I had an interesting letter turn up in the mail about a month ago. It was from my husband’s step-brother’s wife (yes that is a mouthful) who is living in London asking if I would consider writing a 200 - 800 word piece around the topic of something that has great importance in my life. She plans to put together a book after getting responses from a wide range of woman. Being the computer geek that I am, I ended up taking a technological view when I came to try and write something for her so thought I would share it here. For me, one of the most important aspects of my life is the ability to connect with other people.  While some argue that society has become more splintered with families and individuals being increasingly more isolated, I would counter that by focusing on the way that technology has begun to bridge the gaps between people. I lead two lives; one involves interacting with friends and my husband at home or at social events and the other involves my online life with all the friends and acquaintances I have developed in this space. While nothing will ever replace face to face contact with people that I enjoy spending time with, my online life is almost as important to me.  The friends that I have developed through tools like Twitter and through being part of a blogging network may be virtual but I talk to them regularly and have found like-minded people that I can both learn from and share ideas with. Facebook keeps me in touch with a number of friends now living in many places around the world and has helped me to reconnect to people I have not seen in many years. I could do without all the application invites but that is a small price to pay for having a network that allows me to stay in touch with so many people at once. So I guess what I am trying to say is that all of us have a powerful desire to connect with people - it is the essence of what makes us human. As technology changes, people are finding new ways to adapt this technology to meet this basic human need.  The most important aspect of this for me is that some of the biggest shifts in technology we have seen in recent years have not been driven by advancing technology for its own sake; they have been driven by this desire for people to reach out to each other.  I find that reassuring and believe that this growth in networking ability may prove to be one of the defining positive forces for change in our increasingly global society. The funny thing is that I had just published this blog post when I ended up following a link while on Twitter that lead me to a blog post containing this graphic that symbolises connectedness online. Couldn’t illustrate my point more clearly I think! So - what angle would you take if given this topic. Would you focus on friends? family? that lovely new piece of technology you got for Xmas? Why not let me know in the comments.

MetLink Website MetLink is the flagship dedicated educational website of the Royal Meteorological Society, with weather and climate resources aimed at primary and secondary school teachers, students, teenagers, children and the general public. What do you think of MetLink?

I like innovative ideas and Acapela is one of them! You are selecting a video, writing your text up to 200 characters, and you view the complete scene with your own words. Acapela uses the text-to-speech application to make the characters speak your words! It is an easy tool that can be used even with lower graders. The mini videos are animations and they are in good quality, the characters are fun and lovely! When you finish, you can get a link or the code to share your creation with others. Acapela offers different languages and accents too! This makes this tool more powerful! How can we use Acapela in education: Choose one of the animations and students come up with their own ideas. Then, they choose the best one! Students can practice a grammar point that they have just learnt. Teachers can announce events, assignment or projects with this tool. This tool can be used for dictation activities. Students can introduce the characters with their own words. Whatever you do with this tool is sure to be something fun!

