Engaging with a Wiki

I recently used Wikispaces to create my own Wiki. It took me a while to decide what theme/subject to use for my Wiki as I wanted it to be an authentic task. I chose health and fitness, specifically how it relates to learning and education.

Announcing The Fitness Project wiki!

This is not my first experience with starting a Wiki. At my last job I was the one and only technical support consultant in Australia for a small company called DigitalRez. The head office was in Canada and they had a much larger tech support team with years of experience. The difficulty I had was with the time difference. When I really needed their help they were asleep. During my time there (3 years) I had to basically figure most things out for myself which led me to creating a Wiki as a knowledge base (wiki.digitalrez.com.au). Initially I created it with the view that it would just be for internal tech support staff but it actually became a quick and easy way of supporting some of the customers if they rang to ask a very common question.

Reflecting on that past experience, I found it really hard to get other members of the tech support team (i.e. the Canadians) to contribute to the Wiki. They used the information that was on there but very rarely added anything themselves. I think one of the main reasons might have been that I came up with the idea for the Wiki, created it and then presented a well-established product to the group. I may have had more success in leading the group to decide that it would be a really useful resource to have and working on it as a group from the start.

I believe that Wikis could be a great way of engaging students in a classroom setting in a group exercise. As long as they are introduced in the right way and each group member is encouraged to participate. A difficulty could be in one bright or committed student taking over and setting up the whole thing, leaving the other students feeling like they don't know what is going on or understanding what they should be doing. As long as you monitor the activites to make sure that doesn't happen, a wiki is an excellent way of encouraging students to engage in and outside of school.

I've add some new pages...

When study and/or life is getting you down, click on my Fun Stuff page for some light relief.

I've also started on a Teaching Acronyms page so I've got them handy instead of trying to find the folder in which I filed Rickie's handout.

Enhancing lessons with avatars

voki.com allows you to create free avatars to represent yourself or some other character which can then be embedded in a web page, a blog like this one, or even emailed. You can create avatars for free as long as you don't mind a bit of advertising shown at the bottom.

I see avatars as a great way of engaging children. Children have grown up in a digital society and to expect them to come to school and "power down" to read a text book is ridiculous when you think about it. We need to engage them using the multimodal texts that they are used to in life outside of the classroom. These texts are not just linguistic but also include the visual, gestural, audio and spatial (Healy, A. 2008. p9).


Above is an example avatar I created with my free voki account. As you can see avatars do not need to be human - you can use all sorts of characters.

Perhaps another use for them would be for students to create their own and use them to publish their opinion on a particular topic. This could be a way of engaging students who find getting up in front of the class very nerve-racking.

References
Healy, A. (2008). Multiliteracies and Diversity in Education. South Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Engaging with Mahara e.Portfolios

I had a pretty rough idea of what an e.Portfolio in Mahara would be like but after starting work on my own and watching Scot's YouTube tutorial videos I can see how useful and powerful Mahara can be for both teachers and students.

Firstly on an individual level it's a great location for storing all of your teaching resources - lesson plans, videos, images, etc that you can then access from anywhere by simply logging onto the Internet.

Secondly, it's a great way to collaborate with other teachers to share good ideas, advice, lesson plans and units of work.  Mahara provides a Groups facility, Views, a Friends facility and discussion forums - all which can be included in your e.Portfolio.

And finally, what a great way to engage students! Mahara could provide the framework for a unit of work for the students. Using views you could create a series of lessons, on any subject, to comprise a unit of work. Students could be given a secret URL, for example, for each lesson. This could then help free the teacher up to spend time with individual students. In addition the students could create their own e.Portfolio to respond to their tasks that make up the unit of work. Each lesson students could gradually contribute more and more to their e.Portfolio and by the end of the unit of work, create a view in their e.Portfolio to submit an assignment or assessment task. They could also be used to encourage or facilitate group work.

Again, another great tool for engaging students.

