Smik's Learning Space: professional learning

Showing posts with label professional learning. Show all posts

Friday, 24 April 2009

Wikis in Education

On Monday I am giving a workshop session on wikis, and have really made the assumption that the participants will be newbies.

Here is a list of the sites I am using

Wikipedia
Wikipedia selection for schools
Wikinews
Wikimedia
Collaborative knowledge building image
Today's Meet
Another Today's Meet page - murder_paradise
The Story - writing a short story collaboratively using submissions from Today's Meet
Wiki Wiki image
Wikis in Plain English - YouTube video
John Pearce's Digistories Wiki
Smik09 on WikiSpaces

The presentation is available on my public space on BoxNet as well as in the plugin in the left margin of this page (scroll down)

Monday, 10 November 2008

RSS: Keeping up-to-date and informed

This posting relates to the third session I am presenting in Singapore on Saturday November 15 at the Hands On Literacy conference

RSS is an acronym with several explanations:

Rich Site Syndication
Really Simple Syndication
Really Simple Syntax

RSS is a feature of xml technology and facilitates the transfer of content from one computer to another.

Sometimes these are called news feeds, or headlines

One feature of RSS is that as data on the parent site is updated, so the data on the receiving site is updated.

This process is called syndication

RSS feeds are received as xml and are then displayed at the receiving computer in html.
Thus 'raw' xml' content looks a little like html with similar 'markup' features.

Click here http://api.edna.edu.au/headline.rss?sector=edna for an example (this may behave differently if you are using Firefox)

Sometimes you are able to use a website’s features to display an RSS feed.
Sometimes you have to pull the RSS feed in using JavaScript. More about that later.

RSS feeds may be generated by blogs like this one
They enable to user to monitor additions to the blog

The text version of podcasts are also often available as an RSS feed.

RSS feeds thus enable the user to select sources of information and keep up to date without having to remember to visit the original website.

The source site pushes the RSS feed out, the receiving end pulls the RSS feed in.

RSS in Plain English: http://www.blip.tv/file/205570/

RSS Feed Aggregators
Aggregators are web places where you can identify the RSS feeds that you want to monitor
You access them via the web from wherever you are
• iGoogle: http://www.google.com/ig
• Pageflakes: http://www.pageflakes.com/
• Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/
• Blogbridge: http://www.blogbridge.com/
• Google Reader: http://reader.google.com/
• Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/
• Newsgator: http://www.newsgator.com/

RSS Readers
are generally software that you download and then install on your computer

A list of RSS Readers that you can download
http://blogspace.com/rss/readers

RssReader - free RSS reader is able to display any RSS and Atom news feed (XML)
http://www.rssreader.com/
Feed Reader3 – free RSS reader
http://www.feedreader.com/
FeedGhost – Requires Windows XP or Windows Vista
http://www.feedghost.com/

RSS by Email

Feed My Inbox: http://feedmyinbox.com
You type in the URL of the page that has an RSS feed and then the email address to send the feed to. It gives you a "daily digest" of feeds from that site.

Creating an RSS feed is not nearly as difficult as it once was.

The easiest way to go about it is to create a blog and they usually generate an RSS feed.
http://www.blogger.com/

Tumblr is a tool that allows you to generate a blog from a "web journey" and the resultant blog is available as an RSS feed.
http://www.tumblr.com/

Other sources of RSS feeds

Twittr
http://del.icio.us/
Flickr

Feed 2 JS tool
http://feed2js.edna.edu.au/
This is a tool that enables you to feed the content of an RSS feed into a web page through Java Script.

For further information see http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/help/rss_help

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Running an Online Commmunity

This posting relates to the second session I am presenting in Singapore on Saturday November 15 at the Hands On Literacy conference.

I've been involved in setting up and managing online communities for quite a long time now and have pretty strong opinions about what makes them work, and what doesn't.
This session won't be so much a hands-on workshop as a show and tell with some opportunity for questions and discussion.

Here is my brief:
Running an Online Community: the how and why of it
Many schools and tertiary institutions are being asked to supplement their face to face teaching with online courses or add online elements to existing courses. How is running an online community or offering an online course different to managing an "ordinary" classroom.
What makes a good online community? How do you strike the balance between instruction and interaction.

