eT@lking: Retribalizing, Literary Style: Virtual Book Clubs and Bookcast

Thanks so much to teacher extraordinaire Anne Mirtschin for passing on the following information about this free online learning session:

Time: October 27, 2010 from 8pm to 9pm (AEDT)
Location: elluminate webinar
Event Type: online_pdelluminatenetworking
Organized By: Anne Mirtschin

McLuhan (see the video) predicted we’d have to leave the bookworld behind to be “with it” in the electronic world but with social media we can do it all. Learn about an evolving virtual book club model, online or inworld, that culminates with the screening of collaboratively produced bookcasts, multimedia aesthetic responses to books.

To preview bookcasting, check out this ncbookcast festival You can post questions and comments to the wiki discussion.

Meet our Presenter: Cris Crissman, PhD, Distance Learning Consultant, USDLC, Adjunct Assistant Professor, NC State Writer and Producer.

Bio: Cris teaches the “Learning Through Literature with Young Adults” graduate class at North Carolina State University. After ten years of exploring online book clubs, she took the class and the book clubs inworld to Second Life. The students self-select genre book clubs and work collaboratively to produce bookcasts to share with the whole class and the world. Inservice teachers have applied the model in their classrooms. Every year the class leads a virtual author study for teen readers in the state and this year the featured virtual author is Australian Melina Marchetta whose award-winning Finnikin of the Rock is drawing rave reviews from American teens.
Link to join this session

Sounds like a fabulous opportunity to learn much more about a topic close to our hearts. And as Cris is presenting at 5am her time, a large audience would be welcome!

The recording of this session is available for anyone to listen to. Thanks to Anne Mirtschin for forwarding this link.

A Backyard Beginning – Hawkesdale P-12

By Tadfish

By Tadfish

The absolutely amazing and multi award winning teacher Anne Mirtschin from Hawkesdale P-12 College has kindly shared information about how her blogging journey with her students began:

Three years ago, a rich picture studies case grant from DEECD required us to use web2.0 tools. A quick request to my computer technician found some information on web2.0 tools including blogging. The article was produced by Heather Blakey of Soul Food Cafe blogging fame. By a strange coincidence, I also received an email to say that a globalteacher and global student campus was being set up, so I immediately enrolled.  As I had no idea what to do with these blogs, I,  in usual form procrastinated.

As luck would have it, our librarian Faye Matters had attended a SLAV PD in Melbourne, heard a lady called Heather Blakey speak and immediately booked her up for a cluster PD session and art workshop at our school, Hawkesdale P12 College.

Heather squeezed in some time to come to my IT class and discuss the possibility of a backyard blog. We were researching volcanic evidence in our area, and backyards seemed a logical beginning as students had lots of interesting things to talk about – and they all love their backyard. The backyard blog began as a class blog. Students wrote about their backyards. I would grab their file out of their folders and post it onto the blog. Imagine our amazement and delight, when after one of the first posts we received several comments!

Hawkesdale

Your “backyard” is beautiful! Thank you for sharing it with the world.

Lori, California

Thank you so much for sharing your backyard. When we all share like this, it makes our world just a little smaller and better.

She Wolf

These comments acted like magic to my class and me. Somebody was reading our work, we seemed to have a global voice. Later we found out, it was Heather’s wonderful blogisphere who were reading and commenting. However, we were up and blogging. Soon students from years 5 to 10 had individual student blogs. It was hard work, as there was so much to learn  and much of our work was by trial and error– posts, dashboards, tags, categories, widgets, pages etc all had to be learnt. However, Heather created the wonderful  “25 steps to web2.0”. Each day for the 25 days to Christmas, Heather and her blogging friends would add a post each day, illustrating some aspect of blogging.

From humble and unknown beginnings, my globalteacher blog became my class blog, and now features the following:-

Posts

Pages include the following

  • About Me – a vital and important page where most visitors will go to seek out validity and nature of the blogger.
  • Current timetable and list of current classes
  • Code of conduct
  • E-safety
  • Past students
  • Resources
  • Global projects

Widgets and sidebar features include the following:-

  • A flikr widget that shows photos added to my online photo album.
  • Time clock
  • Categories etc
  • Various world maps to visualize where virtual visitors are from eg clustrmaps
  • Flagcounter
  • My slideshows (ppt presentations) uploaded to slideshare
  • List of classes taught with student blog links
  • Student blog of the week in 2009 as the school received a box of usb drives as part of a campaign. The usb drives were the weekly prize.
  • Links to resources and global projects

Posts contain hyperlinks where possible. This is an efficient means of directing students to further online pages and adjusts them to appropriate 21st century literacy.

Postscript: Unfortunately, busy time commitments have prevented me from working on the backyard blog so it rests peacefully at the moment, knowing that it has taken us to the globe!

Thanks Anne. What a brilliant start to what has become an amazing Web 2.0 presence at Hawkesdale P-12 College.