learning discoveries and reflections

And so the journey with Web 2.0 comes to an end.  But not really, for it is really the beginning.  Teaching will be different as a result of doing Web 2.0.  Particularly for the students coming in with laptops.  This year that has been only one form of reluctant users.  Next year all but one year group will have laptops.
The challenge will be to follow a middle path.  That is to embrace the technology and allow teaching strategies to evolve in a way that engages and enhances education but not to the exclusion of tried and true teaching and learning strategies.
Some possible new tools include: iGoogle, Blogs, google docs, flicker,
Some tools to be further explored: Delicious, Scoolte, Wikis, itunes, pod casts and vodcasts, mindmiester, RSS feeds
Some that may not be for me and my classroom at this point are: Glogster, Bubble.us, facebook and nings, second life
I thought Andrew Churchs writings were fantastic, particularly his Bloom's digital taxonomy.
I am also more aware, but not sure how to overcome, many of the ethical issues involved with ICT in the classroom.
Overall a positive experience despite untold technical and another difficulties.  20hours is a vast underestimate of the time required even to engage with the material in a superficial level.  You could spend a year with Web 2.0 @4-5 hours per week.
A steep learning curve has been negotiated over the past term, with many successes and some failures.  It would have been good to start with the iLearn video clip because in many ways it put it e learning and Web 2.0 into context very well.
My major concerns at the end of the course are:
How do we ensure that these wonderful tools are used in ways that enhance on-task learning and do not reult in students engaging in more off-task behavious?
What do we do when the technology fails eg: internet is down, collaborative documants are slow to repsond so that we don't land up with frustrated students and staff?
How do we find the time to find or develop relevant resources / scaffolds etc and revise or modify programs in our already busy and overfull teaching day?
Can we ensure that good, engaging "old" ways are still preserved and utilised?
When the curriculum is so full with content how do we ensure that we have the time, space and energy to develop the skills and higher order thinking required with many of the strategies?
Comments on:
http://bhaw60.blogspot.com/
http://jessicahuybrechs.blogspot.com/2010/11/final-reflection.html#comment-form
NB School should read: Bethany College Hurstville (not Kogarah)

Module 10

Reflections of WIKI's and NING

Wiki's have been in my toolkit for a while, I spent a lot of time last Christmas holidays setting up a WIKI for my Yr 12 physics students.  The biggest problem is maintain it and using it consistently.  Unfortunately these students do not have lap tops so it dependent on them accessing stuff at home.  However, as the group and I were more familiar with my classes we tended to use it as our main technology hub, and for the most part with these students there was not much point in changing.
With Yr 11- the first class to have lap tops have been so resistant to the use of them in learning, at times I question the value of fight them with it.
Yr 7 also don't yet haves laptops but next year's cohort will so great opportunities lie ahead. 

NING was new to me and may be could be usefully applied in the classroom but how many avenue is it worth pursuing.  One of my concerns that is common across many of the platforms is how do we ensure students are on task and using the technology in an educationally beneficial way and not just chatting or engaging in other off task behaviours?

What role do you see for using Web 2.0 tools in your own life as a learner and a member of online communities?

Web 2.0 has tremendous potential for both me as a teacher/ facilitator of learning and as learner myself.
But I am becoming more and more convinced that it is not just an universal panacea for disengaged students but require careful planning to ensure that it enhances classroom practice and results in real gains to the educational process.

How can Web 2.0 assist in improving learning outcomes for all students?

With sufficient preparation Web 2.0 has great potential for improving the learning outcomes for all students, but then there are many pedagolocial tools that can also ensure this.  It requires teachers to have an intimate knowledge of their students, how they like to learn, how they learn effectively, where they are currently, and where we would like them to be.  Then using a variety of strategies that involve visual, auditory and kinesethic approaches, and utilise both higher and lower order thinking develop meaningful and age appropriate learning pathways that meet the individual needs of the students.  In other word be all things to all people.  Is this any different to good pedagogy in pre web 2.0 days?

