Snacking on Digistore

Check out the opportunity to learn more about using Digistore with their free facilitated sessions "Online Snacks".

Digistore has been around for some time now and continues to grow in it's range of learning objects, take the time now to work out how you can make the most of this valuable resource.

Organise your staff to attend a session together (sign up here) or join in on Rocky's session with VPLD in August.

Learn how to search Digistore effectively, create learning pathways and learn more about Digistore & Software for Learning with DigiAdvisors Suzie & Rocky.

A Day in the Life of a DLO

  Trevor & Vicki (VLN ePrincipals) attended “A Day in the Life of – Digital Learning Resources” Conference hosted by MOE last week.

Thanks Trevor for sharing your notes with us:

“Due to fog at Timaru I didn't get to Wellington until lunchtime. A mini speech/introduction by Penny Carnaby, Chief Executive and National Librarian made me realise that much of the work on repository systems has already been done by the national library and Tertiary Organisations eg

http://www.natlib.govt.nz/services/get-advice/digital-libraries/introduction-to-digitisation

http://www.oarinz.ac.nz/index.php

We need to ensure that we gain maximum benefit from the $$$ and time that has already been spent by others.

Next was a speech by Yong Kim outlining a Korean Cyber Home Learning System that was a bit like the VLN but several orders of magnitude larger. Unfortunately the funding model was not obvious.

Repository talk by Brent Thomas http://repository.ac.nz/

Intersting talk about DLO metadata. They developed an NZ version of LOM, whereas the National Library use Dublin Core. If schooling uses the dublin core then alignment/merging of DLO's with national initiatives will be trivial (lol).

Wayne Mackintosh. Some people are inspirational, fewer of international importance and even less visionary. Wayne Mackintosh is certainly visionary with his aim of providing free educational resources for the whole world by 2015. The wikieducator project

http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page

is still under development but is one that I whole heartedly support.

If we can get teachers and schools to collaborate using wikieducator then this will be a significant gain.

Drinks and nibbles. As ever, the real conversations happened here. I had a long chat with Wayne Mackintosh and Jim Tittsler, sys admin for wikieducator about the work that jim has outlined here:

http://wikieducator.org/User:JimTittsler/Sandbox/OO-WE

One of they key ideas about sharing resources is that of contextualistion for repurposing. I have never found a resource that I didn't want to change in some way. We need to make resources easy to change and develop for local use (contextualisation), so when we develop resources for sharing it is important that we remove reference to /local/ stuff - we decontextualise them. I also think we need more formal policies on copyright and resource creation by teachers and that perhaps the MOE needs to take a lead here.

Summary: great one dayer. I wish you all could have heard Wayne Mackintosh.”

ClickView Digital Media

Mike from ClickView demonstrates the capabilities of this digital media library & management system to staff at Stratford High School. We held this demonstration in the VC room to enable other TaraNet schools to hook in (though there were no takers this time).

I was impressed with this system and left the session wishing i was a classroom teacher with all of these tools at my fingertips...

Things that impressed me were:

• Learning Federation Digital Learning Objects can be stored and accessed through the clickview system - what a great way to make these learning objects more accessible to students than through the currently passworded TKI Digistore repository.
• 'Snippets' of video can be edited out of the video and into My Documents for including in presentations or uploading onto learning management systems
• Video can be bookmarked with a url - either a whole video or a certain starting point
• Digital media can be 'exported' to 'the school bag' so they can be played on computers that have the clickview player but are not connected to the school server
• Editing feature allows you to add subtitles to video
• As well as video & dlos, there is photo collections, podcasts & a section for sharing your own video.
• A feature for creating lessons - which can be accessed by all on the school clickview server. A great way to provide learning intentions, sequence digital resources and activities.
• All digital media comes with accompanying learning activities & resources that can be accessed through Clickview as word documents & are customisable
• NZ Exchange allows ClickView screens to share digital media (within the guidelines of the Screen Rights Licence)
• Online tutorials on using ClickView

Areas for improvement? Security permissions for teachers to easily upload media to the system. Only administrators working through the Management server can add new content. Quite pricey at $4 a student p/a & approx $1000 setup. Though if a school is serious about providing easy access to a wide range of digital media and providing the tools to integrate them into learning this would definitely be a worthwhile system.

