powerpoints and referencing

Just like Jill I need to plan a lesson regarding how to reference. However, I won't be using an online tool to do this because my class will not be referencing any of the normal 'things' so its just easier to do it by hand. Also, they've never done it before.

So my first day on prac was great, but holy moly the teachers (and the students) LOVE powerpoint. Fortunately they've given me lots of resources to be able to plan (using powerpoint) but I would argue that for one of my classes we could use so much more. However, my yr 10's seem to learn best by 'read-write' through powerpoint. The are so 'spongey' they just soak up all the information and are able to do so much with it, to the point where we had a good 15 minutes of not doing much in the class because they had all finished. - sigh, they're amazing, talented, extension kids.

anyway, I think its time for bed. I'm teaching 2 lessons tomorrow :) wish me luck!

laptop trolleys on prac

On my last prac, every student had a laptop, we were using ICTs for teaching and learning every single lesson (except for maths in some cases). At my school on Monday, for every class we need to book laptop trolleys to use ICTs, (which to me actually feels like I'm stepping backwards in terms of what I can show I can use with ICTs). Not to mention that I feel like I'm going to be hogging the laptop trolleys if I want to use them every lesson because they only have a limited amount available. Anyway, because I haven't really had much experience with laptop trolleys except once or twice at my first prac school and before then not since I was in grade 9, I thought I should read up on some tips. This blog provides some tips.

Obviously when I'm planning my lesson using laptop trolleys I will need to consider how I will manage the students to make sure each of them gets a laptop etc.

I need to ensure I am monitoring their use of laptops. I also need to make sure I have a back up plan. I need to make sure my mentor books them for me they day before.

At my old prac school where students had laptops with them all the time, they all got into the habbit of coming to class and immediately going on to them and not focussing on the lesson first, so I probably wont have the issue of having to tell the students to shut their laptops before we even start the lesson.

But mainly, I need to make sure I'm organised, give direct instructions, make sure students know what to do when they have their laptops to ensure they don't start to use them innapropriately.

lets use all the apps!

I want to give a holla out to Laurenn's blog here  where she talks about using the AITSL app.

Just wanted to let you guys know as well, ACARA has an australian curriculum app. BCE has a religious education and religious life of the school curriculum app. They are all really handy tools. Khan academy has apps for certain things.

Other apps that may come in handy

- tuner apps for music teachers
- calculus formula apps for maths teachers
- mindly mind map app for all teachers. (kind of like padlet and poplet).

Theres heaps, so many. But I've found that there appears to be more apps for primary teachers than secondary, but you know, we can't have everything.

But definitely, we should all have the AITSL and ACARA app. - just saying, they are amazing.

PD for all you kiddies

Everyone in education should be at QUEDREX on the 25-26th of July

Check this link for more info. 

Positives about it:

It's free (now when I say free, the workshops are free, the registration is free, and a lot of the resources are free, BUT the food is expensive and I suggest you bring some pocket money in case you want to buy some books and stuff).

The workshops are great. Last year one of our own lecturers at USQ spoke there. There was an ICT workshop (I can't remember exactly what it was on, only that they had tech issues setting up). 

Its run by educators, for educators, and the people who showcase there provide their products to educators.

The only negative about it, is that its very 'primary/early childhood' focused. 

Its easy to get to by train, they give you a lovely bag to stash stuff in. 

So I shall see you all there :)

PRAC! - What else would I be talking about?

Some of you I know haven't got placements. Some of you I know hate the fact you can't work. Some of you I know are bummed about being in a religious school when you aren't religious (I on the other hand, have the opposite issue, having one of my teaching areas as religion, and NOT being in a religious school... but whatever, I got a school, any experience is good experience, I can't complain). So yes, I've flicked through all the other posts about prac including This one and I thought you would all like some cheering up with some RESOURCES!!!

 

After talking to my two amazing mentors (yes I've already formed an opinion), they mentioned that the students at the school I'm going to really enjoy interactive powerpoints, and they've already given me heaps of resources to have a look at. But one of my teaching colleagues showed me Neapod! I suggest you check it out. Its 'basically' a powerpoint generator.. but its so much more. You can add quizes, polls, vidoes, images, draw on it, sound, get the students to log in and collaborate on it. AND its free (weooo yeh free stuff!). 

Hope you enjoy!

religious education and ICT

ICTs are difficult to come by in the world of RE. I reckon its because most of the resources are books.

