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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

6 takeaways from the Etilab ‘Emerging Technologies’ Think Tank on 26 March 2016


This is a cross post of a post I wrote for the SchoolNet blog about the second ETILAB Think Tank on Emerging Technologies in Education which I attended last week. The ‘Étilab’ concept was something new to me so I looked forward to finding out more about that as well as learn about emerging technologies.
 
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The preliminary program for the day:
  • General overview of glocal developments regarding emerging technologies in Higher Education, Schools and Industry
  • Vision Setting: how glocal developments inform and shape our vision
  • The ETILAB's response to glocal challenges
  • e-Vision of key players: long term, medium term & short term
  • Reflection Orientation: Digital stories from practitioners' lived experiences
  • Solution Orientation: What can we do differently?
  • Industry's response
  • Commitment Orientation: setting goals
  • ETILAB goals
These are a few of my takeaways from the day.

1. It is always interesting to meet and network with the educators attending a conference. We each introduced ourselves with a mention of our day-to-day work.  This gave a great context to the day.

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2. The first part of the day centred around Global trends within Educational Technologies. The session was opened by Professor Dick Ng'ambi who manages the Etilab at UCT. The Prof (as everyone called him) introduced the work of the Intel and Lenova Etilab at UCT. I must say he aroused my interest to visit the lab when he described it as a sandpit for teachers to play with and experience new technologies. In his presentation it was interesting to hear about Gartner’s Hype Cycle of emerging technologies showing how new technologies  become popular and then interest wanes before they become a regular part of our lives. (Gartner's Hype Cycle Research Report is an annual maturity assessment of technologies and IT trends). Gartner maintains that identifying and employing the right technologies at the right time is critical.

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Professor Dick Ng'ambi
 
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Gartner's Hype Cycle of emerging technologies


3. I found Dr Cheryl Brown from UCT’s presentation on Open Education Resources (OER) very interesting. It seems there are not very many OER resources in the South African Repository. She encouraged us to visit the UCT’s growing repository. This presentation took us through Creative Commons Licensing. Dr Brown says that the current trends among young people seems to be:
  • If I want to know anything I ask Google and will believe everything I read
  • If it is online I can use it.
We also took a dip into the trend of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and how they differ from other ways of teaching and learning online.  MOOCS are hugely popular because they appear to be free. Researchers are interested in analysing the reasons that there is usually a large drop out rate from MOOCS.

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Dr Cheryl Brown
Why are MOOCS not completed?
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Online courses versus MOOCS
      Categories of MOOCS

4. Clinton Walker’s WCED e-Vision for e-Education talk gave a humorous and enlightening. Sounds grand! Will they pull this off I wonder? He talked about the broadband vision, the e-policy vision, the  progression and the skills requirement. I was relieved on hearing that ‘ÇRITICAL is the training for teachers embracing the NEW teaching and learning environment.’  Smart classrooms are envisioned for schools as part of this vision.  There is also a focus on the development of E-Content and a tender is out for populating the –resources portal. He likened the implementation of the policy to a ship ready to dock in a harbour with that final part having the critical gap that has to be navigated.
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WCED vision
The Smart classroom envisaged
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Skills requirements
Risks along the critical path…

5. Puleng Makhoalibe from Etilab spoke on the Etilab design process. The acronym for Etilab is (E)mpathy, (T)hink, (I)deate, (L)earn, (A)ct and (B)uild   She showed the creativity process as seen by Chris Thompson in ‘What a great idea’’ .  She Gartner's Hype Cycle of emerging technologies the importance of the sandpit idea where teachers can experiment with technologies.  I enjoyed her explanation of the design process and how it is important to tap into the genius of all in a room.  She urged teachers to “remove your inhibitions, tap into your creativity, use technology to empower you as a teacher, collaborate with others, be transparent, and just be free…”

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The Etilab is likened to a sandpit
Creativity process…

6. After lunch we had four very interesting presentations showing different journeys in education. The programme described this as “Lived experiences of those at the coal face and lessons we have learned from implementation’. Two that particularly interested me were:

a) The presentation from two teachers - a Grade 3 teacher and an ICT teacher at Pinelands North Primary - on the journey of their school.  This school is part of the world-wide Changemaker Schools movement. (I think they mentioned they are the 100th school in this movement.) The two teachers’ descriptions of all that happened at the school were fascinating. The plan is not to produce cultivate ‘bonsai plant’ students where everyone is the same but rather a colourful mix such as found at Kirstenbosch Gardens.

