Networks on the Web, Professional and Social - Module 9

In the front there are cocoa dusted dark chocolate truffles with a ganache centre, in the background (barely visible) are marzipan and date truffles dipped in dark chocolate - these have been a family tradition for Christmas for as long as I can remember :)

With the explosion in popularity of Facebook came the delicate issues of privacy, cyber bullying and  duty of care. I strongly believe that there needs to be boundaries between the social and professional lives of teachers and students and therefore fully back moves by the CEO to ban all Facebook correspondence between students and teachers. I recognise that Facebook is a communication tool that is familiar to students, however there are other tools, such as Edmodo, which are very similar to Facebook and allow parental access. The parental access negates any concerns about the content or conversations that students and teachers may engage in. Additionally, I regularly monitor the account that I have set up for my year 11 students, ensuring that all communication is appropriate. The process is transparent, the students know they are being monitored, the parents are comfortable and teachers know that false accusations cannot be made - while easily making available electronic resources such as work booklets (students can the download and print these themselves, thus reducing paper usage at school) and YouTube links. Finally, we must educate our students as to why sites such as Facebook are inappropriate in the classroom, not simply ignore their questions. We have a responsibility to teach them that some behaviours can be considered distracting and prdatory

Collaboration tools such as Wikis are a great way to ensure that students share questions, notes, links etc. on syllabus material. In fact, we frequently use WetPaint in biology. It is difficult to navigate through at first (leading to some students not wanting to use it) but I persisted and now I am seeing all the benefits, especially the chance for students to collaboratively create study notes.

I have not had a chance to use Scootle, but reflections from other teachers lead me to believe that the program is somewhat restrictive, with many teachers opting to not use it anymore.

I think that online communities are an excellent concept for the classroom  but teachers must be vigilant to the potential problems that could arise because it is new, and we are still navigating our way through. Furthermore, we need to make the distinction bewteen social networking and online communities very clear.

Managing Your Flow of Information on the Internet - Module 8

Maybe its because I am nearly finished Web 2.0, but I these little Christmas gingerbread men make me feel so festive! They are a modification of Mrs Fields recipe and are always enjoyed :)

RSS feeds are fantastic tools for teachers and possible even keen students. I have been using RSS feeds for two websites this year, the Board of Studies (BOS) and ScienceAlert. The BOS ensure that I keep abreast of syllabus changes while ScienceAlert refers recently published articles in my area of interest (a good site for those keen students!). RSS feeds are definitely a great way to keep on top of new information without me physically logging onto websites and checking for changes weekly. RSS feeds would also be useful if I decided to utilize blogging in the classroom, as I could quickly be altered when a student has made a contribution to the site.

Buiding Online Communities & Social Bookmarking using Delicious and Sharing Blogs - Module 7

I have mastered the macaron, with  the perfect pied - Adrian Zumbo & Hisako Ogita would be impressed! These are a dark chocolate chip macaron with a chocolate and peanut butter ganache which is my husbands favourite flavour

These macarons are "Delicious" which is coincidentally the name of the online book marking tool. I had not previously taken the time to explore this tool, even though I had heard many teachers make reference to its usefulness, but now I am truly converted! To have access to my favourite websites on any computer at any time is fantastic. Furthermore, I see so many students that are not able to effectively carry our research to locate reliable and valid resources on the Internet. If there was a class account that students could contribute to, I could regularly check the websites they are using to ensure that they are more than just an endless list of Wikipedia entries. I think this tool would be very valuable for seniors, especially in the context of giving students links to the most recent articles relevant to the syllabus material because technology in science changes and advances so rapidly. I would also like to see our KLA establish a common account, we could annotate the sites and classify them according to the units of work. This would cut out time in searching for material and over a period of time build a very resourceful virtual library.

One down side is that I do not like the way the Tags appear in the tool bar, but I am sure that is just a settings issue, one that i am yet to sort out!

