Suggestions for 07-08 from BLC Conference
From ABC Wiki
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Things to Consider
New front page to our web presence
This should link to News (rss), the Website, Calendar, Podcasts, Wikis and Blogs, Useful Tools (like Google Earth, Atomic Learning, ClipArt, BrainPop, Google News and Blog search), Booking systems, Parents pages, Video 360 degrees and linking to areas in the school (see Mabry) etc etc. Should this be the same page as the ABC desktop opening page?
Set up a staff curriculum links wiki
This should be well-categorised, for staff to add good links but with a short description. These should be vetted by a member of the committee (two people maybe??) and then links should be published more publicly – wikis, blogs, search tips, bookmarking, rss feeds, podcasting, general web 2.0 information, sharing sites like flickr, slideshare, Internet safety, Moodle etc. All teachers should become familiar with certain sites and understand the technologies – we will put links to more valuable ones from our Intranet home page and our website home page (these may be one and the same?)
Get some staff on board sharing blogs and wikis with their students
– particularly humanities and languages – target a couple of teachers and work with them to help them get set up.
- For recording class notes
- For putting up essays for peer marking, according to group designed rubric
- For developing a joint exemplar essay or response to a question
- For sharing resources about a topic
- For connecting to students in other countries on similar projects or for research etc
- The new Wordpress feature will allow comments per paragraph which will be useful.
- Students need to get involved from the beginning.
- The site should allow for dialogue between students within the course and maybe across courses and certainly posted to the outside community.
Radical modifications to be made to KS3 ICT– some suggestions
- Podcasting: the product will be a podcast but the process will involve decision making about the topic (student directed), research skills, web evaluation, curriculum content support, collaboration, writing skills, editing skills, communication skills, manipulation of software etc.
- Introduction to and use of wikis – practical use of wikis – we would need to have wikis in action that students contribute to and where they feel they make a difference – this has to be collaborative and link to another subject area – could be a book review, notes on a humanities topic that are being shared and self edited etc – but needs to have a real purpose. Making contributions to wikipedia – could work in groups on an entry about something and then upload it to see what happens
- Getting yourself out there on the Internet
- The power of blogging
- My Space and the problems that inappropriate pages can bring later - think about who might be reading your page in the future – considerations of personal safety. A university in the USA declined two students after seeing their MySpace accounts.
- Internet safety generally
- How to Search well (see tools like blogsearch.google etc) and then aggregate resources
- Develop the ability to evaluate authenticity of the information out there
- Putting it all together – youtube videos, podcasts, linking files, flickr etc using PageFlakes
- Social Bookmarking
- The value of RSS
- Using Scratch for modeling and programming
We should decide what we think the essential ICT and other skillls (including web 2.0) are ….
- Make simple audio and video recordings (we're not talking Spielberg here; just cruise around on YouTube for a while and you'll get the idea)
- Make a basic, static website using a simple application like iWeb.
- Do basic photo and image editing in PhotoShop or the equivalent.
- Make a good PowerPoint presentation
- Understand and use web 2.0 applications
- Find useful information on the web
- Get some understanding of the challenges of participating in an online community (which they should already know from MySpace and Facebook, though they often don't think through the potential implications of their actions there)
Pasted from <http://alexreid.typepad.com/digital_digs/2006/10/the_challenge_o.html>
- Information and communication skills (information and media literacy skills; communication skills)
- Thinking and problem-solving (critical thinking and systems thinking; problem identification, formulation and solution; creativity and intellectual curiosity)
- Interpersonal and self-direction skills (interpersonal and collaborative skills; self-direction; accountability and adaptability; social responsibility)
- Global awareness
- Financial, economic and business literacy, and developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options
- Civic literacy
Introduce a Film Club with an ABC Film Festival Competition
Catherine and Fernando to consider (Cine Cuscatlán; ABC Cine Cuscatlán). Movies of up to two minutes maximum in length. It is probably better to have a competition theme. Use of simple video camcorders (a basic Canon costs around $250). Use of Macs for editing. Simple iMovie software very useful to start with. Obviously the entrants can use whatever they want. Make it a special event with an interested Board member involved and set up a screening event with a prize of some sort.
