teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

The honeymoon effect is starting to wear off at my new school, although it’s still better than any other I’ve worked in. Now that I’m used to the way the school works, colleagues and students I’m started to get frustrated again with the whole system. In what follows I’m going to try and set out what I think school should be like in the 21st century and, as a result, what a teacher’s role would be in such a system… :D

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Sloodle is a blending of Second Life and Moodle which promises to bring a bit of pedagogy to 3D immersive environments. Blocks in Moodle become objects in Second Life. Chat logs, etc. in Second Life become ‘contributions to the Moodle classroom’. Looks promising, despite my rather unproductive forays recently in Second Life for research… :p

Edublogosphere.com by Chris Crafts looks to be a decent, useable version of Edublogger News. It’s a bit like Digg.com in that you can submit stories (i.e. blog posts) which can then be voted and commented upon by other users. Could be a great way to find out about new and popular stories… :D

Jotspot, the online wiki service has announced that it has been acquired by Google. This is great! Quite a few edubloggers have commented on its ease of use and the only thing putting me off was the price tag. It’ll be a great addition to Google Docs and Spreadsheets… :)

A seriously useful Firefox extension from Gina Trapani, editor of the excellent Lifehacker has just come to my attention. Called About This Site it adds options to see the site you’re currently visiting via the Wayback Machine, its position on Technorati, and much more! :D

Feeds That Matter is a grouping of publicly-listed feeds on Bloglines that creates a taxonomy of ‘most relevant’ feeds. They don’t seem to be too far off with the education-related one (although this blog isn’t there…) :p

I’ve been far too busy enjoying my half-term to round up properly this week. Call it laziness, call it what you will, but I’ve really enjoyed some proper down-time this week without thinking about school too much. It must be something to do with being in my third year of teaching. Anyway, I’ve been enjoying the following:

• Coffee
• The K12 Online Conference
• Catching up with friends
• My wife’s cooking
• Thinking of how del.icio.us can be used to serve up homework and projects to students
• Messing about on t’Internet
• Learning how to use Macromedia/Adobe Fireworks half-decently
• Coming up with an Edublogosphere search using Google Custom Search

I think everyone else’s attention has been on the conference as well – there haven’t been many posts of note on which to comment… :p

Before I had my own blog or even took part in any forums like those at Schoolhistory.co.uk or EffectiveICT.co.uk I used to read blogs and forums as a passive user. I was Web 1.0, ‘old-school’, however you want to put it. Encouraged to take part in one of these forums by an active user I found that I did have something to contribute and that the amount of stuff I learned
grew proportionally related to the extent to which I participated.

So if you’re a passive reader of this blog, or anything online which features interactive elements, GET INVOLVED! You’ll thank me for it in the end. In my opinion, the best place to start is by posting your thoughts to what’s going on at the K12 Online Conference…

I keep coming across TiddlyWiki and still haven’t heard anything bad about it – in fact everyone seems to rave about it – so I thought I’d have a bit of a play around. The result is at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk/wiki, and I’ve updated the link in the navigation bar of this site. The original version of TiddlyWiki is for use offline only, but there are a few server-based derivatives, including ccTiddly, the version I’ve used. For more see the Wikipedia page about TiddlyWiki. :p

The EffectiveICT.co.uk forum, of which I am an administrator, has had a makeover. The categories have been reorganized to make it easier to navigate and the new blue skin makes it a joy to behold! The purpose of the forum is to promote the effective use of ICT across the curriculum and discuss both the pedagogy and practice behind its implementation. If you’re not already a member, please stop by and join the conversation! :D