Online resources for teaching Shakespeare

English teachers are always looking for new ways to support teaching Shakespeare. Here is a site that provides just that. Provided by the UK’s Department for Children, Schools and Families, Powerpoints, Word Documents and Smartboard files are available for anyone to use.

Enjoying Shakespeare homepage
Enjoying Shakespeare homepage

With strategies that incorporate ICT into teaching texts such as Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as more specific information on teaching Romeo and Juliet, this is a site you should share with your English teaching colleagues. They’ll thank you for it!

FUSE – Find, Use, Share, Education

Victoria’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development has released stage one of their new website. FUSE; Find, Use and Share quality Education resources is set to be revolutionary for teachers by the time it is complete by early 2010. Even now, it has many features both for Victorian DEECD employed teachers and others outside of this system. Teachers can log in using their Edumail details to access extra content and features.

FUSE homepage

FUSE homepage

FUSE is the one place to get everything you need for teaching and learning. It also provides the ability to save, bookmark and package items for later access. So if you are looking for items such as URLs, documents and videos for teaching a unit of work, they can be found, saved and packaged for easy access at a later date. Teachers can also rate and comment on resources.

FUSE has been developed in conjunction with organisations such as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the State Library of Victoria, Scienceworks and Museum Victoria

Innovation and Next Practice Branch Assistant General Manager Katrina Reynen at the release of FUSE

Innovation and Next Practice Branch Assistant General Manager Katrina Reynen at the release of FUSE

Teachers are ecouraged to upload to FUSE. Documents, URLs, videos and more are accepted in all types of formats.

FUSE is the total online planning tool that will be the virtual library inside the Ultranet, once the Ultranet is released. Teachers can begin using this fabulous tool now with the confidence that it will be a major part of the Ultranet.

Bright Ideas has already uploaded a document, a URL and a video to FUSE to share with other teachers.

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

The United States of America’s Department of Education has just released a report on the “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning“.  The 93 page document sets out the answers to the following questions:

1. How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction?

 2. Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning?

 3. What practices are associated with more effective online learning?

 4. What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?

 With our current educational system, the majority of us will be interested in questions 2, 3 and 4 as we implement online learning alongside face-to-face teaching instead of replacing it. (The range of ‘learning outcomes’ that were measured varied depending on the subject taught.) The report goes on to state: 

The corpus of 51 effect sizes extracted from 46 studies meeting these criteria was sufficient to demonstrate that in recent applications, online learning has been modestly more effective, on average, than the traditional face-to-face instruction with which it has been compared.

 And on average, online learning produced better student learning outcomes than face-to-face instruction in those studies with random-assignment experimental designs (p < .001) and in those studies with the largest sample sizes (p < .001).

 Studies comparing variations of online learning provides some additional insights with respect to designing effective online learning experiences. The practice with the strongest evidence of effectiveness is inclusion of mechanisms to prompt students to reflect on their level of understanding as they are learning online. In a related vein, there is some evidence that online learning environments with the capacity to individualize instruction to a learner’s specific needs improves effectiveness.

In brief, students who have been exposed to both online and face-to-face teaching and learning have fared better than those who have experienced only face-to-face learning or only online learning. As most of us interested in embedding new technologies into teaching and learning use this method, this is an exciting (but a hopefully expected) finding.

The report concludes with this statement:

Educators making decisions about online learning need rigorous research examining the effectiveness of online learning for different types of students and subject matter as well as studies of the relative effectiveness of different online learning practices.

It seems that there have been few other studies into the comparison of face-to-face teaching and the quantifiable efficacy of online learning and although this study admits the results are encouraging, it is being left up to individual teachers and schools to determine for themselves if combining online and face-to-face teaching and learning suits their students and subjects.

Nevertheless, this report is encouraging for any teacher who needs to demonstrate to others the worth of using Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning. 

Free professional learning @ SLV

 A few more interesting events are coming up at the State Library of Victoria, all of them are free of charge (but bookings are required), which in this financial environment has got to be good.

On Tuesday 5th May, there is a forum on ‘The Web 2.0 World’. The forum will examine the use of Web 2.0 technologies to find, engage and collaborate with users. Click here  to book.

On Tuesday 19th May, The Learning to Learn series focuses on ‘Today’s Kids,  Tomorrow’s School.’ This session will look how students need to learn and what impact new approaches to education are having on students and their futures. Click here  to book.

On Tuesday 9th June, ‘The Web 2.0 World: Play’ gives participants the option to experiment with Web 2.0 tools and technologies. (The link for booking this session is not yet available. It will be added when ready.)