But I've found this. Its a handbook for RE and ICT. They basically say that use it when its going to benefit the learning and meet the objectives. use it for speed. use it for information. use it to communicate. use it for assessment and presentation of work.

Which is what I've pretty much done in the past :). So thats a good sign that I'm on the right track with using ICTs in my RE classroom.

Instagram and self esteem

Well, today was interesting.

I went onto Instagram and decided to check out what your average teenager is doing on Instagram. I saw things that I didn't want to, but I guess its a reality check thing. I saw a lot of photos of young people cutting. A lot of self hate. A lot of body image issues. A lot of social anxiety. A lot of depression. A lot of attention seeking. And all that from starting with #anxiety. Just google (images) "self harm instagram" and you will understand what I mean.

I think we need to make social media a tool for positive self esteem, self loving, etc.

I'm going to critique the cybersmart PD that we did here. I think there wasn't enough emphasis on how to teach students to be positive in their Internet use. I just want to clarify here. By positive I mean, not not negative. (Ok that sentence got away from me a bit). not negative is ignoring the positive. Just being positive and teaching students how to use social media in peace might be a step in the right direction.

Just for some information. Youth beyond blue  is a handy website with information about self harm in particular.

IWBs

Funs fact for you. My class at school was THE FIRST classroom to ever have an IWB in it. And my best friend Tara was the first student to ever touch one.

Thinking back to grade 5 when that happened (in 2005), my teacher really didn't use the IWB that well. He mainly used it as a substitute for a normal whiteboard. That's from what I remember anyway.

In terms of using IWB's in the classroom. I find that I prefer just a projector. Especially for physics and maths teaching. Unless I want to record what I'm doing. The reason being, is that a normal whiteboard is sometimes all that I need to explain a difficult concept.

Also, at uni, on level 2 in building B. I think the collaborative rooms are poorly designed because they don't have a proper whiteboard in there. They are not designed for learning. Teachers who want to use a normal whiteboard can't. Especially in engineering, where they need to write normally on the board.

I think its because when you are writing on the board, you can add animation to it. The teacher can be physical. Whereas, in the uni collaborative rooms, although they do have the tools to write, they can't animate and talk to the whole class as they do.

Anyway. As I've said before, everything is contextual. It depends on the students. It depends on what is available. It depends on the task and the content that needs learning.

PRAC! please hurry up and come!

I would really like to know where I'm going for prac. I was at 2 schools this afternoon. My old school, and another school for work. I'm getting a little excited about going and teaching again :D. I just wanted to touch on one of the things that I do just before I go on prac. I search for the school online. I check out the school's website, their newsletters, the mission statements, any news publications, information about the community they are a part of, whats coming up in their calendar etc.

If you are in a Catholic school this link might be handy, its a list of all the schools in BCE.

students being creative with youtube and ICT

Well, now that I've finished my unit plan (even though I feel like I could justify all my ICTs more, i.e. I really needed more than 500 words) I'm starting to wonder whether ICTs can be used for more than just teaching academically. And of course I know that they can. But after looking at Jill's post and Jesse's post I was wondering, why aren't students making more videos, animations, music, games, website etc. in their spare time. When I was in school, I remember a group of our friends made vlogs everyday because they walked home together. But we don't hear a lot about kids making millions of dollars through Youtube channels. We hear a lot about adults making millions with Youtube channels, as in, it becomes their income. I know there is one channel of some little kids who cook online (they were on sunrise this morning).

However, I have seen a lot of youtube videos of young girls asking the online public to 'rate' them, and tell them they are pretty or ugly. This, (insert rant face and rant voice here) is disgusting and horrible use of the internet. The girls themselves should not be asking those sorts of questions, they shouldn't have to, and people should not be responding in a negative way. This is legitimately the reason why students commit suicide. And I don't like that.

So, how am I going to change this? Well, going through that PD, there are some basic things I can do, teach students how to respond and how to prevent. But also, I need to make sure that my classroom is a place where students can express themselves safely.

Which brings me back to vlogging and videos, animations, music etc. Through all of these websites that help students to create stuff. Students, through these mediums, can truly express who they are, and can in some instances find their purpose/career path.

