Module Ten

I have done a previous course called CLIC and in that course we covered creating and using Wiki's i the classroom. I have chosen not to do this in my current class as there are issues with the reliability of the IT in the class not to mention the student ratio too.
I believe that when back on an older grade Wiki's will once again be introduced to my class unless something else takes its place that is better. :-)

I have joining the Future of Education and Teacher Web 2.0 however my application is currently pending, this I think is a good thing as they are supposedly verifying that I am legitimate. I am looking forward to what these two learning communities have to offer and in return what I have to offer them.

 I think that in the future there needs to be more sharing of general resources or the state and CEO need to create the basics for each topic being covered so that all the majority of teachers aren't spending too much of their personal time trawling through the internet searching for the most appropriate web based resources to use in their class. I dream a site where it is monitored and constantly upgraded so that teachers can go to the site and find a vast array of resources and sites to use in their classrooms.  Seriously if there is to be a National curriculum with compulsory outcomes, indicators etc then surely there should be resources too, not listed in a book but on a well maintained site that we can RSS to.

Module Nine

I'm already a member of twitter and Facebook which is good for keeping in touch with my daughter who is currently overseas. I looked at Second life and I believed that it had better applications for Secondary Schools as opposed to Primary Schools, well that is until I saw the You tube of Thomas Suarez. This made me question a couple of things such as
How much do we stifle our students in their day to day time in our classes?
If the technology in the class was always working and there was a reasonable ratio of students to technology how much content could we get through in a day?
So with the development of the national syllabus have "they" or will "they" factor in more use of I.T and will the general big questions allow for exploration of the concept rather than a focus on learning facts?

Once again through this module there was a lot to read and watch and that was no doubt the tip of the iceberg.
How do we get a working computer and reasonably priced internet access into the homes of every school student?

Module Eight

Set up the RSS feed to my igoogle page and am looking forward to the updates on the topics that I have chosen. I am amazed at the amount of STUFF on the internet, I went to Podcast directory and this site has a vast array of different podcasts. I think that once again the topic of media release and privacy as there many done by children. I am sure that they are overseen by their teachers and all is above board however what happens to it when it is downloaded onto someone's computer? RSS feeds would be a great addition more for secondary students than early primary.
This gets me to thinking that perhaps there should just be sites where teachers and students can post their work and be the only ones to access it so as to maintain the cyber safety for students. Perhaps there are already ones out there that I haven't seen.

Module Seven

I visited the delicious site and I created my stack and then I started adding things to it and stumbled upon the CEO TM site and a few others from Sydney CEO. Seriously this is going to be something that needs more time dedicated to it as it allows me access to a vast array of different topics that interest me especially in IT. I like when doing a google search will have to be precise about what I am searching for as the time just disappears. At the moment I won't introduce delicious to the kids until I have figured it out a little more in relation to its use with a class and individual students.

I commented on the site of Seth about the death of powerpoint.
I also think that next year I should attend the CEO meetings as the sharing of ideas is always a good thing and in this digital age so many things are changing and at a cracking pace.  Digital footprints and digital citizenship interests me too.

Module Six

Used a picture of the dog as my little id block. Scrolled through a few photos and once again I question how we as a group of people feel about our privacy. There were lots of photos of crowds especially at the beach, I question do all of these people know that there image is on the web?
The flickr program would have good applications for use at home however I believe that Facebook allows you to share photos with friends so how many sites do we add our lives to and while we are doing this on a whole lot of sites what could we be doing with our lives.

Module Four

As a teacher I love u-tube and teacher tube as there is an abundance of material that makes the task of teaching a lot easier. Of concern for me is the privacy issue for students if we were to load items to a public forum. Our class just entered a competition for Generation One and had to fill in a media release form that mentioned You tube I ask how far do things go that are on you tube.

I have just used story bird with my Year 2 class and it is fantastic. You can either have it as private or publish your story for the public. We mentioned the school and the suburb and they wouldn't allow the story to be published until we removed the suburb to that there is a level of anonymity. Quite impressive.

Module Three

We have used Google docs at school for the students at times as we run Mac's without office on them. Once upon a time we used Google Docs for our programming so as not to overload our school backup and this made it easy for access from home for staff and exec. We found that at the time it was sometimes slow to load and for some of us the formatting options that we had on our home computers such as text direction was not an option. I am thinking that I shall review Google docs to see if it better meets my needs some years on as the internet speed is faster and perhaps there have been numerous changes to Google docs that my fix the little glitches that I found. If I am placed on a senior grade next year I will definitely incorporate the sharing of documents between students to encourage collaboration as well as skill them up on another method besides e-mail before high school.
I am feeling quite triumphant as I have just spend considerable time and have finally figured out how to line up the blogs and edit them. Needless to say as a non-native I have written the instructions down on paper. Tried and Trusted method.