Completing an assignment using Web 2.0

Most of the students in my Religion class have successfully created a Google docs account and a Toondoo account. This did not work effortlessly for everyone. They were shown how to upload and edit a word processing document in Google docs. They were also shown how to invite collaborators to view or edit their document.

The document they are working on is a scaffold for a Christian Decision Making scenario and model that they need to follow. Each student has invited me to view their document, so I can keep track of their progress at any time. Having looked over a large selection of these documents, I can see that many are almost finished gathering information for the decision making process.

About half of the students took the opportunity to go into Toondoo and explore the resources and the way in which the program works. One of the boys constructed a cartoon that was not appropriate for the situation and it was necessary to have a talk to the class as a whole about the appropriateness of what they present in the content of their work, and about the appropriate use of IT in the classroom.

There is gathering support in the College for screening of the internet (apart from obviously adult content sites) to be lifted so that staff and students can access the many tools and resources that are available. If this is to happen, then there will have to be an education of staff and students in the light of this new freedom. I am hoping that this will make using IT within my teaching easier too!

Making a start

Today I attempted to make a start on the up skilling of my students in the use of IT. The aim was to use the content management system to give them electronic copies of the assignment and accompanying worksheet that would scaffold the information they are going to gather. A number of obstacles arose: 1) a student did not have access to the documents in the CMS because the class list had not been updated since he moved into the class. 2) The students' access to Google Docs was blocked, which meant that they were not able to upload the worksheet.

One of the students mentioned that she would not be able to complete the worksheet at home because her computer would not recognise the Word document. I explained that with Google docs this would not be a problem, but could not let her experience this for herself.

It is becoming obvious that if we are going to utilise any Web 2.0 tools, then the screening system in our school will have to be reviewed.

Harnessing the technological know-how of my students

Having recently returned from the ACEC'08 conference in Canberra, I have been particularly inspired to be creative and step out of my comfort zone to include more IT in my teaching. One particular point that arose at the conference was that the students that we teach today have a range of technologies at their disposal and so are able to present work in a variety of ways. We should allow them to do this, even if we (the teachers) are not 100% knowledgeable about the programmes they may use. We cannot possibly be expected to be the experts on everything that is out there.

With this in mind, I did a survey of my year nine religion class to find out about all their technological know-how. Their understanding of blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools, of which I had only been vaguely aware pre-conference. To my amazement, all but 1 had no idea what a blog is. Nobody had heard of a wiki. Two had ever made a podcast (one of those learnt to do that in my music class) and none of the others had any idea what a podcast is. Google docs? Don't you use that to find stuff on the Internet? Nope, nobody knew what they were either.

I can only conclude that, if I am going to include technology as a way of teaching, then I am going to first have to teach my students about all the wonderful things that are out there.