Web 2.0 Ideas for Olympic Games lessons and activities

Photo of Omanu Beach taken with my Nokia 6121 in panorama mode yesterday - 7 Aug, 2008

Thanks to @murcha for this great set of Olympic activities and lessons using web 2.0 tools. I plan to put some in to action this week and post some of the results from my students here when time allows. Meanwhile it has been great seeing our rowers in action, and a special highlight for me was seeing 'our' yachtsman (who is still a schoolboy) walking into the stadium during the opening ceremony. Go Peter Burling!!!
Really happy to have found this site too which offers some free, alternative ways to view the Olympics - enjoy!

Circle of the wise

Just reread Vicki Davis' Cool cat teacher blog post about 'Circle of the wise' and am thinking in some ways this is a good way to approach teaching in a classroom environment. Several things that have occurred or evolved this week within the range of students I am involved with are worth discussing here. Firstly I have very limited access to ICT so am trying to be increasingly inventive in ways of using mobile devices. Losing my cellphone early in the week and having to then find a reasonably priced replacement was another challenge - not having the means or inclination to spend a small fortune on 3G iphone was also part of the consideration so in the end I stuck with Nokia as I have had no problems with reliability or of Vodafone's service. So I got this (see left) and am about to embark on learning the foibles of the phone, my students have enjoyed taking pics of themselves and putting themselves and their friends as wallpaper for that class time so now it's my turn! The small phone is the one my friend Toni Twiss is using as her test phones for her efellows research.  Thanks to Toni reading this blog yesterday I now have the correct photo, and a whole lot more info about the good things my phone can do - panorama photos ROCK!
Some other noteworthy events this week were:
1. A group of students completed a submission for the FairGo Ad Awards - focus was to create their own political party. 30 seconds is not long in which to get your message across and creating a 30 second advertisement can be more demanding than creating a 30 minute media product so I was very impressed with their approach and their tenacity in completing and submitting this product on time!
2. Another group of students were not engaging with the novel - S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' so they have been assigned the task of creating audio recordings for the rest of the class to listen to. Ah ha, they are now READING the novel in a group. Challenge here was that we had nothing we could record digitally on to so a voice recorder has been ordered and thanks to PB Tech should arrive at school this week. If it is successful we intend to purchase a few more. Meanwhile, the cassette tape they have recorded on to date seems positively clunky!
3. The third thing I want to reflect on from this week at school is the enthusiasm of senior students to be involved in activities that engage with the real word but that can still gain recognition in terms of the dreaded 'credit system.' Two opportunities for this have been our possible involvement with Seeka in Te Puke, where the students will meet to plan and produce a Health and Safety Induction video - and a student who will liaise with our Principal's secretary to produce material for the school magazine.

Was great to finish the week on such a high with these students who now see their opportunities for the rest of this semester as being a lot more exciting, and all helps to enthuse others - our circle of the wise widens.

My Plick

NBC's best pictures of the year is a new favourite for me at MyPlick,
but there are a lot of other great presentations there. I plan to use this site for presentations from now on - hopefully it will work with Sliderocket, my other new favourite tool for presentations. Although Sliderocket is currently in Beta and by invitation only it is shaping up for me as really cool - especially with the ability to upload existing Powerpoint files.
Meanwhile, back in school my Year 13 media students have been having some fun with Animoto - Elise showed her presentation to us the day after I introduced the class to it. This just proves that students will do 'work' at home if we make it fun enough - she had even read some of the tips!

Comics as texts

Teaching with comics resources from thinkfinity arrived (via my friend Miguel Guhlin) at a very opportune time. Having ordered a supply of graphic novels through our National Library service, I had been wondering about some ways to use these for more than purely a source of recreational reading to encourage reluctant readers into texts.

Another very useful resource about Powerpoint and how to is here.

'We think' sums it all up nicely

This animation by Charles Leadbeater sums up a lot about web 2.0 and how students can operate in real world situations today.
I intend to show it as a lesson starter for classes to encourage them to see themselves as powerful learners.


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Now playing: Radio New Zealand - Belfast Touring Poets Group
via FoxyTunes

Moodle morning

A team of teachers and associates braved the cold and surrendered part of their teaching recess on Wednesday to join in what turned out to be a very collegial and productive experience. Several Mount Maunganui College teachers were joined by Jan from Trident at Whakatane, Richard from the Katikati Matamata ICT PD cluster, Mel Gibb from Tauranga Boys College and Amy Wilson from Bay of Plenty Polytech - along with some of our children and Mel's new (boxer dog) baby Millie. The best part of the day was that we all enjoyed helping each other in an extremely supportive learning environment.
To me this was a classic example of the way classrooms/learning environments should be structured. What do you want to achieve? What steps could you take to achieve this? Who can help you? Why are you doing this (purpose/audience)? Where do you plan to publish/create/post it? When do you plan to complete it - are there steps in your timeline?
For those who came with a specific purpose in mind they were happy to have achieved those goals, for others - once they had explored some of the possibilities of establishing a moodle class or metacourse - they were back to some solid thinking and planning before we take the next steps.
Clearly it is essential to know what we want our learners to gain from an experience before we set it up - it is essential that we are not continuing to follow the time honored tradition of busy work that merely keeps learners occupied. If ICT is to be integrated successfully into learning we must constantly keep asking ourselves why we are using a particular tool and how will it help learners gain what they need, and to remember that the needs are extremely broad and varied - maintain the no size fits all approach.

Maungatapu Winners

These great kids are the age group winners in the Jane and the Dragon animation competition - well done, they created three great animations. Their creations are a reflection of a huge amount of effort and some wonderful team work, not to mention the support of their teacher Vicki Coe. It was great to meet them and view their prizewinning products today, and to be able to show them Marvin software which now has them enthused about creating more animated stories next term.