Module 10

I feel very excited to have finished this course, partly because it took me a while to actually decide to do it in the first place, and secondly because of how much I feel I have gained by completing it. I have learnt so much and have really enjoyed every module and I feel I will become a much better teacher by using even just some of the tools that I have found out about.

I think I still have quite a lot to learn about wikis. It was interesting to look at the examples of the ones provided in the course. A Canadian exchange teacher at my school, Sharon, also showed me her wiki that she uses with her class in Canada and it was fantastic. It was inspiring to see what a wiki can be like and how it can be used on a daily and/or weekly basis as a means of informing and teaching students and also as a way of allowing joint knowledge construction on a task.

I have not yet tried to set up a wiki with my class. I would like to have a go at doing this in the holidays so that I can try it out with my classes next year. I really want to be able to put some of this course into practice next year, even if it is only with baby steps. So for me the biggest question would be to focus on the purpose of my wiki and - as it mentions in this module - how it can be set up for the purpose of not just disseminating knowledge, but allowing for joint construction of knowledge. This will give me plenty to think about over the next month or so but for the moment I am thinking for French of starting a wiki focusing on French culture as this would allow my students, who are all beginners, to contribute mainly in English. But for the future, there would be the possibility of uploading podcasts, videos thay have made, as well as being able to comment on pictures, videos etc. For senior classes, there is so much potential as well.

I think Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally will really come in handy when planning a wiki and related tasks as the verbs that are linked to the thinking tasks really make you focus on what it is you want the student to be able to do and achieve through the use of this technology.

I would like to thank the CEO for running such a fantastic course and offering it free of charge to all interested teachers. I think it is the most valuable piece of professional development I have done in many years and I will enjoy taking my baby steps into the practical world of teaching and learning with Web2.0 next year.

Module 9

Scootle is a great resource and one I was already a bit familiar with. I had already searched for some resources for French and there are plenty of excellent ones there that look very suitable for using with my students. What I hadn't gotten around to doing before was creating a learning path for these resources. So, in completing this module I have now started to do that and I am excited about using them with my students this year and next year. What I also hadn't realised before was the part of Scootle that allows you to read comments of other teachers and share learning paths. This is the part of Scootle that seems to me to be most characteristic of Web2.0. It reminded me a bit of delicious in the way that you can view the learning paths of other teachers just as you could share the bookmarks of other delicious users. I'm pleased I have found out about this aspect of Scootle as I think it will be really helpful and save time.

In terms of social networking I am not really much involved in that at the moment. I am not on facebook, my space, twitter etc and at the moment have no desire to do so. These are not things I would consider using in the classroom but I could see their place as a way to collaborate with colleagues. I did find the list of Social Network Sites for Educators interesting. I was not aware so many of these sites existed for such a wide range of interests, from learning Spanish to using technology in the classroom. I can see how it would be beneficial to belong to one or some of these online groups and it would really connect you to a world-wide web of educators.The problem for me would be finding the time at the moment to really contribute to these sites but it is good to know they exist!

I did not think that much of Second Life and again, for the moment, it is not something I would use in the classroom. I have found many more useful tools through this Web2.0 course that I think are far more beneficial to the students and their learning. I did not find the Second Life website easy to navigate or to really understand how to engage in it. I was trying to enter some of the Paris spaces but could never seem to get anywhere. I am probably also a bit put off by media reports I have read in the past about how Second Life can be unsafe in terms of the people you can encounter in this virtual world. So for now, it is not a tool I will be investigating any further.

Overall, even though I am not that much engaged in social networking on the web, I do think it is an important part of Web2.0 and I will definately be using the social networking aspects of delicious and Scootle regularly.

Module 8

I am glad that through this module I have finally found out what an RSS feed is and how to use one. I had heard about them a bit over the last month or so and began to notice the link on some websites but, until now, never really knew their purpose. I can now see many benwfits in using RSS feeds and I have subscribed to a couple through google reader.

I can see how they are great for teachers as a way of saving time in searching for updates on websites regularly used. All the new information is now brought straight to you! I set up an RSS feed to the Edublogger, which is a site I discovered when trying to embed my Voki from Module 7 into my blog. It explained all the technical stuff in a fairly easy way to understand and I had noticed last week it had an RSS link. I have also set up a link with Grammar Girl - Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Grammar is an interest I have as a language teacher but it also makes me think that it would be great to encourage students to set up their own RSS feeds. It would allow students, especially seniors and / or younger independant learners, to take on responsibility for keeping up-to-date with the latest information and current events for whatever subjects they were studying - grammar and better writing being one example. It takes the learning straight to the student, again they can access learning anytime, anywhere. This seems to me to be another one of the great advantages of Web2.0. Until next time....

