Mobile post sent by lucybarrow using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by lucybarrow using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

Last term, we were fortunate enough to have award-winning UK Educator, Dr John Ingram, visit our school to give a presentation about The Digital Excellence Awards Program. We then visited Lynbrook Primary School where we saw, first-hand, this exciting program in action.

We welcomed Dr John back to our school where he demonstrated his exciting program to our Junior School and ICT Staff.

Click here for more information about Dr John Ingram and the Digital Excellence Awards Program.

We used CoverItLive during the presentation to blog live. Click the green Play Replay button below to view the live blog.

We would love your comments and feedback about the presentation! Click on the Comments link at the end of this blog post to submit your comment.

Of course, I was impressed with the clever use of text and the perfect way in which the music was timed with each text image.  However, the message was conveyed in such a powerful way - I was very emotional!

How would I describe Mankind is No Island?  A masterpiece.

As I have only been blogging for a few months, I was not familiar with Blog Action Day.  It was one of those times when I thought to myself, “I wish I had my own class!”  In my role, I provide training and classroom support to staff so am often not able to organise an activity with “my own students”.

However, the same day that the Blog Action Day tweet appeared from the amazing Edublogger, Sue Waters, I was also exploring a polling site called Ask 500 People.

Ask 500 People allows you to submit votes to polls created by users from around the world and even create your own poll.  It lends itself beautifully to questions where a global opinion is being saught.

I thought that a poll about poverty might be a nice way to test out Ask 500 People.  I never dreamed that I would be so amazed at what can be achieved with this tool!

The question posed was:
“Do you believe it is possible to make poverty history?”

• Absolutely! If we work together, anything is possible!
• I think we can do a great deal to reduce poverty, but we will never rid the world of it completely.
• No. Unfortunately, I think it is an impossible task.
• I am unsure

I was amazed to see that within 48 hours there were almost 400 votes from around the world!

It was fascinating to see where voters were from and to see the results emerging, even after the first 24 hours.

It is also possible for voters to submit a comment about a poll.

This was another aspect of Ask 500 People that produced some lovely results, with three voters submitting their opinion about the topic of poverty.

One, in particular, was quite a personal account of his own family’s experience.

My great grandfather came to America from Ireland. He was poor. He went from job to job and he skipped out on his family of 6 children - alcoholism. All of his children ended up successful. Most of the men served in WWII, and came home and bought homes with GI bill…

You can click here to read the entire comment.

And then there was this comment, from a voter in The Netherlands:

How do you define poverty? This website talks about the 30,000 children that die as a result of poverty every day. In my country no children die because of poverty, the poor in my country all have health insurance, can go to school and buy food. The poor in my country are those who can’t afford a holiday, a car, quality clothes and food, or join a sports club. Those are sad things, especially when you compare and the people around you can, but it is not the same kind of poverty.

Although it is possible to view a Google Map with markers to indicate where your voters are from, apparently it is not possible to see the markers for all of the votes registered.  I was not expecting 100% accuracy, but was a little concerned after some of the markers “disappeared”.  However, a quick message to Ask 500 People resulted in a reply indicating that the markers shown were only for the most recent votes.

The results of the Poverty Poll were as follows:

For educators, I feel that Ask 500 People offers an incredible tool that gives you the ability to attract voters from around the world.  With the right topic, it goes “one step further” than the usual polling sites.

Special thanks to Andrew Douch and Jarrod Robinson for introducing me to Ask 500 People.

Mobile post sent by lucybarrow using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

Monsalvat is a stunning property in the leafy suburb of Eltham in Victoria.  It provided the perfect setting for us to reflect and create our final mobile blog post after our trip to Melbourne.

Our time in Melbourne provided us with the ideal opportunity to test Utterli and its cross-posting feature.    This facility takes blogging to a whole new level and is mobile learning at its best!

Many thanks to Steve Collis, for introducing me to Uttleri and to my twitter friends for their wonderful advice on this exciting use of technology!  My delicious links have more information about mobile blogging.

I am VERY excited about exploring its uses with teachers and students at our school and learning more about how other schools are using mobile blogging!

Mobile post sent by lucybarrow using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by lucybarrow using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by lucybarrow using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

One of a long, long list of positives that came out of the 2008 Knowledge Bank Online Conference was that I was introduced to Wordle. The Wordle site describes it as “a tool for generating word clouds from text that you provide”. For those who may not be familiar with the term “word cloud”, greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently in the source text. The Wordle site allows you to enter your own text, a URL or even a delicious username to generate your word cloud. Word clouds can then easily be added to the Gallery, generating its own URL. It is one of the few sites that doesn’t require you to sign up for an account! You can also easily print your Wordle or use a screen grab tool to save your word cloud to import to another application.

Initially, I was attracted to Wordle because of the tools available to customize your word cloud. The site gives you the ability to alter the font, colour and even direction of the words. It wasn’t until after I created my first Wordle that I realised that there was much more to this tool!

After posting a link to the site on our school’s twitter page, I started to receive some wonderful ideas, especially from the Director of Early Learning Centre, the wonderful Lisa!

I thought the use of VoiceThread might be a nice way to not only share a few simple Wordles with my colleagues but, more importantly, to get them to share the way they are using Wordle. I would love to hear about your ideas, so please feel free to add to our VoiceThread below or click here.  If you do not have a VoiceThread account, please post a comment.

For me in my role as Staff ICT Trainer, I enjoy using Wordle to enhance presentations and give staff a “snap shot” of a particular topic. Wordle is yet another example of a simple yet highly effective tool that is only limited by our imaginations!