Stephen Heppell @SLV

Posted on November 13, 2008 by slav

For the final post about Professor Stephen Heppell’s inspiring talk at the State Library of Victoria on 10th November, Stephen mentioned some innovative things some schools are doing in the UK.

A primary school in East Kilbride (Glasgow) let their students use the ‘Big Brain Academy’ game on Nintendo DS handheld consoles for twenty minutes each morning. Performance in all areas of schooling has lifted since the introduction of the game. The culture of the school has changed, being ‘brainy’ is now cool.

Numerous secondary schools in the UK are closing their staffrooms and reopening them as cafes shared with students. The basic philosophy is that everyone at school is a learner (including teachers) and should share ideas and spaces.

Leasowes School has trialled a month long timetable of each subject and exam results have improved.

Just a few examples of how Stephen explains that schools need to ‘run, not follow’.

21st Century learning

Posted on November 12, 2008 by slav

Continuing on with Professor Stephen Heppell’s talk on 21st Century learning at the State Library of Victoria on Monday 10th November, Stephen outlined the 21st Century as ‘people centric’ where ‘helping people help each other’ is leading to the mass social construction of knowledge. People adding entries and editing Wikipedia, creating content in LibraryThing, YouTube, Flickr and the like (my examples) means that we (and our students) ‘are in a world we haven’t met before’. Stephen says ‘it’s time for schools to run, not follow’.

A recent UK survey by Ipsos asked students how they were currently learning in school. The responses were something like:

Copying from books or the whiteboard (approximately 50% of respondents).
Taking notes from a long teacher talk (approximately 30% of respondents).
Copying from the Internet (approximately 20% of respondents).

When asked how they would like to learn, the responses were:

Learning in groups.
Learn by doing practical things.
Learning with friends.
Learn by using a computer.

When asked what they would like their teachers to be able to do, they responded:

Edit a Wikipedia entry.
Upload a video to YouTube and make a comment.
Subscribe to a podcast.
Manage groups in Flickr (and be able to spell Flickr).
Select a safe online payment site.
Turn mobile phone predictive text on/off.

Certainly food for thought, not only for teachers but also for school administrators. For a recording of Stephen’s session with Victoria’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s Knowledge Bank, click here.

To read more about what Stephen has been involved in, his thoughts and projects, please follow these links:

Teachers TV

Posted on November 12, 2008 by slav

Internationally renowned educator Professor Stephen Heppell presented an enlightening lecture at the State Library of Victoria on the evening of Monday 10^th November. The topic of 21^st Century learning and how we as educators address and change not only our practice, but mindset, is just one of the things that consumes Stephen.

One tool that Stephen discussed was Teachers TV (not to be confused with TeacherTube). UK in origin, it provides thousands of educational programmes on television and the Internet. Many of the programmes available are made by teachers for other teachers; they discuss new ideas that have worked well in their classroom. Teachers TV provides a subject guide to programmes, recommended videos and more. You can keep up-to-date with RSS feeds and if you register, you can download programmes to view later on, comment on programmes and access sneak previews.

Thousands of education programmes on TV and online

Teachers TV is highly recommended as a free, reliable and credible source of educational videos freely available through the Internet. Teachers TV also provides links to educational websites that may be of interest.

Plurk

Posted on November 11, 2008 by slav

Plurk is a tool that enables members to have an online social conversation with multiple friends. You can join conversations by topic, or use the micro blogging tool to send ‘plurks’ which use a maximum of 140 characters (like Twitter). Updates from friends are shown on your page as a timeline in chronological order.

Homepage

Plurk’s aim is to introduce a balance between blogs and wikis, instant messaging and email. Users of the micro blogging tool use verbs to explain how they are feeling.

Example

There is a great wiki that lists schools and other educational institutions that are using Plurk. The wiki provides links to the projects that the schools are undertaking, and currently there are at least seven Australian schools, with three of those from Victoria. Many of the projects linked to the wiki are outstanding and definitely worth investigating. If you like the sound of Plurk and you’d like to learn more about how it works, click here.

Feature wiki – Samaritan Catholic College, Preston

Posted on November 8, 2008 by slav

Lynda Santolin, ILC Co-ordinator at Preston’s Samaritan Catholic College has spent time since completing the SLAV Web 2.0 course earlier this year developing numerous tools for teaching and learning. She has also led a staff PD introducing them to the world of blogs and wikis.

A Book Club blog, Staff Book blog, del.icio.us site, Rollyo account and online image generators have all been tools that Lynda has introduced. But she feels her greatest success was with wikis. ‘I created a wiki for staff to use. I think it has great potential for staff in faculties, or across campuses or even across schools, to share resources and planning. I also set up the Shared Stories Anthology wiki – which is run across 8 schools – the school coordinators compile student writing/visual arts pieces on a theme and publish and ‘book launch’ it each year. The wiki has enabled us to share:

Planning
Practicalities and pitfalls
Logistics
Launch details
Post-launch’

Shared stories anthology wiki

Lynda has developed a further two wikis for teaching and learning; Year 7 Ancient history and Year 8 Middle Ages. ‘In each of those, I had an information focus, but then something interactive – ‘test yourself’ type of thing. Our team put those websites together, I made the wikis, and the kids were engrossed with them and said they had ‘fun’. One example is this one interactive game to dress a knight for battle by answering a few
questions.’

Middle Ages

She continues, ‘I also had a discussion forum, where I tried to ask ‘thinking’ questions, for example, Would you have liked to have lived in Ancient Times? Why/why not? (Their responses were really interesting and often funny ‘No, because I wouldn’t be able to play computer games’). The discussion posts where each student needed to be members of the wikispace to respond. And from memory, they had to reply to an invitational email to do that. That was a lot of work and effort!’

