My Voki

This is my very first Voki, I created it using http://www.voki.com/ . I had heard about Voki’s from my fellow Emerald uni students who completed e-Learning last year. But I had never used one myself. I had so much fun making my Voki; I tried to make it look as much like myself as possible there were so many options to choose from. There are so many possibilities that Voki’s could be used for, I would definitely use this easy to use tool in my own classroom and recommend it to others as well.

This tool could be used in the classroom:

Student blogs - students can explore, communicate and project themselves, they can express themselves and or even become a whole new character and still keep student identities confidential.
Provide opportunities - to those students who may not be so confident in operating videos and or vodcasts.
Engage (hook) students – Students will find creating and sharing their own personal Voki challenging, interesting and very enjoyable. When students are very engaged in classroom tasks, they learn much more (Marzano & Pickering, 1997).
Advocate for different learning styles – students who are audio and visual learners would benefit for the use of an online Voki. Students have individual learning styles, a Learning Manager needs to be taking these into account and cater to each student’s needs. When students learning styles are supported learning and motivation are enhanced (McInerney & McInerney, 2006).

References

Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (1997). Dimensions of Learning (2nd Edition ed.). Aurora, Colorado: McRel.

McInerney, D. M., & McInerney, V. (2006). Educational Psychology Constructing Learning (4 ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.

A Closer Look at "Hooked on Phonics"

Hooked on Phonics is a reading program that is approved by the Children’s Reading Foundation. The program is designed to give each child a strong foundation in phonics and reading readiness skills. Hooked on Phonics has 4 levels Pre-K, Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade, the learn to read program has been designed for easy use in the home and within school settings with a small group of students or one on one.

-The Kindergarten edition focuses on short a, i, o, u and e words, and adding s to nouns and verbs.

-The First Grade edition covers beginning and ending consonant digraphs and blends, two-syllable words and words ending in ing, er, ly, es and ed.

-The Second Grade edition focuses on long vowels, words ending in y, two-syllable words, complex consonant belds, wr and kn and soft c and g.

Each edition is specifically adapted for use in the classroom with daily reading lessons and over 40 reading activities for individual, pairs, group and whole class participation (Smarterville Productions LLC, 2010).

The Hooked on Phonics iTunes channel provides free activities, songs and other great resources to teachers and parents to help their learners read and improve reading skills using phonics. There is a total of 68 free learn to read pod/vodcasts. Hooked on Phonics can also be followed on the Hooked on Phonics website, facebook, bogger and twitter. The link to all the Hooked on Phonics pod/vodcasts can be found on http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/hooked-on-phonics/id318331495

References

Smarterville Productions LLC. (2010). Learn to read in the classroom. Retrieved August 1st, 2010, from Hooked on Phonics: http://learntoread.hookedonphonics.com/in_the_classroom

Podcast put into Practice

I have hear a lot about podcasts but I never really knew what they were exactly or how easy they were to access for that matter. I have had iTunes and used it for so long but never acknowledge the podcasts application in the iTunes library until this week’s topic of images and podcasts. After briefly browsing the podcasts on the iTunes store, can you imagine my sheer delight when I came across a whole range of Triple J podcasts? Now I can simply download the Triple J podcasts and it’s ready instead of searching and downloading song after song to add to my jogging playlist. I use my ipod to play all my favourite playlists, I was unaware of the educational advantages that ipods have.

So if you were a little confused like I was about what exactly a podcast is according to Apple Inc. (2009) a podcasts is a program delivered via the internet with the publisher broadcasting the episodes to a web server. Podcasts can include the more common types of media and can be used to offer a diverse range of programs.

There are many advantages to using podcasts in the classroom. One of the podcasts in particular that I feel could be beneficial for the early years students is the educational podcast program “hooked on Phonics” , this program could be used by teachers and teacher aides working one on one with a student. “Hooked on Phonics” could also be sent home to parents and students to subscribe and peruse in their own time in the comfort of their own home.

Podcasts can be integrates into many of the Big6 skills for example Skill number 4 Students will use the identified information by engaging with the podcasts by listening and then extracting relevant information (Eisenberg, 2001). There is substantial research that suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture obtain higher test results and grades by replaying the difficult parts of their lectures and taking better notes (Callaway, 2009). I believe this approach to new learning material may be effective in any classroom environment. Transforming face to face lessons into podcasts also would allow those students with different learning styles another avenue to gain and achieve the most from a learning experience. Podcasts would also be an effective tool in the classroom if any student were away, or for those who want clarity on the lesson and require some further help, they can simply access the podcast 24/7.

It is important for a Learning Manager to remember that not all students will have access to technologies such as ipods, computers, iphones and even internet so it is essential to modify lessons to suit all learners. Prensky (2005) argues that education needs to be engaging, and that students of today have access to a vast variety of technologies. So how do educators further engage students who do not have the technology in their lives due to socio economic backgrounds? So were to from here? According to the Department of Education and the Arts Inclusive Statement (2004) "Inclusive education ensures that schools are supportive and engaging places for all students, teachers and caregivers. It is about building communities that value, celebrate and respond to diversity. It is underpinned by respectful relationships between learners, teacher and caregivers. It is about shaping the society in which we live and the type of society to which we aspire”.

