Chris Betcher recently blogged about another new Adobe tool- Buzzword- an online word processor written in Flash. Very cool. The features that I particularly like are that you can upload a Word document and it looks just like it does in Word. You can create documents in Buzzword and export as a pdf or a Word document onto your desktop. Ideal for those without the $$$ to spend on Microsoft products. You can insert tables and graphics and do all the usuals that a normal person would want a desktop publisher to do.
Then you can share that document with others just as you might do in Google Docs. But here’s the really cool thing you can do as well. On the far right hand side of the screen you can see the icon- MEET. Thought I would give it a try and find out who I might meet.
Turns out it takes you to Adobe ConnectNow- through which I can share my desktop with others. OK this looks fun but I need someone to share with. Enter Skype and Twitter. Raewyn from school was on Skype and I sent out a general Tweet asking if anyone wanted a little playtime! Colin Warren a educational tertiary level blogger from from Geelong, Australia, answered my call. Together we played and found out pretty much how to work the screen sharing application by talking about it with Skype and sharing the iSite video. The screen capture is of how it looked from my end as Colin opened up his desktop for us to look at. Through this medium we shared photos and movies directly from my desktop.
I liked the interface and it all worked smoothly after we had played about for a bit trying to get the sound working. We nearly had to resort to using the HELP tab but resisted the temptation.
It is great to have a PLN that is so wiling to try new things and learn with each other across the globe.
Here is how the screen looked in a screen grab from Raewyn’s computer. It shows her desktop visibe with my laptop screen viewable at the same time. It looks complicated but it really wasn’t.
I was struck by how relatively simple Adobe’s ConnectNow was and how useful it might be for teachers who are in need of a little online assistance.
By chance we were all Apple users- as it is web based I could see it as a great application to use across the platforms.
I thought the cloud generated by my tweets was interesting. I highlighted some of the most often used words- they emit a sense of what I want my interactions with my on-line network to be like so I am quite pleased.
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach wrote an excellent post that reflects what has been festering in my mind since taking up the ICT Facilitator’s role this year. I have attempted to ‘make the shift’ in my classroom but how can I best encourage others to make similar moves in the way they learn and teach. She highlights nine principles needed to make a shift to 21st century learning pedagogies.
If I can quote her- “Real change, transformational change happens when there is personal ownership of the new technologies and concepts. Today’s new economy is all about human capital, which starts with the educators in a school and then extends outward to all members of the school community.”
People- change is best sustained if people are able to support each other on their learning journey if they can learn in supported groups- we are not islands and the collaboration we strive for in our classrooms needs to be modelled by ourselves as adult learners. This is where action research can be such a powerful tool. He aha te mea nui? He tangata. He tangata. He tangata.
Leadership- because any sort of change can be threatening the support and guidance of those in leadership roles can be critical- the process can be so un-necessarily difficult when classroom teachers are not well supported by those they look to for leadership.
Including all members of the learning community- everyone is part of the process- efforts need to be made to bring all on board- whanau, support personnel, professional colleagues, the wider community.
Developing a shared vision for how things need to be- the need to make sure that teachers together articulating the core beliefs. Our new NZ curriculum statement goes some way to addressing this issue.
Own it- this phrase has been very powerful for me since I first heard Sheryl say it at TUANZ last year. It’s good to use 21st technologies personally before ‘going public’. Become familiar with them, practise and become used to them. My first experiences with communication on line was through the use of email- personally with relatives overseas- because I could see the immediate uses of it I became better at using it.
Communication- we in NZ at the bottom of the globe can be as connected as anyone globally- geography has become less of an issue through UStream, Skype, Twitter etc. Communication with teachers and students outside of your classroom. I am able to communicate with people from UK, Australia, USA, Canada, Uzbekistan- all over.
Know your culture and try to anticipate trends- Sheryl says that participatory media has a tendency to ‘go viral’- we need to try and think ahead of the possible consequences of giving these tools to children. A number of children in my class now have their own personal blogs not moderated by me. I endeavour to have given them the skills and common sense to be safe on line.
