Status5 May 26, 2007
Posted by Steve in ClassBlog, Elearning, Technotrivia, Web2.0.1 comment so far
The Honours Programme is rolling along and is developing into something quite special. It would not surprise me that we are doing a “First” in NSW incorporating social networking software and student activities who signed up for the Honours Programme. (See Honours page on this site).
The Honours Programme co-ordinator was already doing a superb job with the students. My input advocating the use of groups found at yahoo and the option to create a blog has added another dimension to the programme.
Within the Honours Programme are a few genuine gifted and talented people. In the ordinary school structure, they usually are marginalised by their peers. According to studies, these type of people need some way to publicise their thoughts and ideas.
As the Honours Programme advances into the school year, the group has developed their own synergy and energetically help each other out. The genuinely gifted and talent people have created their own blogs which have been read by their peers and given positive, reinforcing feedback. These people are no longer ‘marginalised’. Wow. Great Pastoral stuff.
My Year 8 Technology group finished their animated gif tasks. The better students were able to upload their gifs to their blogs. The less able students created the animated gifs and were marked in their storage directory. I expected to see a couple of students zoom off with their blogs but it does not seem to have happened. Sigh.
It was made known to me over the week that students share the only computer at home and that they have allocated times as to when they can use it. Would you believe that is the first time I ever considered such a thing? that students have limited time on a single computer at home.
The Year 8 Technology students are onto their next task. Basically, they are to create a radio type commercial using Audacity and they are required to mix tracks. Needless to say, they are having a great time experimenting. The finished products are expected to be uploaded to their blog site as a mp3 file.
I am involved in assigning sessions at the Computing Studies Teacher Association (NSW) inservices which take place once a school term. Four workshops run at any one time and participants choose which workshop they wish to do (numbers permitting).
The committee lives all over the place. I started something new in May 2007. I uploaded the session assignment sheets and the agenda document to docs.google.com.
This way Committee members get to look at the documents as they evolve from one inservice to the next. They may make changes or comments as to how the evening should be guided. Hopefully, this will allow the Committee members be more involved in the assigning of sessions, hence, collaboration. Of course, strict deadlines over-rides everything else!
Audacity Inservice May 8, 2007
Posted by Steve in Sample.add a comment
I was involved in an inservice where the focus was on Audacity software. We had a small group but the mixture was interesting. We had about 1/3 computing teachers, 1/3 music teachers and 1/3 linked to a library or audio / visuals within there school. It was a fabulous experience and it was soooo nice to be on the other side of the fence for a change.
Sheepishly, I admit that the end products of the music teachers were much better creatively as compared to we computing teachers. But we beat em with resolving technical issues! The end products were surprisingly good, diverse and made for interesting ideas to use in the classroom. The calibre of the participants was staggering. I was the only one to try to read off an old radio script.
I start with Audacity in the classroom this week. It will be fun and games and I am looking forward to it!! I love experimenting with Year 7’s and Year 8’s!
Techstuff 2 May 6, 2007
Posted by Steve in Musing, Technotrivia.1 comment so far
My computer lab was re-imaged by the IT blokes over the school break. I did extensive testing (so I thought) with the master machine. But, alas, after the entire lab was re-imaged, the students discovered they could not access their flash drives through the USB ports. The IT blokes spent hours trying to overcome the difficulty but to no avail. So they had to add to the master machine and re-image the computer lab again. Mind you, I have never experienced a major re-imaging of a computer lab without something going wrong. My compliments to the IT blokes who are snowed under with requests.- Assisting people with their computers goes with the turf being a computing teacher. As we visit our friends socially, I am being asked to set up their wireless router which they have purchased, installed but not able to get the software operational. Fortunately, setting up the software usually goes smoothly. It is just time consuming. My testing always involved interacting with the school’s email or directories. If the system can handle that, it can handle anything.
- We (the school) did our first evaluation of a Learning Object prototype from the Learning Federation. It was a Maths module dealing with ratios. Much to my surprise we had work stations that could not run the module because they didn’t have an updated version of Flash Player or Shockwave. My solution: I brought in my department laptop and my wife’s laptop for two students to use. The process was very interesting and the students did identify a couple of areas that could be improved with the prototype. I was somewhat surprised that the Year 7 and Year 8 students did not know the word ‘ratio.’ Evaluation sheets were filled out and Express Posted back to Melbourne. We did not raise an invoice because no casual relief was brought in and I used a Prep period to carry out the evaluation. My thanks to the Maths co-ordinator who was open to the idea of evaluating a Maths Learning Object prototype.
- I attended an inservice entitled “Blogging to Learn” by the Association of Independent Schools. When I applied for the course in February, I knew little about blogging. By the time the course actually took place, I had experimented with blogs in the classroom and as a teacher. I did get some valuable information from the course and shared what little I knew. Participants seemed impressed with what my Year 8 students were doing.
- The Honours Programme seems to be going well in terms of using communications. We still have a few students who have not joined the TIGSHONOURS group which suggests technical difficulties. This has been a long, drawn out process. I bet we do better in 2008 in terms of establishing online communications.
- Next project: setting up blogs for the partipants!
- I have yet to evaluate SchoolKit which is from Western Australia.
- Due to circumstances, I bought Office 2007 for Home and student use to place on our laptops. We are allowed to put it on 3 laptops. While I have not actually used Word 2007, I was most impressed with the new layout and the use of tabs. I am used to using tabs in the newer web browsers. It will be interesting to see how others adapt to the new layout.
- I also succumbed and purchased Photo Shop Elements 5.0 for home use. Paintshop Pro was uninstalled. I was getting confused when using the two different graphics program. Now I am synchronised with school. Version 5.0 should have more features as compared to version 2.0 which the school uses.
- My Kodak digital camera has seen its day. It eats up the batteries at an uncommon rate. Solution: purchased a new Olympus digital camera and a 2 GB memory card for the camera. The small size of the camera appealed to me.