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Pinelands North Primary teachers
The bonsai as opposed to a colourful mix
The two teachers played this great video to show the context and development of their school in the past few years.

 

b) The presentation showing the journey of Wynberg Girls High School from their Mathematics Teacher/Technology Co-ordinator Peter Schutte. He showed the decisions made at the school regarding technology in the past year and the progress of implementing their ICT policies. He spoke on the tools they encourage the teachers to use and the ways they upskill the teachers and encourage them to take some risks. He mentioned problems on the ground and how they work at solving them. I was very interested in the idea of creating hybrid IT/Teacher positions for those who are interested. I also liked the idea that the teachers visit other schools to get new ideas and liked hearing about the tools they are emphasising at the moment and how they train the teachers in using those tools through screencast videos. This was a really excellent presentation.

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Peter Schutte from Wynberg Girls school
Real changes are being made
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Solutions to problems
Tools they use a lot

There were many other interesting presentations – in face this was a very interesting day! The collection of tweets for the day can be found at  http://goo.gl/uzMN3U

Teachers, go to the ‘sandpit at Etilab at UCT & play with ‘their web tools.  Also consider inviting invite Etilab to do a Professional Development workshop at your school.  

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Podcasting #1: How to download and use Audacity for podcasting on a Windows PC

This morning I realised that I didn’t have the wonderful., free audio recording application,  Audacity,  installed on my recently replaced laptop and I wanted to record some of our Grade 3’s reading for World Read Aloud Day. Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, and other operating systems. The interface is translated into many languages. You can use Audacity to record live audio. I love this application.

1: Find a free Audacity download online

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2: Watch a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this
This useful 4 minute video came up in my search so I watched it. (Audacity: How to download and install (free software)
http://tjfree.com/how-to-download-and-install-audacity-on-windows/



3: Download both Audacity and Lame - they work together
There are two things to download for best resuslts. One is the latest version of audacity from the Sourgeforce page. The second is LAME MP3 encoder – since it allows Audacity to export MP3 files
The two downloads will sit in the task bar waiting for further instructions

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First install Audacity by clicking on it and following the prompts.
Then install Lame in the same way.

4: Launch Audacity
Once you have installed Audacity, you can open it by clicking on the start menu (button in the bottom left corner) and it should be under ‘All Programs’. If you have selected Çreate a desktop icon it should be there as well.

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You are ready to go!

Friday, March 20, 2015

Podcasting #2: 10 ways to use Audacity for podcasting in your classroom


The free PC application, Audacity, has so much potential for students who have access to it on a desktop or laptop. In a previous post we showed how to download the free application 'Download and use Audacity on your desktop or laptop for audio podcasting'

These are just a few ideas on ways of using it.
  1.  Make speaking avatars for your students’ blogs
    Voki.com is a great site for making speaking avatars. With Voki.com you create an avatar and one of the voice alternatives is to the students to record themselves talking using Audacity – and then upload those to their Vokis. 
  2. Use Audacity for all types of podcasts. Make  book reviews, reports, poetry readings, music tracks, Let your students create music tracks for their video podcasts. 
  3. Make an audio advertisementWith audacity you can:
    • Insert sound clips, and background music
    • Save audio clips from websites
    • Create an audio voice over to ‘sell’ product.
    • Export the final advertisement so it can be played elsewhere.
  4. Students can practise their orals using Audacity
  5. Students an record themselves reading their books and do a sel- assessment on their reading
  6. Record class singing to share with parents via a blog or website
  7. The Slideshare ‘Áudacity in the classroom’ shown below gives more ideas.

Audacity in the classroom from cassafrass01


8. ‘Flip your classroom with Audacity’
This video was made using PowToon and it gives more very good ideas for using Audacity
  

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9. Use Audacity successfully with Photostory 3, another free download from Microsoft. Here is a Slideshare showing how Audacity and Photostory 3 can be used together.



