Useful Links (weekly)

• Half an Hour: Standards for Pedagogically Relevant Learning Environments – Where Are we? Stephen Downes: standards for pedagogically relevant learning environments.Where are we? 

• Google For Educators – Web Search These Search Education lessons were developed by Google Certified Teachers to help you do just that. The lessons are short, modular and not specific to any discipline so you can mix and match to what best fits the needs of your classroom. Additionally, all lessons come with a companion set of slides (and some with additional resources) to help you guide your in-class discussions. 

• Wanna Work Together? – Creative Commons Good video overview of Creative Commons and how it can apply to the classroom. Pays tribute to the people around the world using CC licenses to build a better, more vibrant creative culture. 

• Keeping Kids First A teaching blog with the underlying belief that the aim of education should be teaching us how to think, rather than what to think.

• onlinefacilitation – Twitter Collaboration Stories Still to be convinced by Twitter in education? Take a look at the Twitter collaboration stories wiki for some ideas and good examples of how it can be used.

• Education – Change.org: Technology: The Wrong Questions and the Right Questions Ira Socol’s thoughtful post on an historical view of technology, information and education 

• When is Good A way to oganise when you all can get together

• Screen Australia – DIY Doco A teaching resource for analysing and creating the documentary genre. Examines documentary styles and genres, elements of documentary storytelling and the process from story to screen 

• Visual Literacy and 21st Century Skills / FrontPage David S. Jakes – Visual Literacy and 21st Century Skills

• Social Networking in Plain English – Common Craft – Our Product is Explanation Simple video on what it is and its use.

• 10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports – TheApple.com 10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports

• High-quality photo sharing High-quality photo sharing with PhotoSnack. It’s easy to upload photos, create great photo slideshows, and share them and it’s free! It is easy is to manage your photos online and share your photo albums on MySpace etc, or create professional photo portfolios online. All starting from lots of stylish templates and themes. 

• Slatebox :: Visualize Everything – Welcome! A visualization platform that makes it easy to markup ideas on embeddable “slates” and convey the information visually. Anyone can create an account for free and use SlateBox to build a diagram, flowchart, or more. If you own a blog or website, you can also embed these slates directly on your site. 

• cyber[smart] – Libraries  A digital citizenship development website that’s been developed by the Australian Media and Communications Authority with the assistance of Education.au. It’s well categorised and accessible, providing ‘activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teens and parents safely enjoy the online world’. There are specific resources are also available for libraries and schools as well as materials that parents can discuss with their children.

• VoiceThread Introduction Video 

• Famous Blogs: Jugaad – Blog Of The Day Awards – Top Blog Awards – 2008 Weblog Awards – Best Blog – Top Blogs – Best Blog Awards – blogofthedayawards.blogspot.com – 2007 blog awards weblog awards.

• Welcome – digizen.org What makes you such a good digizen?

• StarChild: The Solar System An informative site about the solar system. It is a starting point for students and is supported by NASA . A multimedia, non-linear reading site, it has a reading feature on the level 1; and interactive games to quiz your knowledge about the solar system.

• We Choose the Moon: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Relive the Apollo 11 mission in real time interactivity. Fantastic web media storytelling 

• Welcome – CHILDREN’S EBOOKS ”Children’s eBooks are not just for Primary schools. They can be used for students with reading difficulties, especially students who are Special Needs and ESL students. In 2010 Children’s eBooks will also be launching a competition to write and illustrate an eBook.” 

• Task Force Recommendations for Best Practices for Child Online Safety Ι Point Smart. Click Safe. ”The most important and timely recommendation from the report (which previous online safety task forces all agree upon) is the need for digital media literacy and safety education that empowers kids, parents, and educators. It’s important that kids of all ages learn what it mean to be a digital citizen and how to navigate the online world safely, and it’s equally important that parents and educators have the resources and online tools to help kids make the right choices online.” [quote from: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-practices-for-online-child-safety.html%5D 

• Global Education Teacher resources supporting the integration of a global perspective across the curriculum: Country profiles, international issues, development and poverty. Initiated and funded by AusAID (Australian Agency for International Development) which manages the Australian Government’s official overseas aid program 

• Ideas to Inspire ’Ideas to Inspire’ is a collection of collaborative presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities. They are the result of the collaboration of teachers from all around the world. 