The General TIG Site I have a new role this year in my job at CORE Education. I am now working on a brand new project to encourage teachers to make use of the tools available to them within the Taking It Global website. The main website is broken down into six different sections. I have been having a good play through the different areas and have been impressed at the sheer breadth of resources and tools that are within each one. I have written about one or two interesting things I found from within each area under the screengrabs below: There has been really interesting discussion on the Community ‘Discussion Boards’ about the Gaza conflict with perspectives from all around the world including people from Palestine and Israel. This would be a wonderful resource to engage in if wanting to get a deeper understanding of the issues involved. I also enjoyed reading through a few ‘Member Stories’ which are the perspectives of individuals in relation to a few key questions. One question was on what makes a good leader and I thought that this was an excellent response from a 22 year old in Jamaica - A good leader is able to identify in himself his faults, accepts when he’s wrong and takes recommendations. A good leader is one who wants the best for himself and his group and not to be placed on a pedestal, but to carryout his given duty with great pride and humbleness. A good leader is uncommon. A good leader is charismatic yet at the same time democratic and possesses the ability to use all leadership styles where necessary. The ‘Commitments’ area is a place where you can share with the TIG community what action you plan to take on an issue that you feel is important in your own context. You can either make a pledge or a commitment. You can browse through what other members of the TIG community have already said they will do and join in with that pledge or commitment. I joined in to ‘Share my knowledge with others’ along with 289 other people in TIG. Groups is a place to join in with others on areas of interest (a little like Facebook groups). I have downloaded the Climate Change resource in the ‘Action Guides’ section and I have to say that it was an incredibly complex and thorough resource that gives you background information and takes you step by step through planning to take action in this area. The ‘Projects’ section is a place where you can set up projects for others to join in with. I like the way you can have blogs associated with projects. There are some excellent tools contained in this section. I think my favourite of these I have come across so far would be the Workshop Kit (a downloadable PDF) that was great tips for running different types of workshops. There are some excellent open meeting resources I plan to use this year as part of the work I am doing with ICT PD! It was linked to from the main events page. Here you can read ‘Blogs’ from TIG members and groups (as long as they have been made public). The thing I really like about this function is that you can link an established blog to your TIG blog so that when you put up a post in your normal blog, it appears in both places. You can even customise the look of your blog within the TIG environment. When in the ‘Regions’ section, you can also browse blogs by region. The ‘Games’ you can play are based around environmental issues or help you learn more about other cultures. I went for the beginning level of the flag recognition game and I have to admit that I didn’t do very well at all. The ‘Global Gallery’ is a place for members to share art work to help explore ideas and issues or simply as a means for self-expression. There are competitions where you can submit work that fits that theme. The ‘Panroma Magazine’ takes submissions for articles from all members and looks to have very interesting articles. ‘TIG magazine’ pulls together art from the ‘Global Gallery and articles from Panorama on a particular theme and can be downloaded to your computer. This is an incredibly meaty section where you can go explore current world issues in-depth. Each issue has links to where information on that topic can be found throughout TIG as well as links to outside information. There is enough here to keep people busy for a long time! There are themes profiled in each area such as the focus on the 60th anniversary in 2008 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was linked to within the ‘Human Rights’ area. The ‘Regions’ section has information about those areas of the world. You can view information at continent level or drill down to individual countries. There are also links to content throughout the rest of TIG that relates to that area of the world eg blog entries or discussion points. If there are locally based projects, they can be profiled on the page for that country. Education Specific Tools OK - so those are the main areas of TIG and they are a huge resource on their own but where it gets really interesting in my opinion, is the range of tools specifically for educators in the education section (TIGed). You can use many of the tools completely for free such as the ‘Community’ area where you can search for partner classes to work together on a project. The ‘Resources’ area is a place for teachers to post useful resources they have made that they think would benefit other teachers. The only thing that has any cost associated with it is setting up a virtual classroom for a year and that is a very small fee to cover the costs for hosting any content that is posted up into this space (around $30 US) Basically, a teacher can set up a classroom and then students can be signed up as members of this classroom. There is the choice of having the students sign up themselves through an internet link and using a registration code you create (in which case they would need an email address) or the teacher can add them in (and they wouldn’t have to have an email address). There are excellent tools available within the protected classroom environment. Members of the classroom can have their own blogs - a much cheaper and safer way to have a whole class individually blogging than with some other educational blogging tools. There are also places to post assignments, discussions, art work, videos (imported from YouTube using your username), writing and you can build a number of maps with place pins (using Microsoft Virtual Earth). There is also a place to publish written work to so that students are able to share their work with the group. Something else that you can enable within the classroom space is integration with the Google tools. You can enable this just for teachers to be able to access (as I have) or for all students as well so that they have their own TIG Google accounts. There would be issues around monitoring content if students have their own accounts but there would also be huge benefits as well. Students would be able to have documents uploaded that they then share with you and their fellow students. They could work collaboratively on a document with students both within your classroom or with students overseas (if you are collaborating with other classes). I think this is an incredibly exciting option and it only took a couple of clicks to set up my TIG Google account (I am suzievesper@tig.org). Basically, Google Aps is built into TIG and I think this is a huge advantage. Overall, I think this is a brilliant set of tools! You have everything you need in here to have a classroom that is open all hours and allows for multiple forms of contribution. This is the area that I will be focusing on in my role of project co-ordinator for TIGed in New Zealand. The project I am involved in is specifically targeting secondary schools. For those that get involved, there will be training from myself on how to use the tools and support in using the site to investigate issues and take action So - do you want to be involved? I have set up a test classroom space for teachers to play around in to learn how it all works. You are welcome to come in and join me in here even if you are not a New Zealand teacher and I welcome primary teachers to join as well. I have posted up an assignment in the class to come up with ideas how TIGed could be used to support different areas of secondary education. You can choose to be a student member of my classroom or to be an associate teacher that can set assignments etc. Want to be a student and see what options they have? I have set it up so that students self-register (ie as if they have an email address) and you can join as a student by visiting this link: http://collaboration.tiged.org/educators/register/ The registration code is joinsoc Or join as an associate teacher by visiting this link: http://collaboration.tiged.org/educators/assistant/ The registration code is teachsoc Come in and explore with me. Make sure you mark where you live on the classroom map. Hopefully, together we can come up with many ideas on how to maximise this amazing resource.

If you are looking for ideas to let your students build up their own stories, you may like WordTamer. This tool teaches children how to develop characters, write a plot and design the settings in a story. It teaches this, in an interactive way, in a carnival. You move your mouse through the carnival to try each step. My favourite one is the "Capture a Character" where you develop your character by playing a game with the ducks. When you complete each step, you can print out what you have written or save it to your desktop. WordTamer also gives certificate to the students. Some ideas to integrate in class: This tool is a great way to motivate any age level to write and create their stories. Students can use the same game on WordTamer and come up with their unique stories. Great way to show how children can start writing their stories. Let children create their stories, print them out and display them in class. Teachers can create questions for the stories that the students have created. Don’t miss the chance to visit this interactive funfair to choose a story start and get tips with your plots, genres and characters.