10. Jon Carl talks about using Audacity in a History Classroom http://goo.gl/roNJ3S 
Using Audacity in a US History Class to Create Radio News Broadcasts on WWII’



I love Google #8


This is another of my weekly round ups of Google posts that have caught my eye during the week. Once again it is presented using the useful web curation tool List.ly http://list.ly/ 

Friday, March 13, 2015

I love Google #7

I love Google! After looking through all the Google posts that were shared to my various subscriptions during this week and last week, these are the ten that have caught my eye so far. 

1. 3 Good Chrome Extensions to Convert Web Pages to PDFs .http://goo.gl/I3GDt9 You could use these extensions to convert long articles ( for instance articles from Scientific magazines) into PDFs which I would usually download into my computer. In this way I have a PDF format of the article which I can access and read without the need for Internet connection.


2. Getting Googley with Infographics
from Rachelle Wootenand and Stephanie Jernigan http://goo.gl/6jccLM This post has some great ideas for working on infogrpahics in lessons. There is a presentation link as well.

image


3. ‘Google Stuff’
from Tammy Worcester http://tammyworcester.com/googlestuff/ On this page, you’ll find an index of all of Tammy’s Google-related resources. This is a really useful collection of Google applications for a quick referral.

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4. ‘A Must Have Chrome Extension for Teachers’ http://goo.gl/nefER5Extensity basically helps you instantly enable or disable extensions on your Chrome. It does three main things:
  • Keep your browser fast - disable extensions that you won't use right away.
  • Keep your toolbar clean
  • Ideal companion for extensions collectors.
image

5. 6 new free Google tools to upgrade your classroom by Matt Miller

http://goo.gl/G2rKeD I always love Matt Miller from Dich That textbook’s posts. In this post he talks about six sites which will help upgrade what you do in class if you and your students utilize Google Apps frequently. Not all are technically products of Google, but they all improve work done on Google apps.

                                              Presentations look much sharper with the right slide template and eye-catching photos. These tools will improve your slide shows and more. (Flickr / Danny Sullivan)

6. ÝouTube tips and tricks’This is a collection of resources on YouTube from Wesley Fryer http://wiki.wesfryer.com/Home/handouts/youtube This is a great collection of resources that Wesley fryer used for his workshop on YouTube.

                                               


7. 'A Very Good Google Doc App for Helping Students with Their Learning' http://goo.gl/SlA1Iw Have you tried the Text Help Study Skills app? It allows them to select, highlight, and group content for review and learning.


image


8. Two Good Google Drive Templates to Create Fake Facebook Pages http://goo.gl/wDhe7j. The Fake Facebook templates provided here are created using Google Drawing meaning that when you click on “use this template” button associated with each of them, a copy of the document will be opened in your Drawing.



9. 10 Excellent Google Drive Templates for Teachers http://goo.gl/m7SiUC. The template gallery that Google Drive offers features a wide variety of templates pertaining to different topics from templates on albums and flipbooks to templates for resumes and cover letters

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10. ‘Slide Carnival’
Have you seen this lovely site?  http://www.slidescarnival.com/ Free templates for Google Slides presentation

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Saturday, March 7, 2015

Google Education On Air online, free conference for educators – May 8th and 9th. Sounds good! Register today!

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This is an exciting message from Karen Walstra from the Google team in South Africa. This conference sounds really worth registering for.

“Dear Google for Education user,

Hope you are well. I am writing to let you know that we just announced Education on Air, a free online conference for educators on May 8-9, 2015.  (Time zone is US based)

Day 1 of the event will focus on "leading for the future" with sessions from educators, students, and other leaders.

On Day 2 over 100 educators will lead sessions on "shaping the classroom today." Topics will range from "increasing student collaboration" to "successful device deployments" to "teaching computer science." I hope that you and your teammates will find this conference valuable.
You can register online for the free event, and there is more info in this blog post.

