Tut 02 Educational Blogs

Educational Blogs

http://junior.melroseps.vic.edu.au/
This blog is a great example because it is clearly laid out with titles and brief description in each entry and the user can decide to click on the link to look at more details. It can used for all primary school aged students, it has various ideas and activities from the classroom that can be used by other teachers and students.


http://bsslibrarian.edublogs.org/
This blog is a great library resource as it gives a range of recommendation for books across all ages in primary. It is clearly laid out with links on the side to access the different age groups, also for each entry there's a picture of the recommended book and a brief blurb about the book, why it is great for children and some information on the author. A very well organised and comprehensive blog both useful for teachers and students.

Tut 02 Copyright

Copyright questions:

Can I copy material from the internet for research?
Yes, provided that it is 'fair' use.

What consitutes research and fair use?
Fair use should follow the guideline - 'a "reasonable" portion of text or notated music.
eg. Printed text - 10% of the number of pages or 1 chapter of the book can be copied.
Electronic text - 10% of the number of words or 1 chapter of the work.

Can students (university or school) use music in videos that they make?
Yes they can, provided they have permisson from the owner of the music. This applies to musical works, literary work including lyrics and sound recordings.

Tut 02 Blog

Ideas & activities that teachers would find useful:

• Make a photograhic montage from photos taken over the school year, could be an end of year activity for students to revise and consolidate their learning. (Pericles, K. (2008). Happily blogging @ Belmore South. SCAN, 27(2), 4-6)
• Students using Bubbleshare slideshow to present images.
• Uploading video clips of class performances and dramas.

Week 02 Text Innovation activity

Activity based on the book Whoever You Are by Mem Fox, the theme of the book revolves around diversity and this activity will be used as a pre-reading exercise that gets the children to think about what is in common with everyone around the world. So I used images to represent some of common symbols around the world and some are already labelled while others they have decide on the symbol and what they represent. They will be using descriptive words and explaining their choices of words. Then after the reading the children are encouraged to revisit the activity and add in any new insight or perspective.

Week 01 Video Review

This is a great video for helping children to understand the importance of being critical of information from websites and teaches them some simple ways to assess the validity and reliability of information found. It is one of the issues that is prominent in our media rich society as children need to be taught to use the information found online effectively.

Week 01 Website Review - Club Penguin

Website Review

Club Penguin

This website is a Disney owned social networking portal for primary school children across the world. It offers a safe and protected online environment for children to socialise and be entertained. There are various activities within Club Penguin with many games, their own virtual home where everything is customisable. The children can also meet new friends, have online chat sessions and play games with each other in a monitored environment. Most of the features on the website is for free while there are some areas that requires a fee to join in their membership.

Week 01 - Digital Media & New Literacies

Brief definition of the term "new literacies"

The shift towards new forms of media usage such as social networking tools that encourages sharing and being connected with the rest of the world. There is a greater emphasis on tools that provides the means to share sophisticated forms of video, audio and also provides immediate connectedness.