Yesterday I had the chance to spend 2 hours with a bunch of TAFEies from Baulkham hills and Nepean…We had a great time seeing (and trying) some of the free and easy tools out there on the web!
We started out by looking at Wikipedia, and seeing how the web is changing into something that everyone can contribute to. I’m hoping that this is a good way to introduce a great free resource (Wikipedia), while also highlighting how the Web is moving from “Read only” to “Read/Write”, but am waiting for feedback from participants to help me understand whether it was helpful or not!
I think most people were suprised at how easy it is to get their own website up, but ideally we needed more time to practise using our sites… A few people identified this on their feedback forms. It’s great to see that everyone found the workshop to be very useful (on the feedback form anyway!)
Here’s some snippets from the sites people created:
Sandra reflects on one of the highlights of last week’s teaching:
Relief on our students faces! As students start to complete their final external exams this week, one of the great feelings as ateacher is to watch the transformation of students. Last week they were nervous, demanding and tired.
While another person seems to be beginning a novel where CLAMS plays an antagonist! :-). JforJules points out that technology introduces a “fantastic new world of interest and rubbish. how to discern is the trick” – how to discern… a good question! (Relevance, relevance, relevance)
Jill notes that “Another aspect of technology and learning is the ability for students to use online tools” – an incredibly important point! We always need to consider carefully our target audience when choosing to use a technology in some learning activity!
Well, I certainly enjoyed the two hours! I’m still struggling to re-jig this workshop so that people can have a website that they want to continue to use after the workshop… even if it was only reflecting on teaching experience once a month or something. Ideas?
I enjoyed the website lesson. It was good to be able to learn other simple tasks there as well. Like putting “.” around the word you search for in a serch engine to pinpoint what you are looking for. Enjoyed it alot thanks Michael.
Regards
Peter
No worries Peter! Glad it was helpful!
Thanks Michael I enjoy our session and agree I did not realise how easy it was to create your own blog. I can see some great uses for this tool and am sure I will use it in the future, hopefuly the not too distant future.
Cheers, Beth
I really enjoyed the afternoon. I just got reved up and it was time to go. i wish that I had more time to play. Thank you.