Social Media Monitoring

Last week I posted about Denis Masseni’s report “Why Schools are Spooked by Social Media.” An interesting component of this report was on social media monitoring. That is, monitoring the internet for mentions of a particular keyword (such as your school). This is a good way to take defensive action if negative mentions occur and […]

Why Schools are Spooked by Social Media

I was pleased I was listening to ABC Radio Melbourne this morning when I heard the next segment was going to be about social media in schools. While I braced myself for a flood of ill informed callers harping on the negatives of Facebook and the like I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Denis […]

Why I think Blogs Should be Public

I have had a number of educators have asked me in the past about my privacy guidelines for my class blog. Recently, an educator contacted me for advice when their principal would not allow their class blog to be public. That is, the principal would not allow blogging unless the blog was completely password protected. […]

Twitter from a Newbie’s Perspective!

According to the website, http://www.whendidyoujointwitter.com I joined Twitter on 9 March 2009. It wasn’t until early 2010, however that I started really using Twitter. I had tried many times previously to get into this social networking phenomenon but, like all things technological, I needed to see how Twitter could enrich my life in order to […]

Global Collaborative Projects

One of the richest ways you can use technology in the classroom is to collaborate globally. I am becoming a big fan of global collaborations and the projects my Grade Two students work on are proving to be powerful learning experiences. Global collaboration provides authentic learning opportunities that help students learn about another culture while […]

Clasroom Resources: Teachers Pet

I have been using the website SparkleBox for quite a while to find a wide range of printable resources for my primary classroom. I was therefore surprised to discover that the SparkleBox website has been been undergoing a troubled time recently with it’s creator and editor, Samuel King being imprisioned in January 2010 for child […]

Teaching Technology Post “Noughties”

For a while now I have been questioning the curriculum that is seen in many primary school I.T/ICT/Technology/Computer classes. Many primary school students spend an hour each week in a computer lab learning about Office programs and the like….”how to make a PowerPoint, Word Document, Photo Story etc”. Now that we have left the “noughties”, […]