using technology to excite learners

Caroline Roche

Holmesdale Technology College, Kent

Twitter: www.twitter.com/carolineroche Email:

caroline.roche@holmesdale.kent.sch.uk Personal blog: http://

uulibrarian.wordpress.com Slideshare: www.slideshare.net

/carolineroche Delicious bookmarking site: http://

delicious.com/carolineroche Diigo bookmarking site: www.diigo.com

/user/carolineroche

Because our students are already collaborating online with each other

Because we need to be collaborating too to reach them in a way that is relevant to them

Social Media Counter – fascinating facts and figures!

Why not connect to an author or another school via Skype?

Cost is an advantage – no travel expenses

Skype is free to download – all you need is a computer with a microphone and a videocamera

Skype will make it more economical for much smaller tutorials for students – consider this for AL English for example, contacting an author or a lecturer at a University or FE college for a Masterclass

Go to this website: http://voicethread.com Signing up for an account is free. If you

want an educators account which allows you to have up to 100 pupils on your account without them having to submit their own names and email addresses, simply apply for one

Then upload your powerpoint, podcasts or videocasts and invite people to comment

We are currently participating in a Voicethread poetry collaboration with other schools around the UK

These can be really powerful ways of sharing information you want your pupils to have

They encourage students to read and look up the information for themselves

They can be as wide or as focussed as you choose

They can be your personal startpage, or be set as a startpage for students to have

Visit these pages here:

http://www.netvibes.com/discoverycollegelibrary#DC_Library

Twitter is a collaborative tool which allows you to connect instantly to selected people to form a PLN (personal learning network)

It will take time to find the best people for you to interact with, who will give you the sort of information which ‘feeds’ you

Twitter needs to be used consistently to get the best value, but will soon become an indispensible tool for you to use

Education professionals who tweet about education in a useful and meaningful way:

@Philbradley – Professional ICT Trainer @Tombarrett-Primary teacher @Markw29 – Primary teacher @dajbelshaw – Director of e-Learning @tommydonbavand @LibWithAttitude – of course!

Twitter has its own polling system which you can use for your followers – Twtpoll

Polling tool for your website – Vorbeo Chat box for your website which pupils can

use to ask you questions and see when you are online to answer – Meebo

Used to share bookmarks with staff and students

Can be accessed anywhere on any computer

You can create separate lists for pupils or staff to use

Two main tools used in UK are Diigo and Delicious

Can embed the lists on to your VLE for better functionality

Diigo gives you the option to join lists as well and receive digests of bookmarks others on the list have saved

Tag bundles (groups of bookmarks) that I have created

My latest bookmarks, including tags I have given them

Lists of bookmarks created by me

Diigo bookmarking tool in my toolbars

Delicious bookmarking tool

You can quickly and easily save the webpage you are looking at by clicking the bookmarklet tag

You can then share the bookmarks with others

You can link to friends and search their bookmarks

You have a library of websites which are peer reviewed by people you trust

You can create a list of websites for your pupils to do their own research with

Go to www.rollyo.com and sign up for this free resource

Create your own Rollyo Copy and paste the widget code on to

the page of the VLE where you would like it to work

In this way, you can teach pupils to search for their own results, but can control the sites you want them to search in

Top 100 Tools for Learning from Jane Hart: brief explanations and links to best tools to use: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/

Phil Bradley: A must for everyone to follow:

http://philbradley.typepad.com/i_want_to/ Discovery education site – brief video

introductions to the most popular Web 2 tools: http://cdwg.discoveryeducation.com/web2.0/video.cfm