Playing chicken

I have just used an image manipulation program called picnik to crop, resize and add warmth to this photo of my beloved boyfriend and friend.







Before photo (2.7 MB)













After photo (0.2 MB)

Apple tree from Flickr

I downloaded this photo of an apple tree from Flickr. It reminds me of a fun poem "Ipple-apple Tree", by Spike Milligan which I have in his children's poems book called "Unspun socks from a chicken's laundry".

I found it easy to create an account to use Flickr, but was slightly disturbed to have to provide a lot of personal details.

There are two levels of privacy settings within the program. The first allows you to share the images you upload just with your family and friends. This would be very useful for networks of people separated by large distances. There are size limits on email attachments so Flickr is more useful than email for this purpose. The second privacy setting is for public sharing of images. If you upload an image you can then choose whether to allow the public to use the image for commercial purposes and/or make alterations to it.

One use of Flickr in learning and teaching is the potential to get feedback about your image since there is a facility to add comments. Art and photography classes could use Flickr to get exposure and feedback on their creative work - either from the general public or from a previously set-up network of peers.

The creative work that other people contribute is likely to be a very useful resource to find images when students need to demonstrate their learning by creating posters, presentations and reports.

When teachers use visual aids it can really assist students who are visual learners - 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. According to Behaviour Intervention Service 2004, students with Asperger's Syndrome may require visual aids to aid comprehension. Flickr is a resource which could greatly assist teachers to provide visual content to their students.

Creating a Powerpoint

I have been using Microsoft Powerpoint to create presentations for quite a few years. It is a useful program to organise your ideas, highlight main points and show graphs and other images to support your arguments. It also assists with presenting information in small amounts, which allows for reinforcement (see behaviourism theory).
This week I learnt how to add animation and sound in Powerpoint and this has added another dimension. Instead of simply making a presentation about a topic, the use of sound and animation provides the potential to fully dramatise the performance for maximum audience engagement.
I never took drama subjects at school and generally shied away from making oral presentations whenever possible. However, using powerpoint as a prop has helped me to face an audience and speak confidently in a range of challenging situations. Perhaps the enhancement of my presentations with animation and sound will help me face tougher audiences in even more challenging situations in the future!
The benefit for student learning is that Powerpoint supports the ability of the student to communicate and defend their point of view to others, that is, for students to create persuasive arguments. According to Daniel Goleman (2007), the number one competence that distinguishes the 'stars' from the average, is the singular drive to achieve. People who have it have very high internal standards of success. They are also able to create persuasive arguments and set challenging goals.

Avatar Reflection

I can think of three ways voki avatars may be useful in education:

1. To break up the monotony of the speaker. For example, they can be used to attract attention at the beginning of a presentation, or to maintain interest half-way through a longer presentation.
2. To demonstrate different accents in speech. For example, in subjects such as languages other than english or drama, students could use vokis to research accents from different countries, or to submit an assignment using their own recorded voice.
3. To man a display if you need to take a toilet break. For example, at a careers expo you could leave an avatar playing on a computer at your display to bring attention to it while you are away.

Creating a voki avatar was light-hearted and fun. I spent a little time chosing the appearance and voice of my character, which gave me the opportunity for creative expression.

According to Multiple Intelligence theory, some people may have more linguistic, interpersonal and visual/spatial 'smarts.' Vokis may have the potential to capture the interest of people with these talents to engage in subjects they may otherwise avoid.

A disadvantage of using avatars in education is that it is reasonably time consuming and uses alot of internet download memory.

Voki Avatar

Below is my first Avatar which I created in http://www.voki.com/.


Get a Voki now!

Mahara

Mahara is a program within which you can: profile yourself; build a portfolio; provide links to external feeds; describe your skills, experience, qualifications and dreams; create friendships/social networks, and; share various types of files. There is a small annual fee for connection but Mahara is relatively easy to use with a login password, tab menu system, browse file upload and URL based weblinks. There is also a privacy feature so that individual site owners (or group managers) have control over the material other users may access.

The program offers two major opportunities to enhance learning in the education industry: motivation and collaboration. According to "The Need to Belong: Rediscovering Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" (Kunc, 1992), students are more motivated to learn if their low and mid level needs are met, including feeling a sense of belonging, . Mahara has social-networking facilities and the opportunity to document your strengths and goals. If all of its features are embraced the program may offer students the opportunity not only to feel that they belong, but that they can get their higher level needs fulfilled, such as obtaining the respect of others.

There is a 'group' feature in Mahara that allows various file types such as spreadsheets, powerpoints and other electronic information to be easily shared. According to "Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning" (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999), collaboration assists motivation through verbalising problems and different people's perspectives. Mahara offers the opportunity to share student's work in a forum common to the class, which:

...provides an incentive for them to do the best possible work, since they know that their work will be viewed by their classmates...

Easter Road Culture

Being an introvert, I like to consider carefully what information I share with others. For this blog I have been putting my ideas onto paper before starting to write on the blogger website. This has given me a chance to reflect on the main ideas I intend to post before starting to type, as well as increased confidence to share my thoughts publicly.

After setting up my alligator, oops I mean aggregator, I have been able to follow blog posts easily. This has given me an insight into the individual learning journey of other students in the graduate diploma of learning and teaching.

I have added a few comments onto other bloggers blog postings and now I find I would like to know if those bloggers have found a reason to respond to the comments I made. In order to check for a response it is necessary to keep logging into the blogs I commented on. I have not been able to find a way to follow comment updates using Google Reader. I wonder if this is a feature that other people would like to use as well? Because of the difficulty tracking comment updates it seems that blogs are more useful as independent journals which allow limited collaboration as an added bonus. If two-way conversations, feedback and collaboration are the main focus of web-based interaction it seems wikis will be more useful.

Today I started creating a wiki about integrating Road Culture learnings into high school Maths and Science education. I am passionate about the topic of Road Culture. I believe I will be a better teacher to my secondary Maths and Science students if I can show enthusiasm for the topic so my wiki is about exploring this thematic link in the public domain.

It took me a little while to decide what I should create a wiki about. It had to be a topic for which I would be most interested in reading others' opinions and developing a shared forum of knowledge, and I was conscious that the audience of the wiki could be worldwide.

Now, what I would like to know is, how do I get this wiki to be seen, and contributed to, by key people around the world?