Learning Gems

I’ve written before about this fantastic project. With the release of Inanimate Alice Episode 4 ‘Hometown’ I am even more convinced that this type of multimedia story is the future of e-reading.

iStori.es

The new episode comes with its own education pack and news of an authoring tool, iStori.es, which is previewed by Alice in this episode. It looks like a fantastic tool to encourage multimedia storytelling, something that students seem to prefer to the more traditional method. I will probably look at ordering it for my school next year.

Learning Opportunities

The learning potential of these stories is enormous…not only do they encourage reluctant readers, they also open the door for so many learning opportunities. Activities that immediately spring to mind after my first reading of episode 4 are:

• Students could use Google Earth to map and highlight features in their own neighborhoods. (Alice explains her new life via a map with clickable points that help to advance the story.) A focus on historical buildings and/or geographical features would instantly lead this activity into History and Geography units.
• Students could easily use their own photographs to put together a photostory of their own, complete with music and words. This would, hopefully, lead to all sorts of discussion points about how music and visuals help to create atmosphere and advance a story.
• General ‘Exploration’ activities: Hints that all is not well in Alice’s current life; possible futures for the family; the importance of Brad; evidence of Alice’s ‘teenagehood’…

Teacher feedback

As an English teacher and Teacher-Librarian I love educational resources which take a ‘new’ approach and which I know will also engage students. I am always looking for something exciting and different so Inanimate Alice is perfect for me. (If it involves technology and reading it’s always a winner!) I passed the resource onto several other teachers, both primary and secondary, and they loved it too. The primary teachers were very impressed and raved about the education pack in particular.

As a relative newcomer to the blogging scene I have thrived on the many lists compiled by other educators and various tech-obsessed enthusiasts happy to share their knowledge and expertise. I appreciate the energy, time and passion that must go into the compilation of such lists, particularly as they have had such an impact on my own learning. I finally feel ready to compile my own small list of useful online stuff

The Learning Gems list is all about me!

This list is all about me and my context…the things that I’ve found most useful as I’ve fossicked about in cyberspace, (I don’t surf!). First and foremost I am an educator, so I get excited about tools and resources with the potential to transform teaching and learning. I am also at a P-12 school so I love discovering things that can be used across a range of levels and subject areas. Key discoveries:

Edublogs: I know there are other blog sites but edublogs fits my context perfectly. It is quick, simple and newbie-friendly. Latest updates have made it even easier to comprehend. I can start blogs for colleagues and students quickly and simply. Furthermore, The Edublogger, Sue Waters, is a tech genius whose blog posts are Learning Gems in themselves!

Another plus is that I’ve discovered edublogs are less likely to be blocked by school filters.

ClassTools: Some great tools here. I used this site to make some fun ‘library’ games and then added them to my library blog. The younger students love them and they’re learning about the library at the same time! They also learned an important lesson very quickly… the questions need to be answered correctly to master the games.

OZ/NZ Educators group at Diigo: I discover so much via my membership of this group. Recent discoveries include: mutapic, a great little online picture generator, and 100 Helpful Tools for Every Kind of Learner, a blog post from College@Home that lists tools for all learning styles. I discovered bubbl.us via this post, a great mind mapping /brainstorming tool that I used recently to help a colleague evaluate a student project.

The Learning Gems list highlights things that can be used in a real classroom with real students next week, if necessary.

When I find something useful and exciting I want to use it immediately. I have real students inside my head: a visual learner, an artist, a reluctant reader, a gifted student… etc, so I get excited about stuff with a real and immediate usefulness in my school. Some that fit here are:

Games that promote keyboarding skills:

Keyboard/keyboarding practice a wiki with links to activities that develop keyboarding and; The Key Master, a great game from addicting games that encourages fast, accurate keyboarding.

Such sites will be useful for Mr Grade 4, “It takes too long to type the address”. Somewhere along the way we need to make sure students have the keyboarding skills they need to work quickly and effectively.

Befunky: This tool turns photographs into cartoons…thought I might use the cartoonizer function to write a fun ‘how to research’ guide for my library.

Literature Map: I’ve found that secondary students tend to latch on to a particular author and then demand similar stuff when reading material runs low. This site is a life saver when students ask for such material.

BBC games: A great starting point for literacy and numeracy games.  Why don’t we have something this great in Australia? The bitesize games are incredible. Great for revision. Love questionaut, very quirky! Had some students with special needs check this site out and they loved it!

My list is never ending! When I started my exploration I couldn’t believe the range of material available out there and it just keeps getting better and cheaper! (ie: free!) There is no way I can put all this into one blog post.

The Learning Gems list will continue…

The Power of Words in Web 2.0

Has anyone else noticed how happy and carefree some Web 2.0 applications sound? Ning, Twitter, Twhirl, del.icio.us, Jing, Skype…I feel like I’m dancing in Cyberspace rather than surfing it! On the other hand, ‘blog’ sounds a lot like hard work; it reminds me of something difficult, climbing a hill, doing it tough (I have no idea why!) but it’s not a very pleasant sounding word. Neither is wiki (sorry)

I do wonder how the names for some of these applications come about, though, particularly when I mention them to colleagues who are not au fait with Web 2.0. When I told one teacher I’d started a Ning his facial expression suggested twilight zone, crazy, alternative lifestyle, hippy commune, etc (Well, He was a child of the 70s!) Mind you, his look didn’t really change much when I explained the Ning to him!