Any system though is only as good as its users so a challenge here to see how Stratford High School staff will work with this digital media available free to them for the next 6 months. Watch this space...

EPIC

EPIC If you're not using it you should be! For NZ schools - find out what your school username & password is to access these awesome resources. Especially useful for those overwhelmed by Infoglut, infoglitz & infogarbage (thnx Jamie) that is often the result of a general internet search - go here first!

"What is EPIC?

EPIC (Electronic Purchasing In Collaboration) is a venture between New Zealand libraries and the Ministry of Education. EPIC gives schools free access to an unparalleled range of electronic resources from the following database providers:

• EBSCO
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Oxford Online
• Proquest
• Thomson Gale

EPIC is available to all registered New Zealand schools. The Ministry of Education has agreed to fund access for all New Zealand Schools in 2004 until 31 March 2007."

Still Lining up for Laptops @ SPS

Today I spent some time the Yr 5 -6 syndicate at Stratford Primary School as I followed the laptop pod around to see what was happening in our classrooms.
One class was using the laptops as part of their maths rotation & accessing 'tasks' from the school intranet that had links to relevant digital learning objects. Paul has shared his Maths task file with us here - thnx Paul. This gives an idea of how you can direct students to appropriate learning objects without students having to navigate through TKI's Digistore to find them. To this I would also add specific learning intentions to be clear about what are the purposes of this activity (beyond 'play these games'). Paul's class have also been busy with the new digital camera's - all classes now have their own. They have been exploring the Macro feature & been taking some awesome close-up photos of flowers to support their language programme (poetry writing). I suggested Paul take a look at flickr for sharing their photos with a wider audience.
Another class was publishing stories for their home sample books. I would encourage them to start using the laptops right at the beginning of the writing process: inspiration for generating & organising ideas, wordprocessing for editing & yes blogs for publishing! I spent some time introducing Lee to blogs & if time allows on my next visit will help her set up a classroom blog. I have tried to model this in my own use of blogs & today I created a new blog with some of the writing that Lee had collected over the years and produced in print format - just to showcase how easy & awesome blogging is. "A Collection of Literature" is a companion blog to the SPS Jubilee blog and is "A collection of stories by Stratford Primary School written over recent years. Chosen for their significance to our school, our town & Taranaki. These are extracted from an annual publication "Stratford Primary School A Collection of Literature"

I have been thinking lately if I was starting out using Web 2.0 tools for the first time (knowing what i know now) - what tools would i use? Would it still be blogger? Would it be something else? Would i forgo vimeo & flickr & go straight to Photobucket? (it does photos, video and flash) What would you suggest for a classroom teacher starting out at this point in time?? What would be in the basic toolbox?

Hyperlink Queen

More time with SPS's hyperlink Queen, Penny today especially focussing on interactive maths resources. Tidying up, linking and uploading class hot links pages. Yahoo gr8 work Penny!

There are loads of cool learning resources online. It would be really good to see all these learning objects searchable independently instead of having to scour through separate sites for just the right one. So you could key in say year level, curriculum outcomes & key words & you would be directed to just the right collection of DLOs … maybe there is something like this and I just haven’t found it yet! It would certainly make sure teachers didn't have to spend hours on this & there would be some standardisation of quality & expectation of curricular alignment.
This is just a sample of what you can find online using Google & the key words: interactive maths activities

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

BBC Schools Maths Game Wheel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/mathsfile/gameswheel.html

Interactive Maths Activities
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/index.shtml
(higher level - good ideas for Methanex?)

Mathematical Interactivities - Puzzles, Games and other Online Educational Resources
http://mathematics.hellam.net/
check it out 4 source code to create your own activities

http://www.multiplication.com/interactive_games.htm
Maths games – critically review to make sure that the bang for bucks balance is in favour of learning and not weighed to heavily on edutainment

Primary Resources for Interactive Whiteboards
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx
Loads of interactives for IWB can be used with DataProjectors & kids independent work!!