BigMarker Website BigMarker is a web conferencing community. Features include multipoint video conferencing, whiteboard, desktop sharing, unique meeting room URL, public or private rooms. What do you think of BigMarker?

This post is a plug for a reading campaign being supported by the Christchurch Library staff. They emailed me asking if I could promote the reading crusade and I am happy to help! Here are the details: In February 2009 Christchurch City Libraries and the Crusaders are once again joining forces to recreate that exciting reading promotion, the Reading Crusade. Crusaders, librarians and teachers will be working in partnership to encourage reading throughout the first term of the 2009 year. Any primary or intermediate child living in the Crusader Franchise catchment which includes Canterbury, the West Coast, Nelson and Marlborough is eligible to enter and be in to win a number of great prizes - the grand prize sees a ‘team’ of 15 children winning the chance to join the Crusaders squad at a special training session. All those entered in the Crusade will receive a participation certificate printed with the signatures of all the Crusaders team. This year the Reading Crusade has a blog! Designed to help teachers get the most out of the reading crusade, it will feature: Teachers link of the week Weekly reading challenge Fun reading sites for students Fun book, library and Reading Crusade facts Insider news Find out about web only competitions Ask the ‘Coach’ (Librarian) Book Reviews Check it out at http://readingcrusade.wordpress.com/ Add it to your RSS feed, be emailed site updates or just add it to your Bookmarks. You can also contact us via an email link to ask questions, get help with resources or ask detailed questions about the offside rule. Have you registered your school for the 2009 Reading Crusade? Go to http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/ReadingCrusade/ ,download teacher resources and register online! Good luck to anyone who registers!!

Poems have several uses and benefits in English language teaching and learning. They are thought-provoking, often humorous and they certainly add a motivational buzz to our classes. If you would like to add some tech into your lesson through poems, here are my recommendations: Concrete Poetry lets you choose or draw a picture on the screen, then drag and drop the words to fill in it that the tool gives you. When you are done, you can print it out. MagneticPoetry is a kit that gives you a white canvas to drag and drop the given words. You can get more words and start over whenever you like. when you are done, you can share your poem via mail.  AiPoem is a great automatic poem writer. Choose a favor and answer the questions that the tool asks you. The tool generates the poem by itself with adding your own words. When you finish, mail your poem or publish it to your website.  Acrostic Poems helps you step by step to write your acrostic poem. Choose your topic and then brainstorm about your topic and write them on the screen. Then, you move to a screen where you write your acrostic poem with the words that you have brainstormed. You are ready to print or share it via mail  now. Poetry Idea Engine is great for creative poem writing. You start choosing the type of poem that you would like to write. It gives you a short description of the genre. You select the words to complete your poem. When you are done, you can print it out or try another one. Piclits is a web tool for inspired picture writing. You simply choose a picture, then by dragging and dropping the words on the picture, you can create your poem. when you are done, share your poem via mail, or post it on social networking tools.  WordMover is an app that helps children crate their poems. On the app, you select the given words to drag and drop on the canvas to create your poem.  You can add your own words, and you can choose different canvas backgrounds.   and here is my favourite poem by Taylor Mali, "What Teachers Make"!

An interesting thing happened this afternoon. I opened up my http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com wiki to find the content on the front page had disappeared with a single line on the page saying "THIS WAS DEMOLISHED BY JAMZ1″.  Having never had one of my pages vandalised before, I hopped into the page history to see who was at fault and discovered from the profile of the user that it was a 10 year old boy in Scotland. The actual page was very easy to fix given that I just had to roll back to an earlier version of the page. I then pondered if I should send the lad a message but then decided this might seem a victory to the boy as it would prove I had visited his profile and probably his wiki which may have been his goal in the first place. So instead of rewarding him with attention, I sent this message to the Wikispaces team: I just wanted to report that a Wikispaces member has purposely deleted the content from one of my wiki pages. I have reverted it back to before it was deleted so no real damage done but still think that this isn’t an appropriate way to behave on the web. When I checked out the history, it was deleted by a user called spyguy4 who it appears is a 10 year old boy in Scotland. I was thinking of sending him a message myself but didn’t want to reward his behaviour with attention - I thought it might be better coming from the Wikispaces team   The page that was vandalised was http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com Action following this message was swift - Wikispaces got back to me to say that they have suspended his account. And now I find myself feeling a little guilty! The kid had spent a bit of time setting up a wiki showcasing all of his interests (video games, cars etc) which I guess he can’t access anymore! I thought maybe a stern talking to would have done the trick. Still, I guess this is a very clear lesson for the youngster on what happens if you behave badly in virtual spaces. What would you have done in the same situation? Do you think the punishment matches the crime?

Pinterest Website Pinterest is an online social pinboard. You can organize and share all the wonderful things you find on the web. Browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. What do you think of Printerest?