A Ning for Teacher-Librarians

On a high after a Web 2.0 Conference by the School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV) I decided to start a Ning for Victorian Teacher-Librarians. The conference made me particularly aware of the number of teachers out of touch with Web 2.0 but also a little afraid of it. Teacher-librarians so often lead the way in schools when it comes to the mastery of new technology. Yet, amongst some of the T-Ls I know and those I met at the conference I have also noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm and understanding for the potential of Web 2.0 in education. I thought the Ning might provide a place for them to share, learn and play together.

Lessons learned from Ning…

T-Ls are great networkers: I twittered my Ning and also announced it on the OZ-TL email list. I gained a new member per day. My next suggestion will be that we each invite a fellow T-L to join the Ning. (Nothing less than total domination will be tolerated!)

Girls like Pink books! Our first discussion centred on the impact of location and gender on collections. Many of the Ning members are from single sex schools and/or isolated schools in the country. Location does not seem to impact on collections as far as I can see. Girls and boys both enjoy reading the Cherub series

Stephenie Meyer has a huge following at the moment!

T-Ls are passionate.

The best way to learn about Web 2.0 is to jump in! I’ve been blogging for a few months now but I had no real idea what a Ning was until I started one. A Ning is a great way to connect like-minded people.

If you’re a Victorian Teacher-Librarian (and even if you’re not) join and/or check out the Victorian T-L Ning:

Visit Victorian Teacher-Librarians

First, let me start with something completely irrelevant…

Many years ago I watched a game of AFL football and saw the president of the losing club cry on national television…Now that’s passion! At the time I was working hard to extract a similar response from my English classes (No, I didn’t want them to cry!) I wanted them to care; I wanted them to get so caught up in a task they didn’t want to stop… I wanted passion! I developed a new found respect for that AFL team, Collingwood, (much to my family’s disgust) because I admire that sort of commitment and passion, no matter what its origin.

Passion in Education
Web 2.0 is also creating a lot of passion and excitement at the moment. I saw this first-hand today when I attended the SLAV conference ‘Re-imagining: Web 2.0 applications and implications’. I spent most of my time listening and nodding my head in agreement through each presentation. I did this a lot as I listened to Will Richardson speak of the challenges and opportunities ahead for educators. Put simply, schools must learn to compete with the virtual, world-wide web as it connects people with similar interests and passions daily. The learning opportunities are endless and students need guidance. Web 2.0 is changing the way society operates and connects; educators have to respond to this.

Jenny Luca, Toorak College, virtually described my own Web 2.0 journey (including the bit about spending Saturday nights on the web!). Jenny also reinforced my ideas about how teachers need to connect with Web 2.0 and educate themselves. Essentially…just do it! Start a blog or wiki, sign up for things, build a network with other passionate educators; there are lots of them out there.

Web 2.0: what’s in it for me? Or…What will I do tomorrow in my workplace to move forward with Web 2.0?
Pass on what I have learned to school leaders. Our leaders need to be able to see the potential here and if they don’t then it is my job to try to show them.

Supply a context for using Web 2.0. Suggest ways that Web 2.0 can be used to enhance learning at our school. Some ideas: Begin a VCE English theme wiki to encourage discussion and learning with other students from other schools studying these themes; do some serious ‘selling’ of my Literature Discovery Tour to show teachers what is possible; Begin a Voicethread project to encourage discussion of the CBCA shortlisted title.

Continue to arrange and present professional development sessions: igoogle; google docs; voicethreads; animito; scrapblogs (and my other discoveries) in a simple, short, non-threatening way.

Encourage individual exploration.

Get the students involved. Students love all this stuff; I have a group I call the ‘library legends’ who are currently creating avatars and alternative identities so they can contribute to a library blog.

Attempt to demystify Web 2.0 for parents and teachers. Send details of my blogs home to parents so they can look at them with their children.

Keep Learning. Continue to sign up for things, subscribe to blogs, comment a lot, start a wiki…etc. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be a Web 2.0 expert but I know it’s important for me to become a Web 2.0 explorer, learner and innovator.

_{Collingwood v Brisbane Flickr photograph by Judi Donovan}

My very first post on this blog highlighted the need for teacher-librarians to stop being the invisible quiet achievers in schools.  It is my view that we are too often ‘overlooked’ because other teachers, parents and leaders aren’t always aware of the vital contributions we make during all stages of the learning process.  We provide ideas, advice, troubleshooting, resources, information and enthusiasm (to name a few).  Moreover, these are often based on our unique perspective of the whole school curriculum; a perspective that gives us valuable insights into teaching and learning processes and educational programs within the school.

