Sharing eLearning at MESC

Lynn Swannell, a Librarian at Mount Eliza Secondary College has developed a very useful eLearning wiki.
MESC wiki
Lynn explains how the wiki came about:
I created this ‘Sharing eLearning at MESC’ wiki with two things in mind – teaching myself how to use Wikispaces and creating a Web2.0 sharing space for staff at Mount Eliza Secondary College.
In April 2010 I signed up to complete the 12-week SLAV ‘Personal Learning Network Program’ and during this time I have discovered (and rediscovered) a huge range of Web2.0 online tools that I wanted to share.  In the past I have emailed teachers and saved them to my Delicious account for future reference but I was looking for an easier way to make them more accessible and share them with teachers.
Since starting the program I have not only expanded my own personal learning network via my own blog (Lynn’s PLN) and reading other  blogs, nings and twitter but also gathered together some fantastic resources recommended  via these methods.  Bright Ideas is one of my favourite blogs and I’m thrilled to have been asked by Judith to contribute.  After reading about the Echuca eLearning Wiki created by Maryna Badenhorst (Bright Ideas 24 May 2010) and then learning about Wikis during week four of the program, I was inspired to create my own wiki using Wikispaces for Educators.
As you can see I have tried to group the resources into various categories and created a page for each.  The ‘Areas of Learning Links’ only has a few links at this stage but I hope to expand on it as more teachers create their own blogs, nings, wikis for their classes.  I have also added a few subject specific resources to the page.  ‘Digital Citizenship’ is an area which our school is exploring at the present and this page has been of great use recently.  The page on ‘Presentation Tools’ is one that is going to be neverending as more students and staff look for alternatives to PowerPoint – I particularly like animoto at the moment.
Our school motto is ‘Protect Nurture Grow’  which is what I hope will happen with this wiki as I launch it to staff this term and encourage them all to share in eLearning.
It is so pleasing to read that Lynn has been inspired by Maryna’s wiki featured on Bright Ideas. It is lovely to know that all staff are encouraged to share eLearning together with Lynn.

PLN Program Round 2

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The School Library Association of Victoria in partnership with the State Library of Victoria present the PLN – Personal Learning Network program. This program is funded as part of the digital education content initiatives and strategies of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

Your PLN is a reciprocal learning system designed just for you!

  • Create your own personalised learning network and share information, opinions and experiences with like-minded people from across the globe,
  • Apply a little intelligent filtering to the information overload out there,
  • Learn from others and contribute to others’ learning,
  • Connect around ideas that you are passionate about.

Find out how you can use the web 2.0 environment to:

  • Expand your personal learning network,
  • Manage the information that web 2.0 provides,
  • Use web 2.0 for learning and teaching,
  • Develop your skills and experience in a web 2.0 environment.

This twelve week online program, enhanced with regular Elluminate how-to sessions, exemplars, and online mentoring offers you a hands-on experience of a range of web 2.0 tools and activities.

This program is designed for novices to the web 2.0 world as well as those who wish to further explore this interactive web environment.

When: Commencing Monday 26  2010
Who: Teacher-librarians, teachers and library team members

How: Work at your own pace, explore new things week by week, share your learning as a team!

Why: So that you build a network of trusted sources for learning and collaboration.

Cost: $175 per person for SLAV members – team discounts apply!

The registration form is now available here!

Have a look at the Wordle of how Round 1 participants described the PLN:

Wordle

Please join us!

Creating Your Personal Learning Network

The School Library Association of Victoria in partnership with the State Library of Victoria present the PLN – Personal Learning Network program. This program is funded as part of the digital education content initiatives and strategies of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

Your PLN is a reciprocal learning system designed just for you!

  • Create your own personalised learning network and share information, opinions and experiences with like-minded people from across the globe,
  • Apply a little intelligent filtering to the information overload out there,
  • Learn from others and contribute to others’ learning,
  • Connect around ideas that you are passionate about.

Find out how you can use the web 2.0 environment to:

  • Expand your personal learning network,
  • Manage the information that web 2.0 provides,
  • Use web 2.0 for learning and teaching,
  • Develop your skills and experience in a web 2.0 environment.

This twelve week online program, enhanced with regular Elluminate how-to sessions, exemplars, and online mentoring offers you a hands-on experience of a range of web 2.0 tools and activities.

This program is designed for novices to the web 2.0 world as well as those who wish to further explore this interactive web environment.