This site aims to bring collect together and order a range of free resources discovered on the Internet, which can be used for teaching Maths in Primary Schools in the UK.
http://www.mathszone.co.uk/

Teaching Treasures http://teachingtreasures.com.au/maths/Maths_more.html

Of course not forgetting our own DLOs at TKI's Digistore. It is really cool how Maths Online has linked directly into Digistore with a grid that is organised by year level & maths strand to the appropriate DLO - check it out!

Quick Links

Today i was at SPS working in Fiona's NE class who have just joined the school network. I loaded a few things on her desktop computer - ArtRage & Tux Typing and tried to load KidPix - tho am having real problems with getting this to install & run in the WinXP os (as i have with the other SPS junior classes) - anyone else know how to fix this??? (i think it might be a conflict in the text-to-speech Windows software...) We looked at some of the projects her kids had been doing & wanted to do & played around with some of these programmes.
I set up her access to the Junior reading resource , Digital Learning Objects & showed her how to make a Quick Links webpage.
Being able to create hyperlinks is a pretty easy skill to do with a very powerful result. Every teacher should be doing this! It allows teachers to easily organise access for their students to specific digital resources (i.e. particular websites or learning objects). I used to encourage teachers to find the web resource they wanted their kids to access & then shortcut it to the desktop but i got a slap over the hand from the network manager (again...) because too many desktop shortcuts load up the user profiles & slow down the system.
So How To? A bit like constructing a WebQuest. You don't need any special web editor. Just use Word - write in the learning activities you want kids to access, find the web address (of the site or the learning object or even a resource saved on your own network), copy the address Ctrl C, highlight the text in your QuickLinks file, Ctrl K to open up the hyperlinks box, & copy the address in Ctrl V. Save As a webpage where your students can access. You can make sure that your passwords are remembered so Juniors can just click straight in there. Easy peasy :-)

EPS

Welcome Liz to Bard Wired! Liz Malone has just taken over as Principal @ EPS. I spent some time bringing her up to speed on our cluster’s learning journey together so far. Phew – hope I didn’t confuse Liz too much!! But she is all logged on to Interact now – and able to check out our milestones there and try and get her head around it in her own good time. I also made sure to tell her what a great teaching team she has joined but hey she had already figured that one out.

Had a short time at staff meeting to introduce the DLOs (Digital Learning Objects) to the EPS staff - which turned into a bit of a fizzer as Firefox doesn't play a lot of them - i think something to do with the ActiveX on the pages (Firefox doesn't support ActiveX- which is one reason it is a more secure browser than Internet Explorer). I hate wasting teachers' time at staff meetings specially with technical difficulties!! Oh well, we did in the end get to browse some of the collection, staff were interested and keen to try out some of the CHOCOLATE DLOs. (It was great to find a relevant resource - the DLO collection is not wide enough yet to make relevant connections to a lot of classroom topics) Some advice for teachers - plan a structured use of DLOs to support learning in the classroom (as you would any learning resource) I am a little worried because these resources are digital & some of them are pretty cool then they will be used randomly, out of context, perhaps as rewards (some teachers still do this!!) and not in the powerful ways they could be used. Before you begin to use DLOs with your kids i recommend you read this article from Learning Media - Quality Teaching Using Digital Resources.

Bernadette is really progressing on the web site maintenance and has learnt how to create new links and make new pages so the newsletters can be archived and available on line. The real challenge is file management – how you organize your files so you can link to the right ones, & upload the right ones. Looking good check out www.eltham.orcon.net.nz Lots more photogalleries to check out there too.

I know it’s not my job to do technical stuff but if it’s a 5 minute job it’s worth it if its going to make the difference with a teacher getting onto it with their kids. (Though we all know it’s rarely 5 minutes ;-) So there were a couple of little jobs like that & worthwhile doing too…


Jackie’s kids are starting a unit on Chocolate so they spent some time exploring KidPix and decorating chocolate cakes - you can see more of their yummy chocolate cakes here and there is a full lesson plan on our Interact site.