Thanks."
Learn more about Google in Education

Follow them on Google+

Friday, March 6, 2015

I love Google #6


After looking through all the Google posts that were shared to my various subscriptions during this week and last week, these are the ten that have caught my eye so far. 

1. 3 Good Chrome Extensions to Convert Web Pages to PDFs .http://goo.gl/I3GDt9 You could use these extensions to convert long articles ( for instance articles from Scientific magazines) into PDFs which I would usually download into my computer. In this way I have a PDF format of the article which I can access and read without the need for Internet connection.


2. Getting Googley with Infographics
from Rachelle Wootenand and Stephanie Jernigan http://goo.gl/6jccLM This post has some great ideas for working on infogrpahics in lessons. There is a presentation link as well.

image


3. ‘Google Stuff’
from Tammy Worcester http://tammyworcester.com/googlestuff/ On this page, you’ll find an index of all of Tammy’s Google-related resources. This is a really useful collection of Google applications for a quick referral.

image


4. ‘A Must Have Chrome Extension for Teachers’ http://goo.gl/nefER5Extensity basically helps you instantly enable or disable extensions on your Chrome. It does three main things:
  • Keep your browser fast - disable extensions that you won't use right away.
  • Keep your toolbar clean
  • Ideal companion for extensions collectors.
image

5. 6 new free Google tools to upgrade your classroom by Matt Miller

http://goo.gl/G2rKeD I always love Matt Miller from Dich That textbook’s posts. In this post he talks about six sites which will help upgrade what you do in class if you and your students utilize Google Apps frequently. Not all are technically products of Google, but they all improve work done on Google apps.

                                              Presentations look much sharper with the right slide template and eye-catching photos. These tools will improve your slide shows and more. (Flickr / Danny Sullivan)

6. ÝouTube tips and tricks’This is a collection of resources on YouTube from Wesley Fryer http://wiki.wesfryer.com/Home/handouts/youtube This is a great collection of resources that Wesley fryer used for his workshop on YouTube.

                                               


7. 'A Very Good Google Doc App for Helping Students with Their Learning' http://goo.gl/SlA1Iw Have you tried the Text Help Study Skills app? It allows them to select, highlight, and group content for review and learning.


image


8. Two Good Google Drive Templates to Create Fake Facebook Pages http://goo.gl/wDhe7j. The Fake Facebook templates provided here are created using Google Drawing meaning that when you click on “use this template” button associated with each of them, a copy of the document will be opened in your Drawing.



9. 10 Excellent Google Drive Templates for Teachers http://goo.gl/m7SiUC. The template gallery that Google Drive offers features a wide variety of templates pertaining to different topics from templates on albums and flipbooks to templates for resumes and cover letters

image

10. ‘Slide Carnival’
Have you seen this lovely site?  http://www.slidescarnival.com/ Free templates for Google Slides presentation

image
 


Wednesday, March 4, 2015

WRADSkype #4: World Read Aloud Day – my Grade 2 class participated!

This was so exciting! In the WRAD Skypathon I was paired up with a teacher, Janet Seifert, a 2nd grade teacher from South Elementary School in Newfoundland PA in the USA. Sadly our time differences of 7 hours precluded us from doing this as a Skype chat but what we decided to do was each make a video of our class reading to share with one another. .

It was very exciting when Janet sent along her Grade 2 video very professionally done by their technology coach, Michael Soskil.It was called, 'In the Snow'.




This is the video from our school of Grade 2 reading 'Eric: It's a piece of cake'.



Although our World Read Aloud project with the school in the USA is over, we are hoping to work together on a Flat Stanley project at a later stage.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

WRADSkype #3: Making our video for World Read Aloud Day

This was quite a mission I can tell you!  Mrs Pena in Grade 2 was great! She had sourced a book on Fire because just at that time there were terrible fires around Cape Town and Fish Hoek, and people had to be evacuated in some suburbs.  The book was called ‘Eric it’s a piece of cake’. It was about a baboon and how he coped in the fires. Our area is well-known for baboons. The book was great. It was all in rhyme and very relevant to what was happening in real life.

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So I went along to the Grade 2 class and videoed them taking turns to read the book on the mat.

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Here is our final video

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