10th Anniversary Clean-up Sale

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Tom March
G’Day All, It’s time for a little house cleaning…

After over a decade as a “Web-based educator,” I’ve accumulated a few too many things to look after myself. So it’s time to see if they can find a better home. Next month, I’ll share a few domains that are catchy, but that I’ve never used. This month, though, it’s time to see if any school district, company or association is interested in two of ozline’s most popular Web sites…
BestWebQuests for Sale

BestWebQuests.com

  • Launched in 2001, BestWebQuests is the only directory of fully reviewed directory of WebQuests that are really WebQuests.
  • Here’s an example review. Note the barchart. This is created automatically by adding and reviewing the site through BestWebQuests’ powerful Control Panel and comparing it to the BestWebQuests’ Rubric
  • Included in the site is all the coding (written in Active Server Pages – ASP), a comprehensive administration back-end and a database of over 1100 quality WebQuests.
  • Includes the domain bestwebquests.com and bwqu.com (for BestWebQuests University – the potential for an online course)
  • BestWebQuests can be installed on any Windows server
  • Offers over $15,000 considered – as is: The database suffers from my neglect over the past two years and a fair bit of LinkRot renders 404s for individual WebQuests. If the quality of the database is important to the purchaser, we will go through and update the links for an additional cost.
  • Development offers considered – if your organization wants grow BestWebQuests into a mecca of Web 2, Challenge-based learning resources, I would be happy to consult on such an enterprise.

Web-and-Flow.com for Sale

Web-and-Flow.com

  • Launched in 1998, Web-and-Flow was Web 2.0 in a Web 1 era. Teacher and librarians create up to six different Web-based activities from the Interactive software.
  • Includes a built-in Link Checker to assist educators to keep their activities fresh each year.
  • More than a Web-page maker, Web-and-Flow was lovingly written by me as online mentoring in curriculum design. Included are a host of Help pages and Tutorial modules. The Purchaser would retain copyright to the written content if they want to repurpose it.
  • Includes the domain web-and-flow.com
  • Successfully licensed to school districts and associations to foster a collection of educator-made learning activities.
  • Written in robust Perl, purchasers might want to develop a revision in something like php and AJAX. This would create a real killer-app for a start-up company or expand the reach of a current portal.
  • Offers over $25,000 considered
  • If the purchaser wanted to redevelop Web-and-Flow into its full Web 2.0 + potential, I would be pleased to serve as a design consultant as an additional contract.

Showcase Sharing Method

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Module 4 Scenario – WebQuests 2.0

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Learning Scenario

Suppose students eagerly adopt opinions, argue positions and debate solutions to challenging problems. Now imagine that they have even built up a body of evidence from which to launch their case?  So what’s the problem?  What happens when students might be willing, even eager, just not able? WebQuests began in 1995 as one of the first good ways to use the Web for learning.  Even as technologies have changed solid pedagogies endure.

Challenge:

Set up a scaffolded learning activity (AKA “WebQuest”) that uses an authentic scenario, open-ended questions, a range of perspectives and rich resources to help students transform information into understanding. You can do this with a Web page template or an “unfolded” process using Web 2 tools.

But before we get to this, let’s check the Agenda

Hume eLearning Conference

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humeOnline Tour

This set of links serves as a main menu of sites for the Elluminate keynote Tom March is doing for the Hume eLearning Conference.

Sample Skills

Bookmarking

Feeds & Podcasts

Cool Web 2 Tools

Handout for this session (doc)

You can view the recorded Elluminate session

https://tommarch.com/classportals/

Whose Future?

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In 1994, the Digital Corporation produced this sexy preview of what the Web had to offer the world. They titled it “VisionShift.” Less than fifteen years later, look how this “Web” has evolved into a phone platform with personalized, location-based offerings that far exceed our wildest dreams in 1994.

Many have seen Pattie Maes’ TEDTalks on the Sixth Sense technology that is currently feasible for less than a topflight phone…

The question is not, “Will this really become available?”  Nor even “When?” The question for us to address is,

“Honestly, what might Sixth Sense become in fifteen years time that we can’t even imagine right now?”

Now let’s add a kicker:

“What are schools doing so that students’ can take advantage of such personal learning potential?”

Module 3 Scenario – ClassPortals

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Imagine…

Imagine that your students develop a sense of mastery and
enthusiasm for Learning to Look but want more.  Participating in
and even facilitating the activities themselves works, but too often
the pressures of an ongoing curriculum curtail pursuing further
inquiry.  What if you had a facility to support ongoing, sporadic
investigations on main interests and themes that have emerged
through Learning to Look activities?

Challenge:

By using a Weblog as a platform, you could empower students as authors to post, comment on and track how topics might evolve over time.  Hey, this sounds like this could develop some good Habits (of Mind)…

But before we get to this, let’s check the Agenda

Curriculum Mapping in Melbourne

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I’m fortunate to be working with ACEL and ASCD as they bring Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Ann Johnson to Australia to continue the introduction of Curriculum Mapping to our schools.  My perspective is that available technologies enable students to “side-step or super-charge” their learning.  The determining factor is a meaningful and individualised curriculum that engages intrinsic motivation and develops a culture of thinking.  My session is titled “Curriculum Mapping + Web 2.0 = Personal Learning” as I don’t think education stands a chance of taking advantage of digital technologies without better articulating and tracking individual student learning. Curriculum Mapping has to happen.

The following handouts accompany the session:

Finally – don’t miss the Conference Archive on Heidi’s Web site, CurriculumDesigners.com for access to presentations, handouts, etc. A real treasure of support.

CPTLA Conference – Teacher Librarians!

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Nice to join some of my favourite people: teacher librarians.  Part of what makes them so precious to schools is that they perform one of the few roles that has truly altered in the past few decades.  From card catalogs to server closets and from a stack of Britannica to Encarta collapsing under the weight of Wikipedia.  Teacher Librarians have had to step up to the times, whereas some in classrooms have not had to face the challenges of change.

Part of what I’m talking about in this keynote is “Info Lit 2.0”.  Yes this involves great Web 2 assets, but more importantly, a clear awareness that in our digital world, we owe it to our students to pursue the second definition of “literate”.  The awareness needed is that “taught” information literacy skills really only achieve the first:

Literate:

  1. Able to read and write
  2. Knowledgeable or educated in a particular field or fields.

 

Like all forms of critical and creative thinking, it’s the disposition that counts once the skill is learned.  This means we must develop a culture that fosters the sensitivity and inclination to engage in the task.

Then we are ready to couple the Challenge and Skill in a scaffolded process.  I tend to “take the mickey” out of Info Lit “processes” that have a neat little step called “synthesis”.  This is where WebQuests came into the mix, addressing the “insert magic here” aspect of most Info Lit approaches.  Similarly, Flow theory shows the way: a balancing act between Challenge and Skill where scaffolding is decreased as skills increase. The nice thing is that teachers and teacher librarians can get into Flow just as easily as students!  I hope that the Look to Learn strategy and tutorials for using WordPress and Pageflakes support participants as they explore the challenges of our evolving profession!

Here’s a handout for the session that focuses on the Look to Learn strategy and a few handy Web 2 tools and tutorials for working with them,

Robotics in Second life

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CLAIM-SUPPORT-QUESTION

  1. Make a claim about the topic
  2. Identify support for your claim
  3. Ask a question related to your claim

Swine flu

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Swine flu

What’s So Funny? – Claim-Support-Question

  1. Make a claim about the topic
  2. Identify support for your claim
  3. Ask a question related to your claim

If you want to learn more about this flu, click on the link below.
flutrakcer1