edna.edu.au

Open Education Teaching Ideas

I attended the Open Education 2008 Conference at Macquarie University yesterday.  It was great because of the people, everyone was excited about teaching, learning and sharing.

What is openness?

• Open education is providing people with an infrastructure to be able to collaborate freely
• Open education is sharing teaching resources
• Open education is using software in education that has been created by volunteers working collaboratively
  
• For those responsible for organising and paying for things open = cheaper and better quality
  

Teaching ideas from the conference:

• Use Open Office (download free) the next time I get the kids to create a text document.
• Use the Smart Copying interactive tool All Right to Copy to explain copyright to the kids. Particularly interesting that you can't enter your work in a competition if you breach copyright. You can also contact them if you have a question about copyright.
• Read about and sign the Cape Town Declaration
• Share your ideas - on a blog like this one, or in a community space like this one created for the Open Education event, you can add resources, teaching ideas or thoughts.
• Play Murder Under The Microscope - an environmental education multiplayer game created by the NSW DET that is available for anyone globally to participate in
• Many Aussie institutions have provided resources that you can freely use.  For example the National Film Archive or the National Library of Australia, you can even contribute to the NLA's Picture Australia project.
• Creative commons licences allow media creators to tell you whether they want you to reuse their material.  Support Australian Creative Commons, appropriate CC resources are the backbone of quality multimedia creation.
• Use the Open Education Resources website provides lots free to use and sometimes change teaching aides and lesson plans.
• Learn more about free and easy to use software by coming along to the 2 day professional development extravaganza at Macquarie uni.
• Setting up blogs with students is also a good way for you and your students to understand the power of open software - community, easy of use and engagement.
  

Great me.edu.au people I met:

• Chris Chescher - his tweets for the day
• Debbie Evans
• Roland Gesthuizen
• Kathryn Moyle 

Tags: learning teaching ideas aks-oss macquarie ict innovation centre professional development collaboration open
Posted at 11:36AM Nov 22, 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]

Jelly Bean Description Activity

Firstly to write my Jelly Bean description I used two key web 2.0 tools:

• Wikipedia
• Twitter
• Flickr
  

• I found out that in Harry Potter they eat 'Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans'
• In the 1910's and 20's a Jelly Bean was a very stylish person
• They are orginally from Turkey
  

Two twitter responses:

• Anne B - Exploring the metaphysics of the jellybean could be interesting
• Kerry J - glistening, gleaming, dazzling the eyes -- with insides that will tantalise!

Things to think about before starting your writing:

• Write down some key words you think of when you think about Jelly Beans eg: sweet, colourful, hungry,
  
• Use a visual thesaurus to make these words more interesting eg famished, starving, malnourished, dulcet, tempting, bewitching, vivid, brilliant, glare
  
• Include ideas about the physical and emotional world of the topic
• Make sure you include a good balance of descriptive words such as adjectives and nouns that actually tell us what it is

My sample writing

At first I took a tiny bit of a vivid red Jelly Bean.  I choose this one because it is the colour I usually least like.  Beneath the crisp shell of each Jelly Bean lies a tiny tempting sugary surprise.  Each flavour a unique experience never replicated within the dull and predicatable experience of nature.  Only man could create these flavours - the flavour of colour.  With the crack of a the green shell a mix of limes and pears and watermelons and many other unidentifiable flavours, each brand adding their own unique twists and turns, sometimes more lime sometimes the surprise of a toffee apple.  So I bite this round little pellet, expecting a cough medicine like disturbing cherry flavour that I usually  only half chew and swallow without inflecting my tastebuds with too much of the red goo, no, no red goo.  Surprise, shock and relief this is cinannmon my spicy favourite.  I slow down.

For not every shell is cracked though the hard waxy shell though, for example like red, pink is just too good, it must be slurped and sucked and savoured.  It's light, almost transluccelent shell glistening, gleaming, dazzling the eyes -- with insides that will tantalise!  It is like chewing on a tiny little fingernail sized princess, complete with tiara and pink dress. 

What is your favourite flavour?  Further teaching ideas?  How would you use images to digitally convey the messages of the description?

Tags: digital literacy descriptive writing literac writing teaching ideas showme communicating
Posted at 07:31PM Aug 28, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[1]