This is where we as teachers need to head – making lessons and topics that students normally feel are boring more engaging! Challenge to us all…

This is one of my favourite aspects of ICT integration into your lessons – Fun Theory. Students having fun and potentially not even realising they are learning. A very powerful learning tool

Here is a very useful tool that I have recently made available to my year 12 Biology class.

http://ietherpad.com/  (titan pad works in the very same way http://titanpad.com/

Etherpad works by allowing students to each edit the same document at the same time! Students can be in their own homes connecting with classmates working on group projects! It doesn’t get any easier or simpler than this.

My students have found this website very useful and now use it for various reasons in varying subjects, including working on the same documents, a tool for revision, brainstorming and mindmapping.

Other useful links for students working:

http://typewith.me/

http://www.synchroedit.com/

Plagiarism is always a thought in the back of my head as students submit written tasks in Biology. I always stress the importance of properly referencing materials with my students, whether it be referencing content, figures, tables and thoughts that are not of their own. Students cause themselves undue stress thinking they may have plagiarised certain aspects of their reports……well worry no longer!

I have recently discovered online plagiarism checkers and passed these websites onto my students. They simple cut and paste their word document into the plagiarism checkers and it gives them a report on the likelihood (in %) of their report being plagiarised.

I have used “Paper Rater” in the past and continue to use it this year (http://www.paperrater.com/). Not only does it provide students with a plagiarism checker, it also provides a grammar checker, spell checker and provides a grade level classification for the written submission (i.e. – the essay is written at a yr. 10 level). All of these tools are quite useful to students. The best part of this website is that it puts the onus and responsibility back onto the students. It makes them take ownership and responsibility for ensuring their assignments are not plagiarised and written to an appropriate grade level and standard. This is a FREE TOOL and I highly recommend it to all teachers out there!

Here are some other online plagerism checkers that may be of use:

DOC Cop

The Plagerism Checker

DupliChecker

I am currently getting my younger students (in year 8 and 9) to create their own Avatars. I felt it was a non-confronting way for students to share themselves with myself and their classmates.

It is also another way for me to learn and remember their names!

Once completed – I am going to post the Avatar pictures in class (without any names attached to the photos) and have students try and match their classmates to the created Avatar’s. I will keep you posted on how this little project goes!

wix.com

This past year I have made quite a few international links with my class’ (see Making Connections post) and have found them to be very engaging for my students any myself.

This past year I have been working with Renuka Bansal of Kingsford Community School in the United Kingdom to develop a network between our year 8 and 9 classes.

Our classes self-assessed each other’s assessment tasks, providing feedback and assigning grades based on the assignments criteria.  My students here in Australia (Cleveland, QLD) quickly found criteria sheets differed between our Queensland standards and those in the United Kingdom.

It was a bit time consuming for us teachers involved, as we had to painstakingly scan each document, attach them as files and email them out. Having said that, it was well worth the effort taken as the students thoroughly enjoyed assessing their counterparts over seas, and also receiving feedback.

Student assessment of other students’ work, both formative and summative, has many potential benefits to learning for the assessor and the assesse:

•  It encourages student autonomy and higher order thinking skills

 Brown, Rust and Gibbs (1994), Zariski (1996), Race (1998) and others have described some potential advantages of peer assessment for students as

•  giving a sense of ownership of the assessment process, improving motivation
•  encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning, developing them as autonomous learners
•  treating assessment as part of learning, so that mistakes are opportunities rather than failures
•  practising the transferable skills needed for life-long learning, especially evaluation skills
•  using external evaluation to provide a model for internal self-assessment of a student’s own learning (metacognition), and
•  encouraging deep rather than surface learning.

Self and peer assessment “promote lifelong learning, by helping students to evaluate their own and their peers

achievements realistically, not just encouraging them always to rely on (tutor) evaluation from on high” (Brown, 1996).

                                                                                                                                                                (Bostock, 2000)

Teachers often do not integrate potential learning experiences because they think “This will be too much effort to initiate”, or they are afraid of the whole process becoming a total disaster.

Making international links is not a difficult task – it could be as easy as talking with friends, using colleagues, or websites that exist to make global connections a possibility in your classroom.

All of the links that I have made so far in my class have occurred by me tapping into resources that already exist for me – friends I have in Canada and past colleagues of new colleagues.

Here are two websites below that are quite useful when trying to initiate global connections in your classroom. Hope they are of use to you.

Websites:

www.tigweb.org

www.epals.com

References:

Brown, S., Rust, C. and Gibbs, G. 1994 Involving students in the assessment process, in Strategies for Diversifying Assessments in Higher Education, Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff Development, and at DeLiberations http://www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/ocsd-pubs/div-ass5.html

Brown, S. 1996 Assessment, in DeLiberations http://www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/assessment/invite.html

Bostock, S. Student Peer Assessment. The Higher Education Academy http://www.palatine.ac.uk/files/994.pdf 

Race, P. 1998 Practical Pointers in Peer Assessment, 113-122 in Peer Assessment in Practice, Brown, S. (ed.) (SEDA paper 102) Birmingham: SEDA

Zariski, A. 1996 Student peer assessment in tertiary education: Promise, perils and practice. In Abbott, J. and Willcoxson, L. (Eds), Teaching and Learning Within and Across Disciplines, p189-200. Proceedings of the 5th Annual Teaching and Learning Forum, Murdoch University, February 1996. Perth: Murdoch University. http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/asu/pubs/tlf/tlf96/zaris189.html

Respondus was my favourite find of 2010! It proved so useful that I am going to try and integrate it into all of my 5 classes for the coming 2011 year.

What is it?

Respondus is a tool that allows you to create and publish tests, quizzes, surveys, and assignments into your online courses/virtual classrooms. You do need to have an online course previously created in order for this software to be used.

How do I access Respondus?

If you are a teacher with Education Queensland (Australia) this technology comes free to you and can be downloaded via the Learning Place – you need to register yourself in the “Teaching in Blackboard” community in order to access the free download (should appear ontop left of screen when you log into your blackboard account).

For all other teachers you can download via the Respondus website

Online Platforms:

Respondus can be easily integrated into the following virtual spaces:

• Blackboard
• Desire2Learn
• eCollege
• IMS QTI 1.1+
• Moodle
• WebCT

How does it work?

There are two ways that you can use this software:

1. Use already existing tests, quizzes, etc –  that are created in word and publish directly into your virtual learning space (online video support)
2. Create your material into the Respondus wizard as you go – then publish to your virtual learning space

I will admit that I have used both options in the past, but found it a bit tricky using the “existing” document wizard.  There are specific rules and guidelines to properly format your test so that they are published correctly; however, I sometimes had formatting issues.

The following type of questions are easily integrated in this platform: true/false, fill in blank, multiple choice, short answer/essay, ordering, multiple answers and calculations

http://sites.google.com/site/mmlteachingwithtechnology/Home/respondus