ICT and TLC

I am very excited to be visiting our City Cite Campus this week!  It will be my first visit and I am keen to meet with the staff and see the unique learning space. Part of the reason for our visit is to look at ways that we could assist in helping City Cite to continue in the development of an ICT-rich environment for the students. Given the location and nature of the programs that run at City Cite, it lends itself beautifully to a variety of exciting computer-based and mobile learning activities.

The following sites and tools are some suggestions:

Create a City Cite Twitter account to share events and activities with others.  Twitter is an excellent way to connect with educators (and their students) around the world.

Flickr is an excellent way to store and share your photos online.  Image from City Cite activities can be uploaded and shared publicly or privately.  Staff and students can even email photos to your Flickr account from a mobile phone!  There are also many exiciting online image manipulation tools such as Big Huge Labs that can use images directly from your Flickr account.

Using their own images, students can quickly create and share professional movies with Animoto.  Animoto Education allows teachers to register a class allowing free access to full-length movies.

At our school’s recent Lorne Conference, I had the pleasure of running a hands-on SAM Animation session with a small group of staff, including teachers from City Cite.  This free download allows you to create stop-motion animation and even time lapse sequences.  It’s simple interface makes it easy to use for students of all ages.  You can click here to read the post, Play, Create & Animate with SAM Animation, featuring examples created in this 45 minute session.

Blogging is an incredible way for students to build literacy skills, share ideas, reflect, publish work, connect with a global audience…the list goes on!  There are many sites available to create a blog but Edublogs is one of my favourites.

Once you have a blog, it opens the doors for other exciting activities with your students like mobile phone blogging.  Sites like Utterli allow you to call a designated number, record a response then have it automatically posted to a specified blog.  Click here for some examples of mobile phone blogging.

QR Codes provide a simple and exciting way to share informtation with students via their mobile phones. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of QR Codes, click here to read a previous post about this technology. A treausure hunt around the city could be set up making using of QR Codes linking to online resources such as web sites, images and audio.  Below is an example of a QR Code generated especially for City City. (Click to enlarge the image and use a QR Code reader on a mobile phone to read the code.)

Trail Guru allows you to plot a journey using a GPS device.  An excellent, free iPhone app is also available, making it simple to record a journey along with photos and a number of interesting statistics which can then be posted an analyzed on the Trail Guru web site.  Click here for an example of a journey plotted with Trail Guru.

A complete list of resources mentioned in this post is available via my Delicious links.

Addendum:

We had a great day at City Cite! The staff were very enthusiastic and open to new ideas. It was also fascintating to hear about the program that is run there and the unique experience that is offered to students.

Whilst there, we were able to illustrate uses for the above tools and especially the iPhone, Comic Touch and Flickr. Click here to view the City Cite photos on Flickr. An Animoto movie about City Cite, using the iPhone app, was also created.  You can click here to view the movie. Special thanks to Nathan Burgess for introducing me to the fabulous Animoto iPhone app!

Nathan also mentioned another great iPhone app called AroundShare. This app allows you to take a photo, post it to the AroundShare site or another site such as Twitter.  Your image appears alongside a Google Map showing your location and other geographical information. Click here to see City Cite on AroundShare thanks to Nathan.

We are really looking forward to returning to City Cite in March to take the first steps in introducing more technology. Getting staff started with Twitter, creating a Bluetooth server and exploring bulk SMS tools are the first items we are hoping to explore.

During our January school holidays, I enjoyed reading Jarrod Robinson’s post about QR Codes and their possible uses in education.  Prior to reading his post, I had seen QR Codes but had no idea of their purpose or possible uses.

Since returning to school, I have continued to follow Jarrod’s journey via his tweets on Twitter and have had very worthwhile (and fun!) discussions with my colleagues, Nathan and Stephen.

If you are not familiar with the concept of QR Codes, these sites are all an excellent introduction. A comprehensive site for information and news about QR Codes is the 2D Code site. Links to the Code Readers and Code Generators are particularly helpful.

For me, the first step was being about to use my mobile phone to read QR Codes.  I tested a number of QR Code Readers for the iPhone:

• 2D Sense (free, includes move and scale feature)
• Barcodes (free, includes move and scale feature)
• iDecode (free)
• NeoReader (free)
• QR Reader ($2.49)
• UpCode (Free)
• Snappr (Free, includes move and scale feature)

After working out how to actually read a QR Code, I started looking at creating my own codes. Snappr is a great site to generate your own QR Codes.  After signing up, I was “like a kid in a lolly shop” as I explored the different types of codes that could be created!

