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Module 9 - Scootle, Second Life, Facebook and Twitter

A strange combination for Module 9:

Scootle is vastly underutilised resource in CEO schools, it varies from school to school and teacher to teacher. I strongly recommend the interactive 'Learning Objects' as the best resources in Scootle.

Second Life has been described as a 'time drain'. As such I've briefly played with it and dismissed it as such.

I once suggested that teachers find ways of using Facebook in their teaching. I've since retracted this due to the potential dangers if a teachers links to a student's personal profile as a 'friend'. A safer alternative is 'Ning'.

I find Twitter extremely useful for picking up the latest information and resources from various eLearning gurus and teachers. By all means follow me: @simoncrook

Module 8 - RSS and Google Reader

RSS feeds are great way to follow regularly updated sites and blogs. You can even RSS the CEO. Google Reader is excellent at organising and collating all of the feeds one follows. However, following so many blogs on this course has clogged things up somewhat. Under normal circumstances I would only follow a few people's blogs.

Module 7 - Delicious

Delicious is for me the most useful Web 2.0 application facilitating collaboration and sharing of resources between teachers and schools.

Module 6 - bubbl.us and Glogster

Online mindmapping with the likes of bubbl.us is the way to go.

Talking Photo

http://www.pqdvd.com/flashediter/edit.php

Module 5 - Digital Storytelling

For me Digital Storytelling is the pedagogy behind Podcasts. Last year there was lots of training around Garageband and Photostory but only when this was given the context of the genre of Digital Storytelling did it really make sense as to the value of creating podacsts in the classroom. The whole creation aspect of making a digital story is accessing the highest order of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and allows for very personal reflections.

There are some great Digital Storytelling resources at:

http://www.storycenter.org/resources.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/about/pages/introduction.shtml
and of course
http://delicious.com/EvertonPom/digitalstorytelling

There are great free podcasts at iTunesU (and soon some content will come from Southern Region schools) and ABC. Students can be listening/viewing relevant podcasts whilst on the bus or at the gym etc.

To kids and many of us, YouTube is king. I particularly like how one can make their own playlists of favourites and subscribe to good channels. For educational content check out:

http://www.youtube.com/edu