Potentials of Web2.0

It seems everyone is starting to wake up to the potentials of web 2.0 :)

Over the next few months I am hoping to start an exciting project with some RTLB's in Nelson to develop a wiki and blogs to support their work.

For those of your from outside NZ - RTLB stands for "Resource Teacher of Learning & Behaviour". These extremely skilled teachers "work within schools around the country to provide advice and guidance to teachers of students who are at risk of low achievement due to learning and/or behaviour difficulties. This may include direct teaching, demonstrating practice, and providing teaching strategies so that students receive appropriate learning programmes and behaviour management on an ongoing basis." (Info from Min of Edu site)

Currently these very computer competent teachers produce an attractive booklet-type newsletter once a term that goes out to all the schools they are working with. Their newsletters contain great tips, ideas and links that are also useful to the general classroom teacher. Currently, however, these newsletters barely get shared around. These Resource Teachers are hoping to hook into the power of web2.0 to share their knowledge.... exciting stuff huh!

So, anyway I am starting to gather resources on wikis etc. This video by Commoncraft (people that brought us the great RSS video) is a great one to start learning about wikis... Wikis in Plain English (seen below)



PS - if you currently know of any RTLBs in NZ that are currently using blogs/wikis etc... I'd love to know so that I can share these links as examples. Thanks :)

Learning, Sharing & Connecting Online with 6 & 7 year olds!

How do you like my post title!... pretty long huh!
That's what happens when you just can't decide on the right words to title your presentation with... in the end I just chucked ALL the words in together!

This little video is the main part of my presentation for the Time4 Online Conference that is on right now! The section I'm involved in: Student Voices doesn't go live until the 31st May in a few days.

The 6 & 7 year olds in my class worked really hard to assist me with this video; they thought long and hard about what they wanted to talk about and we wrote a big plan from their list.

Luckily, I was given an ICT planning day (Thanks Paul!) to record and videotape my students for this presentation. They will be really excited tomorrow when I show them the finished product (although two students ended up on the 'cutting room floor' and got chopped out due to time constraints).

The video is under the section: Globalising and Personalising Online Learning - from Student Perspectives on Time4 Online. The presentations I've already seen on the site under: Collaborative Online Learning and The Collaborative Cauldron: Blogs and Wikis have been top notch and very interesting... if you haven't been to check them out yet, I highly suggest you do! (NB: open entry to other educators from around the world)

Presentation Blurb:

Take a tour through the 'digital side' of Room 9 at Nelson Central School.

Let these 6 & 7 year olds educate you about blogs and blogging and show you what they're doing with podcasting, wikis, blogs and more everyday in their classroom. Also, see the effect these "cool" tools have had in enhancing the home/school relationship.

These students may be young, but they're connected worldwide!
Share in their learning & experiences!

Actual Presentation:


Intro: What is a blog? Why do you like having one? - Answers by 6 & 7 year olds

How to Customise your Blogger Header!

Last week I spent some time on my latest "Digital Candy" favourite site: Cool Text.

I used Cool Text to create the image for the funky text header for this blog (boo hoo no one has commented on how nice it looks yet!).

I had planned to this weekend blog some instructions on how to customise your blogger header and add an image similar to what I've done.

But... don't you love it when someone else does it for you (and in a better format than you would have ever had time to make!).

Ryanne has made an excellent screencast (featured here) demonstrating exactly how to customise your blogger blog header and add an image.

The only thing I would suggest is that it takes a bit of playing around with to get it looking "just right".... and with some pictures a good image compressor wouldn't go astray either.

Go on:
Unleash your creativity!

Comment in another language!

Today I got my first comment in another language! - Spanish!

(See how having a translation feature on your blog is good!)

Naturally, I wanted to know what it said! It reads:

Rachel tu blog y el de tus niños y niñas es muy bueno me gusta seguirlo
por que me parece formidable la utilización que haces de este medio con
alumnado tan joven.Seguiré visitando estos blogs.

The only words I could read was "Rachel" and "blog" (my spanish is definitely not up to scratch!) I copied the text and googled to find a translator... to my surprise.... all translators are not created equally!

Alta Vista's Babel Fish translated the text as: "Rachel your blog and the one of your children and children I am very good likes to follow it so that the use seems to me formidable that beams of this means with pupils so joven.Seguiré visiting these blogs."

That clearly wasn't the best translation, so I tried another.

Free2Professional Translation translated it as: "Rachel your blog and that of your children and girls is very good i like to continue it because formidable the utilization seems me that you do of this middle with alumnado so youth.continue visiting these blogs."

Hmmmmm......

Lastly, I tried good old Google Translate: "Rachel your blog and the one of your children and children I am very good likes to follow it so that the use seems to me formidable that beams of this means with so young pupils. I will continue visiting these blogs."

Hello... that reads better!
Should have tried good old google first!