Marco Torres works at the San Fernando Valley High School. He has inspired students to make some awesome films. www.cinedlg.com; sfett.com; flickschool.com
Consuelo Molina is one of the many success stories to have emerged from Marco's work. Take a look at her movie "Sweatshops" A Sacrifice for You
Set up an ABC Magazine (could be a Secondary and a Primary one) as a blog and podcast
Student council should manage this, with designated students (and staff member)putting the blog and podcasts together. Students and staff will be encouraged to add comments, although these will be vetted by the blog administrators.
Life Skills Units on Internet Safety and website evaluation
What is the best age group for this? Students need to understand the effect of their presence on the Internet (like MySpace) and be taught responsible use rather than us restricting access. They need to be able to evaluate the reliability of the information they find.
ABC presence on Wikipedia?
- Wikipedia often given high priority in searches
- RSS the page to check for any changes made by someone else
- What else should we add?
Using Wikipedia
This is not a source as it can change – start with it but cannot be sourced – some pages have sources linked so these become potential sources. Find pages to make this point and show staff. Great resource for immediate “big” events as often quicker than TV News
Acceptable Use Policies and ICT Vision
AUPs for Blogging, Podcast, Wikis etc – we need to discuss and modify our current policy maybe – consider access to MySpace (see ICT curriculum changes). Some schools use http://www.mysite.com/ Should we consider setting up pages for students here with some control from us. We need students to set up a presence on the Internet and teach them responsible use of it. Facebook is also a possibility.
Staff INSET possibilities and links that might be used for INSET sessions
There are more links on the Resources wiki
- Feedback from the conference should only show what we can become and set a kind of deadline for these ways of teaching to be taken on???? ## Explain how web 2.0 tools can help with student learning.
- The Flat Classroom: http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.FlatClassrooms
- Did you Know? (video clip) Also read this link http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeoKQbT8BKs
- Teach staff about how to evaluate websites – see folder for this (would include points e and f and g below)
- http://internetawareness.wikispaces.com/workshop web 2.0 links and Internet safety
- November’s teaching Zack stuff and Brian Mull’s internet safety workshop presentation
- Using del.icio.us to search for resources using the tag search
- Teach staff to use tagging (for all documents) well to help with searching – we need to consider some guidelines – like application, web 2.0, Internet safety, search, etc
- Intro to Web 2.0
- Other workshops http://bobsprankle.com/welcome/workshop%20links.html
- RSS http://guest.portaportal.com/weswebtools
- Teach staff about the searching well – creating good course unit resources for sharing with students
- http://blogsearch.google.com/ - finds news articles, use advanced search
- http://newssearch.google.com - finds blogs, use advanced search
- http://altavista.com and then search by typing host: and the url of the site you want to search (eg abc.edu.sv), followed by a space and then the subject you are looking for. So host:abc.edu.sv assessment for example
- How to look at Wikipedia as a research tool
- Using PageFlakes to set up web resources for course units – we would need to model this well first
University stuff– for students
- Students can share their experiences in meaningful ways, like Sam Jackson's Education Blog--12th Grade student blog about college application process
- http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html - a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world from MIT.
Should we give every teacher (and student) a blog presence?
Should these adhere to a common format in Wordpress, or is this too restrictive (maybe for teachers and not students?). If we do this and set up a blog for each teacher, can SIMS automatically assign links to the blogs of the students in their classes? There is a good video showing how to use Wordpress through Edublogs
Other things to consider
- Consider improving our wiki software – or paying for full version
- Fernando (?) to install GoogleGears for offline use of Google Reader – for anyone who wants to set this up http://code.google.com/apis/gears/tutorial.html
- http://clustrmaps.com/ would this be useful - to see who clicks on to our website? Fernando to consider?
- http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Password_Management_Utilities/Free_Password_Keeper.html. This is a free Password Keeper that we should give staff access to through the tools on the front web page as many forget – or on the wiki?
- What do we do about Tagging?