Module 7

I think this module came at a good time in terms of exploring and thinking more about the usefulness of online communities. I feel I have learnt quite a lot about Web 2.0 now but I have sort of been caught up in my own experience of it. So it has been good to read some other blogs of people doing the course and to see what they have found useful or how they might have already tried to use some of this technology. Being part of a wiki really does give you an insight into what being part of an online community can offer, in terms of being able to ask a question, get feedback on an issue etc.

I enjoyed the delicious bookmarking site and find it very useful both for organising my own bookmarks and discovering new ones. For me, the best thing about it is being able to add people to your network and check out their sites. I have already found a number of really interesting websites for French that I was not aware of before. It really is worldwide sharing and learning as I was looking at the bookmarks of users (other language teachers) from Spain and the UK. I also found out about a great application called voki (voki.com) which allows you to create speaking avatars. My kids (my own children) love it and I'm sure the students at school would love it too - even to use personally not necessarily as part of school. I have tried to embed one in my blog but so far have not succeeded. I will keep trying.

So, all in all, I really think being able to share information and resources online is perhaps one of the best things about Web2.0. It really opens you up to the ideas of so many others and allows you to share what you have found with others. I think this is what effective teaching and learning is all about.

Module 6

I enjoyed learning about both bubbl.us and Glogster in this unit and as you can see I managed to combine both applications together and post them on my blog! First I created a mindmap about my reflections of Web2.0 as a learning tool. I found that I had to keep each box fairly brief or it was hard to keep track of the mind map and read it easily. Then I made a mind map of French verb revision as an example of something I could use in class with my Year 8 students covering the verbs we have done so far. This is what I included in my glogster poster.

The glogster poster was a lot of fun to create - it took me a while to play around with all the effects you can add in but it was fairly straightforward to use. I can imagine my students loving glogster and it would be a great tool for them to create posters for the different topics we study. I can think of family, pets and food as topics in which this would work really well. I'll have to check if all my Yr 8s are over 13? It would also be great to create pages as a teacher to upload to the school network site for French - in fact, I think I'll try and link my glogster page so that it's ready to go for the start of Year 8 next year!

Until next module...

Module 5

This module dealt with tools that I am mostly already familiar with so I did find it a bit quicker to get through the content, but at the same time it reminded me how much time you can spend ( and sometimes waste!) looking through iTunes and YouTube. I already had iTunes on my computer and use it mainly to buy songs for my iPod and to upload my own music from my own CDs. I had not really used the podcasts or vodcasts available through the itunes store, many of which are free. I found this very interesting and I did subscribe to one of the ABC's Educational podcasts - this week it was on the state of language teaching in Australia so was very relevant to me! I also subscribed to a Japanese podcast which will be useful to help refresh my dwindling level of Japanese.

With the new Mac laptops staff have received in my school I have played around a bit with creating podcats and movies with my students in French class. Each class recorded their own podcasts of role-plays they wrote themselves earlier this year, so I can see many uses for this in the languages classroom.

YouTube I have not used a lot and generally we do not have access to it at school (although I do now). I found some great videos on there made by students on why studying French is important which I think would be great to show in class. I can really see how students will relate a lot more to watching a YouTube video created by students their own age than listening to me go on about it! I also found video clips by French pop singers, eg Lorie that I had forgotten about. I used to show these film clips on a video at my last school and then create a worksheet focussing on grammar etc so I will definately use these now that I can access them easily for the classroom on YouTube. Teacher Tube also looks like a great resource.

I did get many ideas from watching the videos on YouTube etc - there were some on verb revision, learning body parts, culture etc - so digital story telling is something I could see myself using to allow students to download mini revision lessons on topics we have done. Garageband would be a great way of doing this on the Mac and it says it then allows you to upload your podcast or vodcast to the school server. This is definately something I would like to see if I could do at our school as I think it would really engage the students and they could even play a part in creating the revision for their peers.

As usual this module provided plenty to think about and lots of inspiration for changing my traditional way of teaching - just like in the YouTube video on New Literacies!

Module 4

la plage
Originally uploaded by misspris2009

This module I discovered Flickr and all the amazing things you can do and create there. I uploaded about 6 of my holiday snaps of various places in Australia and overseas and then played around with a few by adding stickers and shapes etc which was fun! Here is one for you to see, taken on Mollymook beach and then made a bit more exciting!

I can see many uses for Flickr in the classroom. I did an advanced search for Creative Commons content and there is so much available for tags like France, Paris, monuments in Paris etc, which would be fantastic to use in the classroom. It would really open the students eyes to what these places actually look like. Some of the photos are fantastic. It is also great to have my own Flickr page now where I can upload my own photos and share them. It is a great resource and I really think I have only just scraped the surface of its potential.

