ELT501 #5 Commentary Web 2.0

What's Web 1.0? Web 1.0 - developed in 1996 as read only, had approximately 250 thou sites and 45 million users globally.

What's Web 2.0? Web 2.0 - developed around 2006 as a read/write dynamic, has 80 million + sites, 1 billion + users and a large proportion of user generated content.

Syndication is a hallmark of Web 2.0 technologies. Whereas taxonomy is a term used for classification of resources, “folksonomy” is the way information is organised on the Web 2.0: an open and democratic organisation. Tags are used for labelling. More popular tags are larger. Tags bridge structure and meaning, and therefore reflect social connections.

Examples of Web2.0 technologies are Blogs (blogger, wordpress), Images (Flickr), Wikis (wikispace), Podcasting (odeo), Bookmarks (delicious, Furl), Reading (bloglines, feedburner, googlereader). The possibilities for students using Web 2.0 technologies are fabulous. Students, teacher/librarians and teachers can create a class or individual blogs, collaborate on wikis, create an intranet using wikis, share teaching resources, collect data, record information, assignments or photos...

I watched a few You Tube clips showing what is now possible for the teaching profession, if only we embrace what the kids are already doing. The best of these was “Pay Attention”. The speaker suggested using Podcasts (as there are thousands available in every subject) to reach students on their iPods. We need to “transform teaching through technology”. The other example he used was to use mobile phones to send text messages for gathering data for graphs. My teenage daughter said this would be such a cool thing to do in Maths. Maybe she’s right?

But a T/L I know was horrified to think Students could use phones at school. Issues of privacy, cyberbullying and sexting are her concerns. My concerns are that the legal world is miles behind what’s happening in the cyber-world. What are the impacts for copyright/authorship/plagiarism etc? The teacher librarian needs to be a knowledgeable guide for kids in this remix culture.

There is some interest from the T/Ls at our school for making book trailers, using YouTube etc. This could really be ramped up as a book review option. However the use of blogs and wikis isn’t even being considered, mainly due to the Dept encouraging staff to use the Ultranet, not anything else. Now the unions have blackbanned staff working on the Ultranet so where do keen Victorian Teacher librarians go from here? There is so much more to be done.

The future of reading to tiny tots

To celebrate the end of Book Week in this National Year of Reading our local library opened its doors at 6 pm last night to read to the public. I went up the far end of the building where the children assembled and listened to the story time which has vastly evolved from when I was a tiny tot. The librarian presented an 'active' book first where he had all the kids jumping and jiggling and laughing along to the story line.

  
Next he whipped out the ipad and read three very differeent books to the audience which they could all see on the screen beside him. The first was a make your own story which had simple plot elements to choose from. Once the kids had selected what they wanted then the librarian played the story on the screen. Lots of movement, lots of laughter: the kids were really engaged.

   Then finally the librarian read two more stories from the ipad which were displayed on the screen. The first had many gadgets he could tweak to make the illustrations come alive. Words could fly off the page or buildings tumble or pages could turn all by themselves. It was engaging and somehow suggestive of Harry Potter-type wizardry of the printed word. (I'm thinking here of The Daily Prophet) There was even background music. The effect was pleasing and the quality of the illustrations carried the whole performance well. The last book he read from the ipad didn't have the added gadgetry and it was up to the librarian's skill as a story-teller to bring life to the pages, which he did admirably.

   I walked away thinking that this was the future of reading to tiny tots. Librarians would need ipads and screens and connecting cords.

   Was it a pleasurable experience? Yes, the kids enjoyed it. Was it intimate and cuddly the way story time can be? (I'm trying here to translate a group experience to a one on one reading) Well no. I can't imagine putting my children to bed and reading to them from an ipad with a nearby large screen. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

ETL 501 #4 Searching commentary

I really struggled with this week's activities. I guess it's evident that life-long learning includes persistant learning of how to search the web. I found all the activities frustrating and I know I will just have to keep plugging away at this skill.



Thermal pool at Rotorua, NZ.
Source: B Montgomery

Search Engines I tried searching for volcanoes and teaching on some "other" search engines. The WorldFact Book was the first one, run by the CIA no less, so I got out of there quickly. Intute was the second one I tried, which closed down last year. It only revealed one video resource. Next I chose Bing and selected only Australian  sources. It came up with a range of sites featuring facts and lesson plans, handy stuff for a teacher.

Google Advanced Search The first problem I encountered was how to get to Google Advanced, there was no direct click that I could find. I had to type in "advanced search". Once there, I put in Ysabel, an island in the Solomon Islands and found when I added Solomon Islands I came up with lots of sites. Similarly when I looked at Google Images. Google Maps was disappointing. It only showed the USA or Philippines. I found Google News really useful. So many relevant and interesting 'local' news items. Similarly Google Books just blew my mind. So many books... a relevant page just a click away. I couldn’t find Google scholar.

I liked the file type option to find powerpoint files. This is all really new to me and will be very useful in future. I’ve downloaded Google Earth to play with when I get some spare time.

Knowledge 2.0 I checked out Twurdy and put in the topic of 'stick insects'. It didn't seem to have what it professed in terms of suitable reading ages. The basic sites listed didn't seem very basic to me. Ask Kids was good. I like this search engine as the sites are more suited to middle-grade kids.

I had trouble using KidsClick, the links kept breaking. At this stage I was starting to go a bit demented.

The 7 habits of effective Web Searching I like these habits. I’m already onto the time limit thing and now I’m exploring more search engines. This will take more baby-steps though. I do find all this a bit challenging.

Search engines activity table

Search engine	Keywords	Hits	How useful?	Comments
Bing	Causes and effects of drought in Victoria	69,200	Not sure	Don’t get it
Google Advanced	Causes and effects of drought in Victoria	14,300,000	Chose intermediate reading level and limited it to 220 Thous.	Don’t get it.
Dogpile Metasearch	Causes and effects of drought in Vic	I got sent to Ask! and couldn't locate how many hits. Am I blind?	Too vast obviously.	Still don’t get it.
Yahoo!	Drought in Victoria	530,000	This was probably as good as Google advanced	Going mental!

A little tweet, a little RSS

I feel so crook today; the winter sore throat-snotty nose virus has struck. So instead of major module work I've decided to do a bit of techno tinkering. Yes I've taken all those RSS feed links that Tristian organised and put them in my Google Reader. It sure is easier than trying to navigate around from site to site. Thank you Tristian!
   The other thing I did was become a tweeter. Yes, I played around with twitter this morning and wrote my first tweet. It is a great tool for getting up-to-date news/trailers/promos etc from book publishers. What a discovery! I'm finally dipping my toe in the information age.