Cam’s Ramblings

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My student site is pretty much ready to roll at teh beginning of term one next year. I spenta a good part of my day relaxing after a family Christmas thing last night, and then this afternoon spent some time fiddling around and settin gup the student site. Basically I’m aiming it to my two Year 11 classes, with each topic and sub-topic given its own page where I hope to upload notes and provide additional examples and solutions to students. I took the breakdown of pages (for Methods) from the 2009 Student Unit Planner, (and for General) from the 2007 course outline I have… I’m sure I will get a 2009 version in due course.

As for the year 7 pages, well I’m not yet sure how much use they will get. I suppose it all depends on what we actually do in the classes and whether or not I think it’s going to be worth it.

But yeah, just thought I’d share the news of a now updated and ready to roll student site!

I like Windows Live Messenger (WLM, formerly known as the ‘Microsoft Network’, or MSN). I’ve been a user of this program for many years, and have been quite impressed by its continual improvement. It began as a simple chat client, became a great tool for keeping in touch with specific friends through the power of instant messaging, allowed you to speak in real time to a person at another computer, let you share files with each other and now you can video call.

I am all for the advancement of these sorts of programs. Recent years have seen the introduction of VOIP, a protocol which allows users to easily talk to each other through the internet. One of my subjects earlier this year required us to participate in an online lecture where we all listened in and were able to communicate with the lecturer (who was sitting in her office) by pressing a single button. She would know who wanted to speak, and would give control of the ‘lecture theatre’ to them.

But anyway I was using WLM earlier today to chat to a few friends. I had several windows open, and I was typing away madly to a few people, and actually talking to one. Despite all the advances in the software, and the hardware Microsoft must have in place to operate such a network, it still has its bugs. And some of them are quite significant.

My home connection is not great. I believe it is the slowest speed they can call broadband (256k or something like that). I’ve used Skype and WLM to talk to people before, and there is a noticeable difference between the two. WLM, which has evolved over time is the inferior to the new player Skype, which was purpose built. Maybe it’s just my shoddy connection,but I struggled to maintain a decent conversation tonight using WLM.

So here lies the question – how do we harness this technology in the classroom (I seem to ask that alot these days!)? I’m working with a great teacher next year who has been doing some great things for e-learning, and I hope to learn a lot from him. One of the things I would love to do is set up a series of ‘online classes’, especially for my VCE classes as they approach exams for them to contact me in an easy manner and get some real time help. I don’t know whether such a network is already in place, maybe it’s something worth investigating. Maybe it’ll be a big flop. I know many staff are using websites, blogs and wikis to share information, I’m just hoping to push the barrier one further next year!

Last Friday I finished the last part of my uni course, my last teaching round. I now have about three months off in which to relax and get ready for the classroom in 2009. I am spending a week on the Gold Coast soon with a few friends, and then intend to spend a little bit of time around Kambrya getting to know the staff, some of the students and learning more about my role for next year.

So the next few months might be a little bit uneventful… what I am going to do is set up this blog to become a suppliment to my student site which I am going to develop properley once I know what I am teaching next year. But until then, not a lot will probobly happen worthy of comment.

In other news, I have done a very evil thing and joined the dark side….. I got a facebook profile. It’s been a great tool for finding old friends and keeping in touch with uni people as we all disperse our separate ways. Over the next little while I’m going to explore it and find out how I may be able to use it in the classroom.

When I was in year 7 (about 9 years ago) I decided to put myself up for nomination to our schools Student Council. I got elected, and started to go along to all of the meetings. After about a term, the Council had decided that it was time to nominate a charity or community group to raise funds for. The traditional ideas went around, Good Friday Appeal, CFA, Life Savers…. there were a few local groups too I hadn’t heard of, and also some church based groups (I went to a Christian school). I thought that a group I had been involved in, a scout group, could use some money. After all, the scout group had few resources, dwindling membership and a dilapidated hall.

Despite all of this, there was still a need for us in the community. Whenever we did anything community based, we always got a lot of support, however we were not able to do as much as we had once done, because of a lack of funds (which was a result of less people). So at the Council meeting, I put my hand up to suggest my scout group. A few other hands were up, and their ideas taken, however when I was te second to last hand still in the air I decided very quickly to put it down.

A boy in year 8, who later became one of my good friends in high school, turned around and drew attention to the fact I had put my hand up to say something, then quickly drew it back down. He said to me, quietly, ‘I know you’ve got something to say’. He then drew the entire group of students in the room into it, and I just baked down, shy little me, and claimed I had forgotten.