The Copyright issues I find a bit overwhelming at the moment and it is something I will have to do a lot more research on when I get more into using these tools. The smartcopying site looks great and the sections I looked at on wikis and blogs for students and teachers were easy to understand. The Creative Commons site also explained things easily in the videos I watched and this is a great thing to know about for teachers.

Flickr is definately a tool I can see myself using a lot both personally and as a teacher and I like how user friendly it is.

Until next module.....

Module 3

In Module 3, I leant about Google Docs, a free web-based program that allows you to create and edit documents online, and to collaborate with others on-line in real time. Once again, it is great to find out about these things as I had no idea a program like this existed.

The Atomic Learning website was very helpful and after watching many of the tutorials I had a go at using Google Docs myself. The first document I created was a form. I actually set it up as a sort of revision quiz that students would be able to complete at the end of a unit. I like the way you can easily change the options for the types of questions you want to create, eg text, multiple choice etc. Afer thinking about it a bit more though, I think a better way for me to use the form would be at the end of a unit of work to evaluate how students found the unit and I would also try and include a few questions in French for them to provide a text answer for. As well as an evaluation, this would then also allow me to see if they had understood the work covered in class. At the moment our students complete their evaluations by hand and they often do not seem to put much thought into their responses. Perhaps completing them on-line in this format would make them more fun. Students could also complete them at home.

I also had a go at creating a document which was a draft of the school magazine report for the LOTE faculty. I can see how it would be useful to set up a page on language activities at the start of the year that my colleague and I could add to throughout the semester / year. That way when it comes time to hand in the report we already have commentary on the events that have taken place during the year.

I think Google Docs would also be a great tool for students completing group assignments. Earlier this year my Year 7 RE class had to do a group project on creating a prayer liturgy. Google Docs would have been a great way to allow them to collaborate on their liturgy at home and not rely purely on getting together in school hours. I'm sure that working on-line would also appeal to many students not always interested, or to shy to put forward their ideas in class. By tracking the changes made to the document it also allows me to keep an eye on which students did not pull their weight in the group, a common complaint amongst many students.
So overall, I think Google Docs had many uses for the teacher and students and I look forward to being able to use it with my classes.

Module 2

I really enjoyed this module and feel that my eyes have already been opened to many new things from this course. Before completing this module I was not even really sure what a blog, or especially a wiki were, but now I feel very pleased with myself that I have created my own blog and was able to upload it to the CEO wiki.

I looked at many of the suggested websites about the use of blogs and they ceratinly gave me plenty to think about in terms of how I could use blogs in my classroom teaching. Many of the blogs I saw created by teachers were used either as a means of giving information to students and / or parents, of showing photos of class activities or some were used almost like a journal of their daily / weekly teaching experiences.

After having seen many of these examples I have come up with a few ways in which I think I could use blogs in my teaching. I teach mainly Year 8 French this year and am always looking for new ways to keep my students motivated and interested. I think starting a blog which they could contribute to and respond to would work really well as an addition to the work we cover in class. For example, I could use it to provide a brief review of the work covered that week and then have a question in french for them to respond to, eg "Qu'est ce que tu aimes?". When students have plenty of topics to revise (like now when they are preparing for a test) they could also share their techniques for revising new verbs and vocabulary. If we are following a cultural event in France or learning about a city, blogs could also be a way for students to share information or useful websites they have found with others.

Some websites did deal with some of the issues that we as teachers need to be aware of when using blogs in the classroom - things like getting parental permission for kids to blog, keeping to the school's acceptable use policy and teaching students about the etiquette of online posting. I think before setting up a blog for the students I would need to clearly work out the purpose I wanted it used for and then have clear guideliness and expectations that I wanted the students to follow.

As you can see this module has given me plenty to think about and I am excited about the prospect of how I can use blogs to further engage and interact with my students outside of a traditional classroom setting.
Until next time!

Module 1

My name is Priscilla Curran and I am a languages (I currently teach French) and Religion teacher. I decided to do the Web2.0 course so that I could keep up to date with the latest technologies and see how I could use them in my classroom on a more regular basis. I have found, especially with the teaching of languages, that technology is the best way to keep the students motivated and interested. In Module 1, I enjoyed setting up my igoogle account and adding gadgets to the page. I can now easily the view the weather in Paris each time I sign in and the currency converter will be useful as well! I also found the link to the 20 most useful Web 2.0 tools interesting. I am looking forward to completing the next modules and seeing how I can best use this technology in the classroom.