Ancient history wiki

Lynda explains she is ‘finding wikis – wikispaces.com (it is free and the educational membership is advertisement-free) – easier to handle than blogs. Blogs are hard to do if you are trying to give many people a voice (page). I wouldn’t do it again as a blog, but I’d try wikis.’

Lynda has been very happy with wikispaces.com as she feels that it has great guides and support for teachers. She recommends using wikis over blogs as they are easy to use. She suggests:

‘Before using wikis with students:

Have a ‘play’ by creating your own personal/professional wiki. Learn.
Wikispaces = great help/tutorials (see above)
Know about Netsafety, Copyright and other cyber issues
Show students: examples/models
Use old technology – pen & paper! – to plan
Plan your ‘discussion’ to encourage higher order thinking and metacognition’

Lynda also suggests that: ‘Students need to know practicalities, pitfalls. For example:

Uploading content/feedback comments is NOT ‘chat’ – stay focused
Never reveal your or another person’s entire name, contact details, school
The wiki/blog does not replace homework (can’t be an excuse not to do homework!)’

Lynda also addressed other issues such as Netsafety, Copyright and other cyber issues. She says to ‘familiarise yourself with Working with the Web and to have dialogue with the Assistant Principal and other relevant co-coordinators/staff.’

Overall, Lynda has had great success with the wiki, but explains that the ‘practicalities and pitfalls of wikis and blogs include:

Being time-consuming, so has to be suited to the educational project – worthwhile/rewarding
It gets less tricky as you get more proficient – there is light at the end of the tunnel!
You still have to constantly monitor it and moderate comments (all sent to your email inbox)
Suggest: set a start and end date for the wiki
It’s easier to create the wiki with another person – solo is hard but still possible…
Take small steps and start small!’

Lynda says that the SLAV Web 2.0 course gave her ‘the skills, knowledge and experience to participate in the Web 2.0 world, and I love the multi-literacies, communities, collaboration and peering.’

Thanks to Lynda for sharing her thoughts and hard work and congratulations on the success of all your Web 2.0 tools, particularly the wiki.

Zotero

Posted on November 4, 2008 by slav

A new way to research? Zotero is a revolutionary Mozilla Firefox (an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer) extension that helps users ‘collect, manage and cite’ research sources.

With the results of a recent survey where 49% of Cambridge students admitted plagiarism, that sounds fantastic. How does it work?

The Zotero website says that it:

‘automatically captures citation of information from web pages
has a playlist like library that keeps a record of saved searches
saves records and notes in many languages
integrates with Microsoft Office, WordPress and other blogging software
has formatted citation export
stores web pages, PDFs, files, images, links and other attachments.’

Like Diigo, you can create ‘sticky note’ annotations that ‘stick’ onto the webpage you are using. The Zotero website explains how to create bibliographies; ‘For example, you can drag and drop references into any text field as either HTMLor plain text. You can also print bibliographies directly from Zotero or copy them to your clipboard. In addition, MS Word and OpenOffice plugins offer more precise control for integrating bibliographic information in your writing projects.’

Zotero provides a lot of information about how to use it as a research tool. There are screencasts that give demonstrations of how to use Zotero, as well as lots of links that explain just about everything you’ll need to know. Once downloaded, the Zotero icon lives in the bottom right-hand corner of the Firefox window. Just click on the Zotero icon when you want to use it. With the click of the mouse, Zotero saves the bibliographic information of a website to file.

Zotero in action

Zotero can also be used with Netscape Navigator (no link as Netscape are no longer developing their product) and Flock web browsers as well as Firefox. Zotero 1.0 is the current version, but when version 2.0 is released, it will allows users to share collections, notes and documents, allowing better collaboration. Although Zotero is downloaded to a particular computer rather than generating a user login, it can be used on multiple computers. Version 2 should enable user logins for better portability.

Zotero really is an amazing tool for those who want to organise their research, searches or topics. It could be the new way to take notes and to teach students how to notetake online! Also a wonderful tool for anyone doing graduate or post graduate studies.

Feature blog – Mill Park Secondary College

Posted on November 1, 2008 by slav

Heather Bailie, College Library Coordinator at Mill Park Secondary College has set up a most interesting blog. Did I speak to you about… is a site just for library staff.

Did I speak to you about...

Heather explains, ‘We have nine people making up 7.4 EFT on two campuses. I spend half my time at each campus, others have one or two days a week at their non-home campus. Due to part-timers it is impossible to have a meeting that all library staff can attend. I set up this site during the Web 2.0 course when the penny dropped that blogs are a sensational communication tool. Now instead of conversations between 2 or 3 people, phone calls and emails going back and forth and people being left out of the loop we can keep the conversation in a central location and it is up to each of us to contribute. Better than that, with our Google readers set up as a widget in our iGoogle pages we are instantly alerted of new news. I have even used a post to call for agenda items for an actual meeting and then made comments to record the minutes.’

She continues, ‘This site has been set up directly as a result of the library staff at Mill Park Secondary College completing the SLAV Web 2.0 course. I have just been appointed to the Leading Teacher Position of College ICT Coach – I don’t know if I would have even considered applying before doing the SLAV Web 2.0 online course. What I do know is that having completed it and what I have gained from it has contributed enormously to my successful application!’

It really does go to show that the possibilities of Web 2.0 are only within the realms of our imagination. Congratulations to Heather on her innovative use of a blog and on her appointment as a Leading Teacher, College ICT Coach.

School Library Association of Victoria

Monthly Archives: November 2008