References

Apple Inc., 2009, itunes, http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/podcasts/fanfaq.html, viewed 1st August, 2010.

Callaway, E., 2009, New Scientist, Itunes university better than the real thing, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16624-itunes-university-better-than-the-real-thing.html, viewed 1st August, 2010.

Eisenberg, M. (2001, November 19). The Big6 Skills Overview. Retrieved August 01, 2010, from The Big6: http://www.big6.com/2001/11/19/a-big6%e2%84%a2-skills-overview/

Prensky, M. (2005). Engage me or engrage me: What today's learners demand. [electronic copy]

Department of Education, Training and the Arts, (2006). Inclusive education policies. Retrieved March 20, 2009 from http://education.qld.gov.au/studentservices/inclusive/index.html

Picnik Psychosis!

Image before Picnik manipulation


Image after Picnik manipulation

So here is my image manipulation on a photo of my beloved dog “Sammy”. He is my baby and is very, very spoilt. I had a fun time playing around with the wonderful features on Picnik, it’s not my first time using Picnik to edit my photos. I do have to mention I did well this time to stop myself from getting carried away with the many editing features the site has to offer. There are so may tools and features to edit photos I just want to use all of them at once, but alas sometimes they end up turning out a big mess. I guess that is why the saying goes “less is more”.

Picnik can be used in the classroom:
-Introduce the many wonders of photo editing to students.
-Edit photos for specific purposes e.g. slideshows, school newsletters and classroom displays.
-Photos can be saved from Picnik straight to Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket and more.
-Edited photos can also be saved directly onto the computer hard drive.
-Edit photos for upload and publishing to classroom websites, wikis and blogs.

MobaPhoto

MobaPhoto is a free program, which helps in the creation of photo galleries for webpages. MobaPhoto is a simple to use program making it user friendly for anyone to use. The program allows digital photos to be resized, cropped and correct red-eyes helping manage digital photos and galleries. This can be done in batches making the process quick, efficient and ready for website upload. The MobaPhoto program being only 1.6MB can be downloaded on USB (Mobatek, 2008) making it portable and possible to manage and upload galleries anywhere on any computer.

Benefits of MobaPhoto in the classroom:
• MobaPhoto can be used to manage upload and publish classroom photos and galleries onto the classroom website, blog and or wiki.
• The program can be saved onto students USB sticks. The portable application can be taken and used on any computer within the school environment (computer lab, library) and even used on the computer at home.
• MobaPhoto can be used to introduce photo editing to student. Allowing students to crop, resize, correct red-eyes, rename and create photo galleries using the application’s tools.

References

Mobatek. (2008). MobaPhoto. Retrieved July 31, 2010, from MobaPhoto the portable toolbox for digital photography: http://mobaphoto.mobatek.net/en/

To Flickr or Not Flickr? That is the question.

I had a peak around Flickr, as a guest. I did not want to sign up for an account mainly because I do not have a Yahoo ID (email) and I doubt I would use the program much at the moment apart from this very e-Learning blog posting. But as a guest I was still able to experience the vast collection of images and videos Flickr had to offer, guests can access 80% of the images (National Library of Australia , 2005). Usually when I need images for any reason or a specific purposes I just use Google Images, which anyone can use without an account. I found after comparing my Google and Flickr image searches on Great Danes both produced very similar images. Why Great Danes? Because my beloved dog Sampson (Sammy) is Great Dane breed. I love dogs, especially Shetland Ponies (Great Danes).

Flickr is a popular website for users to share and embed their personal photographs; the website contains more than 4 million images from contributors all over the globe. Flickr is commonly used by bloggers to display images they embed within their blog postings (Wikipedia, 2010). Anybody can add their own images to Flickr, marking them with descriptions and even tags for archiving and retrieving purposes. Of all Flickr’s users, two million of them add a new image to the site every four seconds (National Library of Australia , 2005).

References

National Library of Australia . (2005). Flickr. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from Picture Australia: http://www.pictureaustralia.org/contribute/participants/Flickr.html

Wikipedia. (2010, July 24). Flickr. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr

RSS

RSS stands for really simple syndication and it was easy enough to set an aggregator in Google Reader, but I think I will just stick to the section in the blogger dashboard. The Reading List within my blog dashboard allows me to see a list of blogs I follow and updates on any recent posts and additions made to those blogs. I have the option to add and manage the blogs within my list, to suit my purpose. To add to the convenience of this Reading List (Blog Dashboard) it is possible to view my followed blog items using Google Reader, simply by clicking on the link View in Google Reader at the bottom right hand corner of the Reading List. I preferred to view blog updates in the Reading List in my blog because it seemed to be easier to follow and comprehend.