When: Commencing Tuesday 27 April 2010
Who: Teacher-librarians, teachers and library team members

How: Work at your own pace, explore new things week by week, share your learning as a team!

Why: So that you build a network of trusted sources for learning and collaboration.

Cost: $175 per person for SLAV members – team discounts apply!

Registration form available here now!

Feature wiki – Castlemaine Secondary College

Castlemaine Secondary College teacher librarian Judith Hansen and her colleagues have developed a wide ranging wiki to use with students. Judith explains the evolution of the wiki:

We, the Library Team at Castlemaine Secondary College comprise 6 folks over 2 Campuses ( Junior and Senior): Andrea (Teacher Librarian), Junior Campus FT: Russell (Library Technician) Junior Campus 0.9: Kathryn (Teacher Librarian) across campuses 0.3: Elizabeth (Teacher Librarian), Senior Campus 0.4: Debra (Library Technician) Senior Campus 0.9 and myself (Teacher Librarian) Junior Campus 0.2 and Senior Campus 0.6. Andrea, Russell, Debra and I completed the SLAV Web 2 in 2008.

Castlemaine Secondary College Library Team embraced the SLAV Web 2.0 PD in 2008. Web 2.0….the words and number had been scratching around in our team subconscious for some time. Each of us had some knowledge. The online PD enabled us to explore the realm together. We met every Tuesday after school and worked solidly for an hour or so. It was fun! It was Team bonding! It led to further experiences eg. a travel blog by Debra, a wiki by Judith and a demo blog from Andrea, Kathryn, Debra (back) Judith, Russell, Andrea. We have another Team member Elizabeth, who has always had a handle on IT stuff. She came back from leave and works on the Library Intranet which will begin operating across the 2 Castlemaine Secondary College campuses in 2010.

We work very well as a team and whatever emerges from the Library has been a Team effort in that we ensure that we encourage each other in our tasks and endeavours, our focus being the school community and its educational needs and aspirations.

Homepage

Homepage

Our wiki came about as our school has a special time for students to explore subjects of interest: teachers offer activities, I offered a Library Club. So a page has been created for this group with full edit rights. Apart from the Word Doc.Plan the page has been created by the students.

The Ultranet Looms: An Ultranet Coach Approaches: http://csclibrary.wikispaces.com Appears!

  • First thought: a blog
  • Second thought: after conferring with Rob the Ultranet coach was that a wiki would best suit the aims of the endeavour.
  • The endeavour: to create: a space where the library, it’s activities and resources could be showcased: provide opportunities eg. editing online, adding images etc. for staff and students to develop confidence in skills via a safe space eg. the wiki’s page save component allows for editing mistakes that can be easily rectified, and to build on the emerging Web 2.0 skills of the Library Team.

Pride, Respect, Responsibility and Post-it-notes.

  • The core values of Castlemaine Secondary College are Pride, Respect, Responsibility. Together they form the value core of the wiki.
  • A disclaimer was also included.
  • Ideas formed as the potential for communication via the wiki became understood.. ideas bubbled up at odd times so the pad of post-it-notes became a handy tool for quick jottings that were then slapped into the log book. The Library team worked on some skills together eg. developing the original competition page where we each had to develop and upload a voki. We needed to develop the confidence to play and to nut out knew skills.

Marketing the site…it takes time and commitment.

  • Email out to all staff with a blurb about the wiki and a the link to the site,(not just once.)This resulted in 1 new page, Nick from Music Industry saw the potential for his subject, developed the Music Industry page which excitingly has a class course component. Hopefully the wiki will develop as a forum for the delivery of the curriculum.
  • Screen shots of the Home Page on display in the Library.
  • Campaign! Verbal face to face communication from Library Team to staff and students. Talk about it at every opportunity.
  • Wiki showcased at every opportunity eg. Library orientation lessons, Community/Teacher Interviews (interviews were held in the Senior Library), when the Library computers were set at the Wiki Home page and visitors waiting for interviews were encouraged to explore the wiki, this also happened when the Senior Library hosted staff morning teas and attended English DLG meetings.
  • Redirection! The Library Request Book was moved from the Front Desk of the Library to the Request Page on the wiki. Individuals and groups were encouraged with help to make requests via the wiki.
  • Have a competition page, which links to the front work desk i.e. the answer box is placed there advertising the competition, so students ask for directions to the wiki and enter the competition and hopefully explore the site a bit more.
  • Share the exciting bits..like the number of different countries that have visited the site, student input, such as the Library Club and of course that other educators have expressed interest and encouragement.
  • See our vokis on the Library Competition Page.
Library Club

Library Club

I must say it was wonderful one Friday to have our School Principal show me the white board in her office where brainstorming had been taking place: some of the great things that are happening in our school and to have her point to the Library Wiki!!
Giving things up….all those items you’ve worked so hard to create..but they have to go…the wiki evolves!