Reflections on Blogging

Since leaving University many years ago, most of my working life has been in the I.T industry either providing software support, programming or technical consultancy. I think of myself as a "techie" although not one of those geeky ones with no social skills and who spend all their free time playing Internet games like Dungeons and Dragons or whatever the latest one is (please pardon the stereotyping). Amazingly, in all that time I have not used blogs - at all - until a few weeks ago. I really didn't get them. They seemed to be a bit of a waste of time and I thought that important and useful information could very easily get lost in the other not-so-necessary information posted.

And I still had that opinion until just last week, although I was beginning to see how much fun creating a blog could be. I was still finding it frustrating having to read and comment on other people's blogs when I had so much other Uni work to try and get through and here I am in Week 5 still not ahead in the work like I had planned to be.

Then I watched this short video:




I have now started using Google Reader as my RSS aggregator and now I finally get it! This is so cool! I now have a little Google Reader gadget on my home page (iGoogle) so that every time I open a new Internet window I can quickly see if there are any interesting new posts to read. One of the first things I do when sitting down at my laptop is to check Google Reader. Then I check to see if there are any more followers on my own blog. I've now even created another personal blog for a project my partner and I have just embarked on, calliopeadventure.blogspot.com. And I feel like conducting a little lecture with all my friends so that they understand what it is to blog.

So, I have to say, I am engaged. Kearsley & Shneiderman believe "that technology can facilitate engagement in ways which are difficult to achieve otherwise" (1999) and I would have to agree from this experience. In their article on Engagement Theory, Kearsley & Shneiderman discuss the three components of Learning Engagement Theory, Relate-Create-Donate and that they imply that learning activities should:
1. occur in a group context (i.e., collaborative teams)
2. are project-based
3. have an outside (authentic) focus
(Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999)

I believe that blogs cover those three criteria very well. I have seen videos of how blogs might be used in the classroom and cannot wait to try it myself.

The last thing I wanted to mention about blogging is that to post an entry on a blog really requires you to think and have an opinion on a subject. It facilitates moving into the 3rd dimension of the Dimensions of Teaching - Extending and Refining Knowledge. (Marzano & Pickering, 1997).

In conclusion, I love it!

References
Kearlsey, G. & Schneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved March 2010, from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
Marzano, R. & Pickering, D. (1997). Dimensions of Learning. Teacher's Manual. (2nd Ed). Aurora, Colorado 80014, US.

The Reading Report

(Literacy & Numeracy Week 4)

As part of my course work for Literacy & Numeracy this week I have been reading a report on Teaching Reading by the Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training. (2005, December).

One quite alarming statistic quoted in the report, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1997 was that 20% of Australians between the ages of 15 to 74 had 'very poor' lilteracy schools. With a further 28% likely to have difficulties with reading in everyday life.

So as teachers in training it sounds like we'll have a job to do along with the rest of the teaching profession. It won't just be primary school teachers teaching reading - secondary teachers will need to be involved as well.

The report made a number of recommendations. This was the second one:
"Recommendation 2 The Committee recommends that teachers provide systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code-breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency. Equally, that teachers provide an integrated approach to reading that supports the development of oral language, vocabulary, grammar, reading fluency, comprehension and the literacies of new technologies."

After reading the evidence and studies outlined in the report I think I would have to agree with this approach. The evidence seems to suggest that first and foremost children at an early age need to be taught direct, explicit and systematic phonics instruction. Without these basic skills all the other strategies for teaching reading will not achieve very much and not achieve the learning outcomes. But along with the necessary basic reading skills, other reading instruction (the whole-language approach) should be integrated to create a balanced reading program.

References:

Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training. (2005, December). Teaching reading: A report and recommendations from a national inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. Canberra, ACT: Author. Retrieved 27 March, 2010 from: http://www.dest.gov.au/nitl/documents/report_recommendations.pdf

Sailing the high seas and teaching

Back in 2005 I was a sailing instructor for the Hamble School of Yachting in the UK. The sailing industry is very male dominated and sorry for this generalisation, but many wives are treated appallingly by their husbands when out on the water. Which in turn usually makes them hate sailing and lose all interest. So Hamble School of Yachting decided to run some Ladies Only sailing courses and I was privileged to take 5 ladies for a week's course. Some of them were doing the entry level "Competent Crew" course and a couple of them doing the next level up which was "Day Skipper".

