Hi all,

As requested here is my update on the term 4 webquest task. I see that the ‘Budget’ page has had lots of posts and the ‘Boom’ page has had a few so that’s great.

My approach with my two year 7 Science classes was to try and motivate them to become involved without making it a part of our classwork (we are studying ‘puberty’ at the moment so it didn’t really fit, although as we studied ‘cells’ earlier in the semester I felt some students would be interested).
I discussed the project in both classes and told them what a great opportunity it was, at least 15 students showed interest and requested the instruction sheet which I had photocopied. Unfortunately none of my students have registered yet and I am not hugely confident that they will unless I make them do it in class or set it as a must do homework task (which I feel defeats the point of intrinsic motivation a bit). On a positive note I see that Di has posted some great thought provoking content.

Also on a positive note my Science blog http://mrbarlow.wordpress.com/ is going really well with almost 2700 hits to date. So my students are doing some learning outside the confines of the classroom off their own bat

Tim Barlow

Congratulations to you all for a wonderful start to this project. The evaluations of the summit were very positive. Your class blogs are a great start – all so interesting.

The researchers from Deakin – Filocha, Wendy, Peter and myself have enjoyed meeting with some of you and hearing how your work is progressing. We are keen to hear about your experiences – you may like to respond here on the blog and share with the other teachers in this project. Some quetsions you could reflect on include:

1. How is your work progressing?, Any stories of success or frustration? What response have you had from students?

2. There are five aspects of the project that we are investigating:

Higher-order thinking,

Metacognitive awareness (learning about learning)

Teamwork/ collaboration,

Affect towards school / learning

Ownership of learning.

Have your interventions had an impact in any of these areas?

Tom has been highlighting some of the thinking routines described on the visible thinking website – e.g. see-think-wonder, claim-support-question, stop-look-listen, There are a variety and you may be doing all this without using the label that the visible thinking website uses. I would live to hear of any examples from your students.

Gail

1) Start a new post in your Blog
2) Get the Web address of the YouTube video you want to add.
3) Look at the WYSIWYG menu for the “V” icon.  Click it
4) Paste in the YouTube address and hit okay
5) I like to center the video in the middle of the post.  Do this by dragging overt the funny code that got added and click the “center text” icon.

Remember you can add any text or questions above or below the funny looking code used in the post to represent the video.

6) Click “Publish” to send your post public.

If the video doesn’t show up, that means that it’s probably blocked as a YouTube link on your school network.  Otherwise it will look something like this:

Thanks to Tom’s Stumble upon site I saw this animated map http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/trashing-our-oceans/ocean_pollution_animation which claims to illustrate the build up of pollution in the Pacific Ocean. They claim it’s the size of Texas – more information is on the Greenpeace page

Di

Here’s how you can add the Fish Widget (and others)

This page lists the gadgets by abowman:
http://abowman.com/google-modules/

To add it onto your blog, find the web address of the gadget you want (Fish is: http://fishgadget.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fish.swf)

Then go into your blog and Write a Post or Page. Use the “f” button in the WYSIWYG menu and paste the address (the file should end in .swf).

About 500 height by 500 width should be pretty good, but you can always change this afterward.

Cheers,

Tom –

Jenny mentioned developing a WebQuest for her students. One suggestion is to use a basic WebQuest template and paste it into your WordPress “Page.”

Then you can just edit the text, paste in links and graphics, etc.

You could also skim through places like BestWebQuests or the WebQuest Portal, find a WebQuest that is close to what you want, send a friendly email to the author and modify it in WordPress.

Good morning, I know this is has nothing to do with the project, but on top of everything, I cannot access my email for some reason (!).

Anyway, migraine got the better of me. After a rocky night, I finally was woken up 1/2 hour ago, by one of my sons bringing in to me one of my 5 y.o twins sick and crying. Basically, I had better not leave hospital central today, I think (!)

I’ll continue working around on my new blog “france12″ and exploring possibilities + looking at your interesting posts; and hopefully see you tomorrow.

Cheers

Isabelle  

After hearing someof the interest area yesterday I thought the Edna Global Education site was worth revisiting.The site supports the AusAID Global Education Program which aims to raise awareness and understanding among Australian school students of international issues, development and poverty, and to prepare them to live in an increasingly globalised world and to be active citizens shaping better futures.
Another interesting file is the Chasers Grease parody a combination of song dance and CO2 emmisions!
Lastly Film Australia offers a series of filmclips for use by schools investigating the Asia pacific area
DiW

Here is a great “see-think-wonder” activity:

Tim

Take a look at the right list of Pages and you’ll see one for MyPlace ClassPortals - it should be a list of all our sites