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.