What is the most important thing to remember about Netiquette. "Remember the Human."

This quote came from one of our online quizzes. It sums up a lot. Re reading some of my previous posts, I have noticed that I have not said much about the young learners we will be dealing with. Because this technology allows communication with anyone around the world, there is a responsibilty to provide guidelines for safe usage of the net. As my daughter in grade 5 is learning to email, it is worth looking at the guidelines they have been given.
1. Never give your full name out online.
2. If you recieve an email from someone you don't know, delete it straight away.
3. If you recieve a message that contains something offensive, don't delete it, but show your teacher straight away.

There are also guidelines regarding what can be displayed online. Permission must be gained before publishing photos of students, and thought should be given as to who will be able to access the photos. It may be best to publish to a closed site, where only certain people are able to veiw them.

Sites such as flick'r allow students to access a variety of photographs that may be used for a variety of purposes. Some may be free to use with no attribution, others may require the source to be attributed. When using some of these photos on a website, it may be necessary to resize them, so pages load quickly. A size of about 65 kb is usually adequate.

If students are researching a topic, it is legally acceptable to copy 10% of a work, with attribution.Attribution in copyright law, is the requirement to acknowledge or credit the author of a work which is used or appears in another work. Attribution is required by most copyright and copyleft licenses, such as the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons licenses.

Attribution is often considered the most basic of requirements made by a license, as it allows an author to accumulate a positive reputation that partially repays their work and prevents others from claiming fraudulently to have produced the work. It is widely regarded as a sign of decency and respect to acknowledge the creator by giving him/her credit for the work. (Wikipedia) (I had better attribute this quote)

Learning with ICT is best when ICT is integral to learning.
ICT is integral to learning as a method of being able to efficiently find what is sort. Consulting the essential learnings for ICT, there are no ways of working, or knowledge and understanding as such; rather there is an emphasis on enquiring, creating, communicating and operating using the opportunities that Ict presents.
Kearsley and Shneiderman (1998) suggest in their paper "Engagement Theory" that highly effective learning is best achieved by providing small student teams with authentic, real world problem tasks that they can relate to, create a solution/product and then donate that back into the real world for authentic feedback.
Collaborative ICT tools are important to learning because they support collaborative, constructivist online learning.
Web 2.0 technologies offer significant advantages to educators and students in that there is now a fast growing repertoire of excellent resources designed and uploaded to public areas of the Web.
Authentic learning allows students to see real world applications in their learning.
When comparing a student-centred learning environment to a teacher-centric learning environment, the key difference is learning is negotiated between students and teacher.
ICT is integral to learning when effective integration is essential, not peripheral to the learning activity.
Guidelines for safe, legal, ethical operation online include protection of intellectual property, copyright, privacy and child protection.
"I have a responsibility to get through this content by ..."(a certain time) is not an example of student-centred teacher discourse.

The previous was one of the online quizzes we had to do for this course. As well as being a method of checking what has been learnt, it also represents a good way of acquiring knowledge. Because the questions by nature can not be too long, and the answers fit in them, they represent a good summary of what has been learned. They can also be used as a method of formative assessment, and simply as a method of remembering the important points of a topic. In a classroom, they would be useful to keep students engaged, and also may provide motivation for a reluctant participant. By having a variety of quizzes available for students after they have finished a task, they could be a method of extension, if not re inforcement. Mathletics online and reading eggs are two online sites that deal with Maths and reading respectively. Mathletics appeals to most primary age groups, reading eggs is useful for students who are just beginning to read, probably prep to yr2. It would also be possible to make verbal quizzes that could be loaded to I tunes, as a podcast; there could already be a variety on there (I haven't had a good look yet). Nintendo DS's also have a variety of educational games available.

podcasts

Podcasts can be small video or audio files that you upload to support student or staff learning. Read through our bank of Ideas for learning to help you get started.

They Might Be Giants produce a very engaging range of podcasts, useful for student's of many ages.
Your students or colleagues will be able to view video and audio by either going directly to the project room and downloading the podcast or selecting the RSS feed option so they are alerted when new podcasts become available.

If you don’t have suitable podcasts, select quality evaluated video/audio via the Curriculum Exchange resource centre.

from the learning place:

Useful links

School Torque - The show for Aussie kids, made by Aussie kids
www.schooltorque.com/index3.html
School Torque is a television program giving young Aussies a real voice in Australian Media. This site has loads of information for students wishing to develop a basic understanding of the principles, technology and techniques of video production.

GarageBand support - working with podcasts
www.apple.com/support/garageband/podcasts/
Learn how to create your own rich and professional sounding podcasts using the GarageBand tools.

Search for Education Podcasts
www.apple.com/itunes/
Search iTunes for educational material.

Teacher Tube
www.teachertube.com
Teacher Tube provides an online community for sharing instructional videos and fills a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners.

