My students have been working on a collaborative Scratch programming project that includes managing files, creating and working with shared presentations and creating a shared document that contained links to the various project components. The project consisted of ten groups with each group sharing a Google Presentation, for brainstorming purposes, along with programming files. To consolidate the information I created a shared spreadsheet so that each of my student groups could add their group information. Each group added the names and email addresses of their partners along with a link the presentation url and the name of their Scratch game.

We started with the creation of a shared presentation. Some of the presentations were created by the collaborating students some by my students. The presentation was used to brainstorm and communicate within each group about the direction that the program was moving in. The presentation below is an example.

We did not have all of the email addresses of the students from the other school so I had my students add the project information to a shared google spreadsheet as you can see below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next step was to copy the spread sheet into a GDoc so I could change the shared presentation url into a link that could be used by all students working on the project.

The final step was to create a shared folder that had all of these files. This kept everything in one easily reachable location and also allowed us to use the folder as a location to upload the Scratch files to.

Little to do for me.

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I guess the thing I like the most about Eportfolios is that because we started looking at how blogs might be used to create Eportfolios back in 2006 I still have artifacts from a Language Arts class of one kid in grade 8. Soon he will be off to university …….

Embedding Audio With Aaron Reading Poetry

A Book Report- In this case a short video about the author talking about his book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A digital story  by Aaron and Nick on Thai food as part of their WWW 2006 project.

thai

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image by elycefeliz via Flickr

Well, finally got started with Mahara this week. Started by adding a Mahara install to my virtual space and playing around with the theme. Probably doing things backwards again first playing with the theme then the content.

Plan on slowly migrating the wordpress pages and wordpress blogs, that I was previously using, to a variety of Mahara views. Hopefully, this will give me some insight on how I might integrate Mahara into my classes next year. I am envisioning a math portfolio but we shall see.

This will be a bit different than my current trial with a course based portfolio. That portfolio is using a Wordpressmu site as a CMS that also aggregates all of my student writing. With each assignment they complete I can select exemplary work and as such create a course based portfolio. I have written about this before but this I believe is the final form (for this week at least).

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Started having students go through a revision process that included using Diigo to markup articles and peer edit their classmates drafts. So far we are using yellow highlights for key ideas, blue for vocabulary and pink when peer editing (key ideas and vocabulary came from @rappino). Students also need to add a sticky note to describe what they thought needed to be edited. Seems to be working quite well so far.

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In the Three-rs of-education Dana Watts asks:

Do we need to have an entry level test to access students’ needs when they enter our school? Is there a need for a skills course to pass during the first year? Or will students pick up these skills on their own?

Scot Meech, on the other hand, in Universal Document Creation Techniques wonders:

Are there universal techniques that everyone should know about document creation? What are they if there are? Who is responsible for teaching the basic fundamental techniques?

Both posts reminded me of conversations I have had over the years. I often wondered, keeping in mind the transitory nature of our student population, how you could ensure that all students would be exposed to the same tech skills?

In Abu Dhabi an idea was to create a virtual, video based, course that contained the basic tech skill set I thought our students should have. Such a course would have the added benefit of being a PD resource for teachers as well. Unfortunately, I never got around to completing the course mostly due to a change in High School administration.

With our move to a 1-2-1 program and the removal of some ICT courses I think it might be time to look at this again. Create a blog that could become our skills course much along the same lines as what I have just begun with the Tips and Hints blog. Check out the work @rappino and I did last year with our description of online writing skills and from this create an online writing checklist like my blogging checklist. Add content, by having students in my tech classes create “how to” screencasts. Hopefully, this content could help their peers drive their own learning and make teachers aware of the skills the students were acquiring.

Who is currently responsible for making sure these skills are taught? Same old thing I have been seeing for the last 20 years; tech teachers through an ICT course. This needs to change. Responsibilities need to change. If we want this become part of what each SSIS student does on a daily basis everyone needs to be responsible, administration, teachers and students.

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