This catchphrase caught on however, and was often how this year 8 boy (let’s call him Garreth) would greet me. Truth is, I never ever revealed to him (or anyone at the school, for that matter) what I had originally intended. I still don’t know why I decided to not put my idea forward, it’s never something I gave a lot of thought to. And for some reason, I was thinking about that meeting today.

The other thing that got me thinking today was what my Year 9’s were doing. They were using a program called Audacity. It is a free program which allows uses to record, manipulate and save audio files. The class were creating their own radio shows today, importing songs and recording interviews. I haven’t had much experience with Audacity but I am about to go and download it now. It serves as a potentially useful tool for creating podcasts, as you can save into mp3 format for easy upload to a website.

I don’t know how these two topics are linked, but I’m sure they are somehow.

AddThis is a funky tool which I have just discovered and added to this blog. Simply put, in the side bar are two buttons, one reads ‘Bookmark’ the other ‘Subscribe’. If you want to add Cam’s Ramblings to your Favorites list, or to any other list of websites you may have out there, click ‘bookmark’. IF you want to subscribe to an RSS feed of Cam’s Ramblings then click ‘Subscribe’. After telling AddThis where you want your bookmark of feed to go, it’s all good.

I have a number of RSS feeds which I have downloaded to Outlook, and rekon it’s a great way to have web content come to me, as opposed to me chasing it down. Just a few nifty tools I thought I might employ.

I went shopping on Wednesday with Laura and Tony. The three of us were all looking for one thing, a new laptop. Tony was after something simple to do invoicing for his work. I was looking for something a bit upmarket, something I could take to school on my next lot of rounds. Laura was looking for something to replace her current lappy, so something similar to what I have got.

We went to five differant places to see what they had. We started at Clive Peeters, where Tony found exactly what he wanted (along with a red toaster). We ventured on to Office Works where we waited for ages to get any help, which never came, so gave up. Into Harvey Norman where the sales guy was very keen for us to buy something. He gave Laura his card and made sure that when she came back, his name was credited with the sale. PowerHouse was fourth, which is where I found what I was after, and Laura also found something she liked the look of. We finally ventured into JB Hi Fi to see their range, but again the service was non existant.

So back to PowerHouse, where we tried to negotiate a deal on this very fine specimine of technology – Sony Vaio VGN-CR25G/R. Just so we’re all on the same page, I got the Blazing Red one, not the white one. It was the last one they had in stock, and red does happen to be my favorite color. It was also marked down significantly – around $800 off from the original price for what I purchased.

So in short, I got a new laptop. I’m very happy with it, people had been telling me that Windows Vista was worth avoiding, though I’m not having any significant issues with it. It took a while to sort through all the included software (seriously, how many differant DVD players do I need on one computer!?!?) and I’m just about set up.

So now to continue playing with Vaio.

I am incredibly frustrated. I have just spent the past few hours trying to upload one video to YouTube, to embed into my Journey to totally and completely finish it off. The video I was making was a PowerPoint with narration, so I screencast the whole thing, recorded the narration and saved it as a .wmv file.

I had used this file format for other videos I had uploaded and embedded before (for example, in my Technology assignment). SO I thought I’d have very few problems getting this to work. I was wrong.

I uploaded to YouTube, to be told that the file couldn’t not convert and had the upload had failed. I had no more information, so I just assumed some technical glitch. I tried again…and again… and again. I think I tired a total of five times before giving up. So a friend of mine suggested I check out TeacherTube.

I signed up (which took a while) then  went to upload my video. It uploaded fine, which was a relief. THen came the embedding. I tried three differant codes I had been given, one general, one general with search box and one specifically for edublogs. None of them worked.

So I have done the simplest thing, and linked my Journey to the TeacherTube video. Not very technical, but it serves the purpose it was meant to. It might also offer a download for people who are unable to view the video. Something I can do tomorrow though!

Head on over to my ‘Teaching with Tech.’ page and check out the link to my new and complete blog, called ‘New Technologies: Possibilities and Pitfalls, Teachers Making Choices’. It has been prepared for an assignment at Uni, but is a worthwhile read.
It was also my first go at embedding a YouTube video into a post. The videos arent anything special, more or less me sitting at my computer speaking into a microphone looking at the camera, but teh fact is I have played with and had success with something new.
So now I have just one assignment left for the semester, and that my my second Professional Journey. I plan to complete it on Saturday night and Sunday, to submit on Monday – then it’s just two exams to go.
I also got a book from the library (shock horror, not only did I walk in to but I also borrowed from, the library!) about 100 things to post about. So you may see some of those pop up soonish, as a means of filling in time while between semester.
Enjoy your weekends!