Search Atomic Learning for tutorials
education.qld.gov.au/learningplace/onlinelearning/atomic-learning.html
The Learning Place has recently added Atomic Learning Tutorials through our website. They can be accessed through Blackboard. If you can not login to Blackboard then you need to register for a course or community first. We recommend registering for Teaching in Blackboard.

Switched on Teachers community
www.learningplace.com.au/ea/sot
Join our Smart Classroom community of practice and share and review what teachers are doing around the start in make ICT integral to learning.

Also see comments and practicalities for podcasts, on this blog, on about 10/2. An advantage of print over spoken language is the ability to go back over and re read things that may have been missed. By taking advavtage of podcasting (both video and audio)students can access the podcast at a time that suits them and can listen / watch again if they require. There are a variety of educational podcasts available on ITunes.
Students can also make their own and upload them to Itunes. This again links to Keirsly and Schniedermanm's engagement hteory in that they are involved in a real world practical activity. If there are a variety of schools doing the same thing all over the world, it allows for students to see what others are doing and the conditions they live in all over the palce. This can be benficial for such subjects as SOSE. A step further than this is blogs which I will deal with in another post. The same things apply though. Students are able to request real world information from all over the place. This is much more engaging than simply looking up information in a text book (or online). It also allows more specific questions to be asked.

movie making redux

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ReversingTheNorm is a movie we made last year. It is a very basic one. Having had a lot of discussions with teachers of a range of grades, this is a technology which appears to very extremely applicable to the classroom. A friend of mine who teaches prep (and is very familair with this technology) openned my eyes to some of the possibilites of this. He got his preps to design a script, design a setting and then make a movie regarding litter. This is a real world concept, and they were able to make a movie using stop motion principles. All students had a role. All student were very involved in designing costumes, settings and script. As an engaging way to make a presentation, this appears to be way ahed of the standard poster/ speech etc. Where the opportunity presents itself, I will be using this in my classroom. The variety of learning available in this is much greater than any of the presentations I have seen previously, and much more engaging and real world for the students involved. Here is a link to Eric's movie, cotained in a quote from Eric:

You will need to be on the learningplace to view the movie we have made. Try it anyway.
http://eq21.janison.com/eq/podcast.asp?guid{49BF3288-8459-461B-83DD-CF57A0D65544}

It is very impressive to see what can be done.

voki

Get a Voki now!




http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/ also this one for downloading you tube

Multiliterate individuals are aware of the pitfalls inherent in technology while striving for empowerment through effective strategies for first discerning and then taking advantage of those aspects of changing technologies most appropriate to their situations.
Teachers wouldn't dream of giving students power tools without thinking through how they should be used in the safest way possible that still affords the greatest amount of learning and the most powerful outcomes. Likewise, no teacher would set up learning stations throughout the classroom without thinking through how they would embed the curriculum learning objectives in the activity, how they would organize the cooperating learning groups (which students to pair together), where to place which stations (reading stations need to be in a quiet location in the room and not next to the painting easel) and so on. Yet in our excitement of seeing how easily content is created using digital tools we often are so intent on getting students on with creating a web presence, that we do not think through possible pitfalls or most effective ways of connecting the learning to the medium being used. The 21st Century teacher needs to use these tools in his own personal learning before tossing the students the keys. We simply can't give away what we do not own.

The many forms that literacy now takes. This means extending notions of literacy beyond the spoken and written to include multi-modal and multi-mediated forms of communication, such as visual, audio, gestural and spatial patterns of meaning as well as electronic and digital media, on-line and on-screen.

I concurr with Peter's comments below. There are a variety of engaging ways it could be used, however, I am still not enamoured with it.

RSS Feeds

This link reveals that most children are, in fact, unrepentant sociopaths. http://www.theonion.com/content/news/new_study_reveals_most_children Therefore, to engage them, it is necessary to involve them in an activity that deals with one of their favourite subjects: themselves.
The onion is a satirical American news website. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows "subscription" to such sites. Whenever a new item appears, the subscriber is notified. Some series of Podcasts also allow subscription in the same way, and you could even subscribe to this or other blogs, if you wanted to. When veiwing this Blog, have a look down in the bottom left corner: it says "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". If you click on this link, whenever I put any more inane ramblings on here, you will be notified.
Here is another interesting blog that can be subscribed to, in a different way:
http://andyjthompson.wordpress.com/about/ Whenever anything new is posted, you will recieve email notification.

Engaging

Today’s digitally native students learn by doing, and learn by making mistakes. An example of this is computer gaming: the player learns by making mistakes how to avoid them the next time they are encountered. Many schools now have classroom rules and reminders that include: “have a go” and “give it your best shot” this can be seen to link to these concepts and models of learning.
Computer gaming can also be seen to link to some of the engagement theory. By incorporating learning into games, such as Reading eggs, and Mathletics, students can learn whilst they are playing. In the future gaming with an educational content will become prevalent.