collaborate, communicate, create
Posts tagged Connect
Sharing school stories for 2011
Dec 13th
Global2 is highlighting your stories over the last weeks of this school year. Let us know if you have a story to share.
This post features the work of http://mlubps.global2.vic.edu.au/
Take a look into Bellaire Primary School and the wonderful world of Prep H.
A team of Middle students visited Prep H on Friday afternoon to record that week’s episode of ‘What’s News’. We had a great time and the Prep students did a fantastic job in front of the camera.
Thanks to Mr Holloway for letting us visit.
The film crew were Will R and Kyle S.
What do you remember about being in Prep?
Connect and SLAV Web 2.0 Competition
Aug 12th
Are you doing some wonderful work connecting students using web 2.0 applications in your classroom … or keen to start? You might be interested in entering the Connect and SLAV web 2.0 competition 2009. What do you need to do? Work in a team to create a unit of work incorporating the use of web 2.0 technologies and submit it, along with an application form to Connect by Monday October 5th.
There will be two prize packages awarded to winning schools with a value of approximately AU$800 each. Wii machines have generously been donated by the International Digital Entertainment Festival (iDEF) and games donated by Madman interactive. Each package includes:
- Nintendo Wii ConsoleÂ
- Wii Sports
- Nintendo 7 in 1 sports kit
- One copy of each of the following gaming titles:Â Disney Think Fast, Ultimate Band, Bratz Kidz Party and Build A Bear Workshop
Please share this information with other teachers you think may be interested in entering! Visit the link or click the images to find out more.
We tell Stories
Jul 1st
Looking for exciting digital fiction for Secondary students? Check out We Tell Stories. Six authors. Six stories. Six weeks. Digital fiction from Puffin.
Based on the 39 Steps by John Buchan, this is ‘The 21 Steps’ – an adventure written and and designed for Google maps … ‘One minute, Rick Blackwell is sightseeing at St. Pancras in London; the next, he’s caught up in a conspiracy that takes him far away from home.’
This post is cross posted from the Connect blog. Check it out! For more great online story sites, especially for Primary students try the Online Story topic in Connect. There are 30 sites to explore!
Awesome Resources
Mar 28th
Connect is an awesome site for early childhood, primary and secondary students implemented by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Education.   Links to each of the age groups contain an Aladdin’s cave of wonderful resources. The primary students link has some of my favourite sites such has the ABC Behind the News site (a great resource which looks at local and overseas events that hit the news and simplifies it – suitable for upper primary and secondary). Behind the News is complete with lesson plans and worksheets.
Another great site featured on the primary link is the educational site, BBC Bitesize, which covers numeracy, literacy and science for KS1 (ages 5-7) and KS2 (ages 7-11). Lots of wonderful resources for extension work, revision or introduction to new topics. Other links on the site include “Things To Do” featuring activities to: listen, draw, create, experiment, watch, design, publish, discover, read, play, make multimedia. The primary students page also hosts a dictionary, thesauraus, encyclopedia, maps, calculator, news, environmental news, health, science, art, health, sports, animals and more!
This is definitely the best one-stop shop for primary resources I have come across.
The secondary student resources at Connect are equally impressive. If you have early childhood learners, there’s plenty there too.
Schoolyard Blitz @ Mooroolbark College
Mar 28th
Last year Mooroolbark College teachers Jodie Tilley and Pennie White developed a wonderful WebQuest. This WebQuest was an award winner in the Education Channel (now Connect) and SLAV WebQuests and Beyond 2008 competition. Â
- Schoolyard Blitz! home
Jodie explains how the WebQuest came about. ‘The Yarra Valley eLearning Community implemented a 1:2 laptop program for year 7 and 8 in seven schools including Mooroolbark College and was running PD to support the curriculum development needed. I am a maths teacher at Mooroolbark College. I attended a professional development session run by Pennie White on Student Collaborative Projects with an emphasis on WebQuests. Pennie White was a Development Manager for the Yarra Valley eLearning Community and was based at Mooroolbark College at the time. During this session, I became interested in using WebQuests with my class but was pretty disappointed at the lack of Maths WebQuests available. Pennie and I decided to work together to make a Maths WebQuest and this is how ‘Schoolyard Blitz’ was created. Having Pennie as an eLearning Coach in my school enabled this great project to get off the ground. Without the joint expertise and time invested this innovative curriculum would not have come about.’
Jodie says, ‘I was interested in finding a creative way to teach measurement to my Year 7 students. After brainstorming together we decided that students could design an outdoor area of the school. Pennie thought that Google Sketch-up would be the ideal 3D modelling program that students could use to do this. The best thing about this quality program is that it’s free and comes with video tutorials. This meant that we as teachers did not have to fully know how to use the program ourselves!’
