collaborate, communicate, create
altan
The cornerstone that forms my foundation is my family, friends and vocation. I am motivated by these things and driven towards teaching since education is the ultimate foundation. A symbiosis where, one gives rise to the other in no particular order of precedence with equally mutual dependency. That is to say, education drives society drives education drives society... and so on: family, friends, vocation, community. Yep... I love my job because despite the daily challenges and politics of the work-place, I value what I (and my colleagues) do as a teacher and what I gain as a parent for my own children. What do I do outside the classroom? D I V E in Melbourne's wonderful bay, squeeze a round of golf in every now and then, BBQs, trips and family outings, hack away at my pc (love LINUX, Mac and Microsoft, graphics and animation) and do some professional stuff (yeah you know, reports, correction, 'Prof Dee' etc). Music and drawing is my ultimate relaxation (looking at scores and playing guitar). There's more but I'm sure you've got better things to do than read my blurb. Enjoy our blog and thanks for looking in. Altan.
Homepage: http://altan.edublogs.org
Posts by altan
Emotions and Smiley Mania
Mar 28th
Okay, if you want eye-candy for your blogs and email… here’s some html code for smilies. You could use smiley code purely for visual effect or as a code/decode activity. Perhaps you could use it directly as a web page development module. The options could be included in mobile classroom technologies also. Really, how you use smilies can be an enjoyable learning approach for students. Some are animated. Here’s some examples 
Embarrassed 
Sad or cry 
Rolling the eyes 
Cool 
Shocked 
Imagine using emoticons in a paragraph of text (decoding/encoding exercise) or simply to add impact to student based texting, blog commenting, email…
To look at more click the following link. Hope his is useful 
and not too 
. Have 
WordPressSupport
Altan
Find me at…
Inside 56 AR
FUSE
Mar 14th
Hi Bloggers,
Here’s a heads up… Have you ever heard of F U S E ?? FUSE is an acronym for Find – Use – and Share excellent Educational resources. FUSE is a web site developed by Knowledge Bank: Next Generation (of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD)).
Essentially, it’s a portal for teachers and students/parents to access and share some of the terrific educational resources available via the Web 2.0 collaborative context. Teachers have their own “desk top” accessible via their own TO numbers and edumail password. When logged in, a teacher can upload resource packages and files that they think would be good for sharing. A Q and A process occurs behind the scenes to check for creative commons/copy right and can automatically flag content accordingly. Subsequently, content can be rated for different degrees of usability based on copy right.
General users (non-teachers), can utilize the search engines and links to find resources across the curriculum. The resources can be teacher generated, web sites, professionally produced material and so on. Once you’ve found a useful site, there is an id number you can store and then use to immediately access the site via it’s id number.
I highly encourage our readers to look at FUSE. Personally, I have found a wealth of useful ‘stuff’ packed into a single portal.
Click here to go to
FUSE
See you,
Altan
Inside 5/6AR
Seeking Wiki Experts
Jul 21st
Can you help? A recent request came to me via email for support in formatting a wiki page. It goes something like this…
“The grade ¾ team at my school (including myself) are starting to use a Wiki as a means of doing reading journals. Basically this is an introduction to electronic portfolios… My question is that I want the kids links on the page to go across the page rather than down the page. In the edit function they go across but when I save they go down the page.”
By Rob D.
I don’t wiki as yet but if you can help, please drop a comment here. Rob will be here to view any offers of support. I also encourage Rob to look at the wiki links listed further down the left sidebar of our Global Teacher blog.
Thanks a heap,
Altan :>)
Web 2.0/Blog Tools for Video Libraries
Jul 12th
Well now that term 3 has arrived I’m feeling rejuvenated, it’s time to ‘dress-up’ the ol’ blog. I’m sure quite a number of you have a similar purpose in life 
.
So… here’s my thoughts: I have an account with Teacher Tube (TT) which I use for uploading video files mainly for streaming.
I convert each file into flv or .mov or mpeg4 then log onto TT and commence uploading. Once uploaded, I copy the url path and paste it directly into my post/pages using the html view option (most of you that have done this should have a good idea of what I’m saying so far). The question for me now is that I have seen some video players in a number of blogs that show several videos from a single player-window… this I like very much. I currently only show video as individual clips through individual players. I’d love to know how or if TT has an option to put all videos into a single player window.
Yes, this is a ‘how to’ question but hopefully any shared ideas will be useful for anyone interested. If you got something to add please post a reply.
You can view my attempts at http://altan.edublogs.org
Regards,
Altan
Digital Wilderness
Jun 30th
Well it seems I’ve been out in the digital wilderness for quite a while. Let me elaborate… My name is Altan. I’ve been blogging for about 18 months now (class blog). Last year I was involved with the DEECD KBNG:Web 2.0 collaborative learning project (phase 1). My focus was on cyber-safe issues related to classroom blogs and student engagement in the primary school setting. This also led to some work with Knowledge Bank’s soon to be released next generation environment.
Through my involvement, I came across the Global Teacher (GT) site. Wow, this was a revelation. So much content and structure. I had already set up my own classroom blog but the GT enviro gave me more substantial direction simply in it’s nature, engagement and content.
Some time later, I was presenting at the Web 2.0 KBNG celebration day (among others involved) and guess who was there??? Yes; Heather B. Now, I recall seeing Heather at the opening of the project but hadn’t been aware of GT. It wasn’t until I explored the GT blog that I realized who Heather is. Then, to see her again at the celebration day, gave more significance.
I had indicated that I was interested in the GT site beyond a passing fancy but have been busy beyond belief and have not been able to visit here for some time: until now. Phew. And, having come back to GT, I see some fabulous additions and the usual terrific content. So, I simply would like to say, congratulations on a great teaching/learning blog, the wonderful engagement and content. Cheers Heather.
Altan
http://altan.edublogs.org
MY blog above is simply a student driven blog. Behind the scenes is some serious consideration given to cyber-safe engagement for the primary school student. Feel free to explore.
