Tag Archives: web2.0

Edublogs webinar – Global Student Blogging Challenge

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Introduction

In this recorded session Sue Wyatt (@tasteach) gave us a fascinating look at the Global Student Blogging Challenge soon to get underway for its first run of 2012.

The Session

Sue started with a little of the history of the Challenge which has been happening for several years and has grown phenomenally since its inception.

Sue then shared  and talked about a variety of pages from the Challenge. She told us about how the Challenge works for students and teachers.  This included a look at some of the activities and answering our questions as we looked at the pages.

There was much interest in the mentoring aspect of the Challenge. Sue asks for volunteer mentors each of whom is asked to visit and comment on a number of student blogs.

If you are interested in the Challenge and are an educator, future educator or perhaps a retired educator then please consider volunteering as a mentor. With over 1,000 students in the last Challenge and more likely for March 2012 Sue needs 30-40 mentors. As Sue said in her presentation you don’t need to be an expert blogger – the role is more about visiting, commenting and sometimes making suggestions on what students might write about. Checkout the Mentor Registration Page and be a part of the Challenge!

There are already students and classes registering for the March 2012 Challenge so if you are a teacher with class or student blogs and you want to participate it’s time to think about registering right now!

Conclusion

A great session – the Global Student Blogging Challenge is such an exciting event. Each year I try to plan for involving at least some of my students and/or colleagues. so far this hasn’t happened. Partly this is because of the complexity (for me anyway) of initiating blogging with my totally online regional literacy students who often struggle with computer literacy as well. However this year we have a project which will enable us to try out a model for getting students started with blogs by using them as a simple e-portfolio. So although the March Challenge will not be possible I still have hopes for September!

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday February 16that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday February 17th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate 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.

Edublogs webinar overviews – three in one post

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Why three in one?

Apologies all for very tardy posting! As usual the return to work after our long summer break meant a frenetic few days before returning and subsequently 2 weeks where I have felt more and more overwhelmed by the number of things I need to do.

Introduction  to Serendipity – Teachers and blogging

This recorded Serendipity session took a look at teachers and blogging – whether all teachers should be blogging and just what should be made public/included in a professional blog. We had thunderstorms during this session and I missed a bit in the middle (power outage) which took out my desktop and also temporarily my backup laptop internet (wireless modem). Everyone just carried on with the discussion – my idea of a perfect session is when everyone just carries on if the moderator drops out 🙂

The Session

We followed our usual format of putting our topic ideas on the whiteboard and then polling to choose the subject for discussion. The winner was a combined topic around “All teachers should blog” and How much private info/thoughs should we reveal on a professional blog.

We started with a whiteboard although, as is often the case when we are a small group who all have audio, the discussion was quite audio based.  Discussion ranged around the pros of blogging for teachers, should it be compulsory as part of professional development and some privacy thoughts.

Conclusion

This session illustrated to me that sometimes you just can’t be sufficiently prepared for contingencies. During the session we had a major thunderstorm and I lost power. I had anticipated the possiblity and was also in the room as a moderator via laptop and wireless modem. However the strike that put the main  power off also temporarily knocked out the wireless modem and thus kicked me out of the BbC room. Luckily the participants (all very experienced users) just carried on. In retrospect I probably should have made someone else moderator as well!

Introduction to “Do you Toon?”

The second webinar in this post was an Edublogs Fine Focus – Do you Toon? As always this was recorded. This topic happened because I have cartoons and animations on my mind at the moment. One of the mini-projects that I will be using with students in my National VET E-learning (NVELS) project “E-xtraordinary Learning For A Digital Age” (ELFADA) is for the students to explore some video and cartoon texts and then make their own and embed them in their blogs, so I am exploring the tools available so that I can focus on the easiest to use. It seemed a good opportunity for one of our occasional explore and share sessions.

