Barriers to Inquiry

The video highlights some barriers to implementing inquiry based learning in a classroom.
How can we overcome them?

Pages

^ The tabs to get to the pages are under the blog header ^

I have recently added pages to my blog. I feel they are a great way to add extra content without having to search through the blog archives to find it. At present I've added three pages:
Pictures - This page contains links to free to use pictures, like the flickr creative commons, a picasa album I've started where everything is free to use and an instructional (though admittedly out of date) video on how to search for free to use images on google.
Links - When I come across useful links I'm going to post them here. This page is currently under construction.
Files - This page is going to be like the picture page, but with files. If I make a powerpoint template, music video, radio play, etcetera I'll post them here. This page is currently under construction.

Digital Storytelling PD

I attended the Digital Storytelling (K-12) Professional Development session at BU today.
It was presented by Ron Nordstrom, Art Teacher and Technology Co-ordinator for Beautiful Plains SD.
http://brandonu.wikispaces.com/ contains links and examples of all the things he went over in our session. Not only did we learn about various methods of digital storytelling, we got to play around with them too.
He went over Audio Storytelling, Photostory, Comics and Online Scrapbooking
One major focus was that whenever you use technology in the classroom you are to use it with a purpose. We are to judge the curricular outcomes and not the technology.
There are some very entertaining videos in the show off your skills section, including the now famous, Sean Quigley, from Oak Park High School, and Walk Off the Earth's cover of Someone I Used to Know where five people play one guitar.

He had an awesome speaker the l'il wiz

For audio storytelling I downloaded  Audacity, a free audio editing program. I explored and worked on a radio ad from the script he handed out and as a group we did a reader's theatre based on the Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch.

I also downloaded photostory. Prof. Nantais gave us an overview of this in his class, so I was familiar with it.

I had my flash drives with pictures, so I whipped this up in our tutorial. It's our tour of Melbourne Park, where the Australian Open is held, including the Rod Laver and Margaret Court Arenas.

Comic Life was already loaded onto the school computers, so I switched and tried it out. It's not a free program, but I think it is worth an investment.

I used one of the sample photos that come with windows and some screenshots of the movie Superman Returns to make a mini-comic dealing with the isolation felt by the man of steel.






We also covered Online Scrapbooking. I created an account at scrapblog and made a simple e-scrapbook. It's a neat way to make a presentation and now I can see why people get into scrapbooking. This is what I came up with:

All in all a great session. I recommend, if you are a BU student, that you take this if it is offered next year. If you can't get into the session, then check out his wiki that I linked to at the top.

Presentation Pointers

At one point in our course we went over what made a good presentation. This reminded me of a lesson my co-operating teacher gave while I was student teaching. It was for a biography project where the students would present someone they had researched.
This is the link to the presentation the lesson was based around: www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/Presentations-Tips.ppt
[WARNING: It contains, possibly, the worst powerpoint slide ever created. View with caution.]
I know I've been more conscious of slide design since I went through this.

Evolution of the Cell Phone

Where's it going?