Daily Archives: March 27, 2011

Key Competencies and Web Tools

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Since the end of last year I have been looking for an easy to use, collaborative mind mapping tool. Over the weekend I think I may have found one. Popplet lets you easily intuitively create Popplets, change their colours, text size, and links. I am having a bit of trouble with the collaborative side of things as my invites don’t seem to be getting through. I like it over some others that I have tried that are too hard to navigate and it does embed nicely elsewhere.

When you are looged in you can number the Popplets and out it into Presentation Mode and get a Prezi like experience without the seasick feeling.

You can export it as a pdf or jpeg which is also handy.

The task I was trying to do is link the Key Competencies to web tools that may support them but I am finding that lots of web tools fit across all the Key competencies and my mind map is looking a bit crowded.

Here’s a link to the actual Popplet and it as a pdf as at 28 March 2011.

Photo Competition Plagiarism

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SunsetThe cluster is sponsoring a photo competition. It is all very exciting and we have had a two well attended after school resource sharing workshops on photography, time given to it at the Lead Teacher Day and Principals’ Morning so we are all set to go.

So we are starting to get a few entries. Last week I got emailed a stunning photo from one of my Year Four girls so she could enter the competition. I was suspicious that she hadn’t actually taken the photo because I didn’t recognise the skyline as being local.  Firstly I asked her where she took the photo and didn’t get a reply. I was even more suspicious.Screen shot 2011-03-27 at 11.57.06 AM

Fortunately Warren and Charles were about with a little advice on where to go to check out whether a photo has been used elsewhere on the net.

http://www.tineye.com/ was the site that was recommended. I uploaded the photo and was pleased (dismayed) to find that the photo was indeed borrowed.

I’m OK with children enhancing their photos with any tools they have on hand- iPhoto, Photoshop etc but just want the taking and enhancing be done by the child. In fact enhancing photos to improve them is to be encouraged.

Using the Tineye site won’t help with children entering photos taken by others in the family but will definitely help with photos taken from the internet.

This will be the basis of an interesting discussion in class on my next teaching day.