The Session

When we explore tools in webinars one of the major considerations is how easy it is to learn the tool because we always have in mind the potential for using with students without them needing a long time to acquire the basics. We began with a list of 5 tools (including one iPad app which no-one explored leaving us with four). The first

activity was a look at whether we knew any of the tools. Then we followed a similar pattern to previous tool exploration sessions. Everyone chose a tool to explore from Go! Animate, Make Beliefs Comix, Pixton and Toon Way.

Having decided which tool to explore the group dispersed for ten minutes to explore their chosen tools. Then we reconvened to share ideas on: ease of learning the basics; how engaging to use; possible lessons/contexts; whether we would use with students.

Conclusion

These sessions are always both fun and informative! Exploring something new in a short time frame is always challenging but is authentic in terms of potential use with students. Students need to be able to grasp the basics of a tool quickly because it is a tool and not the primary learning objective of the activity. In my context, with often disengaged and/or not very ICT literate students, I find that tools have to be both quick and easy to learn in order to engage students and enable them to develop their “text” (visual, oral and written) creation skills.

Introduction to Serendipity – Strategies for overwhelmed teachers

Reaching the end of the marathon post with this recorded Serendipity session. This is an issue close to all of us who teach in any context. Teaching itself is demanding enough with the need to meet individual student needs across many levels, learning preferences and personal interests. Add the demands of curriculum and standardised testing or excessive audit requirements, and the increasingly heavy administrative load (this latter often the result of a requirement to justify almost every one of the myriad professional decisions we make each day) and it is unsurprising that the majority of good and conscientious “teachers” feel overwhelmed!

The Session

As always we started with ideas for the discussion topic of the week, and then moved on to vote on these. Perhaps predictably “Strategies for overwhelemed teachers” was the absolute winner. Certainly as one who has just returned to my role as a lecturer in public vocational education at the start of a new academic year in Australia I already feel overwhelmed, and for colleagues in the northern hemisphere that return to teaching after the Christmas holiday in the darkest, coldest time of the year can (as I well remember) be soul destroying in itself.

We decided to take a brief look at what it was that made us feel overwhelmed – inevitably the main culprits are those things we have to do that don’t directly relate to teaching eg admin/paperwork and also the ever moving “goalposts” imposed from outside.

Then we moved on to look at the strategies for dealing with these.

Between us we actually had two whiteboards of ideas – one is shown above. As always the discussion and sharing was not limited to the whiteboard and there were also many textchat and audio contributions to our thoughts making this a session where it is well worth catching the recording. One of the most significant things that several of us took away at the end of the session was the awareness that we all have the same issues wherever we are in the world.

Conclusion

I think this session will resonate with teachers everywhere! I certainly found it helped me with my current sense of being overwhelmed. In common with others I find/have found that my global PLN has been a phenomenal support for me in helping me to survive and manage all those pressures that overwhelm me. Often the the support comes in practical help, advice and suggestions. Sometimes it is just that with a global PLN there is someone I can connect with and chat to via Twitter in that “dark night of the soul” when once again I am up at 3am working because the “overwhelmedness” is preventing me from sleeping!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. This will be a fantastic session with Sue Wyatt (@tasteach) who will tell us about (and invite you and your students to take part in) the Global Student Blogging Challenge that she has now been running twice a year for the last few years. Join us on Thursday February 9th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning February 10th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overview – What poll was that?

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Introduction

In this recorded session we took a look at if, and how, we use/have used e-polling or surveys. The idea for this session was triggered when I used a poll in the overview for last week’s Serendipity and wondered about the different polling and survey tools that people use.

The Session

We started with a look at whether we had used polling/surveys either as a respondent or as an information gatherer. Then moved on to the platforms on which we have used them, finding that most of us had used polling/surveys on one or more of: Twitter, Facebook, blogs, mobile devices and of course “Other” including Learning Management Systems, Elluminate/BlackboardCollaborate and email!

Then came the most interesting part of the session where we started to look at tools we have used and/or that we know about. We began this by using a whiteboard to name those tools we have used as information gatherer, and as respondent and also those we have heard about.

