Belmore south blog.
http://belmoresouthpublicschool.edublogs.org/
 This blog is primarily designed for both students and parents to receive information regarding upcoming events, as well as to show the wider community samples of student work and programs which run within the school.


Eastwood Kindergarten blog.
http://www.eastwood.nsw.edu.au/kinderclips/
This blog publishes kindergarten work samples. It gives parents the opportunity to see what their children are learning about, and students the opportunity to improve and read others work out of school hours.

Text Innovations

This text innovation focuses on feeling verbs associated with being blue. It goes on to focus on the action verbs which might make you feel better.

This activity has strong cross curriculum links with the emotions component of the PDHPE syllabus.

This activity would be completed after reading the “blue day book for kids” by Bradley Greive. It could used as an assessment of differing verb knowledge, as well as if they followed the meaning of the story.

Copyright at university and schools.

Can I copy material from the internet for research?

Yes, as educational institutions (schools, uni’s andTAFE)  are able to use material copyright material without permission if they use in a reasonable and fair manner.

What constitutes research and fair use?

These educational institutions are using this information in a fair way, when they do not sell, or profit from the information. They may however copy material and make it available via email or the school intranet. In other words fair use occurs when the information is only used for educational purposes in an “reasonable amount”, not for extraneous profit.

Can students ( university or school ) use music in videos that they make?

Yes, schools and universities are capable of copying the majority of music, including copying/recording sound recordings, via the music licenses APRA, AMCOS, ARIA and PPCA.

3 ideas or activities that a teacher would find useful using blogs.

Peer assessment on writing. Perciles (2008). Blogs open up the prospect of learning outside the classroom. This learning is not confined to the traditional teacher student relationship, but rather relies on a combination of peer assessment and teacher assessment. Students are also able to edit their own writing via blogs (and often do this more comprehensively when it is peer assessed).

Introducing a concept/ idea through a blog. Barone (2008). This reading shows how effective it can be to introduce students to a concept and a way of learning through a blog (see Michaels “Wright class blog”. ) In this class, Michael introduces the class to the internet and how it helps them learn, via an introductory blog. This blog page also links to many useful sites, such as the school website.

 Providing writing Instruction.  A blog allows the teacher to lead discussion about a writing trait, its ideas and content. This can occur, before, during and after reading a picture book. Students are to comment on the effectiveness of specific examples of the writing trait (within the blog).   

Cluster Maps

clustrmaps.com/index.htm

Cluster maps lets you the location of your audience using a world map. This is useful to target your content specifically to the audience and show students the global connection available when accessing these new lit resources

Tree Octupus Video

The tree octupus website is useful in teaching students as it is a hoax website. Students are asked to assess the validity and reliabilty of this source. The majority of studnets thought this website was reliable as it contained all the information the students needed to answer their assigned questions
In order to assess this example of new literacies (website) students must ask  a number of critical questions regarding the link between the author and material presented. These include how the text was constructed, its values, who is the intended audience and who benefits from this site. These questions are new to the majority of teachers. Teachers are now receiving limited support (in the US) in teaching material of new literacies, due to funding. The US is behind a number of other countries in professional learning for new literacies.

A solution is to give teachers more time and input in the use of technology, in realtion to the specific needs of their classroom.   

Defintion of NEW LITERACIES

New literacies are defined by two main components. Firstly they involve the use of digitality or digital electronic resources (Knobel, 2006). Examples of these digital electronic resources include blogs, wikis, audio and podcasting (Callow, 2008). More simple in order to be digitally literate in new literacies an individual must become competent in the skills assocaited with web 2.0, such as sharing and interacting with the digital media, rather than just viewing them (Callow, 2006).
  The second component of new literacies involve the mindset informing the literacy practice. This mindset recognises the digital sphere as a new, seperate world, which operates independently from the physical world.