Sunday, November 2, 2008

New Horizons

Okay, so I admit it...three days later and I'm still irked by the "need to broaden your ICT pedagogy" comment on my feedback. Now, I realise this is a fairly minor comment on an otherwise glowing report...but I've never been one to accept close enough as good enough.

As a result I'm left with a deep motivation to find ways to "extend" myself, and that's led to me playing and thinking a lot this weekend. And it's been productive. I've:
  • Played with Audacity to finish off the first of the podcasts from the Year 8 classes...can I just say, the out takes had me giggling all night...hilarious! I've now also uploaded these to their secure podcast lounge so they can listen. I wish I was more involved in the actual teaching of this unit..it's driving me nuts
  • Figured out how to use Studymate and Respondus to create flash games to include in my Blackboard virtual classrooms...and realised these can also be used to create activities for ipods...
  • Figured out how to use these on my ipod (I know...I'm slow)

As usual I've done a lot of professional reading (blogs, links, articles, tweets) and as a result have a multitude of new possibilities twirling around in my head. Including:

  • Using smsexpress.com.au or something similar to send reminders and updates to students
  • Using utterli for audio blogging
  • Investigating backchanneling options and the possibilities for my English classes (I'm liking the idea of something like coveritlive.com)

I've been having a couple of small issues with my Utterli blog posts - they haven't been cross posting automatically. Which is frustrating because I'm hoping to get it working before I head to Melbourne so I can still touch base daily. I played with some settings today and since I have to attend a very long after school planning session tomorrow night I'll test it all out then - fingers crossed it's sorted now...

In the meantime - what are your newest horizons? How are you going to be "broadening your use of ICT pedagogy" this week?

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