For example, when I was on prac, I had one student that wanted to learn how to mix music. I knew one of the teachers kind of knew how to do some stuff, so I referred him on, and he found a niche :).

connect.ed PD

This was a very informative piece of PD. I myself have grown up with teachers teaching us about cybersafetey. This PD is on point. It really does explain it well, they know exactly whats going on. I personally think that idea of having student leaders monitoring people discussions online is really handy. Or at the least, teaching students to block, report, take screenshots etc. I know that while I was online as a student, I wasn't the perfect cyberuser. I definitely think that teaching students the right and wrong behaviour online is a very good idea, and teaching them early what they should and shouldn't be doing. And why don't we do this using ICTs? I have come across this site  before that has helped me to think about my role as a teaching in the world of cyber stuff.

who loves to procrastinate?

I think I've come across this before, but I thought I'd blog about it anyway. This website recommendation was sent to me from a teacher that I worked with while on prac. Its called Iprocrastinate. Its a lot like trello, I found, but you can sync it to your iphone. Oh, and its only available on mac. Its procrastinating, but its handy, because its busy work, when procrastinating. So you can plan, write lists, upload documents, do checklists and make planners. I think, as a school diary tool, I would allow it in my classroom, provided all the students have iphones. Or suggest to the students who have iphones to get it. That way they can track how they are going will all of their homework and assessment.  

Religion in the classroom and ICTs

I was reading this article  about how some people believe that ICTs have no place in the religious education classroom. I completely agree with the article, ICTs and religion are definitely connected. Did you know (now, I can't remember exactly where I read this, but I did) when the first websites were created, religions were the first to create their own websites, because it meant that people could communicate across the world about their beliefs and build global communities of faith. In the past I've used ICTs in my religion classroom mainly for research, but I've also heard on websites that recreate religious rituals, that also create simulations of religious sacred spaces. I know some teachers have also created webquests (something that I have looked into but haven't tried yet). In my time in religion as a student I made imovies. But again, a lot of this is based on research and providing information. I think that is because in RE when it comes to transforming knowledge, there is a lot of application, synthesis and evaluation of knowledge and using ICTs to create new ways of communicating that knowledge. I haven't explored how I can use ICTs to talk to other people from other religions etc, however, that is definitely a possibility.

Lists

As you can see, I have a lot of lists. I use mac stickies. Its simple, but its messy. Trello  is much more effective. I don't think that I'd use it for teaching and collaborative learning, I think Padlet is better. I would recommend the website if there was a student in the class that loves lists as much as I do.

I also want to draw attention to a small icon on my desktop, in the bottom right. Its a program called Paintbrush (mac version of paint). I use it in conjunction with a graphic drawing tool, known as a wacom. I only have a small one, but they can be quite large. I also use a quicktime screen recorder and garageband to record my voice. BOOM using all of those elements, I get videos in which I can record maths and physics working out.

What I really don't like about twitter

I was scrolling through twitter just before, and when i signed up to twitter I chose to automatically follow a whole bunch of news twitter feeds. This, my fellow teaching colleages, was a huge mistake. 

The thing with twitter is that news companies only get 125 (i think) characters to introduce a story, and oftentimes, they choose to focus on a particular part of a story that .. well really doesn't have anything to do with the story, or at best exaggerates what the real article is about. 

For example, there was a link to an article from a newspaper that said "is it ok to call obese models fabulous?"and it had a picture of a beautiful obese model on there. I clicked and read on the article (maybe that was my mistake) but what I found was actually a medical professional (I think) talking about the negatives of obese and overweight people within the population. It had nothing to do with models, or looking fabulous, or what to call obese models. 

Again, I clicked on another article that talked about how Robert Downey Junior from the avengers walked out from an interview. With this tweet there was a picture of Scarlet Johanson along with it. The article then described how 2 of the members of the avengers cast (not Robert) had made the mistake of commenting in a derogatory way about Scarlet Johanson's CHARACTER the black widow. Then, about halfway down the page it had a video from the interview with Robert. 

In one of my early blogs I was talking about how I thought that twitter would be great in my classroom because it allows for more communication etc. But now rethinking this in regards to how big news corporations can't describe their understanding of things properly within the 125 characters, how can I expect my students to do the same? 

differentiating using ICT

I was thinking about something Vicki said in the lecture the other day about using ICT to suit a wide range of students within my unit plan. And I freaked out because I hadn't intentionally designed my ICT learning experiences to cater for different students needs. So I went back through and I thought about the general VAK model and all the learning activities seemed to have elements of each in there somewhere. But then I was thinking about multiple intelligences and I thought, 'wow with ICT its actually quite difficult.' So, I googled it. I found this slideshare that explains things a little clearer. Looking back at my unit plan, I can see now that, without even realising, I've catered to quite a few different types of learners. I thinks its because in the back of my mind, I wanted to provide students with diverse ICT learning experiences, hence the design of my unit, caters for the diverse needs of students.