We do not know what we do not know- new things will come along that are totally random- we can expect the unexpected. We will need to be able to run with these new challenges.
The power of collective wisdom- we all learn together. We are all learning and what each of us thinks matters.
Thank you Sheryl for insightful post. I encourage my readers to read Sheryl’s blog in its entirety as she is able to write in much eloquently than I but I wanted to write my own version to help me move my own thinking along by giving it my own ’spin’.
View my page on TechnospudProjects My on-line friend, Jen Wagner, has recently created a Ning for primary school teachers as a place to met up, share ideas and find other teachers around the world who want to collaborate on global projects and meet up with other like minded teachers. Joining this Ning would be a great way to join a PLN, Personal Learning Network, and move out of just sharing your learning with your class, school or parent community.
Lisa Parisi, from New York, and I have recently collaborated on a Hemispheres Wiki. Lisa’s class set a couple of questions that could best be answered by people living in the Southern Hemisphere and we set about answering them from our own experiences showing photos and videos of our findings. The seasonal differences were highlighted by our class photos on the ‘about page’. Lisa’s children were standing in their playground surrounded by snow and mine were on the beach.
This week’s highlight has been an impulse buy- Parallels for my TELA laptop. I was going to buy a new 17inch MacBook Pro but got the speed wobbles when I realised how much it was going to cost. This is my compromise. I may still buy a MacBook at a later date. The installation went smoothly and now I not only have a back-up of my PC on my TELA Apple laptop but I can access my books and other Publisher files from my Apple. I even got my new Polycom Communicator that only runs with Windows XP to work with a quick test Skype call to Lenva Shearing just to check. With the Communicator you can make Skype call with the speaker to a larger audience and not have to worry about feedback. Tino pai rawa!
I can’t wait till our next Skype collaboration- maybe with Lisa Parisi from New York as we learn together via our hemispheres wiki to find out about how things work in our different hemispheres.
After an all day Sunday session at school tidying up for move to another classroom and a new level of children. I felt in need of a little light relief as I had cleared my Bloglines and checked out the tweets and thought I would ‘Google‘ myself. I was amazed that this German blogger had found his/her way to my Teacher tube Video, One Woman’s Wanderings with Web2.o. These links are truly incredible.
Over the last so long I have become an avid follower of the conversations brought about through Twitter.
There is much talk about ‘getting’ or ‘not getting’ Twitter. At first I thought it a bit of a toy but realise now that it can be much more than than that.
I follow the ‘Tweets’ of these people and 115 people follow what I say. Through Twitter I have been able to share some of the things we have been doing, get the word out about events, happenings and new tools, find out more about the thoughts of others, link to new blog posts, share ideas and feel connected to other teachers globally.
You can tweet from your mobile phone and receive tweets even when you are away from your computer and you can privately direct message individuals within the 140 character limit.
The way to ‘get’ Twitter is to leap in- find some people that you want to share information and ideas with and ‘follow’ them and follow some of the people that they follow. From there the conversation spreads.
Here is my Aussie mate Chris Betcher’s video on how Twitter works if you are more of a visual learner…
Through Twitter we invited the world to join our “What have we learnt with ICT? Voicethread and Lisa Parisi from New York had her class add valuable input into it and make it so much more richer. We are about take part in the new collaboration with our Northern Hemisphere friends who want to find out more about life below the equator. Lisa has made this comparing hemispheres wiki and we are going to help her class find out some answers to a couple of questions that I have always wanted to know the answers to as well- like which way does water go down the plughole at latitude 43 degrees north- clockwise or anti-clockwise?
Today Tweeterboard was brought to my attention , via a tweet of course. With Tweeterboard you can gauge how influential and ‘clickable’ your tweets are based on your conversations with other Twitter users.
Chris, from Sydney, brought us all together via Skype for a bit of a chat about our practice. I encourage you to have a listen by clicking on Chris’ Virtual Staffroom logo. I hope you learn something from us and be entertained slightly as well.
