Tag: Students 2.0

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Blogs – how to set one up and write a post that gets you noticed (maybe!)

I created this presentation for Students 2.0. Blogging can be a very powerful tool for young people who want to explore their interests and connect to others with similar bent. All too often I come across student blogs that are set up as class assignments and you can feel a lacklustre involvement with many of them. It’s one of the reasons I don’t get my students writing blogs. I think that blogging is an art, something that is best pursued by people who are passionate about what they are doing, people who write because they love their subject matter and want to share it with others.

That’s the best scenario in my opinion, but I do think there is worth in exposing students to ideas about what can be achieved if you choose to push yourself out there and share your thinking with others. Particularly for kids who have specific interests and don’t realise that you can advance your cause by connecting with the right people.

I visited a school a couple of years ago where students were given the task of putting together a ‘pitch’ to a company about something they were interested in. One student was a go kart racer and had real potential to make his way to the higher ranks where you could eventually become a formula one racing driver. I was very impressed with the effort he put into his ‘pitch’ and the dedication he gave to the task. It mattered to him. I watched the teacher thank him for his efforts, but I couldn’t help but think there was an opportunity wasted at that point. If he had a teacher who understood what blogging can do for people, he could have been encouraged him to start his own and create a profile that may get noticed by those who make decisions. He could have created the digital profile he needed.

What we need in our schools are teachers with skill sets that enable our kids to be exposed to social media tools that will help them take their learning outside of school walls and give them an opportunity to connect with others. My fear is that teachers with the necessary skill sets are few and far between. Hopefully a presentation like the one above will help some teachers relay an understanding to their students.

The Elluminate session was recorded. You can follow this link to listen to me expand on the ideas presented in the slides if you so choose to.

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RSS – Bringing information to you

This is the presentation I prepared for the second session of the Students 2.0 Learning Web 2.0 series. Not a huge number of people were in the room, but hopefully there will be teachers and students out there who will find this presentation useful in their classrooms. This is the first time I’ve uploaded a presentation to Slideshare. Usually I create presentations using SlideRocket, but Elluminate likes the PowerPoint format so that is what I used this time. Doing it this way means I can upload them to Slideshare and can regularly check in to see if they have been viewed or if anyone has left a comment.

I’ve uploaded this presentation to the Learning U wiki I’ve created to support this series. On the RSS page there are other great presentations from Slideshare and YouTube to help people gain an understanding of what RSS is and what kinds of options are out there for receiving RSS feeds.

Hopefully people will find this a useful resource. It took a fair bit of time to put together, so I hope it sees sunlight somewhere!

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Students 2.0 – the first session

Tonight I jumped a hurdle. A few of them really. I was moderator of an elluminate room running the introductory session of Students 2.0. Anne Mirtschin, wonderful woman that she is, had provided me with quite a bit of training over the past week and it was thanks to her that I felt reasonably comfortable about running the session.Thanks also need to go to Adrian Camm who helped out with this session in a moderator capacity to ensure it didn’t fall over!

I fully expected there to be no-one with me in the room. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Seventeen people attended, all of them teachers from Australia and the United States. Some, like Monika Hardy from Colorado, got up at 3.15 in the morning to attend. One of the students from my school was trying to get in but had problems with elluminate on her computer. This is going to be the biggest challenge facing this initiative; establishing the student base that will make the whole thing viable. Hopefully the teachers who were there will be able to generate interest amongst their student body and we may see them getting on board in weeks to come.

I put together a short presentation as an introduction; you can find it embedded on a Wiki I’ve created to support the sessions I’m going to be running in the coming weeks. Here’s a rundown of what’s on offer;

RSS – finding what you’re interested in and bringing information to you. May 5th 7.30pm AEST
Blogs – Learn how to set one up and write a post that gets you noticed. May 12th 7.30pm AEST
Google Docs – storing and sharing your information in the cloud. May 19th 7.30pm AEST
Ning and other social network environments – how to work and learn with others. May 26th 7.30pm AEST
Wikis – for storing, sharing and showing what you can do. June 3rd 7.30pm AEST
Twitter – not just small talk. Using Twitter for learning purposes. June 10th 7.30pm AEST
Social bookmarking -organising your learning. June 17th 7.30pm AEST

This is all a bit of an experiment at the moment. It may work, it may not. Hopefully it will prove to be valuable for students; we’ll just have to wait and see how things pan out. The session was recorded, but my limited understanding of elluminate means that I’m not sure how to find the recording and get it linked into the Students 2.0 site! Hopefully, Steve Hargadon can help out with that for me.

I hope students will find the space and see the possibilities of directing their own learning with the support of teacher mentors. Time will tell.

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Student’s 2.0- what’s it all about, Jenny?

On January 1st 2010, I wrote a post called ‘The era of the everyman – but you better be good’. In it was this paragraph;

I’m a little disappointed that the elective I proposed for this school year, Learning U, didn’t get enough interest from our student body to warrant a class running. (It was renamed ‘ICT’ in the elective handbook – don’t think that helped it any : (  ) The idea of the course was that students would explore their passion and use the tools of social media to connect and learn from others who also share a similar passion. I think it would have helped guide some students to understand how it is you can produce quality content that will help you rise to the top. So, how will I convey this understanding without the forum I was hoping for? I’m not quite sure yet, but I know I’ll be doing my best to help the students at my school to understand that you can use the available tools, and the connections that are possible with these tools, to your advantage. But they’ll need to remember, quality counts while you’re at it.

Last November, I went to a dinner with Steve Hargadon, John Pearce and Jenny Ashby. While there, I talked about the Learning U idea. Steve was interested and we’ve continued to talk since about how it could be realised. The result of those discussions is Students 2.0. Here’s what it’s about;

Students 2.0 is a network for learners to connect independently with other students and with mentors–to shape your own educational paths and experiences outside of traditional institutions. It’s a place to explore passionate interests, find people to help you, and build professional competencies. Soon you’ll be forming your own virtual “Personal Learning Network” (PLN)!

I’m going to be running a series of ‘classes’ helping students to learn how to use the tools of social media. The times for these are detailed on the home page. I’m doing this not because I think learning online is all about the tools, but because I think an understanding of these tools will assist them to understand how they can use them to shape their learning experiences. I want to see students find a way to explore what it is that interests them, something our school curriculum might not be doing. It doesn’t have to be a purely academic pursuit, there are kids out there who want to be pro skaters. The fact is, whether you want to discover the cure for aids or become a pro basketballer, you would find some benefit in understanding how you use social media to connect with people who share your interests and learn how you can make your voice heard.

The network is up and running and we have seen a number of teachers join. The challenge will be developing the student community. I suppose we will be working on the ‘if you build it, they will come’ concept. Effectively, this will mean relying on teachers to inform students about its existence and leave it up to the students to decide if they join or not. The fact is, students are under pressure themselves with the expectations of school, sport, family and their social lives. This network is not going to appeal to everyone, but there are kids out there I suspect who are looking for something like this. If we can help some of these kids realise their potential in a field that interests them, then it will be a job well done.

That’s my take on Students 2.0 anyway. It’s kind of strange to read my words from January the 1st, and be contemplating at the start of April what might be possible now. Hopefully, it will evolve into a useful resource supported by teacher mentors and experts in areas of interest to the students. It’s somewhat of an experiment, and the hope is that it will prove beneficial. It may even provide a teaching model that schools can tap into. We’ll see what evolves.