I have been fiddling around on the Voki site making my own Avatar that I can give a voice to also. It allows people to express themselves through an avatar. I can see how this could be useful for younger students, but most probably not older than middle phase. I have attached my Voki that I created on my Blog!


Get a Voki now!

Delicious - better than the favourites tab!

Also in Managing E-Learning I have been shown the revolutionary new tool of Delicious, which allows you to put all your favourites onto one site! It's a useful website for when you need to go to one of your favourite websites but you are not on your own personal computer. For instance, until I knew about Delicious I had every favourite website in my favourites in the tool on the left hand side of the screen. However, when I wasn't on my own computer and needed to get to one of the websites, it was difficult to find the websites as I didn't know their address. I was so used to just clicking on the link from my favourites that I had not memorised the URL's. Now, with Delicious I can access my favourites from any computer and not have to remember my favourite URL's. This is a great tool for schools also as students can add websites to Delicious when they are researching at school, and then when the go home and continue researching they can add any extra websites to their Delicious page. They can also see who else likes the same pages they do and see what else interests the people that have similar pages to you. Usually you find more pages you like that someone else has and you never knew were out there on the world wide web!!
Here is the link to my own Delicious page with some websites that I have investigated and liked!

http://delicious.com/rebecca.jenner

It is becoming more apparent to me that E-Learning can be a lot more useful at times than not using ICTs in the classroom. However, there are times when ICTs are not as practical. My next blog will focus on where E-Learning is not suitable in the classroom. As a teacher, it is important to use technology in the right context, and know when NOT to use it!
Happy Blogging :)

It has taken me this long but I have figured out how to export a concept map from bubbl.us onto blogger! This is a great tool to use mind maps but be able to move the bubbles around easily and change the colours to make it easier to understand. It is a much better tool than writing a concept map on paper where you run out of room and can't change what you have done without making a mess of things!

So hopefully this link works, otherwise I will try another way. But even if it doesn't, I can easily tell just be having a quick play around on bubbl.us, that this tool would be very useful in the classroom!

Managing E-Learning Week1

So this week was the beginning of Term 2, 2010 of University!! Time to get back to work and by the looks of it, it is going to be an exciting one. I am doing a subject called Managing E-Learning which is teaching me already how I can use technology to help students learn more effectively! I have been shown some excellent inventions on the internet already, including blogger.com, bubble.us which allows you to do interactive mind-mapping, and also wikispaces. We were also shown some multiplication tables on the internet, which showed us that they can sometimes be more useful than just pen and paper, but at other times the better option is not always technoligical. There is a time and place to use all of this technology, and that is what this course, Managing E-Learning is going to be all about. Exactly where, when and how to use E-Learning! It should be an exciting course and I am looking forward to it.
I have a delicious account now too! I am not quite understanding all these new websites yet, but I'll get there. Here's my link: http://delicious.com/rebecca.jenner

That's all for now.
Chow :)