A Portal to Media Literacy

Everything’s changed or changing – fast. Michael Wesch commences with some of the issues of teaching in an inappropriate space before moving on to new media. I particularly love the Marshall McLuhan quote referred to at the opening of this hour long presentation: The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we […]

Zeitgeist

Tuning in to the zeitgeist is a full-time job and one that educators are uniquely situated to both understand and interpret. How many other professions have such an opportunity to analyse the march of generations and the cultural climate of the times while reflecting on the nature of knowledge and learning? How can an educator […]

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

How do I use del.icio.us? Another good ‘Plain English’ explanation. [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.624274&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] more about “Social Bookmarking in Plain English“, posted with vodpod    

School of Life

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.623774&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] I don’t want to give the punch-line away but after you’ve viewed click here and then here.

Wikipedia and other online encyclopedia

Wikipedia is in the top 10 visited online sites by Australians but are you aware of some of the compendium’s cousins? A good critical literacy lesson or 3 could result by investigating the way each of the following Wikipedia clones presents information and positions the reader. I especially like the parody sites ‘Uncylopedia’ and ‘Wickerpedia’. Try typing some […]

'How English Is Evolving…'

My travels in India gave me an appreciation of ‘Hinglish’ and I wasn’t in Singapore long enough to experience much ‘Singlish’ but hopefully, with Chinglish on the rise, opportunities will present themselves to enjoy the richness of this derivation in the not too distant future. How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even […]

RSS in Plain English

Thought this may help you to understand, or explain to others, RSS feeds. [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.617098&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] I use Google Reader.

Building planes – as they fly

A wonderful analogy for what we are trying to do at the moment in schools, although you could, one imagines, read it very differently:   [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.616735&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] more about “EDS Airplane online | Duncan’s TV Ad …“, posted with vodpod      

Evolvo – the video

We put Evolvo through his paces and recorded his emergence into the world and uploaded him to YouTube: [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.616278&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] more about “Evolvo“, posted with vodpod    

Evolvo – our first Spore creature

  My daughters and I designed our first Spore creature after downloading the demo. It was pretty interesting to see Lucy and Sarah, at 4 & 2 years of age, discuss choices about the anatomy of our creature that would not usually be part of their vocabulary. ‘Evolvo’ certainly ignited the joy of learning – and […]

Constructivism

Constructivist teaching methods are IMHO essential, especially as we move into this new world with such powerful tech tools being at our disposal. More experienced staff haven’t had the exposure one would expect but all the prac students currently at the school are conversant with this theory. If we decide to use Moodle, and I think we will, this […]

Inanimate Alice

‘Inanimate Alice’ is a wonderfully innovative online text that tells the story of Alice, a young girl growing up in the first half of the 21st century. Alice grows from an eight year old living with her parents in a remote region of Northern China to a talented mid-twenties animator and designer with the biggest […]

ClickView and IWB Professional Development

Six of us from DHS attended professional development at TIGS this afternoon on using IWBs. ClickView was in evidence and the classroom teacher who gave us a demo was a fan of this video library. It is essential the school budgets for this next year IMHO. Some more IWB links of interest: http://smarttech.com/ http://www.interactivewhiteboard.net.au/

Education revolution worries everyone apparently

Cost shock puts school PCs at risk in the SMH today is another example of common knowledge being reported as if it is news. Staff are quite rightly concerned about what it all means and even the enthusiasts will be ‘worried’ shortly considering some of the events that have been in the news recently re: our Minister that will […]

Education revolution

An article in The Australian, Education revolution worries teachers makes for interesting reading. Read it for yourself, but the statistic claiming only 27% of teachers – ‘…believed the internet was transforming the way they engaged their students…’ would be of fundamental concern. I would like to see the survey to understand exactly what was asked. And Greg Black’s […]

Journalism in the Digital Age

Howard Rheingold’s vlog has some interesting videos. Here’s one that asks the question, “What do journalism students need to know in the digital era?” [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.606073&w=425&h=350&fv=] more about “Journalism in the Digital Age“, posted with vodpod  

Online video stats

For many youths, ‘entertainment and socialisation blend seamlessly’ and stats published this month show YouTube reached ‘4.1 million kids 2-11 and 8.9 million teens 12-17. That’s more than 5 million more teens than the No. 2 video destination, MySpace.’

Spore

Ironically, I wrote Boys and their Electronic Toys: Pleasure and Becoming Multiliterate (p67-72) published in mETAphor and SCAN, just after I gave up playing video games. Having a new baby, house and job demanded that I uninstalled European Battleground and the Total War franchise. My copy of WoW provided me with a free month subscription then […]

Annotations feature at YouTube and more on Twitter

The annotations feature now available at YouTube has been used to make this interactive card trick. I’d love to hear any ideas on how this can be used with classes. Neither video can be embedded into vodpod, unfortunately, hence the links. Also, keen to hear how Twitter can be used with classes (I have posted […]

Screenagers

The Library of Congress is hosting a series of 4 lectures on ‘Digital Natives’ with speakers including Michael Wesch, Steven Johnson and Douglas Rushkoff. The first lecture has been webcast: The Anthropology of Digital Natives but you need RealPlayer to view. I will post subsequent webcasts as they are uploaded.

Challenges

We have had a second day of challenges at work without internet access. Soul Communications, DET’s ISP, has failed to impress and are being called ‘Two-Tel’ by their own staff; bodes well for our future.

Web 2.0 and Work

A tough day today. The internet was down all day and the SBR reporting system could not be accessed for more than an hour or two at the height of report season. It is frustrating that staff (and students) are blocked from using many of the Web 2.0 sites I take for granted at home but […]

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