Friday, August 06, 2004

MyClasses - Other Sharing Options

You are creating a Property for Myclasses - What happens when you select these: Other sharing Options?

Select additional groups you wish to make this Property available to:
  • Viewable and editable by teachers all in schools within my Education Network - Other teachers will be able to change your property - image, text, add entries if a calendar etc.
  • Viewable by all users in all schools within my Education Network - Other teachers and students will be able to see and access your property, but not add files if it is a files box, or change the URL, image or text.
  • Viewable by everyone in MIPS - not sure what this means
  • Viewable by other teachers in MIPS - not sure what this means
  • Viewable by teachers in all schools within my Education Network - Teachers can view it for their own inspiration, but the only way they can use it is to create it themselves from scratch or get you to make it viewable by all users...

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Images in a Blog Posting

Blogger mentions three ways of using images in a blog post:
Posting Pictures in a Blog  
1..Use Hello with Bloggerbot.
2..Use Flickr.
3..Linking to images already uploaded on the web.
Following Posts will talk about each method.  

Too Young for Technology?

The link takes you to an article on CNN.com suggesting careful consideration of computer use by young children:
Too young for Technology?
What is your reaction to this article?
Image From CNN.com Posted by Hello

Thursday, July 08, 2004

MyPortfolio - a possible future companion for myDesktop

The following is a summary of MyPortfolio from Myinternet Website

What is myportfolio?
myportfolio is a place on the Internet that a student can call their own; a place where students can create, collate and publish material. Based on the idea of an
electronic student portfolio (an ePortfolio*), myportfolio allows students to showcase their work in a range of contexts and demonstrate how their skills have developed over time.
Teachers can use myportfolio to assess student's academic progress as well as to publish work by class groups or individuals. Teachers can also utilise myportfolio to assemble and present evidence of their professional development at key points throughout their teaching career.
myportfolio offers students and teachers a personal workspace where learning outcomes can evolve beyond the limits of a single subject or course and where work can be stored for future reference and reflection.
Students and teachers can define who can view which parts of their myportfolio, allowing selections to be tailored to the right audience. myportfolio can be exported as a website or an IMS Content Package, allowing students to take their learning outcomes to a new school or beyond. This simple transportability gives new teachers all they
need to quickly assess the breadth of student's capabilities.
*An ePortfolio is a personal collection of electronic information describing and documenting a person's achievements and learning.

Monday, June 28, 2004

Blog: Blogging (part of email from Peter Carey

(Taken from an email from Peter Carey – June 2004)

Since the theme this week is response writing, I thought I might introduce weblogs, blogs or blogging. I think they have great potential for student writing, portfolios, posting assignments and communicating with parents. I am in favour of anything that gets kids to write. Why not give it a go.

From Jay Cross:
Weblogs are a personal writing space. Easy to share, automatically archived. Weblogs are easily linked and cross-linked to form learning communities. The school logs projects are examples. The school logs also enable a teacher to evaluate a student's thinking, by reading explanations and assignments.
· Weblogs can become digital portfolios of students\' assignments and achievements.
· Weblogs are a novice's web authoring tool.
· Accumulated weblogs become a content management system.
· Via digital storytelling, weblogs play a role in professional development.

Weblogs in the classroom
Presentation on the definition, characteristics and potential for
education of weblogs.
All the News That\'s Fit to Blog
Lesson plan where students critique three Web logs, each of which offers first-hand accounts, but reflect different points-of-view, on the war in Iraq.
Surf The Net With Kids: Blogging
Blogging is a new way to teach writing. This site lists blogging sites.
Weblogg-ed
Ideas for Web logs in the classroom and a clearinghouse for sites and
issues relating to Web logs, RSS and other Internet related technologies in education.
Blogs as Writing Practice
Blogs are an opportunity to publish and share text on the web quickly
and simply and they offer new learning possibilities. Here are some
strategies you might consider for using blogs in your classroom.
Lucy\'s Blog
Lucy from J.H.House Elementary school has created this blog site is
about the news and helping people understand it.

