Skrbl it!

Skrbl

While at Learning@Schools I was introduced briefly to a cool new site called Skrbl.
Skrbl is an online interactive whiteboard that you can use to collaborate on a range of projects with people anywhere in the world.

Sign up for skrbl and you create your own skrbl pad. This allows you to share the URL to anyone you like so that they can collaborate on your project. Skrbl has options for typing, writing with a pen, uploading photos, changing font size, color and more. The site saves itself automatically every so often and automatically updates the other guest skrblers screen as you type. At completion your skrbl page remains as it is until you come back to it and once you are finished you can publish the page in a number of ways.

Skrbl In The CLass

Today I used Skrbl after we had the Chinese Lantern Festival group perform to the school. Normally the kids brainstorm as a class or as individuals but today I set them up in groups of 4-6 with a laptop or computer for each group. I gave them our class skrbl url and they entered it into firefox.

After a quick explanation of what it was and does and a few “ohhhs!!!” and “ahhhhs!!” the kids were hard at work brainstorming their ideas. What I loved to see was the collaboration by all members of the group not just one and then also groups connecting to others from the ideas they saw popping up on the screen. To monitor this more fully I gave each group at the start a color that they were to type in. This allowed me and them to see who was submitting what ideas. Another thing I noticed was that alot of my students who don’t participate in whole class discussions were happily sharing their ideas and some were amazing! Which made me think of all the ideas we miss out from gathering from students who don’t like to share in front of everyone… (we are working on that aspect too - but thats another discussion!)

Here is what our page looks like at the moment. At the moment we are using our 6 thinking hats to come up with facts and feelings about what we saw and heard. You can see each groups different colors and ideas. As the students went through I added a photo in to help them further.

I have set up a skrbl page for myself here… go along and have a play. Leave a message box with your name and country… If you can access the page at the same time as someone else you can see the true power of what skrbl is.

History in the making…

This morning’s video Skype call was big in my family!

It involved the first video chat my dad had ever had and the first one for my 9month old nephew - both ends of the age spectrum. They both looked as equally excited as the other at the encounter with Daughter/Aunty via the computer. Pretty cool!

L@S Notes and Links

I was posting all my links and notes on here but after seeing others such as Allanahk, Lenva and Rachel use jottit I have decided to unclutter my blog and post them all over on my jottit site. So check there for all the notes.

Also all the links I have collected throughout Learning@school are in my del.icio.us account so head there to find links mentioned also.

learningatschool, L@S

Did You Know?

This will be the first in a few I think.

Today for session 1 we partook in a discussion session with Simon based on Did You Know? by Karl Fisch. It was a really interesting discussion that took on several elements. I will blog more about that later.

But what was really cool was the involvement during this…
The use of twitter, skype, google docs and also Allanahk liveblogging the session (here)

Which allowed the “room” to almost double in size… it really was a classroom with no walls.

Image: Flickr - funtik.cat

For Life…

As I was walking down to the Novotel for my last breakout today I spotted this gentleman at the croquet club.

I went and spoke to Alistar about what he was doing (he’s doing all the timetables for the croquet club, on his laptop, outside the croquet club) and he was asking about all the people going past - which I explained to him. A very lovely man (and he did tell me I’d picked the most handsome!)

I just thought it was a really cool image when there were all these teachers etc were walking past thinking about the education in the 21C… so don’t tell me it’s an age thing!

Thanks to Alistar McGregor

Jamie McKenzie - The New Classroom and the Information Literate School Notes

Jamie McKenzie
The New Classroom and the Information Literate School

http://fno.org/feb02/secondhand.html
http://questioning.org/nov04/whyquestion.html
http://fno.org/sept98/infolit.html

What does it mean to have an information literate school community?
A 50/50 mix of text/digital

Deep internet -
Teacher librarians

What do we mean by the information literate school?

Bringing the NZ curriculum into daily practice
* competencies
* pedagogy

NZ Curriculum Online
Intellectual curiosity is at the heart of this competencies

1,190,000,000 - search on China through google.
Our kids are interested in the amount that they find - information gluttony.

