Matt Stephens (dandt_matt)

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Sustainable House Design Learning Object

One of the units I teach to year 8 students is a sustainable house design project, where the students are required to use Google SketchUp to design a sustainable house. More on SketchUp in my next post.

Prior to beginning work on the house however, I spend some time identifying sustainable design options with my students. Along with some great resources found by a fellow staff member (JT), I came accross this online resource made by the Queensland Government; Designing for Sustainable Living.

The learning object focuses on the design of a family home and incorporates a number of options and decisions that can be made. A final sustainablity report describes the impact of the decisions made and allocates a points value to each. Students finish with a final score (out of 300 I think..!)

There is quite a bit of written content embedded in the learning object and in the past I have prepared a worksheet for students to complete, however this year, I had students participate in an onine discussion (as described in the wikispaces post) which worked well and allowed students to access a record of their thoughts and actions which could be applied to their own house design later on.

Some issues that I faced included;

* It is a bit confusing to save your work and after creating a user, you need to use the same computer in order to retreive your work.

* It is possible to flick through the avaialble options and choose the one with the most points.

* Navigation is a bit confusing, especially at the start. You need to click "Siting" to return to the list of options to follow.

Some positive aspects I discovered were;

* The embedded content is very useful and can be printed out and used as notes for revision / application to students own project.

* The graphics are quite good and the layont works well.

* The range of sustainable options is very high and the module exposes students to a wide range of products and features.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Wikispaces

After my first experience with Blogging, I took a year off classroom based social media and did some research. The prospect of starting 7 or 8 blogs in 2009 didn't appeal to me and I went in search of a means of creating my own webpage. A place where I could upload all of my presentations, word documents, sound files, videos, etc. I was initially confused. Did I have to build my own web page and host it, paying all the associated costs..?

No... I stumbled upon the wiki...

In late 2009 I started my first wiki, as a trial run for the following year and found it extremely useful. The wiki I have created this year allows me to prepare a new page for each of my subjects and to link additional pages to each as required. Wikispaces also allows educators to upload and manage their wiki at no cost and I currently have 59 "files" uploaded onto my wiki.

Wikis are much more user directed. Rather than be constricted by the gadgets of a blog, the designer has much more control over the content and formatting. Images, videos, hyperlinks, and other content can all be formatted as required.

Some issues that I faced included:
* In order for my wiki to remain private, students need an account, email address and to ask permission to access my blog. Once this is done however, it is smooth sailing. I took about 30 minutes to get my class started.

* If I left my wiki public, it may be edited and changed by anybody = Public. There are a few issues associated with this; privacy, IP protection, etc.. I'm not too concerned about people using my work in their own classrooms, what I was worried about was people deleting my wiki content. I'm sure there are ways around this now, however I am yet to experiment with an open wiki. Comments and suggestions welcome..

* I fear that at the end of the year, I have to begin a new wiki because I would prefer to reveal only the current work to the students and add new content to the wiki as it becomes relevant. If you are happy for the content to stay on the wiki all year, then no dramas.

* Students still need a medium to create work of their own. Unless they are completing all classroom tasks in a workbook, they will need to begin a blog or wiki of their own which the teacher will need to access.


Some positive aspects I discovered included:
* One big winner with the wiki setup is the attached discussion tab. Students are able to discuss their work and "chat" on the wiki framework. I found that starting a discussion post each lesson allowed students to multi task, completing a classroom activity on the web (or otherwise) and talking about it via the discussion post. I found that they asked eachother questions, rather than myself if I was busy, and because I was the administrator of the discussion, I could monitor their discussions, deal with inappropriate comments and teach responsible use of the web.

* The freedom of the wiki is a big advantage. I was able to include all content and upload most file types that were needed for my classroom.


Please feel free to comment and leave suggestions for improvement.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Blogger

My first major step into the world of school based ICT was back in 2008, starting a Blog. I set up my own blog page and posted tasks for my students to complete. I also had my students start their own blog pages as a place for them to post their answers and complete a range of tasks. The purpose of this activity was to familiarise my students with working on the internet and the variety of applications and terms that applied. By following the link above you can see my first page and the student pages in respose.

Some issues that I faced included;
* I was limited by the gadgets of the blog. I was unable to upload word documents, powerpoint presentations etc. I now know however that with applications such as Google docs and Mikogo etc. it is possible to easily link from my blog to these external apps.

* I found that I could only host one subject per blog. After thinking that I would like to have a web page dedicated to each of my subjects, I ended up starting an individual blog page for each subject.. 7 Blogs.. Very time consuming to manage. My solution to this issue was to start a wiki... More to come on that in the next post.

* Due to the public nature of the blogs, students who completed the tasks first had their work copied by those who waited until the last minute


Some positive aspects of this task included;
* Students found it enjoyable to complete tasks on the web, rather than answering in their workbooks.

* We all ended up following each others blogs and could comment / evaluate each others work.

Please feel free to comment and leave suggestions for improvement.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Background image source.

Thanks to www.burton.com for the background image. I downloaded it in late 2009 and have noticed that they no longer use it on their site. I am not aware of the original artist.