"ICT in Secondary education Assignment 2"

This is a presentation developed for the subject ICT in secondary teaching by Roopa jakkilinki, Mark Hodges & Xun Wang.

The technology used for creating this online presentation is Voice Thread, Voice thread allows the creation of online presentation in a collaborative environment.
The issue being addressed in this presentation is "Cyber safety in the context of social networking for teenagers". With the advent of internet , online social networking has become popular among net users especially teenagers. This social networking has both benefits and perils, schools face the issue of providing a safe internet usage environment for students.
This presentation addresses these issues and the role schools and teachers can play to make social networks and the web a safe haven for students. This presentation also looks at the polices created by government for schools with regards to cyber safety. 

"Comment on a peer blog for ICT in classroom"

This is the comment made by me on Richards Blog as part of the ICT in learning assignment1 part 2.

Hi Richard,
I think the lesson you created was very interesting, and the students must have enjoyed the experience of creating games using game maker software, I also think that it provided a wonderful opportunity for co operative learning.
Below is a link to the comment:
http://www.richstudio.info/uni/2011/09/12/ict-task1-2/#comment-18

ICT in classroom Assignment 1 - Part2

“ICT supports knowledge building among teams and enables team members to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding”

I would like to describe one of my ICT classes that I conducted during my placement and it very much relates to the above statement taken from VELS IT section.

This was a lesson conducted for year 7 students and it is related to the following  VELS ICT progression points

• Use of complex ICT tools, peripherals and manipulation techniques to explore and represent the relationship between components ( VELS 5.25, 2nd Paragraph, ICT for visualizing thinking).
• Use of complex ICT tools, peripherals and manipulation techniques to explore and represent the relationship between components ( VELS 5.25, 2nd Paragraph, ICT for visualizing thinking).

Lesson Description: This was a lesson related to digital photography and this lesson had two parts, the first part of the lesson was a group activity where I divided the students into groups of four. Each group had to go outdoors and capture the following types of images:  landscape, portrait and abstract images. The students were asked about their understanding of above mentioned types of images and I explained further and built on their existing knowledge. The groups were given digital cameras and I questioned the students if they knew how to use the cameras and then explained the operation of the cameras.  The students then went outdoors to shoot the photographs in groups; the group activity encouraged cooperative learning. Students learning cooperatively capitalize on one another’s resources and skills. The students were given a time limit to work on their photo-shoot and they returned to the class after the shoot, and they saved the work.

The second part of the lesson was where all students had to create a collage using adobe Photoshop this was an individual task.  I used multimodal instructions (verbal instructions, visual demonstration and written instruction sheet with images) to demonstrate how to go about creating a collage. According to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer 1997) there are two information processing conduits which are visual and auditory, using dual mode of instructions instead of single mode enhances the performance of the working memory as the workload is distributed on both channels. And this also caters for different learners in the classroom.

The students were encouraged to take the help of peers if they had problems before calling me for help; this was leading to peer learning.

At the end of the lesson the students printed the collage created using colour printers. This lesson was a very successful lesson where the students enjoyed the entire experience. 

References

Ø  Richard E Mayer, RM 1997, ' A cognitive theory of multimedia learning: Implications for design'.

Ø  The Cooperative Learning Center at theUniversity of Minnesota : Run by David and Roger Johnson, this site contains essays, information about their books and workshops, newsletters, and an FAQ on the theory and practice of cooperative learning, especially at the college level.

Ø  Teaching Concerns: Cooperative and Collaborative Learning : This sub site is part of the Teaching Resource Center at the University of Virginia. It contains articles on cooperative learning from their newsletter.

Mindmapping with Mindmap 42

I tried using Mindmap42 , it was very user friendly and had lots of interesting features. I added a few resources to it. I think it is very useful to put ideas together specially in a collaborative environment. I have the resources on the mind map and also in this blog under the resources page. Enjoy Mind-mapping :)

Welcome to ICT In Secondary Education

Hello everyone,
This blog was initially created as a personal learning area for the subject Information technology, I am going to use this blog also for the subject ICT in secondary education. I will be using labels to differentiate posts which are related to ICT in secondary education. I hope the readers will benefit from the other posts which are IT related.

