Who would like their blog showcased?

At Ulearn09 I will be running a workshop on how to get people like you [squiddlers, kidlets, students, Room5ians - whatever it is you're called] to write brilliantly online through blogging :-)
I need some quality bloggers to volunteer to have their blogs showcased. You can even recommend one of your peers if you like.
Let's see if you guys have superior blogs to the Woodmonstas...
:-)

And guess what - the poor Woodmonsta kids haven't had a chance to do something like the Kakepuku Catastrophe! Poor them!



Of course you may all be at the beach or off skiing...

How about Hamiltron or Rosiegal or Kittymilo or Nei-Nei-NeinaMarie! or Roo or Mojo?
And, of course, we must check out the glorious student who gave us our name:
Im a Room5ian :-)

Teachers need to learn too

teachers need to be learners to be able to help students be better learners - see Angela Maiers quote:

"Teachers need to be great learners to lead great learners. I believe that learning is a lifelong journey, an ongoing exploration and way of life. I challenge myself and others to always be striving to find and share big ideas in every million dollar conversation."

Her blog is a repository for some interesting thoughts and resources... enjoy

Ulearn08 Inquiry Learning with ICT Integration

This is for the teachers at Ulearn, kids... but you are most welcome to leave relevant comments.

"...compared to that, we (bloggers) are just a cult.
I think that what we are doing is extraordinarily important. We are drilling through barriers that insist on keeping things the same. But the barriers persist. Too many schools still can’t view blog pages, podcasts, or other social sites. Most teachers have no time built into their work schedules to participate in these conversations. Way too many children do not have access to the technology they need to become in any way acquainted with today’s information landscape. The concepts of Web 2.0 remain couched in tech-speak that is either to esoteric for many to understand or it down-right turns people off."
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/


But back to me - I find blogging to be incredibly valuable as a tool that provides my yr 7 GATE students with a forum for their discussions, an outlet for their passions, ideas and creativity. Within the online forum it provides the students get to feel their work and ideas are important, valued, interesting and worth sharing.

By not making it private and "secure" students are able to experience the thrill of making new friends, sharing thoughts and questions with an exciting and fresh audience. We now have friends all around the world who add interest and vitality to our blogging world. Our Clustermap has registered nearly 8000 hits worldwide since March this year.
[See example: Mr Teehan and his class in New Jersey - blogging, skype]

In our inquiry unit we used our personal blogs to compile information and images which were relevant to our study.
[See Mudpies, Kittymilo, Snowgirl, Hamiltron, Roo, Rosiegal, etc. for examples]

The HCC communications manager, Agent S, as she is known to us, was delighted by our use of ICTs and became our very own mobile blogging agent during the Hamilton400 street races.

As we took field trips and attended City Expos as exhibitors, we noticed we have a graffiti problem. We met Constable Craig and competed in an anti-graffiti poster competition.

We met the directors of the city museums and libraries and discussed ways in which we coudl become more involved in creation of 21st century spaces and exhibitions.

Digital story telling - MARVIN

Interwoven threads...
Kids use Blogger, and Glogster to create and share content. They embed polls, hyperlinks, mobile blogging images and text. They debate, argue, support, affirm, question, share, create, enjoy and work things out.
Why stop them? If you are not an expert, it doesn't matter.
Remember what Prensky told us - they are the Digital Natives...let them play :-)

Room5ian Blogging Tips:
How to get a Clustermap in your blog
How to mobile blog

If you're a teacher reading this....

...and you're going to Ulearn, please introduce yourself so we can chat about what you might like to hear about in a "breakout".

If you're a kid reading this maybe you could talk about the most interesting or useful ICT stuff we do in class.

:-)

Thanks for helping out. All idea sharing appreciated.
BTW -teachers - Twitter is cool for low key interaction in a teaching community.

Pedagogy 2.0 for teachers

[Room5ians may ignore this]

From an interesting article in Innovate,

Volume 4, Issue 5

June/July 2008

An official publication of the Fischler School

Future Learning Landscapes:

Transforming Pedagogy through Social Software

Catherine McLoughlin and Mark J. W. Lee

"Pedagogy 2.0: Teaching and Learning for the Knowledge Age

In striving to achieve these goals, educators need to revisit their conceptualization of teaching and learning. Educators need to engage meaningfully with the world in which students live and strive to integrate technologies and tasks that are meaningful and relevant to the demands of today’s networked society (NMC 2007). The connectivist model is particularly promising in the context of Web 2.0.

Connectivism describes learning as a process of creating a network of personal knowledge, a view that is congruent with the ways in which people engage in socialization and interaction in the Web 2.0 world—a world that links minds, communities, and ideas while promoting personalization, collaboration, and creativity leading to knowledge creation. Such processes lead to an interdependence of ideas, individuals, communities, and information networks, all supported by technology; a Web 2.0 pedagogy will capitalize on this interdependence. We call this approach Pedagogy 2.0. Pedagogy 2.0 is defined by:

• Content: Microunits that augment thinking and cognition by offering diverse perspectives and representations to learners and learner-generated resources that accrue from students creating, sharing, and revising ideas;
• Curriculum: Syllabi that are not fixed but dynamic, open to negotiation and learner input, consisting of bite-sized modules that are interdisciplinary in focus and that blend formal and informal learning;
• Communication: Open, peer-to-peer, multifaceted communication using multiple media types to achieve relevance and clarity;
• Process: Situated, reflective, integrated thinking processes that are iterative, dynamic, and performance and inquiry based;
• Resources: Multiple informal and formal sources that are rich in media and global in reach;
• Scaffolds: Support for students from a network of peers, teachers, experts, and communities; and
• Learning tasks: Authentic, personalized, learner-driven and learner-designed, experiential tasks that enable learners to create content."

The magazine has many interesting articles and staff may be interested in reading online as they consider new ways to educate.