L2eL – Learning to e-Learn

My Google Reader was littered today with news of Google’s My Maps.

I have looked at Platial, Microsoft Live Maps and Mapsack and thought that these tool offer a great way to present information for students.  I was interested to see what Google Maps would offer and assess if this was the leader of the pack.

So, I’ve spent an hour this morning putting together my first map.  I am impressed with how easy it was.  I firstly created a Picasa Web Album to store the images I wanted to add to my map.  I then created My Map presenting my holiday photos from last Summer.  I guess if I was more adventurous I could I added some text to describe the pictures or added details about the history of the areas visited.

Creating the Picasa Web Album allowed me to easily add the images to my map.  Picasa We Album has a ‘Link to this Photo’ button that provides the html code to add to My Maps.  To add the html code I added a placemark and then pasted the html code in ‘Edit HTML’.

The Google My Maps help is very straight forward in explaining how to create a map.

This would be a create tool for students to use for a geography field trip, a local history project or any topic where geographical location was related to the infromation presented.

So after an hour this morning I was very impressed – this is my favourite mapping tool.  It was simple, straight forward and quick to create my map.

Video can be added in the same way as images were added from Picasa.  Selecting the embed html code from sites such as YouTube and Google Videos and adding this to a placemark is as easy as it is for a picture.

To add sounds I could a link to a file I had stored on Archive.org or a podcast I had created with software like Podium.  I could create a movie in PhotoStory or MovieMaker, add this to my OurMedia page and link this to my placemarker.

The easy of use and versatility, as well as the emphasis on creativity, would make it very appealing to students – well at least for the first dozen times students are asked to create a my map!

Filed by Paul at 9:45 am under collaborative, web tools
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An increasing number of schools are purchasing learning platforms for their students.  One of the key features of these learning platforms is the provision of a student online learning space.

An online learning space for most of these products appears to comprise of some online storage, a facility to add bookmarks and notes and a calendar.

Pageflages appears to offer a lot of the same functionality.

Experimenting with Pageflakes, I was able to add ‘flakes’ that contained my emails, add a to-do list and add notes.  Here’s a link to my example.

The all important online storage is available by adding a ‘flake’ that links to your Box.net free online storage account of 1Gb.  Files are limited to 10Mb max and 10Gb of traffic is permitted a month.  This compares favourably with many online storage spaces provided to students through learning platforms.

A calendar and a timetable can be added to the page, along with a message board.  RSS feeds and images from a Flickr account can be added.

There are an increasing number of ‘flakes’ available that allow you to further personalise your Pageflake.

Pages can be ’shared’ allowing other to view these.  Clearly emails and other ‘flakes’ would not want to be on shared pages, but calendar, notes and to-do lists might be helpful.  You can select who has access to your page and even provide them with access to edit your page.

Overall, this free tool offers a lot of the functionality of an online learning space.  The learner manages this space as opposed to a school on behalf of its students.  This is a significantly different way of working to schools managing learning spaces.

The key feature missing is a link to a virtual learning environment and the ability this provide for teachers to support the students learning by providing resources, tasks, tests and feedback.  A link to Wikipedia will have to do instead.

For the student who is looking for a more customizable space than the one provided through the school’s learning platform, Pageflakes make have an appeal.  The student can add a link to their school’s online space to access their work assigned from a VLE.

Filed by Paul at 9:12 am under e-portfolio, online storage, web tools
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I came across this free download through Computer Active magazine.  I was impressed by the usefulness of this tool and its ease of use.  I think Notefish would be useful for students to use when researching using the internet.  I found it helpful in collecting notes on Personalising Learning, collecting both text and images.  Notefish captures a link to the webpage that the notes are taken from.  I thought this was helpful for citing references and for collecting links in a similar way to deli.ci.ous.

Below is a short clip of me using Notefish.

Download

One issue I have with many students using the Internet for research is that they often copy lots of information and are not as selective as I would wish them to be.  I think this tool encourages them to select and organize information.

Students can select to share their notes with other students.  Creating a Notefish page would be an interesting homework task.  I can imagine it working well in a subject like geography.  Students could be asked to present the various faces of tourism in Kenya.  Information from the Oxfam website could be used to highlight issues of sustainable development.  The Kenyan National Tourist Board website could be used to show the positive features of tourism in the region.  Students can add their own notes to a section, commenting on the purposes of the information presented. 

This could be an interesting way of students creating revision resources for use by each other.   Assessment for learning strategies could be employed for students to reflect on which sites are good revision resources, how well they are organised and ways in which they could be improved.

Having just worked with a teacher and a class of students on presentations in History, I could see how Notefish would be useful during the preparation phase of the presentation to collect useful information and images.

Click on this text to open the shared Notefish page I made.

When sharing a page you are asked for how long you wish to share the page and asked if you wish to password protect access to the page.   This could be helpful in restricting access to just a class of students.  If all students using the tool for research in a class set the password to be the same it would help aid class access whilst maintaining the page as essentially private.

Notefish is downloadable from Notefish.com and I think its well worth a look.

As a free download there are adverts on the right of the Notefish page you create, and these adverts reflect the content of the note page.  This should ensure that nothing inappropriate appears in this section provided the topics of the notes are sound.  This might provide difficulties if used in PSHE or Science with particular topics.   It is a potential e-safety issue, and I would suggest experimenting with Notefish and a topic you wish to use it with before presenting a task to students.

 Have fun!

Filed by Paul at 5:30 pm under web tools
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