I aim to cover these ideas:

Blended learning
What makes a vibrant online community?
What works in establishing an online community?
What spaces and tools are available?
How do you keep it going?
Balancing instruction and interaction

In blended learning

Combination of face-to-face lessons with technology-based materials
Classroom teacher becomes a learning facilitator
This is more than just putting materials online.
Thought needs to be given to how to create interaction between the participants, how to provide a stimulating environment that provides opportunity for collaboration.

Types of online communities

mailing lists – announcements & information
‘groups’ with files & storage space
‘groups’ with storage & variety of activities
wikis, wikia, wikispaces
blogs – are they a community?
new social networking places

Decide which will suit your purpose best.

I'm very taken with the methodology shown in Gilly Salmon's 5-stage model http://www.atimod.com/e-tivities/5stage.shtml and will spend some time discussing it's implications, using the cartoons provided on the site for each step.

What makes for a successful community?

Personal profiles
Clarity of purpose, focus for activities
Activities where members can interact and contribute
Ongoing stimulation, social interaction
Shared ownership, commitment,
existing clientele, common interest
mentoring
reasonable bandwidth for management activities

The Role of the Owner
- shared ownership is recommended
What does the owner do?

Sets the group up
Defines purpose, layout, attractiveness
Advertises, promotes
Assists people in joining
Initiates activities
Upload files
Moderates discussions
Arbitrates if necessary
Participates *****

Not an armchair ride
Running an online community whether for students or teachers requires active oversight, participation and sometimes intervention by the owner(s)

Fostering that sense of Community

Sometimes the hardest thing is just getting started
Some tools are more useful than others for breaking the ice. They may even be useful in well established Groups
Use ‘getting to know you” tools
Members introduce themselves in a forum
Group Profiles
Photo Albums
Chats
Forums
Add a colleague
Frappr Map

Define the purpose of your community

Whatever the nature of your group make sure that everyone is aware of its purpose
Clarify expectations, conditions of use etc
Will you allow OT discussions?
Provide activities and resources that reinforce the purpose

Assessing vibrancy

Active discussions
Things that connect members
Relevancy
Sharing
Growth

Active groups Don't Just Happen

They need ongoing stimulation & nurturing
When you start a new group don’t show your hand all at once
Think about ’the journey’ your group will take, plan stimulating activities
Take a pro-active role: it isn’t an armchair ride – go that 1 step further
You don’t just knit together, you also start new rows
Be alert to members having problems

Tools from the web for your group, website or blog

ClustrMaps gives a visual idea of who comes to your Group. Gives Group Members a sense of belonging to a “living” community.
Frappr Map: Add the code from the Frappr website into any space where you can embed HTML code within your Group. Encourage your Group Members to put in their location, image and a message about themselves.
Feedjit lets you monitor traffic to your group/blog.
VoiceThread: Allows the adding of images, audio and text messages
Flickr Badge: a good way of displaying shared events and photographs with your Group Members
Screencast-o-matic: A free tool that allows you to generate a tour of your site with or without audio. Once you have created a screencast you can leave it on the web and use it from there or download it as a .mov file to store for offline use.
Odiogo Allows you to attach podiocasts to a blog. FREE to bloggers – a link comes onto your blog. People can hear a “near human” computer generated voice. Also can be saved as an mp3 file

Examples of online communities=where you might set one up

Web 2.0 Social networking places

focus on “friends” and commonality of interest
create your Profile – define who you are
set up links with others of like mind
links with other online tools
forums, chats
RSS feeds, file upload, ratings
use tags

Blogs are usually chronological documents often compared to a diary or journal, written daily, or at least regularly. Once you have posted to the blog you make only minor amendments.
Discussion Board (or a tool that allows discussion to happen) could be something like a Yahoo or Google group, or an edna Group (which uses Moodle and has a forum tool)
Wikis are often favoured by teachers because they can be much more collaborative. They basically build up an online booklet. It is not so much about individual entries, but documents that everybody can add to and edit. They can lend themselves to branching documents (like Wikipedia). e.g. Wikispaces, PB Wiki
Sites to look at