I won’t go into detail, you guys can just get in there and have a play – add a note to my wall … go on I dare you!

Look really embeded!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway we got there in the end and the kids were thrilled to receive their replies.  I then announced that we would be meeting our ePals on Thursday through a Video Conference call, confusion – “What’s that?”, “Are we going on a bus?”, “Will their Mums bring them?” hmmmm.  I explained as best I could, “Well, it’s like talking to someone on a big TV”, “Oh, you mean like Skype?”, “Yes”, “Is that all? Why didn’t you just say so?”, “Mmmmmm …”  We began our preparations by brainstorming for good questions to ask the other class, this of course was when it became my turn to be confused.  The students had such a difficult time coming up with good open ended questions, in fact after further probing I realised that very few of them were able to formulate good questions that would maintain a focussed discussion.  This realisation was further backed up by our VC call with the other class.  Questions were asked and answers were given but there was no attempt to elaborate or probe for more information.  If it wasn’t for the two teachers present who carried the conversation, it would of been a very brief VC Call indeed.

So many questions have sprouted from my grey matter since this experience.  “Is it their age?”, “Was it first time jitters?”, then “Is it me?”, “Am I dominating conversations?”, “Should I keep quiet during discussion?” maybe not, because now that I think about it, most of our classroom discussions are heavily reliant on me prompting, questioning, scaffolding and drawing out their thoughts and ideas.  This of course goes against my belief that I should be striving to put myself out of a job. I don’t want the kids to be reliant on me, I want them running their own focussed discussions.

What I do know is that the national trend for oral language proficiency is at a steady decline.  In our school there has been a significant increase in referrals to the speech and language specialists.  Our PAT testing at the beginning of the year has shown a significant gap in students vocabulary.  Through my own casual observations, I have noticed that many of my students would not understand the books my parents read to me, they would not understand the vocabulary; goodbye Oliver Twist and Little House on the Prairie.  Most irritating of all is when I hear fellow teachers saying statements like “You did good!”. Double Grrrrrrrr.

What to do?

Here’s my plan:  Increase my formal oral language programme, explicitly teach questioning through the use of De Bono’s Thinking Hats, and, here’s the cool bit, use the VC equipment whenever possible.  I see the Video Conferencing as an excellent tool for providing oral language opportunities.  There is a significant difference between conversing with our peers and conversing with a stranger on the other side of the world.  My kids understand this and if I can activate my students learning by allowing them to practise these skills through VC with real strangers, then hopefully I will be on my way to putting myself out of a job.

What do you think?  Any suggestions?  Anyone want to VC with ME?

My Del.icio.us Site

Wordle.net is an very new (less than four months old) and interesting site, that creates these colourful ‘Word Clouds’ from text pasted into the site. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

At first glance, not unlike the creator Jonathan Feinberg, I thought wordle.net was merely an entertaining way to display what ever you had on your mind. However, upon closer investigation, the potential for enhancing learning quickly became apparent. According to his FAQ section, Jonathan has received other 100 requests from teachers since Wordles conception.

Let’s have a look at an example of powerful words:

Some enterprising person has inserted Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech on human rights into Wordle.net. You can clearly see the 150 most used words (small connective words are automatically removed). As you can see in Eleanor’s speech, the themes of Freedom, Human Rights and People have a strong presence. Lets compare Eleanor’s speech, with George Bush’s speech on Sept 11, 2001.

Hmmmmm . . . Anyway, give a Wordle a go, it is a great way to analyse documents quickly and painlessly. Just look at this next Wordle, it could save us all some time.

“Just remember all…that words are powerful, so very powerful, that it can change attitudes (for the better or for the worse), with or without provocation. They can be triggers, reminders, movers, and emotive…Be kind with your words and listen too” ANON

Pixton is a great little site that allows you to make online comic strips quick and easily. You can upload these comics to the site and others can make comment about them (I am very excited because I got my first ‘LOL’ last night) and you can comment on other strips. Pixton was recently reviewed on TeachersFirst.com and you can check out their thoughts at this link:

http://www.teachersfirst.com/single.cfm?id=9280

In terms of use in my classroom, I can see it as a great way of creating situations and scenarios for the Dare programme we are doing next term.

Of course the old debate of clip art, to use or not to use, comes to mind. Are we stifling creativity and making it too easy by using pre-made figures and scenes? Are we encouraging kids to use other peoples creativity?

Personally, and feel free to disagree, I believe that in this case we must look at the purpose of using this platform. That is of course is feedback from an authentic audience. The power of Pixton is not the ease and speed of use, it is the social networking aspect. Students are able to express themselves in a relatively creative way and find out what Jim-Bob in the big old USA thinks about it. And I can tell you it feels pretty cool when a stranger gives you a LOL!