Mobile Games for Science

In the never ending search for great Web 2.0 tools, here’s one that packed full of great links for students of all ages: Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools. This site has everything you could want to get you started on the Web 2.0. It uses a wiki, itself a great Web 2.0 tool, to reinforce its own message about using Web 2.0 technology.
Each page focuses on a specific aspect of Web 2.0, including presentations, audio and video, research and collaboration, writing and drawing tools, social networking and file sharing, file storage and widgets.
Pages are neatly set out in tables with links, images and a brief description. You could use this site to encourage your students to evaluate different applications to rank the best tools for different jobs.
These guys have done all the hard work for you by gathering so much together in one place. If you want to get started in Web 2.0, this is the site for you.

The second part of the Gwen Solomon’s and Lynne Schrum’s book Web 2.0 new tools, new school is very much a how to guide for implementing Web 2.0 tools into the school setting.
Chapter 4 addresses the key issue of professional development for teachers through the case study at Lemon Grove who: ‘prepare teachers for new models of learning by offering more than 120 hours of curriculum-based professional development to implement technology in their classrooms, they work with 20% of the teachers each year on a five year roattaion cycle’.
This is the key issue with technology. Apart from the availability, the main stumbling block is the lack of teacher expertise. Interested teachers spend hours with technology, whilst disinterested teachers focus their attention elsewhere. A planned program of continuous professional development helps ensure teachers are well prepared to use technology in their classrooms.
From this chapter on, our co-authors provide numerous examples, some for repetitive emphasis, of different web tools for the classroom. They have been careful to provide URLs and specific case studies, so from Chapter 4 onward we read about blogs, wikis, podcasts, photo editing and sharing, movie creation and so on.
Chapter 5 has a series of tips for encouraging participation ina ‘professional, online learning community’. There is no need to feel isolated if no one else in your faculty is having a go at technology. There is a globe full of similar teachers teaching similar content in similar, if new ways. Tapping in to this community is an effective way of gathering ideas and sharing observations and experiences. Gains could be made by encouraging teachers to include a technology component in their Individual Professional Development Plans. Goal setting is an effective way of bringing about change.
Chapter 6 is directed towards the school leadership and the need for providing support, both in time and infrastructure, to reap the benefits of this technology revolution. There is also an excellent discussion on open source software. Too often the cost of software discourages schools from pursuing some of the great challenges in technology integration. However open source provides a vehicle to cover almost every aspect of computer function you can think of, and a few I hadn’t even considered. Again web addresses back the information with direct access, enabling the interested school leadership team to explore the potential of Web 2.0 technology in their school.
Such issues bring us to Chapter 7. This chapter focusses on online safety and security. Encouraging schools to display student work, and even students themselves, can only be done if there is a guarantee of safety. Using the web has a range of different implications and students need to be aware of these. The Creative Commons Licence has overcome some of the issues relating to shared resources on the web, though there is still a great deal that is protected by copyright. Many sites, including wikispaces, have dedicated school-centred areas where content can be monitored and protected from public eyes. As is always the case, there are examples of Web 2.0 tools which can be closely monitored by schools so students can experience Web 2.0 in safety.
Next week will be the final installment in this review of Web 2.0 new tools, new schools.

I’ve just finished reading through Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum’s wonderful guide to Web 2.0. It comes highly recommended to any teacher looking for practical ways of incorporating Web 2.0 technologies in their teaching.

I must admit I purchased the e-version for my Kindle. It was easy to read and very engaging. The book is split into 10 chapters:

Chapter 1 introduces the new world of Web 2.0 by contextualising it. One of the themes which will run through the book is introduced here, namely the key role of the teacher as a technology leader. When the “teacher has become a confident, active and visible user”, the technology “use becomes seamless and transparent”.

Chapter 2 contrasts Prensky’s notion of “digital natives vs digital immigrants”. The book looks at the advantages of the 1:1 laptop system and its advantageous outcomes on learning. There is some discussion on the importance of the shift from students as memorisers of information to synthesisers of information. There is a distinct challenge on educators to ensure “students learn how to process and use (that) information wisely”.

Chapter 3 discusses some of the new tools, in particular the massive potential, and underutilisation, of open-source code. Here the power of Web 2.0 comes to the fore. Blogs, wikis, social networking, podcasts, photo and video editing are all covered with online sources for each and descriptions of their use. This is no Idiot’s guide. It is a very comprehensive overview of the massive number of tools available to teachers to power up their classrooms. The list of applications is far too comprehensive to reproduce here, and I was only looking from a Science perspective.  My own research is moving me towards a mobile gaming education environment so what particularly resonated for me was the following quote: “It is not a big leap to consider mining data about every student’s learning style, retention of infromation and interests and then harness what we know from successes in the past to predict what will be successful for each student in the future. Eventually every student may get a detailed learning plan that is adjusted automatically based on new data.”

Now that is differentiation at its ultimate.

More on this excellent resource in the next post, but while you’re waiting, why not check out this and other great titles to enhance your teaching?

Crickey!

Can you believe the number of techno-tools available for educators these days?

You just have to find a way of gathering everything into a single place because otherwise it is overwhelming. That’s one of the aims of this website. Through posts, pages and links, we plan to prepare and present some usful tools which you and your students can enjoy.

Web 2.0 has thrown up a suite of open source, interactive applications which are ipso facto made for educators. They allow group work, shared response, immediate feedback and critical reasoning.

Don’t limit your thinking about Web 2.0 to blogs and wikis, even though that would be an excellent place to start, because Web 2.0 promises so much more.

To find out more about the potential of Web 2.0 to transform your teaching experience, follow the link to the Web 2.0 for Science Educators page.