Technology Toolkit: Introducing You To Web 2.0 is a book I and Gary Bass authored. If you're interested, click on the image for further information and an order form.
Last week I was party to one of those almost surreal experiences that come along every now and then. I was asked to present a session on Internet Safety for parents at one of my old schools. My session was to follow on from a presentation by the school principal on 21st century learning in relation to the school.
The event was widely promoted via the school newsletter over a number of weeks. Now parent information evenings at the school usually attract reasonable numbers of attendees so it was quite surprising that come the appointed time to start only four parents had turned up. As it turned out these four good folk were the entire audience from a school that has more than 550 pupils.
Now of course this begs the question, why so few participants for what should to all intents and purposes have been a lively topic? Was it that the parents already felt they knew enough about 21st century learning and how it applied to the school? Is internet safety a bit “too hard” as a topic? Alternatively do most parents see that internet safety is not that big an issue at this age? Maybe it was that the parents didn’t want to hear from me? All in all, given that issues related to internet safety still feature quite regularly in the media I would have expected more participants.
I wonder what is the experience of others doing similar presentations and whether my experience was an aberration.
For those that are interested, as part of the presentation I prepared the following Slideshare presentation that I used to talk to. The presentation was also supported my updated websafety4kids wiki
“If you love history, or just want to learn more about it, YouTube has exactly what you need. Always up to the challege of providing thorough, accurate information, YouTube delivers channels from leading names in historical studies, from The Smithsonian to the Discovery Channel. You’re sure to find just the right information you need for your lecture, lesson plan, or perhaps just your personal viewing pleasure.”
This is nice comparative chart from Mark Wagner focusses on the similarities and differences between blogs, wikis and Google Docs. It comes with embedded links to examples of blogs, wikis and Google Docs that show these attributes in situ.
Part of a larger Marvel Comic site with games and other promotional material, this page lets you create relatively simple comic strips using characters from the Marvel comics. A little like a cut down version of Comic Life it is a reasonable introductory tool. Finished comics can be printed or downloaded as a pdf.
Tom Barrett shows the way again this time extolling the virtues of Google Squared. Don’t forget to check out the Slideshare Tom has embedded into this post from his blog.
Google Squared is a product of Google Labs. It displays your search results in a grid format. Each item found for your search term populates the rows and their common attributes are shown in the columns. Rather then listing the web pages, your results are organised.
In my opinion it is vital that we don’t just assume that primary school children, who have grown up with “Google” as a verb, can search internet content effectively.
In July last year Google search engineers recorded 1 trillion unique URLs that they indexed, and that was more than a year ago. The amount of information at our pupil’s fingertips is amazing. Sometimes it is too much.
I think Google Squared is a great addition to classroom searching as it provides well needed structure to those search results. It doesn’t just provide a list of sites to click on but a grid of types of information. Google Squared is limited to the types of search terms that can be “Squared” but I think the added structure is a huge benefit to the experience of finding information.
For this post I have produced a series of screenshots and will highlight some of the unique features of searching internet content in this way to help you get the most from Google Squared in the classroom.
From Mashable comes this quite informative “HOW TO“, well worth a read if you are a regular Twitter user.
The just-launched Twitter Lists feature is a new way to organize the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people. In actuality, though, Twitter Lists are Twitter’s long awaited “groups” feature. They offer a way for you to bunch together other users on Twitter into groups so that you can get an overview of what they’re up to. That’s because Lists aren’t just static listings of users, but rather curated Twitter () streams of the latest tweets from a specified set of users.
In other words, you can create a list that groups together people for whatever reason (the members of your family, for example), and then you can get a snapshot of the things those users are saying by viewing that list’s page, which includes a complete tweet stream for everyone on the list. Lists allow you to organize the people you’re following into groups, and they even allow you to include people you’re not following.
From Online Colleges comes this really interesting list of Tips to do with things Google.
With classes, homework, and projects–not to mention your social life–time is truly at a premium for you, so why not latch onto the wide world that Google has to offer? From super-effective search tricks to Google hacks specifically for education to tricks and tips for using Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, these tricks will surely save you some precious time.
My Avatar Editor creates avatars based on the Mii™ characters found on the Nintendo® Wii™. With an extremely easy interface, avatars can be created either online or by using the download app available from the site. The on site guide has all you need to get started.
This constantly updating embeddable table from Gary Hayes details statistics related to the development and/or use of social media including the number of tweets, iPhone apps downloaded amongst others. Fascinating.
Using the Download PDF button on this page you can download a really interesting pdf guide for parents about talking with children about working online. The guide looks at children of different ages and stages and offers sensible and commonsense advice. Though it is written for the American context the underlying advice is relevant to all.
Today’s post features a number of Australian schools using iPods and iPod Touches in the classroom.
This post from Kerrie Smith of educationau is one of series this time highlighting some really great work of Australian teachers with iPods and iPod Touch’s.
How is ICT changing what teachers can do? Technology has done a lot but what’s really impacting on teachers is how information is changing. A number of years ago I wrote a book called Redefining Literacy. It started out being a technology book but the more I researched the more I realised it wasn’t technology I wanted to talk about, it was information. The nature of information has changed and, as a result, so has what it means to be literate.
This great Q&A from the New Zealand Interface mag with David Warlick has some really concise insights into how schools and teachers can approach the challenges of integrating technology and learning.
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