Blog - 2nd Grade Class Summer Reading Fun

Awesome Readers and Writers
Mrs Dudiak has set up a blog. Mrs D posts to the Blog and her Year 2 students comment.

Awesome Readers and Writers
Post 7: How was Green Meadows Farm (Excursion). 52 comments.
Post 6: Can you describe this Waterfall (Photo). 40 comments.
Post 5: Let's talk about our writing. 26 comments.
Post 4: It's show Time. 44 comments
Post 3: Make a choice: Is it Fiction of NonFitction books you enjoy the most? 64 comments.
Post 2: Have a book to recomment? Tell us about it! 28 comments.
Post 1: Are you ready to Blog? 5 comments.

Teaching with a Weblog - Timothy Johnston

Using a weblog (blog) as a class web page has the following features:
(1) A simple, easy-to-use, free web-based editor and free web page host server can be used, so no PC-based software programs (HTML editor or FTP) and no server accounts are needed,
(2) students require minimal training to begin independently publishing work to the blog, and
(3) the instructor’s workload to maintain the class web page is distributed to the blogger software and to the students. These features enable students to share their work with each other online, and make it available from and to any computer that is connected to the Internet.
This paper explains how to use a blog for teaching:
(1) The reasons for putting student work online are discussed,
(2) the steps needed to initiate and manage a blog are described, and
(3) the advantages of a blog as compared with the traditional method of creating web pages are presented.
Abstract of Timothy's Paper - presented April 2002
Teaching with a Weblog - How to Post Student Work Online

Friday, June 25, 2004

Preview of a Junior Primary Mydekstop

Myinternet will be upgrading during September 04. A Junior Primary desktop has been previewed as part of this process. See it at:
http://www.ceo.wa.edu.au/home/share/junior_style.gif

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Mydesktop Journal

Journal:
A Journal is a list of comments in order of date.
It has a simple structure – entries are listed in order, much like a timeline with comments along the way.

What follows applies to a Mydekstop Journal.
Use the Mydekstop Tools button to create a Journal or add an existing Journal to your desktop.

A Mydekstop Journal can be restricted to its creator (ie personal journal), or made available to everyone in the school, or only to the teaching group and particular year level(s). In addition, the journal can be:
private – users view their own entries. Teachers view all entries.
shared - users and teacher(s) can view all entries.

Suggestion:
1.. Try adding some existing journals to your desktop to see how people are using them. A good one to try is the Cathednet Video Conference Project Group Journal [Title is: Cathednet myCUCM Project Group].
** A hint for finding existing journals: Select Forum in the Property type and the search will find journals as well as forums.
2.. Create a Journal then add it to your desktop. Try adding a few entries to see how it all works...

Journals could be used for:
Narrative Genre: Story Starters, Diary Entries, Jokes, Anecdotes, Nursery Rhymes, Recount, Haiku,
Transactional: Postcard
Procedural: Messages
Reports: Reviews
Persuasive: Complaints

In favour:
You can decide whether students can see other student entries (modelling) or not.
You can have several Journals on the desktop at the same time.

Against:
Journal entries cannot be edited – only deleted.

Monday, June 21, 2004

Berkeley - Luke has arrived

Berkeley...well here I am, in your blog!

I must have done something right to get this far.
This 'blog' idea, is it a bit like an online forum?

I'm in Bililluna this week, so it might be worth touching base to see where the schools and WAEC are at with their networks.

Luke

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Welcome

A blog is a weblog which is a dated diary or journal published on the web.
Paperbark is a sort of private blog - ie for its members mainly.
However, it has a web address so others will be able to access it once they know the name of the blog.
One aim is for invited members to have a go at experiencing a blog.
Another aim is to trial a team blog where members can add their own posts to the one blog.
A further aim is to put together ideas about using blogs in education - for teachers, for students, and how blogs compare with email, journals and forums [journals and fora can be setup easily where myClasses and myInternet are used (eg cathednet in West Australia)]