Digital tools for online learning

Concept mapping for learning






Wiki's for collaborative Learning

To Wiki or not to Wiki, that is the question. In my opinion, there are so many online tools used to create web pages to store personal information its just crazy, but to simply find one that is suitable for your own needs, or for your classroom needs is something which needs to be decided on the individual. As blogs themselves are more of an online journal/diary of personal information, Wikis are more for collaborative uploading of information. Blogs are more informal, wikis are formal. You can use blogs for informing people of your travelling, the processes of your house being built, and in this instance, the online journal of our personal learning journay that incorporates our own ideas of learning about ICT's and online tools that are useful within classrooms.

Wikis are for collaborative learning, where people can be in groups, and upload informaion, images, videos etc collectively, and edit the information uploaded. Whereas blogs, you are unable to edit anythin, except comment. Please view this you tube clip which is an attempt at explaining blog vs wiki in a comedy aspect.



I have created my own personal wiki page
You can create your own wiki as well. Here is a short clip on what a wiki is, and how it can be used in the classroom.



Wikis and blogs are also a fantastic way of including ESL students within the classroom, whether a few or a whole class of ESL students, as stated in the clip below, Online blogging, and wiki's are a link to the whole world where you can touch base with people from any country, learn their culture and languages.... Please view this clip as it is quite interesting listening to ESL students talk about their views on the topic.



Cluster Maps

You will find cluster maps on many websites these days, which is a small map which shows the visitors from each part of the world and where they are viewing your website from, the more viewers from that particular area on the map, the larger the dot becomes. Its a great way of knowing statistically where the majority of your viewers are located. Fantastic tool for marketing especially. Within the classroom, an exciting way of allowing the students to understand the power of the internet and monitoring capabilities. They can see what cultures are interested in their work, who they need to cater for, and what information to add to their pages.

Below is my own Cluster map for my blog.








Below is a clip of how a teacher uses cluster maps within the classroom.




Creating a web page

Digital tools for the internet are increasing daily as more and more programs are created to make it easier for the individual to create online webpages, blogs and wikis etc.

I played around with the weebly site to create my webpage, having created many simple webpages in the past when the internet had first began, webpages such as 'Anglefire' seemed to have been lost within the world wide web somewhere. My own personal Weebly website is available, and I found it very easy to use. The system involved a simple drag and drop way of creating the page, click on a link to link to a new page, and its comepleted for you.

This is a fun way of creating your very opwn webpage that is free, with the option to pay for your own personal domain name that simply attaches a '.com', without the advertising of weebly or any other such sub-domain sites.


Animations and simulations

As technology has come along way through the years, so has digital animation and the programs used to create them. Without animation we would not have been introduced to the Simpsons, Futurama, Disney. Below I have included a clip of a hilarious animation that my daughter found online .



Animation can be simulated into classroom lessons easily, whilst at the same time incorporating art, multimedia, science, physics all in one. A website I came across introduces the flip book animation that can be easily created by children at any age, although using the online tool, allows you to upload each frame of the flip book, and create an animation.

My first year as a prac student was spent in Secondary school teaching Visual art and Multimedia, so one thing I also enjoyed doing with the students was stop motion animation. Ever seen the movie Chicken run? This was created with Plasticene models and a photo taken at each necessary movement, and then bundled together to create a motion film. There was an obscure amount of frames in that movie alone !...

In order to view animations or simulations online you need an Adobe Flash player ( which is the program that bring all of the frames of each GIF. together to create movement).


Google Earth

Google Earth allows you to view Historical imagery from around the globe, Ocean floor and surface data from marine experts and use
Simplified touring with audio and voice recording. After investigating this tool further, I found that there are people who create 3-dimensional digital models for Google Earth so that you can feel the 3D aspect of touring a place online.




Google Maps

Google Maps is an online interactive map that has most definitely taken over the original ATLAS book encyclopedia. Google maps is now so interactive that you ca zoom in to see a virtual view of houses, streets and even go window shopping in New York! (personal experience). There are many features of Google Maps that include an extensive zoom,sattelite imagery, pin point location.

This online tool would be excellent for use in the classroom incorporated into many of the KLA's including History, Earth science, environmental science, physics and geography by including map plotting lessons, organising travel plans