We had a gathering for CITFLN at Reid campus on Friday with a number of things on our agenda, some of which we didn’t get to as time ticked away from us!
One highlight was a demonstration by Moir of a digital graphics pen which Moir has trialled with her Physics students (most of whom work in the AFP) in a tutorial fashion online.
Moir showed the pen in action and then showed an online whiteboard through which she encourages students to interact (if you have no pen you can still use a mouse apparently). The service is partly free and is called Skrbl. The possibilities for such interactions are endless – you could develop a floor plan with interior design students, map out an orienteering course for sports students, annotate images and graphs (as Moir does) – even animated gifs work on the whiteboard too! In fact, Michael Coghlan also blogged about a similar setup recently.
The bringing together of virtual and physical activities is the real key here. Connecting students with one another is one aspect, but connecting students to ideas and support is entirely different. Engaging in practice is paramount for students who are isolated from a classroom setting where a teacher is on-hand to offer timely pedagogical support. The interface between teacher-student communication and the ability to interact in the way the pen and online whiteboard show, affords much in terms of hands-on activities that at one time many said couldn’t be done online!
Animoto have opened their service to Education for FREE! One main proviso (and pretty painless it is too) is:
The only thing we ask is that you keep us posted with the creative ways you find to use Animoto in the classroom. Our goal is to put together a collection that becomes a hub of sorts for teachers who use web 2.0 technology in a clever, innovative & fun way.
Here’s your chance to develop video/multimedia “on the fly” and encourage your students to do the same, collaboratively or individually, without needing to spend hours/weeks even learning about the technology itself, not to mention the editing!
Animoto videos can be embedded into your webpages, or downloaded and used with your students directly in the classroom or workplace learning settings. You can even promote you programs and courses to prospective students and employers using Animoto! Here’s a couple of examples.
If you get hooked, we’d LOVE to hear how you’re using Animoto in your teaching and learning!
The Edublogger has been set up by Edublogs — “the largest education community on the Internet” where you can sign up for a free WordPress-powered blog — and is dedicated to helping educational bloggers with using emerging technologies in education, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.
Sue Waters has joined James at Edublogs as writer of the new blog, The Edublogger. If you’ve yet to delve into blogging, then this would be a good starting point for you – Sue will go to ANY length to get you blogging well and using other great Web2.0 services in your learning and teaching!
As Sue herself says:
As a blogger I’m about — practical application of technologies in education, and most importantly HELPING OTHERS learn how to use these technologies.
We’ll be delving into The Edublogger from the ACT with gusto Sue and the best of luck!
Lingro is one of the coolest web services I’ve come across – it enables you to open a website or document in the Lingro window and then get a translation or dictionary definition of every word on the page just by clicking on them.
You can also create a wordlist of every new term that you have learnt and play a simple flashcards game to test your knowledge of the translations or definitions. The possibilities of this site are enormous.
In fact, Michael Coghlan also blogged about a similar setup recently.