Exploring Photos and Videos on the Web - Module 6

One of my favourite dishes of all time (I would eat it every night!) - chilli eggplant with prawns, adapted from the lovely Kylie Kwong!

My experience with Flickr is limited (although I am starting to think that I should use it to post my food wonders) because if I have wanted to share photos with friends I have used Facebook (clearly not allowed in schools, and for good reason!) or with students, I have used EdModo. As I already have a way of sharing images with students, I am not sure that I will utilize Flickr in the near future, although I can see it may have potential in the classroom such as sharing photos of scientific diagrams. It would be easy for a student to capture what I have drawn on the board and then up load it to a general account that the class shares, especially good for when a student is away.

Creating and Communicating Online - Module 5

Inspired by Gourmet Traveller, this is a triple chocolate cheesecake on a sable base, topped with hazelnut praline - it takes two days to create but it was in celebration of my brothers engagement, so it was worth every complex minute!

I am not a visual learner, I love to methodically write notes in concise point form but I do realize that many students are more engaged when presented the opportunity to draw what they know. I started using Bublus in Term one and have found that  it is a great tool for creating unit summaries or at the beginning of a unit as a diagnostic assessment. I can then save the mind maps and give students access to them. I have also set the creation of a mind map for homework for junior students and it is interesting to see what they have learned by the end of a unit of work!

I have not yet had the chance to create a Prezi for the classroom. I think it is also an innovative tool for visual learners because they program can show relationships between the information being presented, I am apprehensive about implementing the program (as opposed to traditional PowerPoint) because I get a little motion sick when the presentation moves too fast.

Here is an example of a map that we created as a class in Senior Science:

Digital Story Telling - Module 4

Bakalava ice cream - this was amazing! I made vanilla bean ice cream and then mixed in a nutty syruppy mixture and served in home made pastry cases - it was very well received by my dinner guests - MasterChef here I come!

So this brings me to vodcasting - perhaps I would be an Internet cooking sensation? I frequently use YouTube in the classroom as a strategy to engage students and enrich their learning of complex scientific processes. Most recently I have used it to demonstrate the development of a fetus - rather than get students to label diagrams of the stages of development on paper (a very traditional approach), they were able to actually see a child developing and understand how the child changes over the course of pregnancy.

I used have used GoAnimate with senior students which was enormously successful and the students had so much fun learning about content because they were constructing the knowledge and being creative.

Traditional oral presentations can be replaced with vodcasts using programs such as Jing. The benefits of this approach is that ESL students or those that are not confident enough to stand in front of peers, can do the presentation at home and can record several versions till they are happy with it. This means that they are able to convey the information and are not disadvantaged by nerves, which  would likely impair their ability to do well in the assessment. This approach to assessment tasks is also advantageous for teachers, as we can listen to the presentation several times, therefore can assign more fair and accurate marks. It also saves time in the classroom as precious lessons are not taken up by presentations. 

The disadvantage for students is that they would not learn from each other if lessons are not given in which they can hear the presentations of their peers, so I thought perhaps I could publish exemplar presentations.on Edmodo. This however, is fraught with privacy issues, as once material is published on the Internet  it is difficult to remove.

Google Docs - Module 3

Scrambled eggs, with basil from our garden, olive oil from George Kolumbaris's restaurant and soy and linseed sourdough from Burke St Bakery - oh and marinated Greek Fetta - what a great way to start the day!

So this is related to Google Dos in that it is the same breakfast that I will have on Saturday when I assist the CEO organised Biology day for top year 12 students. The people involved in organising this event were all time poor, so the presentation was made using Google Docs. We all had access to the documents, therefore we could collaborate and each contribute to the document.

Additionally, I have used this in class. Students were able to type into one document and we created a comprehensive piece of work collaboratively. Students were using several skills simultaneously without even realising it, including research, critically analysing the contributions and working as a team.

Google Docs is a great way to save documents online, though it doesn't completely negate the need for hard drives/ USB drives, it does allow information to be shared more easily and quickly and on the go.