I'm back!

Evening everyone,

Well it has been a hectic month and no mistake! Things have started to get very busy at work lately as I'm examinations secretary and the personal life has been no less busy, some good and some a little more wearing.

I haven't been very visible for the last few weeks, my apologies to all for that. I've been away from my trusty connection for 2 of those weeks and only got back last night. Went to help my best friend in Ireland who had just had a baby and had some health issues with the birth, that was the first week and then had the honour of being made godmother to my niece in England, so that was the second one. Neither of these places had an internet connection - Yes! There are still people in the world who don't do this. It is mind-boggling to me as so much of my existence now revolves around it as I seem to spend so much time on my computer. But, they manage to live out happy lives without it at all!

My students' blog has also been going quite well though I had to get stern on them once and ask them not to post irrelevant stuff on it. This comes back to the cyberspeak debate. The girls here seem to talk in a mixture of Arabic and English using numbers and symbols for the sounds they want to make and it makes it very difficult for a uniglot (?) like me... They have taken pity on me lately, though it has made for some 'fuddy-duddy' comments being posted - cheeky monkeys!

I've now got to compilate all my readings, postings, comments, etc. for our first assignment which is due next week. I'm okay about it, it's been at the back of my mind since the second week or so, so I've been careful to keep stuff up to date (except in the last couple of weeks) so I think I should be okay..... hopefully anyway.

Take care all and good luck with your assignments. See you next week

Reggie

Happy bloggers

Hello everyone,

Well I did it. I managed to find a blog place (wordpress.com) that allows me to invite people to see and contribute to my blog so I can restrict access to it. Got the go-ahead from my headmistress after I showed her Richardson's article and so we are good to go. Presenting it to my Year 10 students tomorrow.... Wish me luck! Going to get them all online, hopefully over the weekend, and discussing uses and dangers of electromagnetic radiation.
I'm hoping that they will all agree to remove the privacy restriction on the blog and then I can post a link to it and you can all have a look.
Apart from that I've also found (through the Qsite mailing list) a lovely collaborative wiki -

http://schools.wikia.com/wiki/Physics

That's the physics page but there are many more subjects available in there.

I will let you all know how it goes tomorrow with the girls. If the response is positive, I'm going to try and set one up for each of my classes and then incorporate the whole wiki idea. I think it's great and I think the girls will be properly up for it too. Like one of the discussion threads said - when kids realise that the world is potentially watching, they are more careful and thoughtful about what they say...

Reggie

Blogs in classrooms

Evening all,

I've just finished reading the suggested reading by Richardson and Downes and am getting, rather nerdily, excited about the prospect of using blogs in my lessons, something which I have never done before and am going to have to be careful how I set up. The school I'm at is very paranoid about security online and the possibility of our students being able to have any kind of conversation with an unsanctioned outsider. Still, there are ways around this, or so my reading would lead me to believe so I think I'm going to set a goal of trying it with one group of students, seeing how we go (we'll be discussing whether mobile phones are harmful..) and work from there. Exciting possibilities for collaborative learning!

Of course, and relevant to the last posting, I'm going to have to learn 'cyberspeak' pretty quickly as I can't see these students waiting for their 'old' teacher to catch up on what they're saying! Thank you, by the way, for the thought provoking comments on the last post, hope to see you here again...

Reggie

Language evolution

Evening all who are reading this....

I've just finished reading the Merchant article from our course notes on language evolution within communications, looking at teenage girls.

I have to say, my mother does this to me in text messages and it drives me insane because I have to translate her texts into 'proper English' in order to understand them. To me, this hinders communication because I haven't developed speed in reading this kind of language. I still text with full words and punctuation. I can't seem to help it.... It just seems more polite and considerate to the receiver to do it that way rather than have it appear that you couldn't take the time to be bothered.

But, having said that, I think that my time is definitely coming to an end and we are getting to the stage where English has two forms of language. The formal kind and the informal, communication kind. This has almost been accepted thus far with email letter writing which isn't really expected anymore to follow the formal rules of letter writing that we all learned as kids. It's just a matter of time before the 'grammatically correct' email becomes the formal one and the more relaxed language style becomes the norm.

I'm not really against this either. What is language for really when it comes down to it? Communication between individuals. So if it can be understood, it is fulfilling its function. I know, when my students are chatting to each other online, they are using almost a code to each other that I can hardly fathom. They would never dream of writing a homework like that but why not? I can't see that I'd have a problem with that. Of course, I'm not an English teacher, I teach Science so I'm more interested in them being able to communicate ideas.

Anyway, really liked this paper....

Reggie

First Post

Hi and welcome to my blog.

This is set up as part of my course EDU5471 - Computer Based Resources in Education with USQ.

The idea is that I "Create a personal blog, journalising your thoughts over your participation in this course. You may like to include content snippets, resources, analysis of how you can use the information in your educational context, identify your learning and feelings though the course or indicate areas of interest or surprise to you."

So step 1, the creation of the blog is now done.

So far, I have already learned some things in this course, even though it's only just begun. I've also emailed some of the links to things I've learned to my work so that I can share it with colleagues and help with the use of computers in education at my school. For example, I like the link www.epals.com which is a secure site to allow learners from around the world participate in literacy acivities online. I like it! We have, over the last couple of years at my school, had a bit of a literacy push on and I think this can only add to that and benefit our students. Anyway, I figure it's worth checking out and trying. This, I think is one of the keys to effective use of computers in education. Finding resources on the web, assessing their use in one's own environment and then, if they are suitable, having a try to see how learners respond. If it's positive, then these resources can be built into a scheme of work....

I also have to say that I really like learning online. Upon starting this course (MEdTech), I wasn't sure if it would suit me or if I could keep my motivation up during the semesters. However, I really do find the material really interesting and have met some people during the modules that I've done that inspire me to try harder. Also, although I am a bit of an independant learner, in that I like to work through material on my own and try and figure it out for myself, I've really enjoyed the discussions with others. And, it also means I can fit the study time in around my own schedule and still have a life! All good..

So there you go, first post and first level of learning....

Hopefully, you've enjoyed reading my musings thus far. Hope to see you back here soon..

Reggie