Visual learners?

While reading Emma's blog  I saw that she mentioned that she loved youtube because she was a visual learner. I understand that completely, I just wanted to come at this from an auditory learners perspective. One of my subjects this semester only consists of readings and NO lecture (and very few other resources). The lecturer posted a Youtube video and said that "if you are a visual learner, I suggest you look at this." I just went ahead and watched it anyway to have a break from the reading (that I wasn't fully comprehending). I learnt so much from that youtube video that he gave us, even through it only went for 5 minutes, and not because I was watching a guy in a video presenting a workshop, it was because I was able to hear a person talking about the topic.

I'm not saying that visual learners won't get anything out of it, but why did he just mention visual? That means that within my classroom, I need to remember that both auditory and visual learners will benefit from youtube videos. However, I would suggest that visual learners would learn more from gifs (or really short silent animations) because they are purely visual stimulation.

learning another language

Just for fun. 

Yesterday I downloaded this app and just started playing and ... LEARNING FRENCH AT THE SAME TIME! 

I've never really even tried to learn another language, apart from Tetum when I went to east timor, and I only really learnt how to day hello, and yes, and no, and how are you.. that type of thing. 

But this app, is so clever, it really transforms learning. 

It allows you to do several thing functionally- start with the basics, do levels, gain points, go back etc. 

Pedagogically its amazing. In each level, you do several things such as translate, speak phases, match up words and their meaning, write in the language, etc. it also includes pictures so that you can visualise something and understand the meaning. You get to do all these thing, and you learn how the syntax works at the same time through hints and stuff. Its basically just a game. 

I've already learnt words like pomme (apple) robe (dress) noir (black) rouge (red) le/la/'l (the) hoome (male) femme (female) fille (girl) garcon (boy) et (and) calmes (calm) magne/mangez/manges/mangent (eat) livre (book) journal (newspaper) lisons (read) sommes (are) enfant (child) vous (you) nous (we) menu (menu) orange (orange) and a tonne more- and I've only done 2 levels that I completed in about half an hour. 

quicker, easier, more engaging, fun, - what more could you want?

Assignment 2 thoughts

Ok God, I'm getting the hint now, you want me to work on assignment 2 now that I've submitted some of my other assignments, its ok, I'm getting there. 

After being reminded by this post, and this post, and this post to begin my assignment and start thinking about writing a unit plan, I've decided that I will, due to time pressure, use a unit that I've already designed. 

But, I did want to share my thoughts on BCE's religious education curriculum. At the moment through my subjects at ACU, I'm learning about the differences between the different methods used in Catholic schools to teach religious studies. Now, religious education tends to want to do 2 main things. 

1. teach people about religion (like in SOR)

2. and teach people to be religious in a particular way (like in the church) 

But it wasn't always like this, and often, these elements overlap. The religious education curriculum is nice enough to separate all of the content areas onto knowledge and skills (constructing and transforming knowledge)- that tells us something about how we need to approach religious education. It means that we need to be integrating the topics as well as aligning the knowledge and skills within a unit. And each of the content areas relate "teaching people about religion" because the Catholic schools framework discusses what to do in Catholic Schools to teach students to be religious in a particular way. 

I just wanted to note as well that the BCE religious education curriculum has an app, same with ACARA, very handy. 

Onenote

After reading a post on Sammy's blog I was curious about onenote. I then went on to actually see what onenote is, and found that there isn't much information out there, however, I found this fantastic youtube video  about it which explains everything. Now my question is... WHY AREN'T SCHOOLS USING THIS RIGHT NOW INSTEAD OF PEN AND PAPER?... SERIOUSLY!

For organisation, for assignment work, for collaboration. And also... FOR PRAC!

I'm definitely trialling this while on prac in terms of organising my lesson plans and collecting resources, doing reflections etc.

Watch the youtube video and I promise you will be swayed. However, if you are already using evernote, you might find it a bit like de ja vu.