  • The Request Page was originally created as a table that was filled in by the requester but it was a bit unwieldy so a much simpler form of logging the request is now in place. It also allows for some play in the editing whilst continuing to communicate the information to the Library Team.
  • A group of Year 12’s were very interested in having a Year 12 page but it didn’t get past the heading and a couple of sites.. not enough time, it closed.
  • I originally created a monthly audio introduction to the wiki on the Home Page. As the wiki evolved and chores increased eg. uploading the monthly new acquisitions the audio introductions were discontinued. However I have had fun using the skill to create audios of poems for eg. a guess the poet competition.

What next?

  • Have students and staff take on more responsibilities eg. Library Club to record Library news, and have eg. English staff utilise the site as a place to submit assessment tasks such as text reviews, a component of the task being to successfully upload the piece of work onto the wiki.
  • To create a Studies of Asia page, with a travel blog and links and space for the school community to share queries and knowledge of our neighbours.

Cherio and feedback
So far we haven’t had any notes left on the pages, so this is an area that we haven’t really explored yet…maybe you would like to leave something for us to play with!
Castlemaine Secondary College Library Team.

Well done to the Castlemaine SC library team!  It’s great to know that students are really getting involved with the development of the wiki and that the Principal has acknowledged your great work on it.

Feature blog – Ballarat Grammar School

Marcia Phillips, Head of Library and Learning Resources at Ballarat Grammar School (and former Victorian CBC judge) has developed an interesting book blog for students and staff. Marcia explains the inception of the blog:

As a result of undertaking the SLAV Web 2.0 course and enjoying it enormously as well as learning an incredible amount, I decided to start a blog for the Ballarat Grammar Resource Centre.  I first started blogging using our School’s Management system, Scholaris, but found this too restrictive, so I turned to Edublogs back in November, 2008 and started a new blog.  I find Edublogs relatively easy to use and suitable for our needs.  Not everything has worked and some days I cannot fathom why I can’t embed a video or load an image.  I walk away and come back to it at a later date and often, although not always, experience a better result.  However, due to the time that some postings take, I have found it quicker and easier to work from home on the blog.  The speed of my computer at work compared to my home computer means I can accomplish so much more in a shorter space of time.  I blog about what is happening in the Resource Centre, what is new, or a feature an author and their work.  I try to keep my focus on what the students and staff want to know or read about.  As a result it is not a personal account of what I am doing, with the exception of my reading.  I often report on what I have recently read. 

CodeX - The Ballarat Grammar Resource Centre blog

CodeX - The Ballarat Grammar Resource Centre blog

I have signed up students who can write posts although only a few have been active to this point, but I am hopeful more students will agree to contribute to the blog.  The Year 10 English teachers are enthusiastic about show casing their students’ work via this medium and are working on different forms of reviews at present.

I am excited about CodeX and look forward to many more happy years blogging.

Congratulations to Marcia on a fabulous blog that looks appealing and is evolving quickly.

Feature blog – Eltham College Junior Library

Raeanne McLean, teacher librarian at Eltham College of Education Junior School has shared her experience of developing Web 2.0 resources for her students. She explains: 

I finished my T/L course at CSU at the end of 2007 and then was excited to implement the things I had learnt. The course had given me the confidence and tools to try out new things on the web (but precious little time to do it!).

  In 2008 I saw the promotion for The Victorian School Libraries Learning with Web 2.0 Program through SLAV. I am a hands on person and jumped at the chance and bought 8 other teachers onboard from our school. We set up a time each week in the library to work through each activity. We all found that we ‘played’ with the features during the week. I learnt so much by completing this program as I hit inevitable problems along the way that I had to solve.

The idea of setting up a blog was always on my ‘to do’ list but I didn’t feel confident enough. After the program I had a greater understanding of how to do it and the various applications that could be utilised.  I have set the blog up specifically for years 3 and 4. There is so much out there but it is certainly a start for them and me. The students have really enjoyed it and have visited it from home and made comments. I have a link from our intranet under the library page so they can access it anywhere.

