"everyday is a learning day" » social http://maramastewart.com Exploring and Challenging Learning in the 21st Century ... Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:09:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Preparing for ulearn09 http://maramastewart.com/2009/08/25/preparing-for-ulearn09/ http://maramastewart.com/2009/08/25/preparing-for-ulearn09/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:15:22 +0000 marama28 http://maramastewart.com/?p=77 uLearn09

elearn09 is approaching rapidly and I am feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety.  Excitement because this is my first ulearn experience and I get to have some face to face time with the many awesome NZ Educators.  Anxiety because for some strange reason, must of had one too many coffees that day, I applied to be a presenter and was accepted! Eek! :-o

My presentation is called An eWindow into my Classroom (Breakout Five for any of you who are interested in attending).

Join me as we create a classroom blog that allows parents and whanau to be an active part of classroom learning. We will be using a variety of Web2.0 tools that are free and easy to use. There will be tips and tricks on how to make your blog appealing to students and informative to parents. I will also talk about ways you can engage an audience in the global community. Your classroom blog can be so much more than another publishing platform, it can be an interactive environment that enhances student learning.

(Believe it or not it took me four hours to write that synopsis.)

I am hoping that by the end of the session we will have constructed a mock classroom blog and or set up the bones and a few fancy bits in my ‘victims’ own classroom blogs.  I will set up a fairly open rotation where participants can engage in a variety of cool web2.0 tools that will enhance your classroom blog and to make it ‘blog-i-licious’ (blog-i-licious  – my term for a blog that is engaging, fun, funky, collaborative, communicative and of course enhances learning, thanks Fergie!) My brainwave for this presentation is that all of my presentation’s content will be sourced on a Wetpaint Wiki.  That way participates will always have a point of reference to go back to after the intensity of the conference.

I have found Wetpaint is an easy to use platform, possibly less finicky than Wikispaces (of course this is only my opinion).  My only real bugbare is that you are unable to view the html code, but I can get over that.  Each page on this Wiki will explore a different Web2.0 app.  I will include tips and tricks on how to use each app. in your blog as well as include examples of how I have used it in my own classroom blog.

As you have all probably guessed by now; this post is basically shameless self-promotion on my part.  But it is also me feeling a bit guilty for neglecting my blog for this my newfangled wiki of mysterious means (I am keeping it private until the conference).  Therefore I, in another self-promotion tactic, will be releasing sneak peaks to a few of my wiki’s page as my blog posts during the lead up to ulearn09.  I will have omit a one or two links and leave out a some of the workshop content, but I hope these sneak peaks will pique your interest in attending my workshop (remember Breakout Five) or at the very least consider playing around with creating your own classroom blog, or maybe adding a bit of ‘Bling’ to your existing one.

]]> http://maramastewart.com/2009/08/25/preparing-for-ulearn09/feed/ 0 Pixton – Martha 1.0 http://maramastewart.com/2008/09/21/pixton-martha-10/ http://maramastewart.com/2008/09/21/pixton-martha-10/#comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 06:59:20 +0000 marama28 http://thinklearnlive.edublogs.org/?p=5
Just a bit of fun in Pixton :-D

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!

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