Flickr and Creative Commons (Module 4)

Flickr shows great potential for use in the classroom. One high potential idea is to have students load up photographs as they complete all mandatory practicals. The idea being that the photograph would aid their recall as they revise for the HSC.

See a shot from my Flickr account below. It's a tad blurry as a student took the shot.



One of my favorite bloggers is Alvin Trusty. Alvin is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and the Director of the Educational Technology Program at the University of Findlay. See his professional bio here. He has shared a number of quality presentations on a range of contemporary EdTech issues, his PowerPoints have been skilfully compiled and are generally first rate.




Presenter's Guide to Copyright from Alvin Trusty on Vimeo.

Module 4 done.

Google docs (Module 3)

Google docs is a wonderful tool for use within and outside the classroom.

I have used it several different ways:
- collaborative documents when working on a project,
- forms to survey a class and collate the data,
- folders to share documents with a conference audience.

There is also the capability to spreadsheet, create presentations and draw. A truly powerful tool. I enjoyed writing this post as I took the opportunity to visit the docs area of my two active Google profiles and seeing the information stored there brought back some fond memories.

Along similar lines, I also have a Windows Live Sky Drive, but more on that in a later post.

Off and Blogging

Module 2 of Web 2.0 for CEO Sydney Teachers

I've resisted suggestions that I should start a blog for some years. My last employer was St Joseph's College and I was fortunate enough to have shared an all things digital passion with Judy O'Connell. Joeys was a great place to work, well resourced and an executive that supported and encouraged experimentation. Judy's pretty out there with her thinking and that was great for me as I was energised and no doubt tried many things that I otherwise might not have done.

This year I moved to St Aloysius' College and have found myself in another supportive environment. Much to my surprise, I started blogging in a subtle and indirect way. Frustrated at having lost a number of "gems" in the past, I started an Edmodo group entitled ICT Ramblings. A number of colleagues have joined the group and we use it as an informal place to lob in ideas. So despite my protestations, I have been blogging in a fashion through that group.

I am an avid reader and periodically conduct literature reviews in whatever has taken my fancy at the time. Immersion in a well written academic work provides a wonderful opportunity for reflection upon your teaching and classroom practices. Edubloggers provide insight and stimulus in another way. The people that I particularly like are on my Edna and Blogs Pageflake, some others that have appealed for whatever reason have been bookmarked here.

Adopting a Structured Approach to Web2.0

I'm extremely grateful to the Inner West Region of the Catholic Education Office (CEO) for granting me access to their course entitled Web 2.0 for CEO Sydney Teachers.

The course is presented in 10-modules that demonstrate the power of Web 2.0 online tools for the classroom. For me I hope to consolidate my knowledge of appropriate Web 2.0 technologies for contemporary learning. In my classes we have already experimented with tools like wikis, blogs, and Google docs. Services like YouTube, Flickr, and Delicious and the like. Students have podcasted and vodcasted.

The questions that I hope to explore extend to for what purpose have I had the students undertake these tasks, have they been done well and have the students benefited from these endeavours.

Module 1 Web 2.0 and personalising your Web space is now complete. I've benefited already in a number of ways:
a) the New Tools Workshop is a great site that compiles an extensive list of Web2.0 tools. I found the site to nicely compliment the resources list at Jane Hart's Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies and Michelle Dodd's Access Ability Programs,
b) password management is not a strength, but I now have a scaffold that will be the basis of a password protected vault in a newly created OneNote page,
c) having re-tried iGoogle, I remain content with my Pageflake that has been evolving over several years. There are three public flakes based around general news and web page tools, Web2.0 and Educational Technology and finally Science news feeds.

My Chemical Journey