Ticking Mind Bulletin #12 2011

If you could have any backyard, what would it be? One of today's Web 2.0 tips is a tool that allows students to think about just that - and create their own, unique backyard. This can become the stimulus for a descriptive writing task: In my imaginary backyard there would be...

PBS (The American Public Broadcasting Service) has developed a tool that allows users to select from a wide range of backgrounds and then insert objects into the backyard. No account is required. It's easy and fun to use, and the image created can be saved and printed off at the end as stimulus for the above task. Find the tool here: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/offthemap/html/create_your_own.html

Students love Web 2.0 tools because they are visual. The next tool we want to discuss is Sketchcast - an online drawing tool. There are loads of online drawing tools, but what makes this one unique, is that you can record yourself doing your drawing and talking about it as you're doing it.  The video can then be posted on Sketchcast's website. Students will need an account to use this site, but it only takes a minute to create. Once you have filled out your username, password and email address, you can get straight into creating a drawing and recording yourself.

There are lots of ways we can get students to use drawing as a learning tool in class. They can draw:

- Pictures or icons to represents characters from texts

- Important places in the setting of a text

- Create charts or concepts maps about ideas

- Draw pictures to represent vocabulary terms

- Draw pictures to represent any type of content they have just read

Drawing pictures requires students to actively think about the content they are trying to represent visually. If they draw it, and talk about it at the same time, it's great evidence that learning is taking place. Set students any of the above tasks, direct them to Sketchcast, and get them to record themselves talking about the picture as they draw it. Once a video has been created, it will have its own unique web URL and can be visited by your or any other student. See the tool here: http://sketchcast.com/

Short Films / Big Ideas #6 2011

Something creepy today. Last bulletin we looked at Dangle and Black Hole. Today's film, Pencil Face, is similar to both those films in that it contains no dialogue. It's also similar because it involves the protagonist discovering an object that can do amazing things. However, whereas Dangle and Black Hole are more science fiction or dramatic in genre, Pencil Face leans towards horror.

The film clocks in at 3.00 mins. In the film a girl discovers a huge pencil with a maniacal grin (as you do). She soon finds out that whatever it draws comes to life. But can a huge pencil with a creepy grin really be out to do her a good turn? Of course, like Black Hole, the protagonist in this film ends up falling victim to the magical object they thought safe to use. Unlike Black Hole, where we feel the protagonist deserves what he gets in the end, we don't feel this about the girl in Pencil Face. In that sense, the film is a good study in characterisation. It can be watched side by side with Black Hole and we can ask our students at the end: did the main character deserve what they got? Why? In Black Hole, the main character is greedy - he deserves what he gets. However, in Pencil Face, the girl uses the pencil to draw objects like a kite and a birthday cake - things of childish innocence. We like her.

Pencil Face is also a simple but effective illustration of sound as a filmic technique. The accompanying music is creepy and rapidly gives us a strong idea of the plot direction. Play the film for a minute or so and ask students to predict what happens in the end. Ask them to think about how music contributes to their sense of where this film is going.

Ticking Mind Bulletin #11 2011

In our last post we discussed one of our favourite web 2.0 tools - Popplet. It's a simple and attractively presented mind mapping tool that also allows for collaboration (check out all our previous bulletins here). Today's bulletin is about online survey or polling tools.

Polling tools can be used in a number of ways in the class:

*Get an overview of students' opinions about an issue - or different aspects of an issue

*Get an overview of how students feel about characters or the ending in a text

*Get an overview of how students feel about a theme or topic being studied

*Students can create their own list of 'powerful' questions to ask about a text, issue or topic and poll each other

Polling tools are a way of getting everyone in a class involved and providing feedback. They also provide a starting point for class discussion.

There are two polling tools which are particularly good. The first is Flisti. This is a well presented tool that is quick and easy to use. It requires no account or log in. Simply visit the page, create a new question and then share the URL it creates with your students. Students themselves can easily create questions, too. Find the tool here.

Votos is also easy to use, but requires an account and a log in. If you have a Facebook or a Twitter account (which most of your students will), you can log in with these. Otherwise you can create your own account. Votos' features are slightly more advanced - giving you more options on how people can respond to your question (such as ranking answers). Find the tool here.

Both tools allow people responding to a question to also give a written response. This make both these polling tools ideal feedback tools. Students need to tick an answer to the question, but then provide a brief written response. If students are doing this all at the same time, response information is updated live - so they will be able to see the survey results develop in front of them, and read the comments from other students. Once you do this, you'll easily see how it can spark class discussion.

Log onto our practice Flisti question here - should we let students use Facebook in our schools?

Ticking Mind Bulletin #10 2011

One of the things the Web 2.0 is best for in the classroom is to allow students to visualise their learning. There are many Web 2.0 concept mapping tools that can be powerful learning aids in the classroom. In this blog we want to talk about what we consider the best - Popplet.

Popplet is a concept mapping tool that is more attractively presented than every other available online concept mapping tool, is easy to use, has collaborative functions, and allows users to insert pictures and web pages into their concept maps.  See the picture below (or, if it isn't displaying, click here)



















Concept mapping can be an effective way for students to explore and represent their understanding of ideas and how they link. However, often concept mapping is done poorly in the classroom. Here's a procedure to follow:

1. Students start by listing 10-15 words, phrases or ideas that they most associate with the topic being studied
2. On their concept map, students first place on the map the topic in the centre
3. To the left of the map students write the word from their list that has the strongest link to the topic being studied. They explain the link by drawing a link to the topic in the centre and annotating this link with an explanation.
3. Students next place the word from their list on the concept map that is most logically linked to the first word they wrote. They explain the link to the first word and also draw a link to the topic in the centre and explain this link if appropriate.
4. Students then place a word  on the map that can most logically be linked to the previous word, performing the same steps as above.
5. Students keep going in the same fashion until they have linked all their words.

The beauty of this procedure is that it gets students to focus on meaningful links between aspects of the topic being studied. Popplet makes an ideal companion because it gives students an infinite canvas on which to create their concept - it also means they can continue to revise and edit as they go along.

To use Popplet, students will need to create an account. It's free and quick. If every student in a group creates a Popplet account, one student can create a new Popplet and then share it with the other members of the group who can all collaborate on the Popplet at the same time. This is perfect for the classroom in which every student has access to a laptop.

Further to the above concept mapping procedure, Popplet is also a great tool for creating plot recounts of a text being studied. Give students 15-20 digital pictures that can be associated with events from a text somehow (you'll need to save these pictures as separate files on the network where students can access them), and ask your students to arrange them in order from left to right in a Popplet page to represent the order of events from the text. They can then annotate each picture.

Find Popplet here.