These sessions are not only relevant to teachers/librarians, but can count towards the VIT PD requirements.

Feature wiki – Casey Grammar School

Casey Grammar School Head of Secondary School Teaching and Learning and teacher librarian Julie Squires has developed a very useful wiki for her year 11 English class.

Wiki homepage
Wiki homepage
Julie explains, ‘Although I created the wiki specifically for my class, I made it public so that any English teacher and/or student can use it. I am introducing my students to the wiki slowly; they need to complete their VCE profiles via the wiki and I want them to get used to doing homework online. I want the students to take responsibility for their own learning. I am encouraging them to use tools such as Essay map and bubbl.us to plan their essays online. Students can contribute to the ‘Reading/responding resource bank’ so that others can see what their classmates are doing. I really hope it becomes a collaborative effort between them as often students don’t realise what their classmates are writing and thinking. It’s not cool to share too much in class, so hopefully this way they can experience the power of learning collaboratively.’
Useful online resources

Useful online resources

Julie continues, ‘And by giving them links to useful resources, like Glogster and Ergo, I am helping them find resources they would not necessarily come across themselves.’

Congratulations to Julie for her great ideas, creativity and for sharing her wonderful wiki with us. Julie really is a leader in her field! If you have a moment, check out her ning, a place for Victorian teacher librarians to meet and share.

Feature wiki – Buckley Park College

Buckley Park College Librarian and Web 2.0 whizkid Leslie Sharples helped with the introduction of wikis to College staff in the first week of the school year. Pauline Kossis, the Assessment and Reporting Coordinator and Senior Accounting Teacher immediately grabbed the idea of using a wiki with her class and ran with it.

Accounting homepage
Accounting homepage

Pauline explains how her wiki came about. ‘I became excited with the thought that wikis could combine all of the features I was looking for as a teacher and for my students to access information and share their knowledge.’

Course content
Course content

She continues,’ Previously I was setting dates and times to be online so I could assist students with their exercises, but this was solely one on one and other students were not privy to the information. While my wiki is a starting point for students to access resources, links and classroom activities 24-7, they can collaboratively explore the various topics covered in Accounting 3.  I have just finished inviting my class in and eventually, there will be an inclusion of more resources, eg. vokis to highlight key concepts covered, current articles, PowerPoint presentations, as well as questionnaires to rate their learning experiences(ie.what went well and what topics could be explained further).’

Links
Links

Pauline says, ‘Students will provide some of the work that will be displayed on the site also e.g. Chapter summaries (these will be used for revision). The same process will be duplicated with all my other classes.’

Leslie Sharples says that Pauline’s wiki is making a real difference to her students. Well done to Leslie for introducing wikis to the staff and to Pauline for her excellent ideas and commitment to developing exciting educational learning for her students.

Feature wiki – Preston Girls’ Secondary College

On their arrival at Preston Girls’ Secondary College earlier this year, teacher librarians Judith Way and Reina Phung grappled to get a handle on the curriculum requirements of the college. Job-sharing the 1.0 position, with no support staff, Judith and Reina found it difficult to find the time to meet with subject coordinators to ask for their input. Aware of the few audio visual resources and a collection that needed updating, they decided to set up a ‘Curriculum Audit’ wiki.

Not a link, just a screenshot of one of the pages from the wiki

Not a link, just a screenshot of one of the pages from the wiki

It was decided that the wiki was to be kept private, for the use and eyes of the  school staff only. Staff were emailed an introduction and request to contribute to the wiki. The email contained a word document attachment that included detailed instructions and screenshots on how to contribute to the wiki. Staff were then asked to contribute their thoughts on a number of questions:

  1. Do you need library resources for this topic/subject?
  2. What type of resources do you need? Please be explicit.
  3. Are you happy with the resources the library already has?
  4. What resources would you liked to be purchased or discovered?
  5. Do you have research skills embedded into the topic?
  6. Would you like to work with us to embed research skills into the topic?
  7. If you’d like help, when can we meet? Please nominate a time/date.
  8. How else can we help you in the teaching and learning process?

Some staff not only responded quickly and in some detail, but were enthused about the possibilities of wikis. One teacher, Les Kyle, proceeded to quickly create her own extremely detailed wiki for her VCAL class; the whole curriculum, topics and links to resources (with some contributions from Judith and Reina). This wiki was kept private within Preston Girls’ (using an email to the students’ email address inviting them to join the wiki) as full student names appeared on the wiki and discussions between teacher and students took place. Judith and Reina were proud to think that their Curriculum Audit wiki was the catalyst for Les’s fabulous wiki.

