Our Visual Literacy Powerpoint

Visual literacy

View more presentations from Jules Green.

Digital Video

Podcasting

I have just had a look at the podcasting tool Podomatic.

Using Podcasts in the Classroom

Several suggestions for using podcasts in the classroom:

• Encourage students to review a book they've read in an informal chat session.
• Let students read a play with sound effects (e.g. door closing, footsteps).
• Let them interview someone, like a television reporter with breaking news.
• Do a running commentary on school activities or news. (Daily or weekly, as is convenient for your situation)
• As a link, discussing a Science experiment or Social Studies project they may have blogged about. (To go into more detail or maybe to clarify an issue)
• As a public speaking forum, where students give speeches on topics.
• To keep the school community updated on upcoming events.
• To listen to and talk to students from another school, perhaps even in another country.
• To insert excerpts from school concerts etc. on a website or blog.

Just found (thanks Kurt) a cute little stick-figure animation program called Pivot.
It allows you to create simple animations and play them back. It is comparable to Paint in ease of use and would be particularly good for younger kids - although Kurt, who is 13 is having fun with it too.
I wasn't able to work out how to load an example to my blog so if anyone else can please enlighten me!
Here is a youtube clip I found apparently by the creator of Pivot.


Blog soon, Phil

As a post cpmment to this post I showed this site to my nephew who is in year 2 and he loved it.

My Wiki

I am now the proud owner of a WIKI.
http://phils-e-learning.wikispaces.com/
Haven't done much with it as yet.

Here is Wikipedia's definition of blog and wiki.

In short, a blog is a "website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in reverse chronological order".

A wiki is "a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content...and allows for linking among any number of pages".

Blogs and wikis share some common traits:

• They are both websites.
• They are both user-generated (the content of blogs and wikis is created by the actual people who use the blogs or wikis.)
• They both allow users to comment on the content.

What are wikis better at than blogs:

• Wikis are better at archiving information for easy access.
• Wikis are better at gathering information from a group of people. For example, the wiki Library Success collects information from librarians around the world. (See this past MPLIC Tech Train blog post for more information about Library Success)

What are blogs better at than wikis:

• Blogs are better at quickly sharing new information.
• Blogs are better at starting and maintaining a dialog between the publisher and reader.

I have just had another read through the Big 6 and Engagement Theory frameworks in order to choose the one I feel fits my digital learning design best.
Being a fairly simple person - (I can't help but think that at this point in my travels the Amish probably have it right! ) - I must admit I am drawn to the Big 6 framework.
However, also knowing that nothing that is worthwhile comes easily I feel I will need to analyse both of the frameworks more fully in order to really come to grips with what they are saying.
I wholeheartedly believe in collaborative work within the classroom and ICT's can definitely assist in providing tools and forums in which students can collaborate. I also recognise that students need to be engaged in meaningful and relevant tasks - again ICT's offer much to this end.
I guess one of our biggest challenges as future teachers will be to integrate this technology successfully to realise these goals. To do this we will no doubt need to provide our students with effective tools such as those offered by these two learning frameworks.
When push comes to shove then, I think I need to do some more reading.....

Touchgraph

I am truly excited about this tool. It does in seconds something that I have thought about doing for years, that is collating useful websites at the touch of a button (database).
I recommend everyone check this out. Just type in a topic - visual literacy for eg and a whole range of websites will appear in a mindmap layout. But that's not all! On the left-hand side of the page you get a list of all the websites and, when you click on one of these you will get a small summary of the site in the top left of the screen along with a live link to the site.
I can see endless uses for this both in school and at Uni as well as in personal searching.
I am intending to explore it more thoroughly to see if you can build up a personal database.
Will keep you all posted.

http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html