RSS

I already use Google reader and it is fantastic. It is a great way to keep up with friends and colleagues blogs – once you know where they are! So I did do it with last term’s blogs, but that got rather ahead of me, but was so easy to see. Then I have added that portlet to my igoogle page that is my home page so every time I open up the internet on my computer I get my RSS feeds. Easy :)

Creating Digital Books in Excel

While it was all very interesting to have a nice pretty book, is it useful for my context? I can see for kids, yes. I think it might be able to incorporate graphs and if I lock cells and only leave certain cells open for editing then it would change variables and that would be useful to show cause and effect in basic Physics. I did already know this and have made reporting packages for a couple of applications, one for emissions from the Stradbroke sand mines and the other for aligning an Instron testing machine.

What was pointless was that I have a Mac and even in the Help search, I could not find “speak cells”. I think that is a little condescending for uni students though! Great for young kids, especially since they are using computers more at younger ages and this could help them even write their own books, or complete sentences or stories.

Authentic Learning and Assessment

The link went to a site that was down for upgrades, so couldn’t access the article. This is a reminder that if ever I put a link to an article in my Moodle course to make sure that I put the full reference there so that students can find it even if that particular link is down. I also think that it is not useful to put links directly to articles within password protected databases in the CQUni library as this makes it difficult. I have had some difficulty at home because it doesn’t ask me for my password, so I have to trawl the databases to try and find the article, so actually describing which database and how the article was found would be significantly more useful than a link (even though many might think that is easiest).

Blogs

One thing that I have found is that I can’t use blogspot.com while in the CQUni mail system as they require different log ins. Now that is mostly because I already had a gmail account before CQUni gave me another one. Means a fair bit of swapping around.

The Machine - Us

The Machine is Using/Us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&feature=player_embedded

Just watched this video.

How this relates to my learning - I'm afraid I'm still a bit of a static learner. I don't find the idea of being able to edit Wikipeda exciting. I don't even really like thinking about the fact that this blog may be being read by many people. At least I know that this blog is for my ideas, and while people might or might not like my ideas, that doesn't matter. If I have to put facts out there, or reports... that would be different.

How this would relate to my teaching - I could imagine the pressure students would be under if their Physics assignments were somehow to be published on the web, in the 2.0 environment where it could be changed. Even as a class group. Students don't like looking stupid in front of other students. They don't ask questions on forums and even if they just email me, they are always saying something like "sorry, it is probably a silly question, but..." Could they then really put something on a wiki and then have other students changing what they said because it was wrong, or answering the questions...? And my students range in grades from pass to high distinction, and while I want to change them all to HDs, making them put working on a wiki so that the other students can help, wouldn't be doing much for their self esteem.

How this relates to learning in general - with all of the information out there, we are already struggling to help students understand what is academically rigorous literature. The more blogs and sites like Wikipedia that are out there, the bigger our challenge. Great for synthesising and critical reflection, especially in areas that are 'opinion' driven, but not for 'fact' driven areas. You just have to read the newspaper to find crazy, unsupported, unsubstantiated, mis-represented statistics. Did you know that 45% of the Capricornia electorate are homophobic? Too many people just accept that and don't ask about the method, the terminology... the rigour of that data.

Edutopia and technology in curriculum design

Video

George Lucas and Robert Thurman

www.edutopia.org

They documented ideal learning environments.

Project learning

Cooperative learning

Integrated studies

Comprehensive assessment – multiple measures

Teachers – the human touch – the most valuable element

Higher ed gives more self control over what they are learning.

Learning is a fun thing to do if you are interested in the material

Students don’t always know what their passion is, and like George, can stumble on it by chance.

Using stories in film in learning.

Tell the story of how to integrate technology into schools.

Don’t put computers in a classroom and teach students how to use them once a week. Use computers as a tool, like a pencil, to learn other subjects, and cooperate.

Lots of great theory, but there are holes.

Kids want to be adults – so give them adult tasks. Don’t teach them maths, tell them to design a plane, and they will want to learn the maths and science to do so.

Using the knowledge to do something.

Website shows you how to organise the classroom around the technologies.

Edutopia

Looking through the website it seems that there is a lot of information on integrating technology, but pretty much only in person. Cameras, probes, photogates, video, heart rate monitors… How would we get students to use that sort of equipment when studying at a distance?

One thing that I did love about it was the encouragement of integrated learning. They took the data from the cheerleaders heart rates etc and graphed that in Maths and then talked about velocity and acceleration in Physics using videos. Since all we can work with is that the students have computers, it would need to be carefully considered exactly what we asked of them. Yes, we can put up the videos, but of course that won’t be as meaningful as if they were in the videos. We can get them to graph data, but that’s not the same as if they had generated the data to start with.

Blogging on blogging

I’m not so sure about blogging for collaboration. Examples in the material about T charts and Y charts, PMI analysis are all more for wikis than blogs. Blogs are very good for individual thinking and analysis. Yes, someone can follow someone else’s blog, but they also have their own where they are more likely to put their own thoughts. I have found that commenting on other people’s blogs is quite a rare thing. Everyone has their own space and reading someone else’s thoughts means having to go to each of those spaces, unless using Google Reader. Using a wiki or Google docs would be better for collaboration.

The other side, to enhance critical reading and writing skills blogging is a pretty good idea. It is a first step. It is a non-threatening environment to allow free writing, which I believe would encourage writing. To have blogs for assessment in university would be a slippery slope, depending on how. If it was marked on content, I think it would take away the whole point of blogs. If it is marked on a few key criteria, like includes critical reflection and must be a certain length, or reference 2 papers or similar. The material had some good ideas about blogging for school students. This can work – if used properly. Kids can be mean, so the fact that other kids can comment on a blog would need to be monitored for negative feedback or bullying. It could also make kids scared to blog the assignment as it will be open for all, or, it could raise standards if monitored and promote quality.