Final Course Reflection

Here I am at the end!
Despite the feeling initially that there was so much material to cover, the course soon transformed into a fascinating guided tour of the highlights of the the Web 2.0 landscape.  I enjoyed going at my own pace, the optional detours, and the reflections of fellow travellers.
Happy memories of places I'm keen to return to are:

• Blogging (great to reflect yourself and with others)
• Twitter (a wealth of topical information, provided you search with a plan in mind)
• Google Drive (tools to collaborate and collect information)
• Animoto (engaging slide shows)
• Bubbl.us (collaborative mind-mapping)
• Feedly (all your websites in one place)
• Scootle (huge potential for finding, sharing and commenting on resources)

I think Bloom's Digital Taxonomy will be a useful reference for curriculum planning and in thinking about the lower order and higher order digital skills that our students need.  It's interesting to reflect that many students would routinely use many of the Remembering, Understanding, Applying and Analysing skills.  As teachers, we can also facilitate the acquisition of Evaluating and Creating skills through our knowledge of a range of Web 2.0 tools.

Of course, we also have much to learn from our students.  Now, more than ever, they have their own networks and resources outside of the classroom.  The more we can all share this knowledge, the better the learning will be.

The types of tools available will inevitably change.  But those which allow us to work together, to learn and to create knowledge will have the greatest impact on all students.

Finally, I looked around the Course Resource Collection which has a wealth of still more ideas to try.  I rediscovered Voki there, so I'll leave my farewell to my avatar:

Module 10

Wikis, Nings and Google Sites have great potential for a class to create online material together that they can share.  In my experience, students are pretty good at creating websites and will choose this as a way of presenting their research.  The teacher Google sites link was broken, but I found another link that had a good overview of uses.

I've also used the small groups feature of Edmodo to allow particular groups of students to work together on a project, and I think I would now incorporate Google Docs also to allow them to create material in this environment.

Module 9

Quite a lot to take in in this module!  I've used Scootle a little bit before but hadn't explored the sharing options.  The user guide is quite useful and there are some overview teacher videos on Youtube that are also good.  I don't think many teachers at my school know that we could be all sharing learning paths, so this might be something to look into.  Although it takes a bit of effort to both access Scootle and find relevant material, once you've collected some good resources into a learning path things are easier.  I've shared paths with students via a link that includes the PIN, so they only need one click to get there.

I'm still not convinced about using social networking sites in the classroom.  Second Life is an interesting idea and it's intriguing that tertiary institutions are setting up virtual campuses there.  We have a no Facebook policy at school, with no staff-student contact less than 2 years after students leave.  Twitter is perhaps the most promising to me.  It seems like it could be a way of gathering information on current events as they occur - eg. who is being affected by the storm; are there any rainbows; what street art is around; are there any celebrities around the area; what's happening today in science week; where can I find examples of corrosion, birds, butterflies, frogs, spring flowers... Paper.li might also be a good way of combining student tweets or those on a particular topic into an online newspaper.  I have a LinkedIn account but haven't really explored how connections could come together (I seem to get a lot of messages from Richard Branson!).

We have started using Edmodo over the last year or so and I'm a big fan.  I like the fact that it is a secure online environment, that it's easy to share content and have class conversations, that I can collect and mark work online and that I can connect with other teachers and share ideas.  The customer support is exceptional.  And it's free.

Module 8

It was really interesting to set up a Feedly account.  Although not all websites have an RSS feed it was great to be able to see at a glance what all my favourite sites were up to.  In the classroom you might use it as a way of starting discussions on a current topic, or perhaps following students' own blogs.  Although not as up to the minute (or overwhelming) as Twitter, following feeds would be a way of getting a daily update on news in a manageable way.

Module 7

At school our library runs sets of Delicious bookmarks for various subjects and research projects within each subject.  As a comparison, I tried Diigo in this module.  It seemed very easy to use and could be a great way of a class generating resources together.  I like the way links are commented on and annotated, and the permanence it offers in comparison to Twitter references.  I would like to try it for a specific class project.  It could also be interesting to use for my own professional learning ... if only I had the time to check it!

Diigo stores cached versions of websites that are part of your collection even if the original disappears.  This is a great advantage because more often than not the websites you point students at change and links are broken.  Files within websites are also saved, such as pdfs and mp3s, although I'm sorry that videos aren't saved as these are those critical things that disappear just when you want to use them again!

I converted a set of links that I use for Year 10 Biology from a word document to a Diigo list Life on Earth - a walking tour to see how the process works.

Module 6

Had a bit of a play with Picassa Web Albums/Google + (it seemed to jump between the two).

It does make it very easy to then link a photo to your blog.  Would be a useful way for a class to share their photos from an excursion or camp (the photo above was from a city maths excursion that included Hosier Lane).  I've used Flikr before to store and share photos, and I can see that this Google version would make connections between Google applications easier.

Module 5

A friend of mine introduced me to mind mapping with Freemind.  Bubbl.us reminds me of that, with the advantage of being online.  Below is my experiment with Bubbl.us, embedding a mindmap of this course that will grow as I progress through the modules (as well as zooming, you can click and drag the map to move it around).

Mind maps are a great way of brainstorming with structure.  I used Freemind in teaching Environmental Science building out from question "How to save the planet?" as we covered various topics over a number of weeks.  In that same class I had students make Glogs using at least 5 ideas from our shared mindmap.  They had a lot of fun making them and we rearranged the tables so the room became more like a design studio!

I also think that Prezis are amazing - although I think you have to use them selectively.  All that zooming can lead to motion sickness!  I've used them mainly to give overviews of a course or topic, such as introducing Year 10 Biology