Teaching-with-Technology

The conversation that I had with my Yr 7 students made me think about why I have been asking them to blog.
I think one of the things that I could do would be to provide them with some really powerful opportunities to see the way the web can make a difference to people in the world.
An example would be to show them Sarah McLaughlin’s website and how she has created a video that simply shows what can be done with the $150,000 that would be normally be spent on making a video release for a new song.
Another would be to use the images that I came across on the reuters website which has a series of topical photo stories and images that you could use and maybe add a song to it to get more effect.
How powerful are images??? and the messages they can send. Can I help the students see this relationship and the power of being able to reach the world even though they are students who live in a small country town in the middle of Victoria.

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of Year 7 students today who, when told that part of their lesson today would be to add to their blog commented, “We don’t get why we have to blog.” They wondered what was the point of blogging. Good question (as usual) and it made me think more about what I was actually asking the students to do.
In the immediacy of the lesson I quickly rethought what I had planned to do and decided that we would brainstorm all the Information and Communication technology that we use. And then I asked the kids to think about the one or two things that they couldn’t ‘live’ without and to blog about that.
Seemed to solve the immediate problem but not the long term one.
Later in the day I caught up with the same kids and we talked a little more about what they might want to learn about.
I told them a little about Web2.0 and it’s development on the web. How it’s one of the reasons that I want to encourage them to blog. So that they, like so many other people in the world, have an opportunity to express their thoughts. To think about what is important to them.
They seemed more interested, especially when I suggested that they have more of a discussion about what they would like to learn about and that I would be happy to listen to them and see what we could come up with.
So that’s where I left it for today but it did make me think and wonder about what I could do to encourage them to realise the power of the web and the way it can make a positive difference in people’s lives.

This week I have been spending some time in two Year1-4 classrooms situated in a large room with an interactive whiteboard. Having started a minibeast theme this term we thought that it would be a ideal opportunity for the classes to start up a blog which would record the progress of their frog habitat in one class and the snail aquarium in the other. With each class I took them through the blog posting process and then worked with a small group to have them learn a little more so that they could support the effort of others to blog independently.
We also learnt how to upload images so that they can record the process visually.
Here is what we have done so far.
Wedderburn Wonders
I have found that using our class page in myclasses, to provide url links for both viewing and posting has been very supportive.

I’ve been looking for posts and blogs as I want to get more imformed about blogging. The more I look the more there is to find. Half an Hour: Adults and MySpace
Having said that, I think we just have to jump in and have a go. I’m setting up a blog for Grade 1-3 students who are in two classrooms and who are participating in a Minibeast theme.
We want to have a blog where students can log observations that they have made about what they have learnt.

In a parallel life I am also an Intel Teach to the Future Senior Trainer for the Victorian Department of Education and Intel Australia.
In previous posts I mentioned that I travelled to the US to train in a program called Intel Thinking with Technology. Over the next few months I will be introducing this program to Australia through some pilot workshops in three states.
This week I am talking at the Victorian CeLL/Intel Conference in Melbourne.
Rather than destroy a few trees photocopying the information, I thought I would put the links on this post and then have interested teachers go to my blog.
Australian Intel Education site.

Teachers can currently view three unit plans that have been written by Australian teachers in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.
The Thinking With Technology will be a pilot project and is designed to train Master Trainers and Participant Teachers in the use of the online thinking tools.
The course will help teachers to look at ways that we can use the online tools help students visually represent their understanding of complex and interconnected issues.
The Thinking with Technology tools are already freely available to all teachers and can be accessed under the section called Thinking Tools-Supporting Higher-Order Thinking.

Much has happened with our students and blogging since my last post. I’ve taken the advice of my good friend Jamie and decided that the best place for our Year 7&8 students to place their blogs is in the much safer environment of edublogs and more specifically learnerblogs.
We now have a blog portal for Wedderburn College bloggers and this provides links to the student’s blogs.