Process page
Jodie continues, ‘The WebQuest itself presents a scenario to students where they work in teams of three or four to design an outdoor space of the school with a budget of 100,000. Students worked as architects, accountants, designers and computer model creators on this four-week assignment. Students had to measure the dimensions of the physical space. They had to create a scaled drawing on graph paper and develop their design for the space. They had to use the Internet (with a hotlist provided by the WebQuest) to cost the equipment, furniture and materials needed.’ Â
Evaluation page
Jodie explains, ‘They then used Google Sketch-up to create a virtual 3D model of their design. They had to present their submission using PowerPoint to the rest of the class. I ran this WebQuest with my year seven class with great success. The students were highly motivated and were even seen working on this in their lunchtimes.’
Jodie has also provided a list of VELS Standards addressed in the WebQuest:
- Strand: Discipline Based – Domain: Mathematics – Dimensions: Number, Measurement, Space and Working Mathematically
- Strand: Interdisciplinary Learning – Domain: Information and Communication Technology – Dimension: ICT for Creating
- Strand: Physical, Personal and Social Learning – Domain: Interpersonal Development – Dimension: working and learning in teams
Well done to Jodie and Pennie for creating such an interesting and engaging WebQuest and for winning a Smartboard in the Education Channel (now Connect) and SLAV WebQuests and Beyond 2008 competition. Hopefully this will inspire Victorian educators to submit their Web 2.0 projects to the Connect and SLAV Web 2.0 2009 competition.
About Connect
Mar 6th
Kerry Rowett, the Client Liaison Officer for Connect (formerly the Education Channel) has kindly agreed to be interviewed by the School Library Association of Victoria’s  Bright Ideas blog.
- Who is behind the fantastic new Connect websites?
The Connect sites are an evolution of the Victorian Education Channel and are funded by DEECD. Different areas of the Department worked together to create the sites with representatives from Communications, Information Technologies Division and Student Learning. A small team of four educators in eLearning are responsible for the QA process, ongoing improvements to the sites, content creation, Cybersafety education and professional learning. Connect is managed by Sandy Phillips. The sites were designed by an external company – Amnesia.
Connect Primary
   2. Why were the websites redeveloped – what do you want to achieve with them?
First created in 2001, the sites were long overdue for a ‘makeover’. Our focus during the redevelopment was to better highlight a high quality range of online resources for use in education. The pages have been developed to improve the user experience. Each page has a larger number of direct links to rich, interactive websites. Topic clouds on the teacher, primary and secondary pages each link to six quality sites whilst the topics page includes a wide range of topics now organised by VELS headings. Sites can be featured more readily (in a more visual form) and can be frequently updated with greater ease.
    3. How do you see the websites being used in schools? – Primary – Secondary?
Schools use Connect in different ways. Anyone anywhere in the world can view and search Connect. However only Victorian Government and Catholic schools can choose to lock students down to sites only available in Connect. There are a number of options:
- Many schools choose to have Connect Primary or Secondary as their Internet home page. Students can also search for sites not in Connect
- Some classes search within Connect only and some classes search beyond Connect with general filtered access
- Students use Connect when they are trying to maintain their download budget. Students may have an Internet ‘account’ but still have access to Connect resources when this reaches ‘0′
- All students are ‘Connect only’ and search within Connect for safety and /or cost saving reasons.
Connect Secondary
    4. What kind of input did you have from classroom teachers?
When we received the initial designs for the new Connect sites we visited both primary and secondary schools to seek feedback from teachers and students. This feedback was then provided to the designers. Subsequent designs were also shared with teachers for feedback. Our focus throughout was on making it easier for teachers and students to access high quality online resources for teaching and learning.
The Victorian Education Channel and now Connect have always responded to teacher feedback with most sites available in the spaces included due to teacher and student recommendations. Staff members frequently present at conferences and alter the sites in response to feedback regarding suggested websites, topics, useability and design considerations.
    5. What type of content do you have on the sites?
Connect features a wide range of online content. Users can search the sites for websites, images, audio and videos. Resources are tagged according to audience – so a search in the primary and secondary pages will get different results. There is also a range of ‘how to’ information about new technologies including blogs, wikis, podcasting and social networking. You can link to schools with great online content such as Horsham West (Vic), Copacabana (NSW), Hawkesdale (Vic) and Woodlands (UK). Useful organisations such as VCAA, VIT and Subject Associations are also only a click away.
Connect Teacher
 So whether you want to play a Maths game from the BBC , drag and drop words to construct a poem at Pic Lits, create an online mind map at Mindmeister, make a movie with the Zimmer Twins, write a book review at the State Library ‘Inside a Dog‘ site or watch a Science video from the Futures Channel … you can find it in Connect. Websites are added to the sites daily. Click on ‘suggest a website’  to make your own recommendations.
Thanks to Kerry for her detailed and interesting answers. The Connect sites look fantastic and there is certainly something for everyone! Congratulations to everyone involved.
