The Smell of a Good Website

The feeling I get from following other people's links and searching for good stuff on the internet is the same feeling I get when I'm browsing in a second-hand bookshop. There's always that anticipation of finding some hidden treasure somewhere. I love the smell of old books. I wonder what old websites smell like??!!

Over the last few months I've found a number of blogs and sites which have absolute 'must bookmark' and have harvested them to my delicious page.

Here are some very worthwhile places that you might like to check out (if you haven't already!).

Turning the Supertanker was one of the first e-learning blogs I came across. A great record of one Auckland school's journey in digitising practice. Definitely check out the Resources page, as it has great links to Web 2.0 resources, and the 'How to' page and excellent video tutorials on how to use some these, like Voicethread, Inspiration, and Audacity. Definitely worth a visit.

Andrew Churches' blog has a lot of great information, and the accompanying wiki is a storehouse of ideas and resources for those wanting to integrate e-learning into their classroom. Particularly useful are the Starter Sheets he has here, pdf sheets introducing web 2.0 applications to the classroom, suggesting classroom adaptations, and importantly, tying these in with Bloom's and learning styles.

Will Richardson is usually on everyone's blogroll, and for good reason. He wrote the book (literally) when it comes to using the Read/Write Web in the classroom. You could spend hours exploring this blog and following all the worthwhile links.  This blog introduced me to RSS and the possibilities for its use in learning. If you're unfamiliar with RSS or want a good place to refer other people who are new to it, check out this page. After reading that I set up a bloglines account and now enjoy my blogs coming to me!  

If you enjoy reading my blog (for example) you just click on the RSS Subscribe button in the side bar, and then choose your feed aggregator, and then whenever this blog is updated you'll be notified immediately, rather than having to check to see if there's anything new.

OK, last one for today! Graham Wegner's Open Educator blog is always thoughtful, challenging and refreshing. And his Shared Items are always worth checking out too.  Definitely one to sub on bloglines!

The Unpredictability of Creativity

I've been thinking a lot recently about the whole place of 'creativity' in education, and in particular whether we should see it as the means or the ends of the learning process. I have to say that my general position has been that we should give opportunity for creativity in our classrooms, because real learning may come from this. 

But I'm beginning to feel now that all learning that takes place should not only include the creative process but be directed towards that end. Perhaps it's chicken v egg stuff.

There's something about human nature, the one thing, in my humble opinion, that really sets us apart from the other wonderful species on our planet, and that is our creative urge. We need to create, and to see what we have created and share what we have created, be it tangible or intangible. 

I spent all of Wednesday with my class at their off-site technology programme, and I was blown away by how engaged they all were. You could see it in their faces, that their mind's eye had a vision of where they were going, and they were going for it. It really challenged me to think about my own classroom and what opportunities there are, on a daily basis, to be creative.

If you have the time, watch this inspiring talk by Sir Ken Robinson,  "Do Schools Kill Creativity".

He suggests that we are prioritising the wrong things, and I can't help but think that perhaps it is because if the ideas come from us as teachers, this is predictable (from our own point of view) and can be planned for. However,  what comes from the learners is completely unpredictable and out of our control. It's risky, it's messy, but it's what learners crave.

When we look at the way Web 2.0 is developing, it is completely about people taking something there, changing it, improving and sharing it.  And finding some fulfilment in doing so.  The tools of the read/write web are tools for creativity, and that has to be our deciding criterion when considering whether or not (and how) to use them in the classroom: how well do they excite the creative imaginations of our learners and give them an outlet? Or are they just bells and whistles...

Ahead in the Clouds

There are so many great web 2.0 applications out there these days that we're really spoiled for choice. One that I'm using with my class at the moment is called Wordle, which allows you to paste in any text, and it organises it into a word cloud with the highest frequency words being the largest.

Here is a Wordle of the comments from my first post, Engagement is Learning (hat tip to my course tutor for this idea!).

I'm using this in my Current Events programme. As a class we are looking at a particular news item that we want to explore in greater depth. After a general first reading we discuss what we think the main ideas and key concepts are, and then paste the story into Wordle and see what stands out. My students really love the visual aspect of it, and the fact that you can randomise or customise it to change its shape, colour etc.

I can also use this to add to my spelling and word study programme. They can select several relevant words from the article, and avoid selecting low-frequency words that are a bit obscure or chosen just because they looked difficult!

Another cool tool is one you'll find on this blog, called  AnswerTips , which allows you to double-click on any word on the blog that isn't a link, and it provides a box with a definition, synonyms, etc. Great for the class blog!

Death, Destruction and the Internet

I was watching the news yesterday evening and there was a clip about the things happening in Sudan at the moment. Really tragic images 

that stop you in your tracks and make you rethink your current enthusiasms and their relevance.

After all, what could 'e-learning' possible mean for the person in this image? Where does e-learning fit on Maslow's heirarchy of needs?

Then it struck me that of course the Internet has no relevance at all for this person, BUT, it does have incredible power to make this kind of thing relevant for the learners that I'm responsible for. The internet is all about connection, and although things like third world poverty seem a million miles away from my classroom context, I can show my students that the world is smaller than they think, that the world is a village, and that we need to be responsible citizens of that village.

On my MEd course recently we've been discussing the importance of our learners not just finding and presenting information on the Internet, but also going that extra, essential step of generating new knowledge, being creative with what they find there. However, it can't stop there. Surely this new knowledge is useless unless that in turn is followed by action.

 Confronted with images like this, we need to discuss with our learners, "What can we DO?".

Engagement is learning

Well, here is the inaugural post for what I intend to be long and enjoyable journey through the edublogosphere! 

Because education is concerned with learning, and 'learning' and the way it's defined is somewhat contentious (to say the least) I would like to venture out and ask the question: Can learning ever occur if a learner is not engaged with the process and content of the learning? Put another way, if a learner IS engaged, does it therefore follow that they are learning? Can a learner be engaged but not learning? 

I don't think so, and that's a huge part of the benefit of e-learning opportunities.  Not many other tools in education have such a power to draw the learner in and help them to see things in different ways, and to be constantly discovering the 'new'. And discovering something new and getting a thrill out of it is, in itself, engagement.

I was looking at the weblogged wiki yesterday (this is Will Richardson's wiki), in particular what he had to say about connective writing, '...the ability to publish in a variety of media with the intention of connecting it to others who share an interest (or passion) in the topic'. 

I really believe this is the way forward for engaging students in authentic learning. This is what Web 2.0 is all about.