The story so far for Year 1 Educational Studies

The new face of Glogster

It's time to introduce Glogster, the Web 2 application that is both creative and innovative, to my Ed Studies students.  There is no denying that it is a wonderful tool for collaborating and sharing information, yet again I'm inspired by the work of others as I check out what's new with the application.  This time I stumbled across this YouTube video of 4th grade children in Hosmer School in Water town, MA.

Every day is a school day

One of the best things about my job is that I never stop learning.  Today my 1st year Ed Studies group were playing with 2animate to create animations of their favourite catch phrase.  I asked them to put them on their blog and reflect on the process as normal.  One clever student has given me a really cool way to add the active animation directly to the blog as blogger doesn't support gifs, using a cool website called TinyPic.com to grab the embed code!

Et voila!

Shift Happens

I know that this is an 'old' clip but as I teach and learn about education and technology I feel that it still encapsulates some of the issues that education of today faces.  When I say 'old' 2008 is old in terms of technological advancements. Yet this clip is still pertinent and applicable to today's learners. I have seen this used in an innovative seminar about the way in which technology should be shaping education and today a student found it on YouTube for her Wiki piece on Education of the Future.

   

A first year group's reflections

Here you can see a bubbl.us activity being used to help 1st year students explore the concept of reflective learning. The students created this bubble collaboratively as they also got to grips with the tools that bubbl.us have in their free version of the app. They went on to produce their own bubble and embedded them on their own blogs. For some students this was a straightforward procedure, that was a mere progression from their activities on Facebook or their personal blogs, but for others there were a fair amount of concerns and anxieties to do with their perceived ICT skill set. Some of them don't realise just how skilled they are and that the skills they have are so easily transferable. My hopes are that this course helps to build their confidence as well as broaden their personal resources. Only time will tell!

A new year group

Welcome to blogging Year 1 Educational Studies

To most of the this first  year group it is their first taste of blogging.  Although some do have a blog or even a collcetion of them!  The favourite blog host seems to be tumblr and a nice collection of visually stimulating sites they have too! Tumblr seems to be the favourite host for blogs that display lots of images, although this may just be a coincidence.  It would be interesting to evaluate some of the free blog hosting sites to see which is best for the job.  A job for me when I get a spare moment or two, maybe...

See the list of top blog services

Click here for the full review

Steve Jobs

As I am still smarting from buying an ipad just as the ipad 2 is announced, Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being.  The founder and innovative force behind apple died very recently and one begs to wonder what impact his death will have on Apples technological stampede.  In August this year Steve Jobs resigned from his role as CEO of Apple, although this was not the first time he had done so.  Incredibly in his early 20s Steve founded what is now the multibillion dollar company Apple. In 1985 Steve reigned from Apple to form a new company, neither company thrived as well as hoped leaving the market open for Microsoft’s Bill Gates to take a foothold in the Ed Tech market.  By 1996 Steve jobs is back at the helm of Apple and the company begins to flourish yet again, with such wonders as the iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone and the iPad.  What is next I wonder? See the timeline of the man that changed the face of technology.