resources collaboration edublogs
Posted at 01:05PM Oct 26, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[1]

Labelling pictures of me in different moods

The lesson I planned today for the computer lab didn't end up being possible.  But I didn't want the students to just play games on the computers either.  So I thought I'd see how easy it was to use the iLife suite for an impromptu lesson with Stage 1 kids with learning difficulties.

We made a quick iMovie of different emotions:

1. Use Photoboth (or digital camera) to take pictures of your face with different emotions
2. Drag pictures in iMovie (or Movie Maker) project
3. Label pictures with the word that describes the feeling (for some kids I typed the words first and they copied them)
   
4. Record your voice saying the words
5. Add music if you feel like it
   
6. Play the movie and discuss
   

The hardest thing for these kids was displaying and correctly labelling their emotions but that was to be expected.  If I was prepared I would have actually had line drawing pictures for their first go and built up to taking pictures of themselves.

Tags: digital images imovie teaching ideas photography video showme
Posted at 05:47PM Oct 15, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

Fun projects with a technology twist

Lately I have seen a couple of great examples of how to integrate technology with students in practical ways.  How we keep this and pass the knowledge around - mostly through twitter is almost as interesting as the projects themselves.

• I have been working on documenting procedures visually using cooking projects like Nonna and iMovie.
  
• Stephen Drummer is teaching his kids about the 16 Habits of Mind by getting them to blog about a burger.  Check out his blog at BurgerTeach.
  
• Jenny Luca's project is 25 Days to Make a Difference
  
• Tom Barrett (UK) has been working on visual instructions with how to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds.
• And of course my mum using Wordle to come up key words for learning themes.
  

It would be great to see how you are integrating technology into the curriculum.  Particularly if you're a primary school teacher so I can steal your ideas :).

Tags: instructions fun showme technology literacy projects science teaching ideas
Posted at 05:31PM Oct 15, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[2]

Consequences lesson using GoAnimate

I made this animation using GoAnimate in about 20 minutes.  It's a fun, simple way to provide an alternative method of communicating ideas.   This should work in pretty nicely with our learning to accept consequences for actions unit.

Things to remember:

• The screen demo on the mainpage is good and give a good overview of features and how to use them and it has pretty exciting music
  
• If you want to add movement to an object you need to do it before you move it to the character
• There are some slightly undesirable actions but I think this can be managed through a quick laugh and letting the kids know it's not appropriate for the work we are doing at the moment
  

Tags: literacy teachingideas showme socialskills fun interesting technology tips
Posted at 02:40PM Oct 10, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

Digital cameras in the classroom: a multi-purpose tool.

I'm starting to wonder what would happen if we replaced one interactive whiteboard with a class set or maybe one between 2 of digital cameras.  The computer isn't the only way we interact with technology.  Digital camera's have made pictures part of the human experienced - used in a variety of ways from documenting our belongings for insurance purposes to recording a recount of events to photo journalism and art and even beautiful photo essays.

So I'm going to continue to use the one camera we have in our school to it's absolute maximum.  Here The Digital Photography School has tips on digital photography with kids/students.

• Experiment
• Check backgrounds
• Hold camera straight
• How to hold the camera
• Get in close
• Take lots of pictures
• Balance between taking pictures of people, things and places
• Find a point of interest
• Rule of thirds
• Review the pics with them
• Focal lock
• Different modes for different situations
• Exposure

Tags: photography technology resource art ideas cameras showme
Posted at 04:42PM Oct 09, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

Screen Readers = More Than Meets The Eye

Why it's important?

Ever since listening to Tim Noonan's talk at a conference a little while ago I have been on a journey of learning about accessibility.  I used to think of accessibility as a way to allow blind folk or people with disabilities to access our content.  Now I think of accessibility as providing alternative options for accessing information for everyone.

This blog post at iHeni alerted me to Glenda Watson Hyatt a blogger with cerebal palsy.  Watching her Youtube video I thought I too have been to a conference, too shy to say anything, feeling alone in a room of thousands.  For me as a participant in learning it made me feel better to know I was not the only one. 

Anyway it got me thinking about the advantages of improving accessibility

• It opens up the doors to more people from diverse backgrounds to connect with others from diverse backgrounds - this can only be good for learning and socialising
• It gives everyone more options for how they want to communicate and connect with the world.  If I'm a very good listener but a hopeless reader I can work with my strengths.  If I would prefer to listen to a webpage as a I work on an assignment or lesson plan I can.

Curriculum integration

• This term I'll be showing the kids how to use the screen reader. Which for my kids will potentially be a lifeskill that will enable them to engage with the world for their whole lives.
  
• Using a screen reader for web-based research.  Discussing what they have listened to.
• Using the screen reader as part of the audio track in movies that we make.  They can be shy.
  
• Writing text and having it played back to them.

How to do it

Apple accessibility features - select text to have it read to you on Mac

If you don't use a screen reader but have trouble reading text on your computer screen, you can have your Mac read the text you select. To turn Text to Speech on, open System Preferences, click Speech, then open the Text to Speech pane. You can even set up a keyboard shortcut to initiate Speech.

Tip: Tick the box marked 'speak selected text when the key is pressed'.  Then select 'Set Key' and choose a key to use.

Microsoft

• Accessibility features - Using Narrator
  
• Dictate text using e-Speaking

What are the challenges?

For me one of the big challenges is that by opening up opportunities for success in one area you may be taking away success in another area.  For example by giving students the opportunity to have a web page read to them instead of reading it themselves they may find that it is easier to intepret the text when listening to it but on the other hand they aren't getting the practice of intepreting written text.

Post your ideas in the comments.

Tags: resource research screenreader teachingideas accessibility literacy showme
Posted at 12:33PM Sep 30, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[2]

Two Ways to Search

Kidcyber is an Australian site with hundreds of current topics listed in categories. There are two ways to search.  A google search will bring you results based on your keywords, ranked by popularity and other measures.  A category search will bring a list of websites that have been verified as relating to a particular category you select.  Kidcyber is an Australian site with hundreds of topics listed in categories.  Remember each method has advantages and disadvantages.[Read More]

Tags: tools search technology showme
Posted at 06:35AM Sep 19, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  | 

Multimedia Jeopardy For Your Classroom

Teachers in the Sydney Region in NSW are a lucky bunch.  The Sydney Region Schools IT Service provide a blog (Podcast Lane) to help teachers and ICT Co-ordinators with the practical aspects of integrating technology in their classroom.  I found this great interactive Jeopardy game resource (for PC users) on their blog.

Not only does it have heaps of ready made quizzes available but it is also completely customisable meaning that you can create a quiz for your students or better yet get the students to create the quiz themselves.  You can add any kind of media as part of your quiz including pictures, audio files and movie files.

This resources is an amazing way to get students working on little bits of media - vox pops on content as part of the questions for Stage 2, taking pictures of the school environment for Stage 1, literature review for any stage.... the list is unending.

Depending on how you use the tool it can teach some of the skills of the 21st Century I talked about in my previous post including - play, negotiation, distributed cognition or performance.

Nice work Stu!

Tags: tools tips ideas allstages game showme
Posted at 03:20PM Sep 14, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  |