Snappr allows you to create many types of codes that fall under the headings of Classic, Social and Snappr. Codes can be created quickly and easily then embedded into a site, downloaded to insert into a document or printed on an item.  (Yes, people are printing their own QR Code t-shirts!)  The content of a code can even be edited later so that the actual QR Code image looks the same but the content is different. There are so many exciting possibilities for sharing information on this site.  It is definitely well worth a look! Click on the codes below to view a larger image and see if you can read them! There are four different types of codes to give you a taste of what is possible:

So now the big question is, “How can QR Codes be used in education?”  Again, Jarrod has some exciting ideas in his QR Codes in Education post.  We are particularly interested in looking into the following uses:

• “The Amazing Race” using QR Codes: Codes could either be printed on a sheet and given to students or displayed in different locations.  Students could then access clues that are not just text-based, but include images, web sites, etc…  This adds a whole new dimension to this type of activity.
• Sharing resouces with students: Because you can create QR Codes that link to content such as images and audio files, students can easily access these items via their mobile phones.  This could have exciting possibilities for student access to content such as podcasts.
• QR Codes on library books:  During a Twitter discussion, Jarrod suggested QR Codes on library books with a link to a web site, audio file, etc… with additional information about the book.
• Add QR Codes to printed materials: If you need to give a printed copy of information to students, you can add QR Codes with links to online resources.  Students are then able to easily access this extra content without the need for a computer.
• Voting via QR Codes: Snappr allows you to create codes that link to an online voting system. This is a great way to quiz your students or gauge their opinions.   
• Create a Snappr Micropage: Snappr also allows you to create a Micropage. This is a basic web page with a title, images, text and URLs.  The page is optimized for viewing on a mobile phone.

At our school, I am looking forward to displaying some QR Codes in our Computer Centre and around the school to generate some interest in this exciting technology.  I think this prize might be the first reward I offer:

My PLN is not just made up of colleagues or even former colleagues.  It is made up of educators from around the world, some of which I had the great pleasure of meeting in 2008 and some of which I certainly hope to meet in the future.

Without doubt the most valuable tool I have used for establishing my PLN has been Twitter.

Twitter has provided me with the opportunity to:

• share and discover new resources (my Delicious links have gone through the roof, thanks to Twitter!)
• ask for and offer assistance to colleagues about a range of ICT and education issues
• have access to a never-ending amount of professional development (reading the blogs of other educators has been extremely worthwhile)
• feel a deep sense of gratitude for my home, town I live in, school I work in and the wonderful people in my life
• share lots of funny moments and even some heart-breaking ones

I compiled the slideshow below using One True Media which was passed onto me by the lovely Amanda Marrinan via Twitter.  (Of course!) If you are unable to view the movie via the player, please click here. Special thanks to Lisa Dumicich for the fabulous photo of Twitterers at the VITTA 2008 Conference.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

In response to Jarrod Robinson’s challenge via Twitter, here are the “7 things you don’t need to know about me”. However, one of the following statements is completely untrue.  Which one is it?

1.  I am the youngest of four sisters and our names all begin with ‘L’!

2.  At my first swimming lesson in primary school, the teacher made me jump into the deep end - then had to rescue me!

3.  I was put off alcohol at the age of 16 when I witnessed a friend throwing up into a gutter with her police officer father standing behind her.

4.  I love music and reached 8th grade level in piano and used to play the guitar, flute and saxophone.

5.  Although my family is originally from Malta, my parents grew up in Egypt.  My father came to Australia on a Super Constellation aircraft which was very ambitious for that time!

6.  After teaching for 5 years, I had a change of career and worked in the airline industry for 4 years.  This included working as a flight attendant with Ansett Australia.  (I couldn’t wait to return to teaching!)

7.  I once met Ian “Molly” Meldrum when working on a flight from Melbourne to Perth and spent most of the flight chatting with him about Egyptian Artefacts, something we both love.

Thanks @mrrobbo for challenging me - although I was reluctant at first, I really enjoyed the task!  Thank you for also reminding me that behind all of the amazing educators in my PLN, there are “real” people, each one with their own “story” that is usually untold!

It’s a difficult task to choose seven more people to challenge, so I’m asking each and every one of you to consider sharing “7 things you don’t need to know about me”!