Module 9

Scootle
Finally! An idea that has incorporated all of the ideas we have been learning about on this course. One website that captures everything - networking, sharing of websites, pictures, files etc., without having the stress of logging on to each individual website!

Second Life
Love it!! Second Life brings teaching into this generations style of learning. Our kids are growing up in a world of technology; games on the computer and games on the TV. This program taps into this generation by teaching them in a world in which they are familiar. I love the fact that you can use this program to teach (for example) Kindergarten about the snow - most of the kids at our school have never seen snow, only in pictures. So to have a program that not only shows them snow, but the different things we can do on the snow (ski, ice skate etc) is incredible. This applies to the older grades as well - taking a tour of an Asian country is by far more interesting than seeing pictures in a book. The world is your oyster with this program. Now all we have to do is have the time to learn how to program the idea that is suitable to our needs.

Twitter
Twitter is a means of connecting with your friends on a day to day basis without having to send individual emails to all friends about what you are doing. Twitter lets the user read updates about their friends' lives as they happen. It has opened the world of connecting with celebrities and other people who once would have been "off limits" to the common person (for example, Kevin Rudd has a Twitter account).
As a Facebook fan, I see Twitter as another Facebook... except with Facebook you can learn more about your friends through sharing of pictures, writing on walls and individual emails. I have not signed up to Twitter as I feel that Facebook is enough social networking... there is only so much computer time in a day (or as I'm discovering, there is only so much computer time in a week!!)

Module 8

RSS - another great idea!
I have to admit that I had a hard time trying to figure it out. I found the Google Reader update icon but it wasn't orange and I couldn't add pages I wanted to on the list. But with a lot of clicking and trying to work it out I finally did it and am glad I did!
RSS is a way of streamlining all of your favourite websites and adding them to one page. The RSS feeder lets you know what updates have been made to the page. It shows how many updates have been made on that site as well. The purpose of it is another time saving program - instead of going into individual pages to see what changes have been made (if any), it will show you (through the use of bold writing) if there have been any changes and how many. Once you view the changes, the list "un-bolds" itself until further changes.
Genius!

Module 7

Delicious!
What a great idea! What will they think of next? Delicious is a bookmarking function that you can access from any computer... Fantastic considering it was always hard to do research at home, find a few good sites, email them to my work email, then access them at school. Either that or work on the classroom computer, then go into the computers in the staffroom, and have to Google to find the same sites again. Very time wasting...
Not only can you access your bookmarks, but you can access and share bookmarks with friends or colleagues. I love this idea! Sites for teachers are endless, and you can spend hours just sorting through the good and the bad, the relevant and the irrelevant. At least this way you know the sites that have been Bookmarked are worth visiting.
The internet really has changed from the user being a passive user to a role that is active and useful to a whole lot of people!

Module 6

Bubble.Us

Finally! A tool that would be suitable for use in a classroom of Infants all the way through to a university level. Bubble.Us can be used in a classroom to determine the student's understandings of a topic through pre and post testing.

The tool is easy to use and visually easy to read. When I do brainstorming on the whiteboard the student's ideas become muddled up because of space issues - this tool allows the user to move the "Bubbles" and "sub-Bubbles" to a space that fits, and gives the options of changing colours to give clearer grouping options.

Glogster

What an amazing tool for both teachers and students to share their knowledge and understandings of a topic!

What comes to mind though is the issue of equality. Although the program is a free tool, students who have access to a computer are more likely to have a greater knowledge on how to use the program, therefore being more confident to import things like videos, pictures, animations and sounds. One of the first things that I thought of when I saw an example of a document created on Glogster was how impressive it looked - far more interactive than a cardboard poster! - but then my thoughts turned to those who weren't confident users of both the program and a computer. Teachers need to be mindful of focusing on the content of the document, and not be drawn to the impressive links (videos, pictures, animations and sounds) that have been uploaded onto the document. By doing that, I actually wonder how much a student knows about the topic - do they know how to use the program more than they actually understand the topic? The topic of access to computers is once again an issue that needs to be addressed - obviously a very costly and time consuming issue, but one that will affect the future of our children.

Having said that I just tried to use it and it is actually very simple to use! What will they think of next? :)

http://renandem.glogster.com/edit/glog/?action=glogs_create