Next came the best bit where members of the group shared an experience of using a poll/survey tool, We had brief looks at GoogleForms (including a quick play), Facebook, Flubaroo and PollDaddy before running out of time and moving on to our best takeaways from the session. This session flew by and we reached the end far too soon!

Conclusion

This was so interesting – I love to know what tools others are using and to hear about the contexts and purposes. I had a major takeaway in that although I was aware of GoogleForms in a vague way and had responded to polls via that tool I didn’t realise how many different question types there were. Neither had I really taken in the fact that a spreadsheet is automatically created for the answers thus making subsequent data analysis very easy.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday January 19that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday January 20th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate 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.

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – End of year activities!

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Stop Press – last two days of voting #eddies!

We have been shortlisted for the Edublogs awards Thank you so much if you nominated us. And thank you also if you are voting for us.

ONLY TWO DAYS TO GO – deadline 11:59pm US EST Tuesday 13th December. That’s the early hours of Wednesday morning in Europe and late morning/early afternoon Wednesday here in Australia  if you would like to vote for us (Serendipity/FineFocus Webinars in Edublogs award)s click HERE to go to the site, see nominations and cast your vote.

Online End of Year/Christmas Party

We invite you to our End of Year/Christmas Party on 15th/16th December – come along with virtual “goodies” for the festive table, and if you feel inventive bring a game to share and play. Take a look at the overviews for our parties in 2009 and 2010 to see the sorts of things we do. After the party the webinars will be taking a two week break returning on 5th/6th January with the first Serendipity session of 2012!

Introduction

Apologies for the delay in posting – despite starting leave at the end of Friday I have been finishing off a variety of work “loose ends” over the weekend. My holiday begins appropriately with this post. We had a fun session – very Serendipitous and, as always, recorded (though I was a bit late starting the recording – I don’t seem to get a recording reminder in BbC11 as I did in Elluminate10) so you can catch up on what we did it if you missed it!

The Session

We started as usual by putting our topic ideas on the whiteboard and then polling to choose the topic for consideration. The winner was “End of year activities”.

Once the topic was chosen we used a whiteboard to collect some of our ideas and thoughts on this including some links. As usual ideas were also shared via text chat and audio. There were many ideas with Christmas themes around the 12 days of Christmas and collaborative activities such as drawing a snowman. This prompted the sharing of the “Drawastickman” link by Carole (@Coach_Carole).

Never one to pass up an opportunity for playing I opened the link and App Shared it so that we could play out the story collaboratively by taking control of my desktop and taking turns to complete a stage in the story. This was great fun – working via someone else’s desktop is a huge challenge because of the inevitable lag time. Drawing is particularly hard because of this lag and everyone did a great job as we finished the story.

Drawastickman is a nice toy to play with and would be even better if there were a variety of scenarios/themes leading to different stories!

Conclusion

This session definitely put me into a holiday mood! Now I have to come up with a good online game for the party next week.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, in which we let our hair down for the “End of Year/Christmas Party” Bring “goodies for the festive table and if you feel inventive an online party game and join us on Thursday December 15th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning December 16thd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room. Remember we have a two week break after the party and will return on 5th/6th January with the first Serendipity session of the year

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – “cool tools!”

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Introduction

We were a small group this week, however as usual the session was  recorded, so if you missed it you can catch the recording.

The Session

The session followed the usual Serendipity format with a whiteboard for topic ideas from participants and then a poll to choose the topic for discussion. The consensus was for us to merge two topics “Tech toys for motivation” and “Cool tools” and talk about and share some of our personal favourites.

A small group means that everyone has an opportunity to talk on the microphone and this is what we did! We started with a whiteboard on which we wrote some initial tools but soon moved the taking turns to talk about personal cool tools (mainly via audio but with some textchat particularly for sharing links)

When it came to my turn rather than just talk about a tool I Application Shared Wordle – one of my personal favourite “cool and motivational tools”. Then we took turns to have control of desktop so everyone could add their own choice of cool tools. Thus we were able to build a collaborative “Cool Tools” wordle of some of our favourites.

We had time for a further “round” of sharing. Once again each briefly talking about a tool of our choice, with some Application Sharing and links shared in text chat.