ICT Career fair at Federation Square

I attended the ICT career fair at federation square on the 27th July. There were many interesting workshops being conducted, since we were short on time we attended a workshop called as Developing Software for Mobile devices. In this workshop students were made to think about the requirements, design and prototype software for mobile devices. Overall it was a valuable experience.

About roopawiki

Hi everyone,
I created a wiki and would like to invite you all to join it. can you all kindly leave your email id's in my blog. I have also linked my wiki to this blog, so feel free to visit. I hope you are enjoying your break.
Cheers!

Assignment 2 Report

This report is an reflection  on my blogging experience of creating a PLE click on the following links to read in detail.

My Blogging Experience

Limitations of Blogger

Useful websites while blogging

Free templates and widgets

My teaching experience

Conclusion

References

My Blogging Experience

The subject ICT lead me to a very interesting aspect of computing which is Blogging. I had no previous experience in blogging and was a novel to it. But with every passing day I learnt new tips and tactics.  I learnt a variety of things starting from setting up a blog to adding new widgets and manipulating the blog template. I found a lot of helpful tips on the web, and whenever I was stuck I would google the problem and there was always a soulution for it. I enjoyed the whole experience of setting up a blog.

Limitations of Blogger

My first choice to set up the blog was Blogger, though blogger is a wonderful environment, I found some shortcomings as I progressed with the blog creation. I some times wondered if wordpress would have been an better option for this. Blogger doesn’t allow to trackback comments where as wordpress does and in blogger the home page is the only dynamic page and all the other pages created are considered to be static pages. Static pages don’t allow to add multiple posts  and also doesn’t allow to add jump breaks. These issues donot come up in wordpess.

Useful websites while blogging

I found a lot of useful websites which helped and provided tips about blogging. These websites covered a lot of issues like  how to create labels, label clouds.,How to add html to blogger,How to reference posts and many more. Some of the websites I found very helpful are bloggerBook (blogger book), the original blogger (the originalblogger tips and tricks).

Free Templates and widgets

I came across websites which provide a lot of templates which can be used in blogger (Btemplates). I did add a few widgets in my blog which are the Sudoku, calendar and the weather widgets. but the widgets the websites provide are limitless. I would suggest that it would be worthwhile to visit these websites and explore the myriad options they have (Widgets for free).

My Teaching Experience

My placement was in Ivanhoe Girls Grammar and I enjoyed every minute of it. I found it to be a wonderful learning experience. I taught Information technology to Year 7 students, this was a multimedia based course , and in my blog I have created a list of resources which were veryhelpful to me though out my teaching. You can access this list by clicking on the following link which is a part of my blog.

Conclusion

Though I started off  as a inexperienced blogger, this whole process of creating a blog made me get in touch with the many prospects of the WWW. I think Blogging is the best way to share knowledge and information on the web in different formats such as audio, video text and images, which can be word documents to slideshows.The possibilities of blogging are endless.

 

Bibliography                                                          

blogger book. (n.d.). Retrieved 06 15, 2011, from http://www.blogger-book.com/2007/12/label-list-what-is-it-and-how-to-use.html

Btemplates. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2011, from http://btemplates.com/

the originalblogger tips and tricks. (n.d.). Retrieved 06 15, 2011, from http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/2006/05/creating-categories-step-by-step.html

Widgets for free. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2011, from http://widgetsforfree.blogspot.com/

                                                                                                                                     

Adding Widgets

Blogger has many inbuilt widgets which are pretty simple to add, and Blogger also allows us to add widgets from external websites. I have added a sudoku, weather and calendar widget to my blog, I obtained them from a website called  widgets for free. This website also provides for free templates for blogger. Have fun exploring the website.

