In an attempt to ignite my students’ passion for words I explored the internet to find a few ‘learning gems’…

Wordsense: one of the best around in my humble opinion.

Anagramania: Guess the anagram before the time runs out!

Crickler Crossword: A new type of word puzzle!

Frank’s Panic Puzzle:

Word puzzles available from Addicting Games:

Vocab Sushi: Building a better vocabulary

Messing with ideas and words: Plinky prompts

It also occurred to me that students might find it fun to create their own word games using classtools:

Plurk

Plurk has become one of the first places I check when I turn on my computer.  It feels like I’m catching up with colleagues.  The fact that many of them live in another hemisphere is not important.  We are all educators and we are all concerned for our students and eager to learn anything that might improve the way we teach and learn.  We share Important and irrelevant details, wish each other goodnight and good morning (sometimes), moan about day-to-day ‘teacher-type’ problems and learn together about things that are new and/or useful.

Plurkers

I look forward to hearing about the weather in Brattleboro VT USA, not because I care about weather particularly but because it means Skip Z is out and about and his morning ’shout out’ is a Plurkadian tradition.  He’s also a professional colleague whose opinion I value and many of the links he has shared on Plurk have become an important part of my teaching and learning.   Mindelei is another plurker guaranteed to challenge my thinking.  Her passion and enthusiasm are a plurk feature and she loves to ask questions to make ’seasoned’ educators think.  GingerTPLC is another plurker of note.  Her teaching day is a constant reminder of what we are all trying to achieve in our classrooms.   Kevinh has energy in abundance and is clearly a well respected educator.  I don’t really have a spatial understanding of North America but Kevinh seems to be presenting in most of it!

I could go on…

If I listed all the Plurkers I value it would take far too long and I simply don’t have the time.  Could I just leave you all with this one piece of advice:  If you’re an educator sign up for Plurk. The Plurk ‘eduverse’ is a wonderful place and you’re guaranteed a welcome!

Earth 2.0:  Is it possible to create a completely sustainable planet?

The best bits about my work on this project:

1. Pageflakes: Using pageflakes as the Webquest Headquarters was a stroke of genius (If I do say so myself!!!) Pageflakes is a great tool for educators: it is flexible, easy to use, vibrant in appearance and the range of widgets available is outstanding!

2. Teamwork: I worked with a colleague to produce this webquest and had far too much fun as a result, mainly because we were able to laugh at ourselves during several ‘manic’ Earth 2.0 moments.  We could have kept going but we had to stop to meet the competition deadline!  (Mark is already talking about our next project.)

An interesting note:  Neither of us had time to take on this project…if you’re an educator there is never enough time! How did it happen then?  We became passionate about the learning, the project and the notion of Earth 2.0.  Discussions led to action; engagement in the task led to refinement and development of ideas and activities. In short, the project became fun for us.  We reacted the way we want our students to react to a new learning task.  There’s a lesson in that for everyone.

3. Local and Global Feedback: We gained valuable insights into the project by asking our students to review it for us.  They thought it would be improved by games so we added games!  I used Classtools, one of my favourites, to put together some simple games based on the sustainability theme and also added the Planet Green Game.  I then asked my PLN via Plurk and Twitter for objective advice.  My  Plurk buddies provided me with some excellent feedback that I acted on straight away. The Plurk eduverse is really something else…I highly recommend you become part of it!

4. Web 2.0:  The possibilities are endless!  2.0 tools help make learning fun and provide teachers with ways to actively engage and challenge students.  In addition to the suite of tools available on Pageflakes we also found wetpaint wiki simple to use and loved our voki characters.  I used Big Huge Labs to create the Earth 2.0 trading cards and EduPic, graphical resources for educators, for the images.

· The Google Tools: I’m talking Gmail, igoogle, Google Reader, Google Docs and Google Apps (for Education). I use each every day and believe they’ve helped me more than any other tools. An essential starting point for all educators.  To learn more try this excellent blog post from College@Home: ‘57Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard of’

· Edublogs: The blogging world is a vibrant place embedded with passion and enthusiasm that tends to be contagious. Starting a blog (or 5 in my case) is a great way to become immersed in the thinking and challenges of Web 2.0. Edublogs worked perfectly for me because it had simple, easy to follow, films I could watch and also The Edublogger, a fantastic resource for all bloggers.

· Microblogging Tools: At first it was Twitter and then Plurk. I love the sharing and camaraderie these tools allow. Plurk is ‘time-zone friendly’ because the timeline allows me to easily follow and contribute to discussions that happen while I’m asleep. Twitter is not quite as useful in this respect although it is still one of the best and I have made some of my best discoveries via tweets. Both are valuable tools for educators. I’m hoping Edmodo, microblogging for education, will work just as well with my students.

TOP 3 Blogs: The ones I read first are:

· Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day

· Free Technology for Teachers

· Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day

All fantastic blogs to follow!  Great resources for educators.

TOP 3 Diigo Groups:

Educational discoveries abound:

· Web 2.0 tools for teachers

· Classroom 2.0

· OZ/NZ Educators

Top 5 Wow-factor tools: (Tools that impress with very little effort!)

· ClassTools: Impress students and teachers with your specially designed games

· Glogster: So many possibilities…higher-order thinking opportunities in abudnance.

· Pageflakes: a great tool for educators; the ‘anything flake’ opens up all sorts of possibilities. Great as the ‘front page’ for our Earth 2.0 webquest.

· Animoto: Very cool presentations. Impress the ‘too cool for school’ group with this nifty little tool

· Flickr: More than you think! Creative Commons makes this the best starting point for educators looking for great images.  Lots of tools worth exploring too!

However, it’s not really about the tools…

It’s about quality teaching and learning; it’s about being an agent of change and it’s about equipping students and teachers and being an agent of change so that, eventually, all teachers and students are equipped with the skills they need to function fully in the 21^st Century.

I wanted to build something for my work colleagues to illustrate the power of the group and show the potential for us all to save time and energy when we work together. At the same time I wanted to encourage reflective thought and build something members of my PLN could also share with colleagues as appropriate.

PLN Power:

The ‘PLN Reflections’ slideshow below is the result of my experiment. It’s powerful stuff; creative and inspirational. Achieved in a matter of days, across several time zones and without any drama, it is a small taste of what can be done. However, the best part is not the slideshow itself but the interactions and enthusiasm that occurred behind the scenes, particular in plurk. I’m already hatching plans for a ‘We are the Children’ equivalent…watch this space!

I am currently attending the ELH 08 ‘Expanding Learning Horizons’ conference in Lorne and find myself wondering about the benefits of such gatherings. (I am having fun so from that point of view it’s great!) However, I suspect that a group of like-minded people already dedicated to bringing about change in education is not necessarily the best audience for the messages here. We do not need to hear the message again and again…we need to act on it!

Several issues and questions seem to persist:

How do we change the way people do things in education?

How do we change school culture?

How do we ‘transform’ the resistors?

How can we move forward without moving backwards too?

These are not small issues. These are issues that require vision, perspective and planning.

I would love to hear from people who have changed school culture and transformed teaching and learning in a school anywhere…

How long did it take?

Was a ‘softly, softly’ or ‘bulldozer’ approach used?

Were many or any people lost along the way?

If you picked one decision or moment that seemed to be a ‘turning point’ what was it?

What main piece of advice would you give others committed to change?

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.

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…