Thanks Chris for bringing us together to discuss ULearn07, Twitter, blogging, podcasting, K12 OnLine, Second Life and more.
I have recovered from last night’s networking marathon. The first learning opportunity came through a Twitter from Jeff Utecht in Shanghai that he wanted to try out WiZiQ- an Elluminate like on-line application. A number of us from all over the globe had a bit of play as we worked out together how the application works and a number of others joined us for a bit while we were playing. Dave Warlick came along to put in his 2cents worth, Will Richardson got a bit webblogged by his lack of audio input!
Jeff archived the session if you are interested but be aware that Jeff is on his own for a bit at the beginning as he waits for us to turn up!
The second opportunity came through a Skype call from Chris Betcher. He was playing with Skype and seeing how many people could come and join him in a conference call. We got up to nine people from all over the globe- it was a lot of fun as we all had a good laugh and I ended up adding some more great educators to my bloglines and Twitter network. It was 2am NZ time by the we finished and my battery gave out.
It is amazing how these serendipitous opportunities come about and how we can learn from each other by participating from them. I wish I had been working on my computer as I had not yet downloaded Call Recorder for Skype on the TELA laptop so have no audio for you to follow.
Tomorrow I am going to go out and see if I can a T-shirt embroidered to wear to the Edubloggers’ Cafe at Ulearn07. I like Chris’ idea of “I’m Blogging This”! Any other suggestions???
Sheryl is now safely back in Virginia from the Shanghai Learning 2.0 conference and has posted a link to the recorded archive of our Elluminate Session. I really do recommend that you listen to it as the other speakers were spot on with their contributions- well worth listening to again.
To listen to an Elluminate session click on the above link and you will need to give permission to open a Java application, it will check for the latest version and automatically load, wait a bit for it to open, it starts a little scratchy and then Clarence Fisher tells us about how he uses Web2.0 tools in his isolated school in Canada, followed by David Jakes, myself and Chris Betcher.
Uploaded with Skitch!
Clarence talks about how a class can be limited with just one teacher and the need to open the classroom doors so that children can learn from each other and other teachers/experts from around the globe.
This slide shows his representation of how a network of links has developed through blogging. Our class blog would be very similar I think. We learn things from friends and from friends of friends.
Do have a look/listen- you will not be disappointed.
This afternoon NZ time I had the privilege to be invited to participate in a discussion at the Learning2.0 conference - Communication, Collaboration, Connection in Shanghai by my good friend Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach.
I was accompanied by Clarence Fisher who is a full time teacher in a small school in the backblocks of Canada. I felt close to Clarence as his school is also small and a little isolated but he uses Web2.o tools to communicate and collaborate globally. Then we featured David Jakes who is a technology co-ordinator from the US and my new friend Chris Betcher from Sydney.
Chris and I had worked together the night before the presentation discussing what we might highlight and Chris tried to lend a hand while I struggled with converting a Jing video in swf format to something that would upload as a podcast. BTW I got there in the end by using a little cunning and a lot of persistence! (If you want to Download
This is a slide that I captured from Chris’ presentation as it graphically shows how a blog can be the hub of communication and networking with live updates embedded from Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, comments, Clustrmap and other blog links. Uploaded with Skitch!
I will post a link to review the conversation when Sheryl publishes it.
As usual I learnt more from these connections than people learnt from my ramblings.
