How to best implement blogs into the Year 10 IT curriculum

Hey readers,

I am working towards building an exciting Year 10 IT curriculum for this semester and I am trying to envisage what the best way to implement blogs, so that students are fully engaged into the subject. 

This subject is for the students to experience just a taste of what Web 2.0 has to offer through a range of different tools and techniques and for them to give their opinion on this through writing their own blog.

We initially started creating these amazing tools in Google Blogger, however some students encountered some problems when they were asked to provide their phone numbers for verification purposes (in which they refused to do).  They then asked "how can we create a blog".  I think to counteract this problem, I will suggest that they can create their own blog in WordPress (thanks to Daniel Garcia for providing me with ways to implement this through his presentation at the recent VITTA conference) and then build on each post as we experience new and exciting tools and techniques.

 

This week we are looking at working with Adobe Flash to create animations that involve creating a shape following a path and also a bouncing ball.  The end aim of this is to build towards working on Stop - Motion animation.  As Adam Elliot said during his recent keynote presentation at the "There are NO barriers to what you can achieve with your students. Take a risk! Or 10! Be creative. Be innovative".

The whole aim of the subject is for the students is to have the license to show off their creative might in a classroom setting having many different tools at their disposal.

Till later

Rossman

First Entry - VITTA 2013 Conference

This entry sees me reflecting on my first VITTA conference held at Caulfield Racecourse on 12th and 13th August, 2013.  I went to the conference both excited and nervous at the same time.  The aim of me attending was to develop ways in which to create effective and engaging student learning in my IT classes at school.

First day I attended the keynote presentation by Bruce Dixon, who is the founder of Ideas Lab.  During his presentation he spoke about many things, but the most powerful message that I took from this was that through "leadership in teaching you can expect more"

The rest of the day was spent attending numerous sessions based around improving student engagement, creative an effective learning environment and how best to manage change in schools.  These sessions were extremely valuable as I took many ideas on how I can improve my own teaching as well as make many contacts in the IT teaching community.

Second day started off with an amazing key note by the Academy Award Winning Film Director - Adam Elliot.  Throughout his witty and funny presentation, the 2 main topics that came through were "confidence, commitment and passion gets you places" and "There are NO barriers to what you can achieve with your students. Take a risk! Or 10! Be creative. Be innovative".



Once again the rest of the second day was spent trying to get as much in as possible especially in the area of how I can using numerous online (social media ) tools in the classroom to enhance the experience of both myself and my students.

Definitely looking forward to attending next year's VITTA conference and maybe even presenting... Just have to come up with an interesting and exciting topic that was an informative as the presentations that I attending over the duration of the conference.

Signing off

Rossman