Teacher-librarians, as lifelong learners, stay up-to-date with emerging trends and are often first to hear about new learning tools, educational shifts and exciting texts.  It is also a vital part of our role to pass this information on to others.  Which brings me to the point of this blog post …

I pass on a lot of material to staff and I’m still trying to work out whether the following incident is a good or bad development.  I started passing around a teacher magazine with a lot of valuable material in it. Before I started at the school this particular magazine was simply fodder for the recycling bins.  No-one ever picked it up or read it!   At first I only passed on copies to teachers I thought might do something with it, (that is, read it!).  Recently I received extra copies and started passing it on to every teacher. 

Well, today someone cut out an interesting article about libraries and ICT from this magazine and pigeonholed me (no name attached) No doubt this person believes they have helped me out by passing on a crucial piece of ’library’ information.  What they don’t know and will probably never know is that I was the person who passed this information on to them in the first place!  Also, the article, which I had read, was about an Australian teacher-librarian, Judy O’Connell, a wonderful blogger whose blog, Hey Jude I also read regularly! (We also recently became friends on Second Life!)

Is this a positive sign?  It means that teachers are finally starting to read and learn from this valuable resource.  Essentially, I achieved my goal.  OR… is it a negative sign?  Teachers continue to be unaware of how these valuable learning gems reach them and I remain invisible (and perhaps another teacher-librarian position disappears somewhere in the world?)

What a journey!  Twitter, Voicethreads, Diigo, del.icio.us, YouTube, Second Life…the list goes on (and on!)  I’ve been so busy exploring the learning potential of these tools that I almost forgot the relatively simple pleasure and excitement generated by a visiting author.

I recently invited popular author, Archie Fusillo, (The Dons, On the Mat, Bruises…) to work with students in Years 9 and 10.  His writing workshops were a huge success and the air was abuzz with that ‘learning vibe’ or hum that teachers everywhere recognise.   The students loved him.  They laughed a lot but were also challenged to examine the writing process and reflect on the ‘sound’ of good writing. 

Archie is funny, down-to-earth and a natural storyteller.   His visit provided a positive learning experience and a timely reminder for me…’Learning Gems’ take many forms and it’s important to find a balance between face-to-face interaction and the wonders of Web 2.0!

Last year I looked at Twitter and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I eventually deleted my account. Recently I signed up again, this time with some understanding of its potential. Now I’m hooked!

Twitter allows for the short and sharp sharing of information, something I believe suits educators perfectly. We always seem to be rushing somewhere, operating on the edge of chaos, planning on the run or snatching quick snippets of professional dialogue with colleagues on the way to class etc. Twitter can operate within that environment because tweets are limited to 140 characters and only take a few minutes to write or reply to. You can tweet throughout the day!

The educators I have ‘met’ on Twitter happily share links, ideas and professional knowledge as well as personal snippets about themselves. I love it. I feel like I’ve stumbled onto the global virtual staffroom…a place abuzz with activity, ideas and energy (and coffee, of course!). My global colleagues are generous with their knowledge, tech-savvy and passionate about education.

Twitter is a Learning Gem with huge appeal and potential.

Discovered Animoto yesterday…signed up, uploaded images of book covers and created a very cool video clip in less than 10 minutes. I can imagine it being used for all sorts of learning activities. Some that immediately spring to mind are:

• A visual reflection on a text’s themes (particularly useful for musical and visual learners)
• A pictorial essay
• Creative ‘writing’ (digital storytelling, poetry)
• Student Presentations (great for advertising projects etc)
• Adding ‘cred’ to teacher presentations.

I get very excited when I discover a ‘learning gem’ with so much classroom potential. Let’s face it, anything with the potential to engage and revive ’sluggish’ students is worth a look.

I wonder how many teachers have seen their schools purchase new ‘Wow-factor’ technology only to find it used to continue and reinforce outdated teaching methods. In the wrong hands a PowerPoint presentation can be just as monotonous as an hour of ‘chalk and talk’. Similarly, an e-learning course can be little more than an online presentation of black-line masters if not constructed to be engaging and stimulating.

In my opinion one of the best things about the 2.0 shift is the way many educators are now using technologies for different types of teaching and learning. Thinking has changed. Educational opportunities emerge almost daily and I recently discovered something with enormous potential: Inanimate Alice, interactive “multi-sensory” storytelling.

As a teacher-librarian I have been quite sceptical about the benefits of e-books, especially in terms of their ability to encourage students to read. Online books do not conjure up cosy images of reading; they still need to be read in the ‘traditional’ way. However, Inanimate Alice is different and I believe it represents the future of e-reading and online storytelling.

Teachers can sign up for a newsletter and education resource pack by clicking on the image below:


alt=”iTeach Inanimate Alice” title=”iTeach Inanimate Alice” border=”0″>

I am still exploring the web looking for ideas to help with my Book Week Literacy project, a story book using the prompt “Imagine if I discovered…” In my travels I found Big Universe Online Children’s Books and created a small story using the prompt myself. The book was easy to construct using illustrations provided on site although I did have to watch the demo first. It was approved for online publishing in a few hours. I decided that Big Universe has huge ‘learning gem’ potential. I can imagine teachers and parents using it as a literature and writing learning tool. Hopefully, it will also help me to create some excitement for my Book Week project!

The books are free to create and read online.