Aus dem Inhalt:
Den GrundschülerInnen von Lehrerin Allanah King von der Appleby School stehen seit 2006 jederzeit 12 Notebooks (Apple Laptops) mit Zugang zum Internet zur Verfügung. Erste Erfahrungen mit einer online Lernumgebung machte Allanah King bereits im Jahr 2005. In einem Workshop lernte Sie das Bloggen kennen und führt seither auch ein sehr lesenswertes EduBlog. Im Video berichtet die Lehrerin davon, dass jede der fünf Schulklassen (1. - 6. Klasse) an der Appleby School inzwischen ein eigenes Class-Blog (Klassen-Blog) führt, in das die Lernenden mindestens einen Beitrag (Post) wöchentlich schreiben. Für das Verfassen des wöchentlichen Blog-Eintrags ist bei Frau King immer abwechselnd jeweils ein(e) Schüler/in verantwortlich. Häufig schreiben die SchülerInnen jedoch mehrere Posts wöchentlich; insbesondere dann, wenn viele Aktivitäten in der Schule oder im Unterricht stattfinden. Alle Kommentare auf den Class-Blogs werden zuerst von den LehrerInnen geprüft, bevor sie frei geschaltet werden (Moderationsmodus). Von den einzelnen Class-Blogs verweisen zahlreiche Links auf weitere nützliche Web 2.0-Tools: Blogmeister Class Blog, Education-Blog der Lehrerin, TeacherTube-Konto der Lehrerin, Klassen-Wiki, Podcast-Plattform, Kalender, Quick Notes, Fotocommunity Flickr, einzelne SchülerInnen-Blogs u.a.m. Besonders beliebt bei den Kindern ist auch die digitale Uhr. Ausserdem besitzt jede Klasse ein del.icio.us-Konto (Social Bookmarking), mit dem die SchülerInnen nützliche URLs sammeln. Allanah King bemerkt, dass del.icio.us zwar nicht sehr häufig genutzt werde, jedoch trotzdem ein sehr nützliches Tool für den Unterricht sei. Alle Class-Blog haben zudem einen Site-Counter (ClustrMap) installiert, damit die Lernenden auf der Weltkarte sehen können, woher die LeserInnen ihrer Blogs stammen…
I am waiting with baited breath for the clock to tick over to midnight so that I can say that we in NZ can be the first to contribute to Blog Day! The idea is that we all link to five new blogs that we think people may be interested in…
Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2007
Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
I was Skyping with Jane Nicholls tonight and she asked if I had heard of an Aussie blogger, John Pearce who teaches at a primary school in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, who had dropped my name on his blog. He has got good taste- maybe a blog to follow! Thanks mate!
Via Paul Harrington comes a link to some more great work from the redoubtable Kiwi Allanah King just across the ditch, (that spot of ocean between we Aussies and NZ). This time Allanah has produced a great video relating her experiences with her children in blogging and podcasting as well as skyping with Paul and others. An easy view Allanah’s presentation is part of what looks likely to be an interesting conference, the No Time4 Online Conference which will be running for 2 weeks from 28 May to 8 June 2007. The pre-conference review contains some familiar and some less familiar introductory contributions to whet the appetite of the numerous kiwis and a couple of others who already signed up. Hmmm maybe we should invite a five or sux of our colleagues from the Shaky Isles over here to Oz to give us a hand???? ;).
At the very end of last term all NZ schools got a memo from the Ministry of Education informing us that we had to remove Microsoft Office from all our Apple computers as the Microsoft School Licence Agreement had expired and was not going to be renewed.
Computerworld published an article today about it and I felt compelled to make comment.
On two matters really….
Firstly I looked for the comment link at the bottom of the article so that I could say my piece. I have been reading too many blogs in the holidays I think!!!
Secondly having to remove Word and Excel will be no loss to my eight year olds. I am not so sure about Powerpoint but as long as we get an Apple’s iWork all will be sweet in that respect.
The loss of Office in itself, may well be a blessing in disguise and further encourage people to go the Web2.0 tools as a replacement. We have already had a play with Writely- now Google Docs. Yesterday I helped a fellow teaching colleague with using RSS, Delicious, Bloglines, Gmail, Blogs etc. I didn’t take my computer with me as I had all I needed residing on the net in secure locations. Which computer I accessed the information from was irrelevant. In saying that I am still very much an Apple girl with its simplicity of use and the seamless inter-connectivity of applications.
As long as we have the required, supported, ubiquitous internet access then I’m all for it.
