Staff Learning

Collaborative Brainstorming with EtherPad and Wordle

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:51:39 +0000

Real-time Collaborative Brainstorming – What Fun! What Good Learning!

When students have access to computers or personal devices (Netbooks or iPad3+) you can easily create a real-time collaborative writing page that will also generate a word cloud to show the dominant terms students wrote.

Here are the steps.

1. Go to PrimaryPad (click on the link or the image below) and then click on the “Create New Pad” button.

2. Copy the URL / WebAddress that is automatically generated for your page.

3. Paste the URL into your Blog post so students can all access the same page.

4. Edit the PrimaryPad page to include any instructions / prompts you want students to respond to. Then turn off the Authorship Colors so that only students’ writing is colored.

5. Now you are ready to engage the students in an activity such as this by Year 11 English students who analyzed two scenes from Rebel Without a Cause. Have students enter their names in the Author Icon so everyone can see who is writing in which color.

6. Once students have completed the writing, you can have them read through it, edit or select the most insightful passages, etc. Now let’s get a snapshot of the group’s thinking by having EtherPad / PrimaryPad create a word cloud including the most used terms.

First click on the Timeslider icon.

Once the contents of the page reloads, you can run the slider backwards to see how the composition evolved. It’s cool. But we want to use the “Import/Export” icon, so click on the two arrows.

Next, click on the Wordle export.

Depending on your computer’s speed, the browser you’re using and how well Java loads, you should see a word cloud appear in the next screen thanks to the Web site Wordle.net

You can click on the Randomize button to change the look of the font, layout and colors.

You might want to save the image. If you are comfortable taking and using a screen capture go ahead, but you can also use Wordle’s built-in online gallery to host your word cloud. Simply click on the Save to Public Gallery button.

Go ahead and provide authorship details and description:

If you want to include a thumbnail image and link to the full-size image, you can copy the embed code provided at the bottom of the page.

Now go back to you own blog post and switch to the HTML view of the Text Editor and paste the embed code.

To see what it looks like, just flip back to the Visual Text Editor:

That’s it! Well done!

Look to Learns (L2Ls) for K-12

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:47:07 +0000

Below are a few Look to Learn activities that might suit the students / courses identified below. You do not have to limit yourself to those at your Grade Level / KLA, but these groupings are meant to save you time as you trial this approach for promoting Visible Thinking.

Early Years

Upper Primary

ASUS EeePad Transformer Set-up

admin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:53:52 +0000

Unboxing & Initial Set-Up

The Following Steps are Used for the Initial Set-up of an ASUS EeePad Transformer

Unpack units and remove all stickers / protective plastic
Clip Screen into the keyboard (securely)
Plug-in to power source
Start (button on top left of screen)
Set-up

Accept default US language
Accept default keyboard (US – helps with keyboard @ symbol)
Untick location services
Untick back-up to Google account
Turn On Network Time & Date

Brings you to the Desktop
Open Settings (lower right corner of screen)
Open Wireless settings – Turn on WiFi
Select the OxleyWireless network
When prompted, enter the password and proxy: proxy.oxley.nsw.edu.au & port 80
This creates an Internet connection (note obtaining IP address and Time Update upon connection)
Open the Web Browser (blue Globe icon) – if this prompts the Oxley Wireless log-in simply “cancel” unless you will be using the tablet for a staff member.
Opening the browser should initiate an update to Adobe Flash. Accept this update.
This prompts connecting to a Gmail / Google account. Use: oxleyit@gmail.come & the password and Accept the Google user agreement.
Install updates
In the browser, navigate to oxleylearning.org and click on the browser settings in the upper right corner, click on Settings > Homepage, Click “Current Page” and set as default.
Charge the unit (takes approximately 2.5 hours for Keyboard, 6 hours)
Register serial numbers, affix # tag and get units barcoded for Oliver.

Look to Learn – SOLE

admin — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:42:05 +0000

Sugata Mitra, a professor at Newcastle University and MIT, began his “Hole in a Wall” experiments many years ago. This clip shows the computers placed as “holes in the wall” where children accessed them without any supervision or instruction and then he goes on to describe another experiment where Tamil speaking 12 year old children were challenged to teach themselves biotechnology in English.

See – Think – Wonder

What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

You can learn more about SOLE’s (Self Organising Learning Environments). You can also read more about Look to Learn activities.

The uses for Homework?

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:56:37 +0000

Recently at an Academic and Area Heads meeting the question was raised as to why we ask students to complete homework. Many ideas were offered. As a way to capture these great ideas for further discussion, a “Stixyboard” was set up. All you need to do is visit the link and drag a stickie note onto the board, then type your ideas. The link was sent around via email.

Modifying Your OxleyLearning Menus

admin — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:43:01 +0000

Here’s a good video describing how to modify the menu structure of your blog on OxleyLearning. Administrators of Faculty blogs has access to make these changes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There’s also an in-depth guide on Menus from the WordPress site.

Adding Youtu.be Videos – 2012 Update

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:40:07 +0000

Youtube has begun using a strange configuration of its domain that doesn’t work when you embed a Youtube video into a post on your OxleyLearning site.

The workaround is very easy and shown below.

Embedding http://youtu.be Videos

1. As usual, find the video you want to embed.

2. Access its distinct Web address by clicking on the “Share” button.

3. When the Share menu opens, notice the “Options” link and click it. Notice that the domain is in the funny “youtu.be” format. Not to worry. You can click on the “Long Link” checkbox to change to the traditional — WordPress-friendly — format.

4. Now you can copy the long link.

5. Return to your OxleyLearning site and embed the Youtube video as usual.

Diigo

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:34:15 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Diigo is a great tool for many uses. You will discover how you find it most useful, but here are a few main ways:

Bookmark Web sites
Annotate Web pages
Join in annotated discussions
Share Links with a Group
Join a Group of other users around a shared topic
Receive emails that update you on newly added links on subjects of your interests

Educator Account Help pages

Educator Account & Console
Educator Account – Getting Started page & FAQ

General Help Pages

Accessing Atlas for the First Time

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:14:20 +0000

Oxley College uses a software program as a live database of its curriculum. It goes by the name “Atlas Rubicon.” As a new member of staff you are provided with a log-on.

You can get to Atlas by either entering the URL http://oxleylearning.rubiconatlas.org or navigating to it from OxleyLearning (http://oxleylearning.org and use the dropdown menu).

Once you are at the Atlas site, use the select menu to find your name. Select it and the first time you will use the default password. This is sent to you in the Welcome email message. When you log-on with this you are immediately prompted to change the password to one of your own choosing. Please make it one you will remember. If you happen to forget, notice the “Click here for password reset” link.

If you would like a basic overview to the Atlas interface, there are a range of Help files. Of particular interest might be the “Basic Navigation” video.

Look to your Faculty Leader for help in learning how your colleagues use Atlas to Develop and Browse units of work.

Core Apps

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:33:39 +0000

The following were the core apps we installed on every iPad. Staff have experimented with many others, but these found the most use across faculties.