Happily blogging

Here are some fantastic examples of educational blogs that could be used to model to a class examples of effective blogging. These blogs chronicle students learning experiences from week to week using a combination of text, image and video. There are also links to other blogs, student's opinions, samples of student's work, scientific experiments and links to helpful websites. I believe that these blogs would be appropriate for upper primary or lower secondary students (year 4 to year 9). Posts are made by both class teachers, and students.

http://allstars.edublogs.org/category/projects/

http://huzzah.edublogs.org/

http://room9shsinv.blogspot.com/

http://marybankseniors.edublogs.org/

Copyright

Can I copy material from the internet for research?
Providing that the website does not have any specific statements relating to copyright, material can be printed or saved for the purposes of research or study and providing that the copying is 'fair' and is not going to be distributed to others. It is also imperative that the work is attributed as being another person's work and the author is credited.

What constitutes research and fair use?
*The Macquarie dictionary defines research as "diligent and systematic enquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover facts or principals."
*Fair use is defined as a 'reasonable portion' of printed music or text. This is around 10% of the number of pages or one chapter of a book or source.

Can students (university or school) use music in videos that they make?
Students may use music in a film that they create, provided that the video is to be submitted for an assignment and they do not intend to show the video outside the classroom.

Answers found in the following documents:

http://www.copyright.org.au/pdf/acc/infosheets_pdf/g053.pdf/download

http://www.copyright.org.au/g038.pdf

Picture from pre-reading activity for book 'The Rabbits'

In this activity, students are shown a portion of an illustration and asked to speculate what the picture might be about.

The activity focusses on developing visual literacy by showing the relative obscurity of the images used in the book when seen in isolation. Students would complete this activity and then compare how each image is used in the book relative to the text that accompanies each illustration.

3 key ideas/activities

Here are a few ideas for activities that teachers may find helpful.

*Using a class blog where students upload creative works for critical appraisal by other students. This can motivate students to ensure that they thoroughly edit their work as once it is posted, it is for all to view.

*Sharing information or knowledge of Australian history with an overseas class who are studying Australian history. The class could jointly construct a wiki on this topic that can be viewed and commented upon.

*Students could create avatars and record voiceovers for them and post this to the class blog.

Pericles, K. (2008). Happily blogging @ Belmore South. SCAN, 27(2), 4-6
http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries

Save The Tree Octopus

This video illustrates how easily online information can be doctored. Students often believe the information presented to be from a reputable source as it provides detailed information. This can be very misleading!

TeacherTube

TeacherTube is a great online resource where teachers can view educational material on a variety of subjects.

New Literacies Definition

According to Knobel and Lankshear, new literacies can be defined in terms of 'technical stuff' and 'ethos stuff' (2006, p.80) The technical aspect refers to the apparatus used to communicate, create multimodal text, sound or image. This could be a computer, mobile phone, game, MP3 player or other device. The ethos part refers to 'the kind of mindset informing a literacy practice.' (Knobel and Lanksher, 2006, p.80) New literacies recognises the different way that cyberspace operates in contrast to the physical world and focuses on 'sharing of information' (Callow, 2008, p.14)

Mcdougall (2007, p.131) notes that new literacies place value on students to develop skills in understanding visual language and using electronic media. In contrast, traditional literacies often appears to centre around developing children's ability to successfully count, read and write.