Photo Activities

At first I established a Flickr account and uploaded some digital photos into Flickr.

I then looked for and found a photo I liked, downloaded it onto my computer before posting it to my blog. It is entitled
'Redoubt... before the eruption'


I uploaded 'Harbour in the Morning', which I took at the end of last year on a morning stroll in Port Douglas, from my computer into Picnik. I cropped it slightly and then reduced the size from 3648 by 2736 pixels to 500 by 389 pixels, or from 5.37 MB to 118 KB. This is a huge reduction, obviously at the expense of quality; however, the great advantage is that it can be uploaded much quicker. I then saved it to my computer and posted it to my blog.

'Harbour in the Morning'



Photos are another wonderful tool for teacher and student use alike. Children can obtain photos from Flickr or use their own or anyone's (with permission) photos. They can then easily reduce the pixels and embed them into their blogs or wikis or use them to make conventional assignments more attractive.

There is a great photo, which I took last year during the dust storm, in my wiki (please find URL in 'Blogs, Wikis and Vokis', posted 04.04.10). This picture takes a little while to download as I haven't reduced the pixels (at that time I didn't know, yet, how to do this); however, this picture is worth waiting for.

PowerPoint

Oops, I completely missed the (power) point! I was so excited about learning how to create a power point presentation - I had never done this before - and then putting it into practice, that I didn't read the bits where it says that the focus would be on power point as a teacher-based presentation, and that I was to create a presentation for one of my classes. Oh dear! Now I ended up with the presentation 'Facts about Bees' which I would expect a student in year three or four to make and use as visuals for an oral presentation.

Facts About Bees

View more presentations from Beeke Smith.

Actually, I think I would be able to use this presentation as a teaching tool. I could show it to students as a guide for that which I expect of them. Yes, I think this would work. Phew, I got out of this one!

This is a rather simple power point presentation. I look forward to having the time to learn more about the great features that power point has to offer.

Power point is a great tool for teachers when presenting new topics, or as a step-by-step guide. If attractively created, these presentations are excellent for keeping students visually engaged.

I can see much potential for children using power point for creating their own projects. Even poor spellers or children with messy handwriting should be able to come up with really neat presentations.

Power point presentations are often made up of dot-points, which make them great for student's oral presentations. The audience's visual attention is likely to be divided between the screen and sometimes nervous presenters, which could make them feel more at ease.

Mahara

I was fortunate to have created a NetSpot account and to have had a little play with Mahara during residential school, but oh, do I find this program a challenge! I don't know how many hours I spent watching those You Tube videos (the most painful thing was waiting for them to download!) again and again, while at the same time doing the steps in Mahara. I have created a bit of a view with which I am nowhere near happy, however, I think I know now how to change that; but I also know that I still have much to learn.

Mahara seems to be a very comprehensive tool. It is a networking system and an electronic portfolio, excellent for keeping one's resume and all those other documents, all in one place. A whole lot of different types of files can be stored in Mahara, and they can be made available in separate views for different audiences.

I can see potential use of it in schools, perhaps not so much by the younger children, but definitely by students from grade 3 or 4 onwards. Setting it up would be a good learning experience in itself and I imagine students would enjoy the process. Children could use Mahara to store their work in. This would be an incentive to produce work of a high standard. A view of a selection of their work including word documents, power point presentations, photos and wikis can be made available to others. I can just imagine the joy on grandparent's faces when viewing high quality work in their little darling's e-portfolios.

Using Blogs, Wikis and Vokis in Schools

Let's say in my EPL School the students will be doing a unit on space during Term 2. All children could have their own blogs, their own Space E-Journal to which they add on a regular basis what they have learned; and they could include links of interesting websites, embed pictures, videos and vokis. Students could give one another feedback and more ideas.

At the same time students could work in small teams, each working on a different project about space, and set up a group wiki to which each group member is permitted to add. The wiki can contain images, videos and more. Students could also collaborate on a class wiki to which each team adds information about their topic thus creating a more comprehensive wiki.

Gifted and talented students with similar interest could collaborate in a wiki on a particular topic of common interest, and they can work on this in and out of class time.

I imagine children would have a lot of fun creating their own vokis and use them in their blogs to introduce sections or at the end to summarise, making those characters or animals talk. I invite you to press 'play' and hear my talking dog. I guess vokis could also be used for sound effects.

The reading 'Teacher Education and the New Knowledge Environment' by Heath (2001), in which he talks about two modes of knowledge, comes to mind. Heath sees Mode 1 knowledge as being attained through a more conventional, theoretical, authoritative way, and Mode 2 knowledge as a more practical, procedural approach. With these technologies students would have opportunities to engage in Mode 2 learning and encompass, as Heath puts it on page 4, "...multiple sites of knowledge production, multiple modes of knowledge and multiple means of its distribution."

Blogs, Wikis and Vokis

Creating this blog was interesting, but it took me a very long time, again and again clicking on all the tabs and figuring out how to use the different features.

I didn't find setting up an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) aggregator as difficult as understanding the concept of one. Anyway, I think I do understand it now: we can use an aggregator such as google reader to notify us of new postings in other blogs that are of interest to us rather than going into each blog separately, thus saving a lot of time. It sounds simple now that I 'got it'.

I didn't consciously know what the word wiki meant even though I have consulted wikipedia on many occasions. Creating my own wiki was fun, but again, it was a process that took me a few hours. I found the videos in http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour with their clear instructions very helpful.

Please feel free to have a look at my wiki at http://spaceexploring.wikispaces.com/.

What is the difference between a blog and a wiki? This is how I understand it:

A blog is a personal online journal which is accessible by others who are able to give feedback.

A wiki is a collaboration tool that is accessible by many and can be added to by the ones who have permission.

I am just about to attempt to add my freshly created voki to my blog. I wonder if it works.

So Glad I Can Talk