Teacher Recourses/Presentation

Teacher Resources 

My part in the group is to devise a Teachers Resource page. To begin with I was a little confused as to what I was suppose to include on this page. At the beginning the only thing I could think of was putting up information about different blogs the teacher can choose from. It was good in the Week 11 lecture to see what else a teacher might need to know when completing our veggie garden project. I had forgotten that example websites were on the Murdoch website so it was nice to have something to compare my work to and make changes. 

What I've included on the Teachers Resource page:

• Blog information: With this project one of the outcomes you are to access is 'information and communication technology capability'. To access this we added in the blog component into our project. The students will have to keep an updated blog each week, reporting their findings. This helps them grasp the idea of what is blogging on a computer and show there understanding in this communication tool with writing up an entry each week.
• Links to different blogs such as Weebly, LiveJournal and Blogger to give the teacher an idea of the many helpful/free blogs that are out there.
• Gave an example of a blog that I had done up. To give the teacher an idea of what the layout looks like.

Example Blog - The Veggie Garden

• List of equipment needed. 
• Suggesting that some equipment is going to need be taken into consideration before starting this project. Such as computers and cameras are going to need to be booked in advance each week for the length of the project.
• Jobs that need to be allocated to each group member before the start of every class.

What the top of my Teachers Resources page looks like!

Link To Our Wiki

Looking back on my work now I wish I had maybe added in some video's and one or two links to other resources such as how to grow a veggie garden page.

Presentation

For our presentation we decided to do a screencast through Viber. On the day we were missing a group member due to being away on prac. It was difficult as there were a number of things we were wanting to change on the website before filming the screencast but couldn't so we had to make do with what we had. After a dozen or so takes in filming our screencast we finally made it through without a mistake. It was then the task of trying to upload the presentation to our website that had everyone frustrated. Viber didn't seem to want to cooperate with us so we decided to give a different screen-casting website a go. In my previous assignment 'The Researcher', we had to use a screen-casting tool to talk someone through using a referencing tool such a EndNote. I did this screencast through Screenr which I didn't have that many major problems with and was able to get the screencast to my website, so we gave Screenr ago. Today it just seemed like nothing wanted to work with us. After an hour of trying different ways to attach the screencast we decided to leave it there and go home. Rianna and Asher would try again when they got home. Fortunately Asher was able to get it up and running on our website. 

So everything looks good and ready for our Wednesday tutorial were we will be presenting our screencast!! :)

   

Communication

At the beginning of Task 3 as a group we had decided that E-mail would be the easiest and best way for us to keep in contact and to convey what we were up to. To start off this was a great idea and seem to be working. We had allocated jobs and we were keeping everyone updated on how we were doing by e-mail but soon communicating became a struggle. Due to other commitments it became difficult to get in contact with one group member. The difficult thing about this was that one person had created the Wiki page and only had the rights to change the page. E-mails were failing and it became very frustrating trying to complete our task.
Group assignments are never straight forward and easy, but I think its a great opportunity to deal with situations such as these. A carrer as a teacher does entail working with others such as the students and coworkers. You're not always going to agree with other but its finding them skills to be able to deal and compromise with others thats important, and group projects help with these skills.

 

Veggie Garden/Australian Curriculum

Task 3 of EDN111 asks us to set up a teachers project timetable.
After selecting what classroom topic we wanted to concentrate on (Science) we now had to decide on a class project that we could organize for a teacher. I think our group did a great job with choosing and staying with Science as there are so many experiments and class activities we have the choice from. The only thing was to select an experiment that fit the Australian Curriculum criteria.  Our classroom project is to grow, maintain and keep a record of a veggie garden.

Like I said before in a previos blog, I haven't gone on the Australian Curriculum website before and dont know much of its layout. So I spent today going through the website. The site is broken down into Learinng Area, general capabilities, and year level.

Our group selected Year 4 science then looked at the different learning development we would be addressing.

One the outcomes this project will access is Planning and Conducting:
'Safely use appropriate materials, tools or equipment to make and record observations, using formal measurements and digital technologies as appropriate' 

General capabilities

• http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/generalCapability/1
  Literacy: Writing down information collected
• http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/generalCapability/2
  Numeracy: Measuring 
• http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/generalCapability/3
  Information and communication technology capability: Through keeping a blog
• http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/generalCapability/5
  Personal and social capabilit: Presenting their findings to the classroom at the end of the project

This is all just a brief outline of what we wish to cover.

  

The Group

Hey Bloggers!

Today we got assigned into our groups that will be working with for Task three - The Teacher. My group consists of myself, Rianna Robson, Asher Rhodes-McMillan and Ed Pley. These are usually the people I sit with in the EDN111 tutorial and I'm happy to be in a group with them.

First things first! We had to select a school subject to concentrate on and delegate jobs out to each group member. Selecting the subject became a little tricky as all members are interest in different things. Asher prefers Arts and Drama subjects, Ed sport and Rianna likes Science. We ended up having to write down all subjects on seperate pieces of paper and draw one out of a hat. That's how Sceience ended up being our subject. I happy with this outcome and there's so much information and tasks that can be done referring to this subject.
Next was allocating the job roles. The jobs were the different pages that were going to be on our Wiki page; Home Page, Project Outline, Task Instructions, Teachers Resources and a Reference page.
This was easy enough allocating job roles, everyone just selected the one they would do.
 Job Roles

Rianna: Project Outline
Asher: Task Instructions
Ed: Home Page
Shauna: Teachers Resources
Everyone: Reference Page

 So we're off to a good start and ready to get into this!

    

Assignment time again!

Hey again bloggers!

So here we go again. I'm starting my last assignment for EDN113 which has us getting into groups and creating a wiki page. I'm a little nervous about this task as I've had a look over the rubic and the description of what is need of us. I don't know much about the Australian curriculum and will have to look a lot more into what aspects are needed to be covered for each year group. Also I not too fond of doing group assignments as they never seem to run smoothly.

Will keep you updated bloggers!

Screen-Cast

Hey Bloggers!!

Finally I feel like I'm getting somewhere! After hours and hours of dabbling around with EndNote I'm confident in how to add a reference to the EndNote library and incorporate that reference into a Word document. I'm still concerned about using EndNote x4 but I can't do anything about it now.

When creating my screen-cast for this assignment I selected to use a program called Screenr. This was a great and easy little tool to use and I'm very happy with my end result.

This assignment I found extremely difficult and it really did test my patients!  I'm glad to have everything up and running on my website but I don't know how I'm going to go on this assignment. 

Keep reading bloggers!

EndNote Will Be the Death of Me!

Hey Bloggers!

My journey with EndNote hasn’t been exactly ‘smooth sailing’. Combining my endnote into Microsoft word has been crazy. After flailing around the cyber-space of my laptop with no success, I tried using my mother’s computer- also a mac- to try to get a fresh start on the whole process.  I even tried downloading , installing and using zotero, which is another referencing program- but being the absolute technological genius that I am (not), I couldn’t stop my mac from stopping the pop-ups and freaking out the whole process. I ended up having to find a website that hosted a file for the earlier version of EndNote; EndNote X4- The latest version (X6) was too disagreeable and so this really was my only option.While I have my concerns about endnote X4 not being up-to-date on all the necessary referencing styles (mainly APA 6^th) what choice did I have? It feels like everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong with this assignment!

Keep reading bloggers!!!