Homepage

Homepage

 An unexpected bonus is from the teachers and parents as a few have come and asked me about it. It has given the library yet another profile and avenue to be promoted. As I try different applications my confidence grows. I have dipped my toes into the blogging world and I am enjoying the experience.

It’s great to see that teachers, students and parents are benefitting from Raeanne’s blogging endeavours. Well done.

Feature blog – Karen Kearney

Whitefriars College teacher librarian Karen Kearney has kindly agreed to share the development of her blog – Childhood Memories. Karen explains:

 The SLAV “23 Things” course during 2008 saw the creation of my Childhood Memories blog.  Our very first “thing” to do was to set up a blog, where reflections on each week’s tasks could be recorded.  

Homepage

Homepage

It was very difficult to decide just what the main focus of my blog should be.  There were so many possibilities!  I wanted something that was going to be of continued interest for me to write about, and that was interesting for anyone who wished to drop by and read it.  After chatting away about some favourite childhood books in the first post, I decided to incorporate all of my interests into the blog, and write down some memories of my childhood. 

As I explored each of the subsequent tasks, many times I was able to tie in the task with something from my childhood.  Theatres have always been a large part of my life and the image generation tasks allowed me to explore some of the different ways I could present photos of our Melbourne theatres.  The week we explored YouTube.I looked at different book trailers.  Later I had fun exploring some old doll television commercials and some clips from classic television shows I watched as a child.  These commercials are absolute gems if your classroom is comparing values important for girls growing up, as I did, in the 1960s, with that of today’s young girls.  Exploring podcasts led me to many different podcasts related to both my professional and personal interests, so much so that I am now a devotee of podcasts as a source of information!

 The blog has also been a place for me to record different ideas which have been useful both in classes and the school library, and as a reminder of useful sites and applications.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the black and white videos at Connect Safely  for example, yet would probably have forgotten all about them unless I had recorded the site in a blog post. 

 Book Week ideas also made it into the blog.  Last year our school library created lots of posters, using Glogster to advertise our book week activities.  Some examples of ones I made can be seen on my blog.  We also designed some Book Week activities using Web 2.0 technology, and again, posts were made on my blog to remind me of these ideas. 

Karen's glogs

Karen's glogs

Wordlewas used to create word clouds.  Examples of Wordles have been made, and can be seen on my blog.  Short, written reviews of both Kill the Possum (James Moloney) and Miss McAllisters Ghost (Elizabeth Fensham) were found and then copied and pasted into the Wordle box.  A click of the mouse then randomly arranged the words and created a word cloud, where words appearing more frequently were larger, and less frequent words were smaller.  This was explained to the students and it was their mission to then work out which Wordle went with which book.  Very popular books were chosen and students had to analyse each Wordle carefully and gather clues to help them correctly identify each book.  Blurbs could also be used for this activity, or students could create their own Wordle by writing their own book reviews.  

Miss McAllister's Ghost

Miss McAllister's Ghost

Kill the Possum

Kill the Possum

Mosaic Maker, part of Flickr’s Big Huge Labs was used to create another competition.  Around 10 well-known books were chosen and a mosaic was made for each.  Using scans from the front and back cover, as well as finding other pictures which identified objects found within the book, twelve pictures in all, were used to create each mosaic.  Examples can be seen on the blog.  Students were able to try to guess which book each mosaic represented.  If they found any too hard they were able to collect a sheet which had all of the titles listed, but each title was jumbled.  Titles needed to be unjumbled before the mosaics could be matched to the books.  

Black Dog Gang

Black Dog Gang

Both of these activities were very successful.  They were easy to prepare, and create, and were enjoyed by many of our students.  They could easily be incorporated into Library classes at both primary and secondary levels, as either activities or displays.  Better yet, have students create them.

 I enjoy sharing my thoughts through writing my blog, and reflecting on the different Web 2.0 tools I have explored.  Writing and commenting on blogs are a wonderful way to get to know people from all over the world.  Whilst there may be few people in your circle of friends who share some of your interests, there will be many worldwide who do, and connecting with them is extremely satisfying. 

Well done Karen and thank you for sharing your blogging journey with us.

Feature wiki – The Hamilton and Alexandra College

Margaret Simkin, the Head of Information Services and Head of History at The Hamilton and Alexandra College is happy to share the development of her wiki  with Bright Ideas readers.