Wikipedia

- changes made by me, you and your neighbour… these are the first sites that often come up for research topics.

Utilising the advanced version of google when researching items

Why don’t goggle want us to use Advanced Search?
- advertising: google can’t match up the ad’s the same.
The thinkers vs the consumers

Understanding
comprehending/considering/pondering/wandering/wondering

Mismatches between exams and the curriculum statements.

What are your criteria that narrow down.
The students have to be the ones asking the questions.
The way your frame it influences your output.

Stuffing technology into the curriculum - putting it where it doesn’t belong.
We use new technology when it enhances what we are wanting to learn.

Cluster diagramming programmes - kidspiration/inspiration

Dove Onslaught - you tube

Dove Evolution

What are the literacies involved in this?
*Emotional
*Ethical and Social
*Visual
*Cultural
*Technological/Digital

why is it important to look good?
how does the media influence this?
What is looking good? Who decides this?

Students creating parodies.
The Slob evolution

500 mile project - year long projects that students dig deeper into

Students who are competent thinkers and problem-solvers actively seek, use and create knowlege. They reflect on their own learning, draw on personal knowledge and intuitions, ask questions, and challenge the basis of assumptions an perceptions
- NZ curriculum

Creating public that are open and critical of what is presented to us.
It is hard enough as adults to know what is true/false online… how do we get our kids to become literate if we struggle with this?

Jigzone.com

Traits of an Information Literate School
Rate your school in terms of these criteria (downloadable file at bottom of page)

Invention
Fluency
Support
Navigation
Searching
Selection
Questioning
Planning
Interpretation
Deep Thinking
Commitment

Rhetorical devices on websites that change contexts…
“Some say…” “Many believe…”

Can we teach our students the selection process - what is reliable?
What is the evidence that these statements students collect are true?
How are we allowing and showing our students to evaluate and critique what they are reading…?

Learning@School 08

Learning@School is a e-learning conference based in Rotorua, NZ every year.

It’s a chance for teachers and more to collaborate and share their learnings and ideas from the past year from within their clusters.

There is a wealth of opportunities on offer here which I will be blogging about over the next few days.

If you would like to be skyped/twittered in to keynotes, breakouts etc just let me know and we will arrange something! I will also post my notes on here as we go along!

Here are the keynote speakers:
Jeremy Kedian
Julia Atkin
Richard Millwood

Breakouts are as follows
* Jamie McKenzie - The New Classroom and The Information Literate School: Creating Technology Enhanced Student-Centred Learning Environments
* Fiona Patteson & Toni-Jayne Miles - Kidspiration - Hands on, minds on
* Ian Fox, Lenva Sheering & Gail Mitchell - e-Portfolios - A Personal Space For Learning
* Simon Evans - Did you know NZ?
* Sarah Dickson & Richard Murray - As A First Year cluster where do we start?
* Lyn Ross - Using ICTs in Literacy

To Edublog or Blogspot…

That is the question!

A few teachers are quite keen to get started in blogging. After this i’m off to play around with blogger a bit more so that maybe I can even answer a few of my own questions. I think its a good idea if at the moment we all keep to similar blogging providers i.e. blogspot or edublogs. I use edublogs (obviously) so know a bit about this on a personal level but I want to hear from the educators who use blogs with their classes, so please help me out!

Here are my questions:

1. How easy do you find your blogging portal?

2. What are the features you like and dislike about them?

3. What is your recommendation for first time bloggers/class bloggers?

4. Is there any other important information we might need to know? i.e. how simple is it to set up students as individual bloggers on a blog?  Is there another blogging provider that is better in your view?

Heymilly Wiki

So, I have just transfered all my stuff from my wetpaint wiki to a new wikispaces wiki after talking to a few people.  This wiki is slowly building up to contain a bunch of links and resources for me to use this year as lead ICT teacher in my school.  Please use anything you see if you want to, but I would really like you to add your completed work to the wiki for others to also see!

 Heymilly

Some parts of pages didn’t fully transfer when I copied it over so if there seems to be something missing there most likely is, but I am working on getting it complete again in the next few days.