However, many staff did not know what a wiki was, and some had trouble even logging on. The ideal situation would have been an introductory session during a Curriculum Day for those interested/needing guidance. However as all Curriculum Days had been allocated to specific topics (Literacy), Judith and Reina continued to work one-to-one with interested teachers. Judith and Reina believe that something like the SLAV Web 2.0 course for teachers would be terrific, as they often felt that the majority of the teaching staff would benefit from the introduction to the Web 2.0 tools out there that can enhance teaching and learning.

The idea that wikis were the ideal tool for student/student and student/teacher (and teacher/teacher) collaboration was introduced to teachers. That students projects could be completed in teams, and the teacher automatically alerted by email to when contributions had been added. Students taking full responsibility for their own learning becomes apparent when those with access to the wiki can see (and also have email alerts) who has contributed what to the wiki. The way discussions and comments are structured means that students have to think about their responses, rather than perhaps plagiarise by cutting and pasting.

The bonus was that discussions about wikis and blogs now regularly take place and teachers who have not yet made a contribution to the wiki promise to do so when the VCE classes finish. The new ICT Coordinator has begun his own blog. And the teachers who contributed to the wiki will have the best resourced subjects in the school!

The only problem that Judith and Reina found was that the initial wiki grew so large that it had to be split into two; years 7-10 and years 11-12.

Feature wiki – Samaritan Catholic College, Preston

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

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

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

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.

CMap tools

CMap tools is a free Web 2.0 tool that helps users create, navigate, share and critique concept/mind maps. The Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) have developed this program and encourage users involved in education to download to as many computers as they wish (for free).  A university affiliated research institute, IHMC is a not for profit organisation administered by Florida University System and is affiliated with several Florida universities.

CMap tools home
CMap tools home

Concept or mind maps have been popular for a while now, and being able to work collaboratively on them is a bonus. The ability to access the saved maps of others is a terrific teaching and learning tool. Students can critique completed maps and understand what is required of a great map before they begin.

Information on the IHMC website says:

  • IHMC faculty and staff collaborate extensively with industry and government to develop science and technology that can be enabling with respect to society’s broader goals. IHMC researchers receive funding (current funding in force exceeds $22,000,000) from a wide range of government and private sources. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, NSF, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, NIMA, NIH, DOT, IDEO, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Lockheed, SAIC, and IBM among others.

Sounds impressive. You do have to download the program, which takes about 50 minutes. That is a problem for schools, but if your IT people can download it to a server and install an icon on desktops, that solves a few problems.

HTC library

HTC library

When trying to find maps that have been uploaded by other users, rather than use the ‘Shared CMaps in Places’, it is easier to go to ‘tools’ then ‘search’ and type in what you are looking for. Refine your search by selecting ‘Select resource types to return’ and click on concept maps. Otherwise a list of other resources will appear.

Some people may remember the program entitled Inspiration that came on CD Rom. CMap tools seems to be the Web 2.0 version of that. Why don’t you have a play and when you feel confident, give it a go with your students? There are a number of Youtube videos to show you how to use CMap tools, Creating concepts and propositionsIntroduction to the views window  and Adding resources are just a few. They are great visual aids to assist you (and your students) when starting to use CMap tools.

Please submit comments if you do use CMap tools.

Diigo

Diigo (pronounced Deego) is a Web 2.0 tool that lets users bookmark, highlight  and add sticky notes to web pages. You can add and share (or not share if you don’t want to) annotations and get recommendations from other users. You are able to publish easily from Diigo to your blog or email and all references will automatically appear. That’s a huge bonus in this day of plagiarism. Diigo even call their tools ‘the best companion for online research’ and that’s a big call. Is it warranted?

Diigo

Diigo

The Diigo blog states ‘We are happy to announce the release of Diigo Educator Accounts, a suite of features that makes it incredibly easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology.’ You do have to apply to Diigo for an educator account upgrade and it can take up to 48 hours for them to process your application (you have to fill out how/why you want to use Diigo in your school).

Diigo has to be downloaded to your toolbar, but it is a very quick process. Diigo says, ‘Once approved for a Diigo Educator Account:

  • A teacher can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
  • Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
  • To protect the privacy of students, student accounts have special settings which only allow their teachers and classmates to contact them and access their personal profile information.
  • Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.’

Sounds like it’s worth a look and a trial with a class. Anything that helps students research and acknowledge sources is worth pursuing. Have a look at the video that explains how Diigo works: How to use Diigo. And thanks to John Pearce of Salty Solutions for this guide to Diigo.