Adding links within blogger posts

I wanted to add links between posts in my blog, a little search on google and I came across this wonderful page that was very useful, it clearly spoke about how to go around adding links between posts in the blog and also how to add links within different sections of the same post. Its a very simple procedure all you have to do is add a anchor tag in the "edit HTML" option of the post.
<a href="url of the post">link name </a>

The following link will give a detailed description about adding links between posts.
http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2010/11/add-internal-links-within-blogger-posts.html

Tracking back comments

Blogger doesnt have an inbuilt support for comment trackback, I tried adding the functionality by using greasemonkey (a user script manager for firefox) and downloaded additional plugins for supporting trackback. But I was not successful. If any of you have succeeded to add trackback facility for blogger then I NEED YOUR ADVICE.

The following link provides instructions on how to download greasemonkey and scripts.
http://andybeard.eu/809/blogger-trackback.html

Label Cloud

I was previously using the label list widget provided by blogger, but when I came across "Blogemus" a label list widget provided by bloggerbuster, I was quite impressed ."Blogeumus"  is a flash animated label cloud for blogger. It was quite easy to add this widget, The site provided html code which I copied and added in the bloggers layout

To learn more about adding labels Adding a label

Click on the following link to see how you can add the label cloud

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2008/08/blogumus-flash-animated-label-cloud-for.html

Adding HTML to posts.

Adding html to blogger posts is quite easy, I added a table in the resources page to organise the videos. All i did was to go the the "Edit html" option which sits at the top of the post and added basic html commands for adding a table.What you see below is the code I used to create a table and add various table data elements. this code is from the "Resources" page in my blog.

Restrictions while using labels In Blogger

I realized the restrictions while using labels, Blogger allows us to add labels to posts that exist  on the home page, The other pages also called as the static pages do not have the option to add labels. Also I would like to mention that blogger does not allow to add multiple posts on static pages.

Adding labels

Labels are also called as tags and categories, they are very easy to add in blogger. Labels are added to posts and will appear at the bottom of the post.To add a label enter a label name at the bottom of the post while creating a post in the option provided. A label is not of much use unless it is added to a label list which is an inbuilt gadget in blogger.
If you have a set of related posts they can all be labelled with the same name, for example I have labelled 3 of my posts related to school placements as "Placements". The label  list will have an option called "Placements" anyone interested in reading about this will click on the "Placements" which will bring up all the related posts.

References:

Blogger book. (n.d.). Retrieved 06 15, 2011, from http://www.blogger-book.com/2007/12/label-list-what-is-it-and-how-to-use.html

The originalblogger tips and tricks. (n.d.). Retrieved 06 15, 2011, from http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/2006/05/creating-categories-step-by-step.html

 

Placement for 2nd Semester

I have been placed at the Grange secondary college (Hoppers crossing) for the second sem. Looking forward for my placement.

Placement details

te

Site:    Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School (Secondary) Address: 123 Marshall Street IVANHOE 3079 Phone: 9490 6222 Principal: Dr Heather Schnagl Student Teacher Coordinator: Nelwyn Wright Mentor Donna Stalker		Placement:    Master of Teaching (Secondary) Accelerated Mode - Placement 1a Start Date: Thursday, March 3 2011 Areas: Information Technology Information Technology Notes: Induction Day: the first day of the placement, Thursday 3 March. Teacher Candidates should report to Reception at 8.30 a.m. Accelerated Mode 1a: 2 days per week Thursdays & Fridays from 3 March to Friday 3 June incorporating a block from 27 April to 13 May (Total: 31 days).
Teaching Fellow: Nelwyn Wright Clinical Specialist: Dagmar Turnidge Supervision Report(s): No Reports available

Waiting on placement details

My placement details are not available yet, I am getting restless about it. I hope I am not the only one who's placement is not confirmed yet.

Welcome! Confused to name your blog..

Hi, Welcome to my blog. Well I have created this blog to serve as a personal learning space for myself and this blog will help people who are interested in e-learning. The first thing that dawned upon me as soon as i created the blog was- "WHAT SHOULD I NAME IT??", luckily there are many useful websites on the net that guide you through the process.

List of interesting links:
www.chrisg.com/catchy-blog-names/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/16/choosing-the-domain-name-for-your-blog/
http://bloggingstartup.com/2008/10-quick-tips-for-naming-your-blog/