Quick Guide to Educational Hashtags for Twitter

For all you Twitter lovers out there.
Thanks to Edudemic...

Ubiquitous learning with Google

I was asked today to produce a graphic illustrating the "Ubiquitous" Google model for learning, to be used in a presentation tomorrow.
I tired hard to get out of using the word, but that was what Russel wanted so that is what he got. I admit to asking a student to have a quick look on Google to make sure I spelt it correctly.
I was going to go round the local area to take the photographs, but Russel supplied them in an interestingly Googly way. He went onto street view and did screen shots on his tablet computer of the views. It seemed an extremely suitable way of getting the images for this particular project.

Jack O Lanterns

While we were talking in TCTV last week about what we could film for Halloween, the subject of Jack O Lanterns came up.
It was decided that carving pumpkins would be too hard, so one of the TCTV members had the idea to use capsicums instead.
So.... armed with a bag full of red and orange capsicums, scissors, card and tooth picks, we made our creations.
They came out pretty good and I have lots of left overs for soup tonight!!

Work Flow using Google

I was asked to do this video this year to go with a set being put together in the Manaiakalani cluster to show the work flow when using google apps. The "Managed Learning Environment".
I did mine about the sequence of events during the first project my Year 11 students go though at
Level 1 Design and Visual Communication.
I was very reluctant to do this, mainly because I hate hearing my voice on a recording, but I have been asked by a few people since then to see it so I thought i would share it more openly.


If you are interested in seeing the other videos that were submitted in our cluster, follow this link.
They cover a wide range of ages of students, doing a variety of things.

Attitude

Yup....this just about sums it up...

Embedding a Flickr feed...

I have messed around with quite a few methods of embedding things onto a blog over the past 5 years of running TCTV. I found this method this morning about how to put a Flickr feed through as a post. Click on more ways to share and blogger is there and it asks to connect to your blog. Once you have done this, it appears as a method on the big icons for quicker access.

Here is my Flickr feed coming though.. I chose the option on my whole feed but you can do this on individual folders too.

I have been using the method of getting the html for the slideshow and embedding it for a long time now, but I like the way you get to see thumbnails of more photos at once on this method.

KarenFerguson1's photostream on Flickr.

Next task...Youtube feed on the sidebar as the gadget on Blogger has broken.

Do you do what you always did?

This year has seen a lot of changes for me.
The standards for level 1 changed last year and I have 2 full groups going though them this year. Everything for this course is now up on my Google site, so this is all new too.
The projects are all different and the way I am approaching them is all different. This has really kept me on my toes this year but the result is that I am extremely pleased with the work my guys have been producing and the credits have been clicking in steadily. ( don't tell them that though, I don't want to ruin my rep).
I have 5 students who have completely finished everything early. This has never happened !!

My next challenge is to continue this into the new level 2 course and the new changes to level 3 next year. I hope all this foreword momentum can carry into these courses too.

I saw this image, and it kind of summed up my year.

Google Analytics

I became really interested for the first time this morning with the Google Analytics that I had set up for my Graphics site, then forgot about.

It only shows from about July as I managed to set it up wrongly at the start...duh!
An interesting shaped spikey graph!

Interesting thought number one .....

I have under 50 students who will be regularly accessing the site at the moment, as I am on half timetable with being a facilitator this year.
So who are the other 300+ "unique visitors" that have had a look?
What were they looking for when they found my site and what did they think when they got there?

Interesting thought number two ....

An interesting variety of countries have found the site, with the UK and America having surprisingly large percentages.

My interest has definitely been tweaked by this today and I really want MORE... or will that feed the paranoia??

The link to the Graphics site is on the side of this blog if you are interested.

Here is where the traffic is coming from. A percentage is coming from the Manaiakalani site, which is interesting news for the rest of the sites in the school, if there is a volume of that traffic is coming from the cluster website.
Here is the link to that site.
The biggest percentage is coming from random hits from Google searches. What were they looking for??...hmmmm

The operating system information is interesting. The linux hits will be pretty much all students as that is the os on their netbooks. Quite a lot of the windows hits will be students too, when they are working on a desktop.

First Day Back Joy....!!!

It was the first day back at work today after the two weeks holiday. I have been joint Manaiakalni facilitator at Tamaki College all year and have always been amazed at the kids who turn up to the door of B10 ( the netbook support room) every Monday morning with a variety of issues that have happened over the weekend.
Broken screens, the internet has disappeared, it just freezes. Most things can be sorted with the
re-imaging stick, where we re-image the whole machines or change passwords that they have forgotten over the weekend or reconnect to the school wireless. More difficult jobs and breakages get booked in for our techie guys to look at and they decide if it is an in house fix or whether it needs to be sent away.

Today though, has been complete madness! Before I even got to the room this morning for period 2, I had been given 3 netbooks to re-image. The room was busy with visitors for the whole period.
The busiest part though was that every time I left a room and walked down a corridor  I had students following me. "Miss, can you fix my netbook?"
Seriously ! I don't know what they do to them over weekends and holidays!
On the other hand though, they always look happy when you can help them out.

Here is todays intake for the techies to look at tomorrow.

Presenting at uLearn12

I had my first experience of presenting at a conference this year at uLearn12.
I really fought against it as I did NOT want to do it.
Our presentation, One to one in a decile one community, was to be a panel style with plenty of people who are comfortable talking to a room full of strangers. It was an overview of our journey through this year at Tamaki College where we have gone 1 to 1 devices for the students working online.  Russel, Amber, Nevyn and Nick did an awesome job of not only keeping to the plan but dealing with the massive amount of questions people had.
My part was to prepare the presentation keynote, which included videos of feedback from various sources, including students and staff. I was happy with that. I can do videos.
When we got there, the place for the laptop setup was right at the front, so by the time the room filled up with people and it got rather warm, everyone had a great view of me pressing the buttons while going a fabulous shade of blotchy red.

I was amazed at the interest people showed, and Russel, Amber, Nevyn and Nick had a hard job getting through everything we had planned to cover as they were answering so many questions. It was good we had a wide selection of people to answer the questions as every angle was covered.

Here is our presentation if you want to have a look at it.

We had a great camera man too.....