Tag Archives: Fine Focus

Edublogs webinar overview – “Show & Tell”

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Introduction

This session was a little different –  discussion in a previous Serendipity session gave rise to the idea of taking a brief look at how individual teachers use a tech tool of their choice. Thus the “Show and Tell” session was born. We had three fantastic short presentations from Rodney (@techyturner), Tracey (@mmebrady) and Sandra giving us great insights into exciting ways to use technology with our students.

The Session

The session was recorded as usual – including some preliminary chat about the wildlife in our respective backyards. Please let me know if you access the recording.

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Rodney started proceedings by telling us about “clickers” and the many applications of these in his classroom. He explained that he is able to get instant feedback on student understanding and how much the students enjoy using the clickers. This prompted text chat discussion and questions about the range of activities that can incorporate clickers.

Tracy told us how she has used GoogleVoice in her classroom and has utilised the students’ own mobile devices – a great solution for someone who has little technology available in their classroom. Because Tracy teaches French the oral dimension is critical and Tracy has used GoogleVoice to enable her students to respond orally to questions posed by her Voki.

Sandra finished off the session by telling us about how she has used “Max’s Toolbox” with very young students. This is an interface that is used within an MSOffice environment and has icons and tools that are simple to use. Sandra showed us how Kindy students have created simple slides on themes relevant to them.

Conclusion

This session was excellent – it was a fantastic way to share teaching strategies and tools, without the pressure on one individual to fill a whole session. Three seemed to be just the right number of presenters and we had lots of discussion and questions around the topics. “Show & Tell” is definitely a theme to repeat!

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday June 23rd at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday June 24th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic of the day.

Edublogs webinar overview – Conferences are a’changing

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Introduction

In this Edublogs Fine Focus session (recording here) We took a look at the way conferences have changed/are changing and the pros and cons of  the tradional compared to the new style for participants. This topic was triggered by the number of virtual conferences I have participated in as attendee or presenter this year compared with the fact that I have attended no face-to-face ones at all.

The Session
We started with a look at our own perceptions of what constitutes a “new” style conference in comparison to what typifies the “old” style conference.

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We also did a quick poll on what sort of conferences (if any) we had attended this year. After sharing our various understandings of old and new style conferences. We moved on to consider what we felt were the advantages and disadvantages of each. This provided food for thought and certainly raised a couple of advantages of the traditional style that hadn’t occurred to me. Personally I love virtual conferences as they allow me to “conference” in comfort from home & make it much easier for me to attend global events.

Conclusion

This session was very active as everyone had lots of ideas about new and old style conferences. For the full “flavour” catch the recording. On a personal basis I’m not sure I did a very good facilitation job on this Fine Focus, I didn’t have much time to prepare and was also a bit distracted by the fact that I was due to present at the online Global Education Conference #globaled10 an hour after the end of the session. Of which I will be posting soon.

Next Week

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session, one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic. Then join us on Thursday Nov 25th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (6pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Nov 26th at 1am CEST, 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

If you are a regular visitor to our webinars you will know that we alternate “Fine Focus” sessions on specific topics with “Serendipity” the unconference sessions where we choose a topic by poll at the start of the session. Sometimes the very fact of being asked for “hot topics” or other ideas for discussion or learning tends to make our minds blank. This has prompted me to start a Serendipity Wallwisher for topic suggestions. Please visit the wall and add your ideas for Serendipity topics so that we have more choices to consider. Some of these ideas might also form the basis for future “Fine Focus” sessions.