Coveritlive

Here is another way to use web 2.0 for collaboration

New Story Telling Tool

OK, found a new site called Bookr. It allows you to search tags of images in Flicker and paste the images in to a Bookr "book" This is a very simple example.

As you can see when you move your cursor over the corner of a page it flips up and turns to the next page. You can also read it in full size by clicking the bar under the book to the left.

I "discovered" Bookr while reading a post on my Twitter account.

Student Web Pages

My students have been working on their web pages for about 3 weeks now. I began by training about 5 students (that is the number of laptops that I have set up in my classroom) on the use of PBWiki. Then these 5 were responsible for training the next 5. This way I could continue with the regular instruction of the class and students were responsible themselves for learning to create their web pages ans for catching up on what I had been teaching in class.
So far most students are accepting the added responsibility.
I have even had reports of students working on and teaching about web page creation during their computer lab time. I am especially pleased about this development because from my observation most time spent in the computer lab is spent playing "educational" games.
I'm hoping that from this other teachers will encourage students to use their time in the computer lab for the creation of more original works.

Rain Rain Rain

Oh my what a deluge today. It started raining today on the way to work then got harder when the buses started arriving. Students were coming in late because of power going out. I had to delay my art assessment today by 15 minutes because of late students. I was so flustered that I decided to make an announcement about the delay in the test and I made it right in the middle of my principals talk on the morning show, boy it just gets better and better The test went well in spite of the rain and late students. All the kids behaved well and took the art test serious.

How to Create Large Public Artworks for Children.

Presented by Paula Allen and Raquel Ache Leonard

This was a very cool workshop that combined individual works of art with a collaborative background. The diversity of media allowed for everyone’s strength to shine.

We started by making a doll using a muslin blank doll with bendable arms. For this we used many different materials, Sharpie markers, acrylic paints, fabric, beads, yarn, wire, and other things from a grab box of found objects.

For the background of the mural we used a 5x15 foot bolt of muslin. For creating the picture large sheets for hand made paper were provided. We tore and cut the shapes to form a scene of the natural environment of Florida.

Vision of Students Today

K12 Online

In one of the many blogs I read I came across a reference to an online conference for educators interested in emerging technologies. Wow this seems to speak directly to me and the focus of my interest of lately. Right now if you access the web site you can find "teasers" videos of the scheduled events. My understanding is that you can view the workshops live online and interact with the presenters. That should be pretty cool. I'm going to try and catch some of the presenters.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the latest of web 2.0 that I have discovered. OK it’s probably a discovery that has already been found by many before me. But I still find it exciting. This is yet another way that information can be saved, stored, organized, and shared with others.

del.icio.us is a website that allows users to create editable pages of links. This could be a great tool for teachers. Now we can easily save and share web sites with other teachers and students. Here is a link to my del.icio.us page. http://del.icio.us/ChanBliss here you will find a link to a video that explains social bookmarking.

As I play with this I’m sure that I will find more things that can be done with this “technology”. I guess on a basic level it allows you to carry your favorites with you.

Learn, teach, learn, teach

I’ve been reading other blogs about using web 2.0 in an educational setting. I guess as with any emerging theories there are many different opinions of how web 2.0 should be used in the classroom.

Some see the use of the web, blogs, podcasts, wikis, MySpace, Flicker and other collaborative web based tools to be liberating and empowering. Others cannot understand allowing that much unscripted, unsupervised activity in a classroom or any learning environment.

Being a classroom teacher I understand the need for control. Conversely as an artist I understand the need for freedom in a creative environment. The challenge now is to balance the two needs.

Of course mistakes will be made but those mistakes should not be a signal to return to the old ways of teaching. With the speed of change happening teachers must learn to teach as they learn. Learn, teach, learn, teach… It is a brave new world that is recreating itself faster than we can get use to the old one.