Saturday 28 May 2011

A blogtale for the road!

In this, my final blog post, I decided to create a Storybird as a reflection not just of my blogging experience over the semester, but of my experience with the New Technologies unit content. I have thoroughly enjoyed these workshops, even though I have often felt completely overwhelmed by the subject matter. While I have definitely warmed to blogging over these few months (as can be seen by my ever increasing word limit) I haven't decided whether it is something I would continue to do. Great tool for use in a classroom but outside school? Not so sure. Sometimes, I just don't want to reflect on anything!
I have not found it difficult to establish a public voice, once I began blogging about issues that were important to me. In fact, I find I am far more articulate when I write than when I speak. If only I had an undo button attached to my larynx.
Looking at other student's blogs, I find mine a little lacking on the embed side. That's probably because I have been exploring these in depth for my wiki - vokis, tag clouds, discussion boards, glogsters - if I had a dollar for every hour I have spent "playing".... Oh, how I love to wiki!
But back to my Storybird! I had a great time creating this - what a brilliant tool to bring into the classroom. I really hope to work in a school with a strong ICT focus regardless of whether they are well resourced or not. In fact, I think a school that had limited ICT resources would certainly challenge my creativity in terms of how I could incorporate these tools into my teaching. But what a great challenge. These tools tick so many boxes for me - they're collaborative, engaging, creative, visual, the list goes on - but remembering that they are just a tool. They are not the teaching.
So, without further adieu, I hope you enjoy... The Neverending Story or Just when you think you've reached your destination, someone adds another stop!


PS Excuse the crude link. I think the Storybird moderators don't want me to share my story and keep changing my settings to private. I could start a whole new blog on that subject alone!

5 comments:

  1. Ah Trudy, I love reading your blog - I can hear you speaking when I read it! Your storybird drew me in...something different and interesting! I really hope to include an ICT focus in my classroom too and I just hope that the school I'm teaching at has at least a few IT resources for me to draw upon...It's that whole private school with resources, 10 million staff meetings and saturday morning sport verse working at a public school, with little funding and limited IT tools but we would get more of a life! BUT now after this course, we just need at least a reliable internet connection and we can do so many different IT things! With the pedagogy first, of course!

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  2. Thanks Jess. I have to say, I love playing with these sorts of tools. Very time consuming but I also get alot out of it. Unfortunately, when I start on something like a Storybird, I get totally consumed by it - the world could be crashing down around my ears and I wouldn't know it. Definitely not a case of continuous partial attention for me - mu poor children!

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  3. hey trude - cute. Yes poor melody, just like her I thought I was coping, dare I say enjoying the adventure, til that web 3.0 lecture and that scared the crap out of me, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to be part of the future. I'm still not sure how a computer screen on a contact lens can add to the learning experience (or life experience) - I'm just seeing overload.

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  4. Trudy that was great! You should be a writer! Please don't laugh if you read my final posting and see my very terrible attempt with a story. I couldn't work out how to use Storybird so I used another one and they don't have very many images to choose from.

    Was all that art from the same batch? Maybe Storybird doesn't like it because it has too many words or it isn't 'kiddy' enough?

    I found it an excellent way to express your feelings on the different 'Webs'. I am sure Mark will love it!

    I am with Jennie. Web 3.0????? Hmmmmm???? Some elements but the whole virtual world thing is just too much. People need to get out in the real world and communicate, not through a computer.

    All the best for your assignment!

    Cheers

    Cindy :)

    PS I would love to see what you have done with your Wiki since you are so creative and I am not!

    Maybe you could send me the URL when your assignment has been assessed?

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  5. No problem Cindy. Happy to share it. Even though Melody threw herself out of the window (it made a better ending than living happily ever after) she is not completely terrified by the whole thought. Yes, it is pretty scary but like everything, we have to adapt. I actually quite like the thought of my alarm clock knowing that traffic will make me a bit later than normal, so it wakes me up 10mins early - so long as I still have ther perogative of throwing said alarm across the room. It does take a bit of the unpredictability out of life though. Not too keen about that.
    Also, not sure I'm crazy about the whole second life thing. Have enough trouble coping with this one sometimes. MAybe I get it now - what a great escape. Have to explore second life a bit more before I pass judgement though. As with all these other tools of Web 2.0, I imagine it will be brilliant in the appropriate educational context.

    PS Don't feel too stressed about your wiki. Glogster is a bit of a nightmare for the first 20 or so hours that you use it. It gets easier the more you use it.

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