Margaret explains:

 This wiki is the result of several years of deliberation about what to do and how to do it in the most sustainable way, while allowing for the fact that we have a small library staff with limited time available for management. Undertaking the SLAV Web 2.0 course provided the idea as it enabled us to work on things together and discuss their potential. Two of us successfully completed the course.

The catalyst came when I attended the SLAV conference where Will Richardson used his wiki as the vehicle for his professional learning delivery. Suddenly the whole picture became clear and the way in which to link it all became obvious. 

Homepage

Homepage

The aim was to create a site where staff can go when they want to find out how to do something to enhance their teaching and learning. Working through the best way to set it up in terms of layout and linking pages took some time and is still open to alteration as suggestions arise. Affirmation during this process came from a teacher responding to an email link I had sent about how to create podcasts. She replied: “It would be good to have somewhere to put these links so we could find them when we need them”.

After several months of trial and error the site was ready to introduce to staff last term. We held a special afternoon tea and demonstrated how to find information. Since then visitors have had a look from all over the world, which is very exciting to see.

Google apps

Google apps

To anyone thinking about what to set up and how to do it, I would suggest that you just need to start. As with all things technological, change is continuous and there will be another new thing tomorrow! My preferred option was a wiki as I had used them more often in class than blogs or nings. It is a matter of personal preference and should not be a cause for concern or delay. Just develop your concept and see where it leads. There are many valuable spinoffs, most significantly the fact that cooperative planning and teaching is strengthened by the process.

What's new

What's new

Our next intention is to create something for students to access, most probably a blog!

View more presentations from msimkin.

Congratulations to Margaret and her staff on creating a visually appealing and useful wiki, with lots of Web 2.0 tools embedded such as Animoto and Slideshare. We look forward to featuring your blog!

Feature blog – Lisa Hill’s professional blog

Lisa Hill is a teacher librarian and Director of Curriculum at Mossgiel Park Primary School in Melbourne’s Endeavour Hills. Lisa has developed a number of professional learning resources and has agreed to share her blogging experience with readers. She explains how her blog came about.

Last year, after attending the SLAV Conference in March, I set up a professional blog at http://lisahillschoolstuff.wordpress.com/ .    It was an experiment that grew as my knowledge of Web 2.0 grew: I made my first post on March 16th, 2008 and have posted 57 times since then, at intervals ranging from one a month to sometimes five or six in a month.  Now, just over 12 months after starting the blog there had been (at the time of writing) 5,995 hits, which means that near enough to 6000 people have visited it.

Lisa's homepage
Lisa’s homepage

 Why do I bother with this, and why do other people bother to read it?

My WordPress stats tell me that topics I’ve written about are common search terms.  People search online for stuff about Aboriginal Perspectives – and I have a whole page showing how we at MossgielPark PS integrate Aboriginal Perspectives into our curriculum for different units of work.  I also uploaded a PowerPoint that I presented at the SLAV conference and people look at that too.  People are interested in anything to do withBoys and Education and I’ve responded to topics in The Age, reviewed a book on the issue, and summarised an article that I read about Boys and Learning.  I got some rather cross comments when I blogged my opinion of ‘dreary and depressing books about tormenting social issues’ in the 2008 CBCA shortlist, but most of the 258 hits on that post kept their own counsel.  This means I don’t know whether they agree withme or with my critics! 

The short answer is that I’ve kept a diary on and off throughout my life, and my professional blog journals the parts of my professional life that I’m willing to share.  I use it to proffer my opinion on various issues in the news, to summarise what I’ve learned at conferences, to share resources that I’ve developed or discovered online, to review children’s books and occasionally to brag about my school.  Blogging means that I am part of the professional conversation that is developing online, and I like that. 

Having said all that, however, I also should ‘fess up that I’m a professional writer as well.  I’ve had a little book published, and been paid for stuff in professional magazines and (once!) in a capital city daily.  I’ve had three resource books for teaching Indonesian in the marketplace and I could have had more if I wanted to.  So I’m comfortable about writing and self-editing, and having been paid to express my opinions before, I’m not afraid to say what I think.  I find writing easy, and satisfying, and sometimes financially rewarding. 

The difference with blogging is that no one pays me to do it, I don’t feel under any pressure to post, and there’s no deadline.  I like being part of the online community and once I’d completed the SLAV Learning Web 2.0 course in the middle of last year, I felt comfortable with the technology. 

