Ferris Wheel Tokyo

odaiba
Originally uploaded by QueenDanielle

Module 4

I had forgotten that I had uploaded some pictures to Flickr a couple of years ago when I was living in Japan. It was really lovely to discover them again and lucky too (I have just changed some of the privacy settings on some unattractive photos that I don't really want to share with the world). I'm not sure exactly why I stopped using Flickr. I think it probably happened the same time I started using Facebook and I didn't feel like I had a use for it anymore. 

As a teaching tool I would usually prefer to use a blog, a wiki or another social networking tool to upload pictures. I guess when the students are looking for images for their projects it could be a better option to use a safe search within Flickr to prevent stumbling across inappropriate material. It is also great that the photo's are copyright free, they can blog any photo they see on flickr,  so the students can upload with the knowledge that they are doing it legally. I have also just uploaded photos from Flickr to my blog and I have realized how easy it is. It could be great to create an album of photos from a school excursion and then get the students to create blogs which comment on the photos. 

Module 3

I love google docs. The more I explore it the better it seems to get. I have been using it to organise itineraries and budgets for overseas trips I have done with friends. 

I now use it with students who I tutor after school so that they can let me know about assessments that are coming up and they share their documents with me so I can prepare material for them and also give them feedback on how they are going. In particular It has been a great tool for a student I tutor with Aspergers. She was having issues loosing her usb drive, forgetting which computers she had saved her assignments on and also wanting myself, her mother and her teachers to check her assignments. Being able to upload and share Google docs has been a wonderful organisational resource for her. She is also now using iGoogle to store bookmarks we collect during research and she can access them from home, school and the library. 

As a teacher, working collaboratively on documents is something we do on a daily basis. So having an online storage and sharing site such as google docs is fantastic.  Being able to add student grades and diagnostic testing results online and share it with the relevant parties would be incredibly convenient. I do worry about privacy issues though, storing school files and student details on line. How easy is it for a third party to access these files?  Another issue is that some of the tools on google docs are very basic. I have had some issues using tables and speadsheets. 

Module 2

 I am quite familiar with blogs, although using them as a personal learning journal is something I haven't done before. I'm a little shy about sharing my thoughts with others and during the Web 2.0 course I haven't been blogging as diligently as I had hoped I would. I tend to do the learning components and then catch up with the blog way later. It is interesting as an assessment tool. I love the idea of blogging and if I am going to expect my students to blog, I'm going to have to put myself out there and give it a go.  

I have used blogs before to post images and organise communications around different art projects I have been involved in. I also regularly research people's blogs when I am organising overseas trips, looking for somewhere great to eat in Sydney and to research specific artist's ideas. I have 3 blogs that are floating around in my head yet to eventuate. I will eventually blog about my food excursions, document some of my overseas adventures and create a website for creative children interested in arty stuff.

In Year 4 this year we used edublogs to communicate with a class in Korea for a HSIE project. I think it was one of the best teaching experiences of my career.  The students were all engaged, they were all in control of their own learning, it was student centered and best of all they could work at their own pace. I really enjoyed using the blog more as a social networking tool than a online journal. There were many simultaneous conversations going on at once. It was incredibly interactive and the students had very quick responses to their questions. I am interested in the different ways that students and teachers can use blogs. Many teacher blogs out there are still very teacher centered. By having all of year 4 and also the Korean students communicating on the same blog it did open up the communication channels and made it  a student centered project.  

Module 1

Exploring igoogle presented many new possibilities for sharing documents and ideas. For shared writing with students and for shared programming with other teachers it is a fantastic resource. Not only do we save on time and energy, we are also saving so much paper. It means that sharing of documents within the school community can happen anywhere, any how.

The 'many to many' format of Web 2.0 is important to relfect on in terms of the contemporary learning community. It reinforces the idea that classrooms are becoming less and less teacher focused. The possibilities for peer teaching is endless. Imagine if each child had a blog and that is how we assessed their classroom learning?