Module 9

Scootle has a number of excellent resources particularly the learning objects, although I would not classify them as Web 2.0.  It would be good to take a systematic look at them as we prepare for Yr 7 having laptops.  I would need to explore learning paths in more detail as I have yet got it.  But I will have to do that later.
Social networking is so much a part of young people's lives that it has to be used.  But how do we do so in a safe and educationally valuable way.  The problem with setting up a site for just educational purpose is that they don't seem to want to use it, yet too many problems are involved in using facebook etc in the classroom.  I think we probably need have appropriate models developed for educational uses.
Second life may be a good way to go for some, but just as I am selective with the range of traditional teaching strategies, using ones that work for me and my students, likewise I envisage I will be selective in the use of Web 2.0 technologies, using some and choosing not to use others.
If we do use them educationally I think it is important to teach safe use of the resources.  When working in the science lab, we explicitly teaching safe practices, likewise when using web 2.0 resources we need to ensure we explicitly teach safe practices.
Not convinced about twitter in the classroom.  140 charchters is not much and does it just encourage an stream of unreflective thoughts?
One of my concerns about many of these tools is that while great skills are developed, in terms of covering the content of the syllabus it is very time expensive and can I justify investing the time in this way.  I would have to say that a creative science teacher could definitely add some of the tools to their teaching kit bag but should be selective as to which other tools they discard.  One of my current questions is what do we stop doing to do things using web 2.0 and what will be  the consequences- both negative and positive.
I dispute the assertion that traditional education has become irrelevant, ineffective and unproductive.  Good traditional teaching can occur using traditional methods or Web 2.0 and poor teaching can also occur using traditional methods or Web 2.0.

Module 8

Google Reader and RSS feeds- worthwhile.  I have added a feed that will keep me up to date on Earthquakes as they happen around the world.  This could be used by Yr 9 science.
I discovered plenty of feeds out there that could be interesting but how does one ensure that they don't get overloaded with too much information.  I struggle to keep up with what comes in already.  Yesterday I dumped 2300 emails from my in box, and already they have started accumulating again.  Information management skills are needed just to survive.
However I am grateful to be aware of some of these amazing possibilities.

Module 7

Delicious is great.  I started using it at the beginning of the year and have a number of sites bookmarked.  However there is a lot more that I could do with it than I am.  Maybe when my Yr 7's get their laptops I'll get them logged into my delicious account so they can gain easy access to the sites I want them to use. 
You should check out the Delicious site Maria Lee has created!  It is tops. http://www.delicious.com/Learning_Support
She currently has over 900 sites tagged and categorised for secondary students, with a particular focus on sites that would be useful for special needs students.
Simon Crooks bookmarks are worth checking out too http://www.delicious.com/EvertonPom.  He has over 2300 bookmarks.  My 45 are pretty meager by comparison.  Simon has some pretty good links to resources.  I liked the one looking at 10 Google forms in the Classroom and 15 Little known ways google can help teachers and students.

Module 6

Some possibilities explored within a maze of frustrations.  Created a bubbl.us mindmap but seemed to have lost it.  Also created my first Glogster Poster and again seemed to have lost it.  I know it is just a matter of getting to know the applications but it is frustrating at this stage.
Glogster edu looks like a good way to go with a class, but not at this end of the year- too much involved in setting up all the email addresses etc.  So it will have to wait for now.
Mindmapping is a great strategy to use in the classroom.  I just need to get my students set up with all the applications I want to use so I can call on them when I want to.  Can I choose one thing to try with Yr 11 SOR before we finish for the year.  May be I look at doing something in week 9 after their assessment task.
Yr 11 Biology: I want to try goggle docs, but I am short on time at the moment.  Again I will wait until later in the term.
Next week I want to look at doing with glogster or flip books or the like with Yr 7.  I will have two lessons in the computer lab.