But why do others bother to read it?  This is why WordPress is my preferred blog provider.   I know the answer to this question because as part of the WordPress free service they offer an in-built stats analysis.  (You can add this to blogs that are hosted by Blogger.com – but they’re not as a comprehensive and you have to muck about installing them.  GlobalTeacher also has  a stats feature.)

Aboriginal Perspectives page
Aboriginal Perspectives page

My all time top post is about Multiple Intelligences (422 hits) but my most popular contributions to the online world seem to be the Author Study units of work I have uploaded.  Whenever we have student teachers at school I show them the blog and let them know that they (and teacher-librarians anywhere) are welcome to download them to use in any way they wish.  (I hope the students don’t plagiarise them, because I’m sure that by now they would be recognised by their lecturers). 

I have also installed the ClusterMap widget which shows me that people from all over the world have stumbled onto my blog (everywhere from the Sudan to Grenada, and three from Korea!) but that the vast majority are of course, Australian – though there’s also two to three hundred from the US and the UK, but only 22 from New Zealand. 

These features confirm for me that I am not wasting my time with this blog.  Most people who visit don’t comment, much as I wish they would because even a brief remark is very motivating, but they seem to find what I offer interesting and sometimes useful. 

That makes it worthwhile!

Congratulations to Lisa on a wonderful blog that not only shares resources with peers, but expresses opinions on learning and teaching.

Lyndhurst Secondary College – a Webquest winner!

Africa’s Child  is an award winning Webquest that was created by the two Teacher Librarians at Lyndhurst Secondary College.

Africa's child homepage

Africa's child homepage

Pam Macdonald and Melinda FitzGerald explain how their Webquest came about. ‘We had a desire to learn more about Webquests, Web design, and making the Year 8 text, The Heaven Shopby Deborah Ellis, more relevant to an Australian teenager. (We also wanted to win a Smartboard!)’

Pam had been involved in developing a science Webquest previous to this endeavour. Melinda says, ‘The earlier Webquest had been designed using Microsoft FrontPage so a teacher gave us a quick introduction on using FrontPage, the rest was trial and error. Many hours were spent researching African sites, NGO sites, design sites, clip art sites, AIDS sites and the many wonderful sites that explain the theory and design of Webquests.’

Introduction

Introduction

Melinda says, ‘We chose the template from the Webquest.org  page.  A couple of nights were spent selecting a basic FrontPage design and loading it with the wonderful African wallpapers and designs we had found. Unfortunately some of these designs have disappeared from the web pages, people seem at a loss as to how we can fix this.’  

Task

Task

Melinda continues, ‘Nicola Park, a Middle Years Teaching Co-ordinator, had been instrumental in the design and implementation of the Year 9 Inquiry Centre and for promoting Inquiry learning across the College. With Nicola’s help we streamlined our rich questions and Teachers pages.’

Teacher page

Teacher page

Some things didn’t go to plan though as Melinda explains, ‘The thing we found most frustrating, was waiting for people to reply to email requests to include sites. Some things we had to drop because we could not get permission to include photos, an author’s link, etc. This actually saw us redesigning some aspects of our quest. Pam did the final touches and got Africa’s Child on the web then entered it in the competition whilst I jetted off to Europe for six weeks. Winning was very exciting and rewarding. Of course the Interactive Whiteboard lives in the library where we both have now developed an interest in building lessons around it.’

 Melinda continues, ‘Many Year 8 teachers use Africa’s Childwith varying degrees of success. We have gone over the design to simplify it but we believe it is as simple as it could be without taking away the team aspect of the quest. Students and teachers will over time become more familiar with Webquest formats. Many students may get confused with the many levels of pages but if the teacher familiarises themselves first they can then guide their students through.’

 ‘One of our aims was for Africa’s Child to become a catalyst for raising global awareness incorporating a major fundraiser for the year – this has not yet happened. The problem, we feel, is timing, The Heaven Shop is not read until fourth term which does not allow for a sustained and ongoing interest to develop.’  

Evaluation

Evaluation

Both Melinda and Pam completed the SLAV Web 2.0 course last year. They said that they found it an extremely beneficial PD that allowed them to understand the new designs for Webquests, ones that incorporate Wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies. They say, ‘We will incorporate these into our next Webquest, although we would be cautious about making the quests too complicated!

Congratulations Melinda and Pam and thanks for your honest assessment of how the Webquest worked with students. Hopefully this wonderful Webquest might inspire Victorian educators to enter the Connect/SLAV Web 2.0 competition.