• Facebook’s Own Estimates Show Declining Student Numbers; Now More Grandparents Than High School Users Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. College and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. 

• 100 Best Blogs for School Librarians | Online College Tips – Online Colleges With a US bias these 100 bloggers serve as good reference resource for learning about everything from library technology to young adult fiction

• Top News – Six technologies soon to affect education From E-School News. Collaborative environments, cloud computing, and “smart” objects are among the technologies that a group of experts believes will have a profound impact on K-12 education within the next five years or sooner. 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Reading options and DailyLit

I have been doing a lot of reading in the holidays. It is nice to read widely and without feeling guilty about work for school that I could be doing. I have also been working on updating some tools I created for the crime fiction genre and I have been trying out some of the Flickr and Google tools to help students with (or give them some alternative approaches to) some of the class novels. I have also been doing some reading about e-books and books on-line

I tend to do a fairly good job of finding the time to read. I always have a book with me, in my bag. Any time I find myself waiting in a queue, I can pull out my book, rather than sitting or standing with nothing to do. (I really hate the loud mobile conversations that many others seem to have to have with whoever is on the end.) I also listen to audiobooks when I am driving, especially when I have 3 hour drives into the country. I am always looking for ways to encourage our boys to read, and for them to have positive reading experiences. I thought that I should have a look at the some of the other options for reading. DailyLit is just one option.

DailyLit is a free service that brings books (also free) (particularly classic books in the public domain) as excerpts, right into your inbox in convenient small messages that can take less than 5 minutes to read. For instance, reading The Count of Monte Cristo, via DailyLit, meant that the emails were about 500 words per day, about the size of an average email or blog post, and that title was free. This is not just an option for your computer, it also works perfectly well on a Blackberry or whatever other PDA you may have.  Sometimes there’s a small charge for the e-book (usually a modern book) but there are plenty in the free category.

Using DailyLit with students.

There is something about DailyLit that I believe could appeal to a number of the students at school. I think lot of boys would like to like to read serial e-novels. It could increase the anticipation of what is in the next chapter. This might then really heighten the interest for a positive experience.  It could also make the idea of reading the classics less daunting.

A lot of boys don’t always read regularly. They read in spurts, often when it becomes necessary to write about something they have read for class assessment. This could encourage them to read each day.

It could make it easier to analyse the books as well. The strategy would be to write about each section as it is read, rather than trying to think of something after the book is finished. The boys could look at individual characters, quotes, or storylines, in easily digestible parts on a daily basis. They could also be encouraged to try to anticipate what might happen next or examine how they believe a character might react to the situation.

There is also the possibility of some sort of on-line book club.  A group of students could negotiate and choose to read the same book and have the same sized parts posted at the same time each day. (You can choose how often or on what days you wish to receive instalments). An on-line chat area /blog/wiki could be set up for them to share their reading experiences. This could be done within a class, across the school or with students from other schools.

There are many genres to choose from and the numbers of books that are on offer is increasing all the time. You can browse by titles, authors or categories or enter in a discussion about some author or title, current piece of writing.

You can receive new updates with news of current offers and  has various features, including a To-Read queue, reader ratings and reviews, and a members page.

Have a look and try it out. I would be interested to find out if anyone has used this with students.

Print-on-demand books: now in store

Print-on-demand has the potential to be one of the most important developments in the growth of the digital world by aiding accessibility of books to the public. Soon a book will never be out of print with what’s been described as the ATM for books. The A&R store in Bourke St., Melbourne, is the only one with this option but 50 more such machines will be installed throughtout Australia and NZ. I really like the notion that the ideas, words, etc. in out-of-print, or hard-to-get, books are now readily available.

I also love the feel of the physical book, the smell of the pages, the look of the cover, the sheer tactile nature of (hardback) books. (Yes, I try to by hardback books whenever I can!) I would always choose to by the physical book for these reasons but I can see that the opportunity, to read the words of the many out-of-print manuscripts, is a step forward. Burning the physical book will no longer be enough to stop the communication between author and reader. Many Australian readers like to buy books and/or go to the local library to borrow the physical book, but here is another option that has merit.

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