Module 5

Lots of great stuff here.
I already knew a bit about podcasts and I have used them once with a Yr 9 class.  I also podcast a lot of ABC radio programs.  What I did not realise was how many podcasst resources there are out there.  At times it feels like too much. 
I did not knos of itune U- possibilities there.
However possibilities for the classroom seem endless.  Two I particularly like are

One activity for year 7 Science
View the following video
http://www.schooltube.com/video/259d68d761ea4c92a5b7/Carbon-Cycle-Food-Chain
then prepare a voice track to accompany it.  I wonder how I could combine the two into a finished product.  I'll ask Rose on Thursday.

Yr 11 Physics
We could so something similar to this analysing the physics behind a sports story
http://www.schooltube.com/video/f8e9f8fd35a148fa8a93/Physics-of-Rugby

Also the photo record of Yr 7 geraniums could be turned into a vodcast with a descriptive audio track added to it.  Maybe a project for the last week of term?

Module 4

Flicker has potential
Yr 11 Biology and the pollination of Australian Plants.  I have uploaded about 25 images I have taken of Australian flowers.  I could then share the file with my students and get them to propose how the plant may be pollinated, thus completing a dot point for Evolution of Australian Biota.  Looks promising.
My Yr 7's could email me there photos of the geranium plants.  Then I could upload them and they could then annotate them in flicker.  Another way of them observing and recoding their observations.
The area of copyright gets more tricky.  I think I am going to need to pay a  lot more attention to this area both within school related work and other activities I engage in.  Plenty of room for learning here.

Module 3

I spent some time today exploring Google docs.  Now this seems to have tremendous potential.  It can use many of the documents I already have without needing to rework them as wold be required for wiki's.
The biggest disadvantage is needing to get all the students to set up a g mail account, including myself.  Having just set up my igoogle account using a non-g mail address, I will now need to reset i-google for my g amil address and use that version if I am going to use i-google.  I don't like having so many accounts etc.  I'd rather have everything integrated. 
Also Yr 7 don't have laptops at the moment so that only leaves Yr 11, and they only have 6 weeks left then I am on leave for 12 months.  However I will continue to explore possibilities.  Tomorrow I will see what the Yr 11's think and what suggestions they have.
But this is the application that has the most potential for teaching from what I have seen through web 2.0 so far.

Module 2

It just seems a bit over whelming.  I checked out lots of blogs and sites listing blogs and I felt as if I was following multiple threads of a spiders web.  It is possible that students may enjoy blogging but at the moment it does not appeal to me.  Writing to an unknown audience, even perhaps with no one ever to read it.  For what purpose.
May be there could be potential for short sharp bursts as another medium to engage students, but does it have the potential for an extended life?  I doubt it for me.
One possibility that comes to mind:  Yr 7 Science planted geranium seedlings today.  They took photos on their phones and will email them to their group mmembers.  Then in the exercise books they started a record of their activity, observations and measurements of their plant.  If they had laptops they could do this via a blog and share it with each other.  But is it going to have a better educational outcome than what we have started today?
I do see there is a role for blogs in other situations- eg my son kept us all entertaiend with his travellers tales last year whilst having a gap year.  Cheaper and more efficient than post cards and phone calls.
Maybe as I explore more I may be converted, but as yet I am not.

Module 1

Hi I'm Elizabeth Lee and I signed up to this Web 2.0 course at the beginning of last week.  Given that I have lost 2 Yr 12 classes I thought now would be a good time to develop some of my ICT skills.  However it has been more of a challenge that I expected.  Given that I am a digital immigrant, I consider myself to be quite computer literate, but I have found getting to this stage of the Web 2.0 course quite time consuming and challenging.  This is in part because I already had some of the accounts and needed to track down user names and passwords to reactiviate them.  But also there just seems so many videos to view and paths that can be followed.  When does one call it quits and say "Yes I can do this now and I don't need to learn more about it not"?
There are so many possibilities with all of this how can I utilise it to maximise student learning?
May be I should just choose one of my courses and start thinking how I can do it effectively in some lessons in that course.