Conclusion

This session was a great one to be part of! As usual with sessions where we share favourite tools there were ones new to me, so I have new tools to explore.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, in which we take a look at the contrasting examples of Diigo and Symbaloo for online/social bookmarking in “I’m sure I saw that somewhere!”  Join us on Thursday December 1st at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning December 2nd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room

 

Edublogs webinar overview – “Facebook won’t go away!”

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session, recording here, was similar to one I did recently with colleagues. I am currently introducing some Web2.0 tools to some of my colleagues and Facebook is one of these.

The Session

The session was fun! I used video and application share,I  had intended a web tour also but BbC wasn’t co-operating so the web-tour became another applicaion share. We started with some general discussion about Facebook and moved on to some of the uses and pros and cons of using with students – including the fact that it is a “place” where many students already “hang out”.

Next we took a look at some of the practicalities of using Facebook in education and the issues around privacy and confidentiality. This included a look at the practicalities of having a second account and the advantages of groups over fan pages. We finished with a quick look at the need for management by group owners to ensure that behaviour remains acceptable.

Conclusion

I felt that I talked too much in this session – something I often feel to be the case when I am the “presenter” as well as the facilitator.  However text chat was active and there was great input on whiteboards so the session seemed to be effective. Also as usual I tried to include too much! So the session was a bit rushed towards the end.

Next Webinar

Our next session facilitated by Tracy Watanabe (@tracywatanabe) one of our regular participants will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday November 10that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday November 11th 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.

Edublogs webinar overview – Social Media With Students?

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session was really a spin-off from last week’s Serendipity session where we touched on using Twitter with students but didn’t really have time to explore the issues. This was a great session with lots of whiteboard activity and as usual the session was recorded.

The Session

Although the session title refers to “social media” this is such a massive topic that I focussed on social networking with students and chose what are probably the two most well known and widely different from one another social networks – Twitter and Facebook. I then added in GooglePlus because although this is very new I suspect it will ultimately be extensively used with students because of the way circles can be used.

We started with some polling to find out where everyone was “coming from” on using social networks with students. Next we set the scene with a brief look at some recent items on social netwroks with students including two short videos. This led on the the quesion of whether we should use this type of tool with students – the poll result was a resounding “Yes” and we quickly filled a whiteboard with the positives and negatives.

The next considerations were the contexts and circumstances in which we might use social networking with our students. This was followed by sharing how (if we currently do) we use one or more of these with students. We finished with a poll on whether we now felt it was more likely that we would use these with students. There is also a slide with live links for the videos and some other items of interest for social networking with students.

Conclusion

This session worked well – it followed a similar pattern to most of the other discussion type topics that I facilitate in Fine Focus sessions. As is often the case I felt that I talked too much, however everyone seemed to enjoy the session. The use of video was something I don’t do often – although I have recently been showing colleagues how to incorporate it via the multimedia window. It worked fairly well although the videos did not play for one participant despite being mp4 and so likely to be playable by the majority of people. This is one of the reasons that I tend to avoid video the other is bandwidth and download time issues. Even though both videos were small files they still took considerable time to download to participants after they joined the room, so it isn’t a good idea to play videos very early in the session. However I will be trying to include more video because I feel it is something I need to become more familiar with.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday September 15that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday September 16th 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

Edublogs webinar overview – Quick & easy online tools

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session was a little different from usual! I am always trying to think of new topics and different ways we can approach these in our virtual room. As most of you know I have a permanent “bee in my bonnet” about the webinars being participative and interactive and I try very hard to avoid sessions where I talk too much! This session was (I think) very interactive as well as exciting – checkout the recording and see what you think.

The idea behind this session comes out of my desire to always have some – easy to learn, quick to use and no need to register – online tools at my fingertips. Many of my students (previously face-to-face and now online) lack motivation and engagement – they are often unwillingly in education/training – so being able to give them a task that involves using a quick to learn tool to create a visual outcome can be an effective engagement strategy.

