TACCLE or Teachers’ Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments, is a project funded by the EU under its Lifelong Learning Program-me. Its aim is to help teachers to develop state of the art content for e-learning in gene-ral and for learning environments in particular. It tries to achieve this by training teachers to create e-learning materials and raising their awareness of e-learning in general. TACCLE will help to establish a culture of innovation in the schools in which they work.
The training is geared to the needs of the classroom teachers but teacher trainers, ICT support staff and resource centre staff may find it useful too!
We all love the Taccle2 website, but we would really like to know what you think about it.
We want to know if you find it easy to use, if the content is interesting enough and if it well structured.
That is why we would like you to answer 5 very simple on-line questions (the questionnaire is available in several languages) :https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L98VVSW
This will take less than 5 minutes of your time and it will help us a lot to know if we need to improve the website or if you like it just as it is.
I’ve been quiet on the blog lately. The last two days I have been rushing to finish a long – and behind schedule – report on pedagogic approaches to the use of technology for teaching and learning and the initial traini9ng and continuing professional development of teachers and trainers. And all last week I was in Blankenberge in Belgium, where together with jenny Hughes I taught on a course on the use of social software in the classroom.
The group on the course were great and I enjoyed myself greatly. More on that in a later post. Thursday last week was Radio Day. I am more and more convinced of the use of internet radio for teaching and learning. Internet radio involves so many different skills and competences – from technical skills to interviewing, from researching to presentation, from planning competences to multi media skills. And above all it requires team work. We presented the day as a sort of role play. We were role playing researching, planning and broadcasting a 40 minute radio programme. Only we were doing it – for real. Producing a radio programme is authentic learning and is fun.
In the morning we split into three groups. The radio- heads went off with me where we started planning the programme, allocated different roles – floor manager, producer, anchor people, music producer, audio techy etc. We set up and tested the equipment and liaised with the other two groups who were developing content. One group was exploring the ideas around digital literacies, the other about digital identities. Each agreed to come up with 10 minutes worth of programme as a result of their workshops.
As the day went on the tension increased. Would we get it all together, would the programme really go out. The last hour before the broadcast was mad. And at 1600, right on queue Sounds of the Bazaar – Live from Blankenberge went on air. People were nervous but I think you will agree they all seemed to enjoy themselves. And afterwards we discussed how participants could use internet radio in their own teaching and learning.
Give it a listen. If you are interested in us running a workshop or if you would like to give internet radio a go get in touch. Its great for pedagogy, its fun and it isn’t so expensive or difficult as you think.
In the meantime thanks to all of you who produced the show – too many to name. Thanks too to Audrey’s son whose music we played. If someone can remind me of the name of the band and the url we will give it a plug on this blog.
Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE Internet radio is broadcasting today, Thursday 23 October, form Blankenburge in Belgium. The programme is being produced by students on a European funded course on using social software in the classroom. The programme, which is going to be fabulous, will be broadcast at 1600 Central European time, 1500 UK. To listen live to the programme go to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u
The stream will open up in your favourite MP3 player.
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Today we started with using Twitter and Voicethread. Both could be used at school level (Roleplay, creative writing etc.).
However, there is the issue of access. Not all students want to create an account or have a mobile device to access Twitter. They could use their mobile phones, but then there is the question of costs.
Voicethread seems to be a very useful device. Especially since it is quite easy to embed it into moodle:
Posted in taccle10 | Comments Off on Twitter and Voicethread
This morning we learned how to use voicethreading which is a very useful and interesting tool to be used in a learning scenario. It allows teachers and students to comment on a particular image by using phone, the webcam, the microphone, by typing or doodling, by making an audio comment or simply by sending an image or a soundtrack as a reply.