Over the week all the women on board definitely came out of their shells and had a great time. For me it was one of the best weeks working as a sailing instructor. Here are some shots from the course.

Sailing past the Needles on the Isle of Wight - heading for Poole.


Me with the crew, I'm the one near the helm without the matching t-shirt.

Literacy & Numeracy Week 3

Activity 1.5 - Literacy and/or Numeracy demands of Mathematics

What good does it do to be able to solve a maths problem if you can't read and understand the problem in the first place?

According to Thelma Perso, "Being numerate requires a certain degree of literacy skill as well as being able to perform the mathematics."

Mathematics requires both literacy and numeracy skills. In order to solve a maths problem you need to be able to read and comprehend the problem. This requires both code-breaking and comprehension skills (i.e. literacy). Of course to solve the problem you also need the necessary numeracy skills such as multiplication, algorithms and adding and subtracting.

References
The Free Library. (n.d.). Cracking the NAPLAN code: numeracy and literacy demands: Thelma Perso examines the literacy demands of NAPLAN test items and provides advice about the explicit teaching of code-breaking and comprehension skills that are essential to numeracy. Retrieved March 20, 2010, from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Cracking+the+NAPLAN+code:+numeracy+and+literacy+demands:+Thelma+Perso...-a0210224587

Will I be teaching or learning?

This morning I have been going through Topic 3 and the start of Topic 4 for Supportive Learning Environments and had my own assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices challenged. I have never thought of myself as having any prejudices but when considering what characteristics I associate with Indigenous Australians I was shocked and horrified to find that the first things that came to mind were negative. Where has that come from? Firstly, I believe that it’s been mainly due to a distinct lack of education about indigenous people and culture in Australia. At least I didn’t learn much about Indigenous people, culture or their history when I was at school. Secondly, the media and how the rest of society has acted/talked about indigenous people. And finally, experience. Perhaps not living in Australia for 10 years hasn’t helped, but I’ve had virtually no experience with indigenous people. Ashman and Elkins (2009, p.21) suggest that “Experience is the essential prerequisite for success because it is the primary source of the individual’s storehouse of knowledge.”

So then I went on reading and thinking. Understanding how stereotypes and then prejudice develops. Thinking about all sorts of groups – boys versus girls, different religious beliefs, children from broken families, children that live in poverty. As teachers I think we need to take a good, hard look at our own values and beliefs before we inflict them onto children. I would like to be thought of as someone with an open mind and slow to judge and hopefully any students I have will see me in that way. To achieve that, I think I have a lot of learning of my own to do and will probably do a lot of that in the classroom!

While not wishing to force any personal religious belief on anyone, I can’t help now thinking about this scripture, “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31). Wouldn't it be great if we just all naturally did that?

Teaching with technology

Shaun Longstreet, from the University of California in Irvine, discusses things to consider before deciding to include technology in a lesson:

Educating for the future

This video by Sir Ken Robinson says it all.

We need to engage all students - not just those who can sit still and behave. The students who are fidgeting or don't seem interested could just well be the greatest minds of the future.

University Discussion Forums, the digest option

Instead of receiving one email for every message that is posted to the discussion forums, it's possible to choose to receive a daily summary message instead. The email will show the subject and author of each post, with a link to take you straight to that post if you're interested in reading it.

Here's how to switch on that digest mode for the forums...




1. Edit your profile. One easy way to do this is to login to one of the courses in Moodle and you will then see your name at the top right of the window as a link. Click on this link.





2. Click on the Edit profile tab. Under the "Email digest type" heading select the following option from the drop down list:

Subjects (daily email with subject only)

3. Go right to the bottom of the page and click the Update profile button.

And you're done!