The Session

For the session I collected together ten links to what I hoped would be small easy to learn and use online tools. Some of these I was already familiar with, some I had heard of but not used and some were completely unknown to me and found through a search for a type/function of tool.

We started with a series of quick polls to gauge familiarity with each of the ten tools. The degree of familarity ranged from some people using a particular tool quite regularly to at least one tool with no-one having any experience of its use.

The main part of the session was based on a quick exploration of a chosen tool by each participant. For this we had a table of the tools and everyone put their name beside the tool they were going to explore.  We then allowed a timed ten minutes to “play” with the tool – the rationale being that if it took much more than ten minutes to use at the most basic level then it would not be very useful with students as a quick re-engager.

The Tools – Function and links (these are in no particular order)

The “playtime” was followed by quick evaluations from individuals of their chosen tool against the following criteria: ease of use; how quick to learn; potential usefulness with students.

Conclusion

This different way of running the session was exciting for me and seemed to be very much enjoyed by everyone. I really loved the evaluations and comments from everyone on the tools they had explored. It felt like a very valid way to investigate tools that we might ask students to learn and use very quickly. I am well aware that if I can’t use the basics of a tool in 5-10 minutes then it is unreasonable of me to expect my students to do so. I think if we have a favourite tool that we use often we sometimes forget how long it took us to get started with that tool when we ask our students to come to grips with it in minutes!

Feedback on the session was very positive with suggestions that we do something similar again and also some terrific ideas for variations such as small groups evaluating a tool and feeding back or taking a tool away and then coming back to a later session with a more detailed evaluation.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday September 1stat 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday September 2nd 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

Edublogs Serendipity webinar – projects for classes & global sharing

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Introduction

The chosen topic for this session was a bit of a blend because we had a larger than usual selection of topics we combined two similar ones “Class based projects” and “Sharing projects with other classes around the world”.  This was a terrific session recorded as usual, and with many ideas shared on the whiteboard, in text and through audio.

The Session

We did a double poll as we had more than five possible topics and then were able to combine  the most popular as they were about projects. This was a very lively session with lots of discussion through the whiteboard, in the text and via audio.

There were also a number of references to and links for projects just starting or already in progress and also for some former ones. Some (hopefully most) of those mentioned in the session are given here!

Student Global Blogging Challenge

GlobalClassroom2011

Travelling With Mr Devil

Kindergarten Postcard Exchange!

The LunchBox Project

Flat Stanley Project

TravelBuddies

Conclusion

This session has made me think again about some of the activities I have done with my regional students in the past (for example a publicity or tourist leaflet for their own community) and how we might take this global. I was also interested in how many of the ideas were based around non-tech ways of sharing but further enhanced by the inclusion of an “e”-facet.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session this week something very different. “Try a new small e-toy!” in which we will take a look at some small and useful “e-toys” we might use with students and share our thoughts about them. Join us on Thursday August 25th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning August 26th in Australia – in the usual Elluminate room

Edublogs webinar overview – “ESL with e-stuff”

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Introduction

For this session we were joined by Jane Curry, who is @parrpakala on Twitter, and a group of her students. Jane and her students talked with us about some of the “e-stuff” they use in their English language learning. The students also told us a little about their backgrounds and former school experiences.  Checkout the recording to hear and see this exciting session.

The Session

The session was informal and was very much a conversation with Jane telling us about some of the e-activities her students undertake and then the students joining the conversation and answering some of our questions about their learning.

Jane uses her “Youth Class Blog” as a thread for the activities and Web2.0 tools she uses with her students. Recent activities include a VoiceThread.

Jane also records her students and uploads the videos – fantastic for language learners to see and hear themselves speaking the language.  We watched one of these videos where Lan talks about the school she went to as a child.

This session was itself another Web2.0 experience for Jane’s students who overcame their shyness to join in, answer questions and tell us a little about their own thoughts and experiences.

Conclusion

For me this was a really exciting session! I love it when we have students involved in webinars in some way and would be delighted for it to happen more often.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday August 18that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday August 19th 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