Week 5: Catching up.....

Have browsed through shared courseware and think The Commonwealth of Learning a great concept for making education available to small nations within the Commonwealth. The materials seemed good although I did not go into them in detail
Photostory is another great way to engage students, especially if the background music is matched to their 'era'. I was teaching a group of Year 10s the other day - first time for me and a bit of a shock! I found out that what engaged them most on the day were the interactive games I had set up on WebCT. The powerpoint presentation (which I thought I had animated well) bored them! I am now interested in developing required study information using photostory. This is a good website for nay other beginners - it contains information on how to set up photostory and has several videos demonstrating its potential
http://www.teachnet.ie/innovative_teacher/default.asp?NCID=365

Week 5 : ARED, etc.

Have used ARED to create a number of learning interactive sessions for my students (especially labelling, sequencing and multiple choice). The feedback was very positive. The challenging ARED tool is the decision tree - so easy to get into a muddle (can do your head in) but is really good for problem based scenarios.
Can't show you an example at present because I am having a problem posting one of my interactive ARED activities onto my blog as there does not appear to be an icon to enable me to do this. So, HELP!!!

Blogging on....

Have been playing around with RSS feeds and agree that it is a good way to have the latest information about anything of interest at one's fingertips. I like the way it packages up 'interest' areas and comes up with amazing 'stuff'. It is a good way to get up-to-date news and I can see why many newspaper conglomerates around the world are in trouble with falling sales. Check out the latest feed on the 10 top scientific breakthroughs - mind you I am not all science although you may be forgiven to think so. I am also interested into alternate therapies and cooking nutritious vegetarian food

Week 4 : Still hanging in....

Interesting week so far. Starting to get the hang of RSS feeds although still much to learn. Have set up a google reader account and have posted several links from various feeds onto my blogsite. I am interested in second life and games as learning options and several links demonstrate the potential of these modalities to engage students in different ways. I also love astronomy and there is an interesting article about the discovery of the smallest star to host a planet