Category: Reflective Teaching

Scoop.it

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Scoop.it is my new favourite web tool… yes I know I have a lot of those but I guess that’s why I love teaching and learning, there are always new ideas you come across that make what you do so much easier. Scoop.it is a tool which helps teachers troll the internet for information about particular topics. You can sign up for a free account and you are able to create up to 5 topics. These topics help you gather or curate web based articles, webpages or posts about these particular topics. Scoop.it also allows you to follow other peoples posts.

I have two topics which I am currently curating in relation to teaching.

1. Teaching Tools Today – where I gather and curate tools useful for teaching, these include web 2.0 tools, traditional ideas, graphic organisers and more.

2. What’s New In Education? – Here I gather and curate posts about current trends and pedagogical ideas in education.

How does Scoop.it help me? Well…. it keeps me up to date on what is happening in the world of education. I follow other educators and rescoop their posts that are relevant to me. I am able to find new teaching strategies to help me in the classroom and most importantly I’m connecting with others interested in the same thing… educating the future generations.

I’ve added the links to my blog roll so you can get to the directly.

Do you use scoop.it? Let me know your topics and I’ll have  a look!

Diigo and Evernote

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been increasing my use of Diigo and Evernote. Though I signed up for both these tools about 18 months ago I’ve never really used them to their full potential. Why??? Time. There are always so many new tools appearing it takes so much time to play and begin to love them!  Time is a big issue in the busy lives of many and as a teacher I always find it difficult to squeeze everything in that I want to.

Diigo – is a tool suitable for use by anyone. The basic idea of Diigo is similar to Delicious. Bookmark and share. Diigo offers many other benefits. You can read, highlight, share and file the page or document as you read. Diigo is an add on to your browser tool bar.

Evernote – is a similar tool but with so much more. It allows you to do all the same things as Diigo, as well as allows you to add notes and tags to help you organise your bookmarks. It allows you to create and organise just like Diigo but has editing and note taking ability like OneNote. I’ve been using this one the most and I can see the huge benefits for my postgraduate studies when I start them again. Evernote is a download which creates a file where you can organise and edit your bookmarks. I also have this as an android app for my phone so if I come across anything while on mobile I can add it as a note and go back later and look at it

 

 

Digital Citizenship

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As a teacher I think it is one of my most important duties to teach children about being good digital citizens. This can also be a rather difficult task. I’m sure most teachers have been in a situation where their students have broken copyright or plagarised work from the internet in assignments. What is difficult about this is that students often have no idea what they are doing is illegal or they are aware of doing something illegal but are not worried about getting caught. As a primary school teacher I try to model correct behaviours on the internet to students. I use my own photos or images or I go to somewhere like Creative Commons or Creative Common Australia.

Students need to understand that they are responsible for using internet resources responsibly and the only way to do this is to teach them. I generally start a lesson on this topic by sharing a powerpoint where great swathes of information are copied from the internet, not reference, music from a CD and photos are randomly taken from an image search on an open search site. Then ask the question ‘What is wrong with this powerpoint?’ Other than the obvious points that there is too much information on the slides and the layout isn’t interesting, I’ve found that the students don’t notice the lack of referencing and particularly plagarism and copyright breach. I then show another short slide show with referencing, but still using images, text and audio which is illegal. The question that follows here is ‘What is the difference between the two slide shows?’ They can usually point out the referencing. I then show them yet another short powerpoint using referencing, original text and Creative Commons acquired images and music. They then have them complete a comparison chart. This lesson then leads into lessons on websites where they can legal download images and audio for use in their assignments. I also deliver lessons on plagarism and how to reference material properly.

A recent webinar with Australia E-Series was an excellent refresh of how to reference images and audio from the internet properly.

So this brings us to website where students can legally obtain images and audio for their work.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons Australia

Flickr Creative Commons (or Flickr CC)

Jamendo (for music)

Open Clip Art Library

ccMixter (for music)

And for those who didn’t know Google will search for free license items but you need to go to the Advanced Search section and find ‘usage rights’ down the bottom.Google is a favourite of many students and if they want to use this search engine they should be taught about this advanced search option.

 

#australiaseries blog

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I’ve been participating in a really interesting collaorbative network of educators sharing ideas for teaching and using ICT and Web2.0 in the classroom.

This amazing group of people gather most weeks to share knowledge and discuss e-learning, new technologies and ideas related to ICT and education.

I’m learning so much and will be blogging about some of that new learning over the next few weeks.

If you are interested check http://australiaseries.wordpress.com/

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