Exploring Learning

"You must leave digital footprints so people know you’re treading among them and part of the community" Vicki Davis, ' Global Education by Design '. I joined Twitter in July 2012 and I honestly can’t tell you what prompted me to join. I had been in a school in Malaysia for a year and that had been my first exposure to teaching with technology. We were a 1:1 Mac school just starting to implement GSuite for Education (or Google Apps for Education as it was then). At that time, the apps were limited, tables for example, in Google Docs, didn’t work properly and the formatting options were limited. There was no Google Classroom either. However, it revolutionised my teaching and I began to write websites as schemes of work that had my learners as the audience and focused on what they were doing, rather than an list of instructions that I, as the teacher, should do to them. I also began to use Edmodo to share all my resources and lessons with my learners online for 2...

I set up my blog in Malaysia about five years ago; I moved to Singapore and maintained my blog. Most recently, I came to Qatar. My Blog address, as stated in the settings of my Blogger dashboard is: Google, however, redirects Blogger blogs to country-specific domains . For instance, if you open  blogspot.com in your web browser, it will change to blogspot.co.uk if you are accessing the blog from UK, or, as in my case, when I was in Singapore, I had the address mrshollyexploringlearning.blogspot.sg , and now I have mrshollyexploringlearning.blogspot.qa . For the past two and half years in Qatar, and for the years I had my blog before moving here, this has not been an issue. Until today.  I submitted my latest Masters assignment on my university VLE, and, as I often do, wrote a blog post about it. I was able to access my dashboard, write, edit and publish. I previewed my post and then, when ready, pressed publish. All this was fine. As always, I wanted to...

This year, I have been a little slack on updating my blog. However, it is with good reason! This year, I have the utmost pleasure in establishing a media studies department. It is challenging to set up and run a department single-handedly, particularly when compounded with technical issues that arise from working for a company that has very tight security and imposes extreme limitations - think 'exercise yard' rather than 'walled garden'. These restrictions have resulted in a school that has been protected from the advancements afforded in more liberal environments, which proves very challenging to a subject that requires access to online resources for success. In addition, the requirements of media courses now are much more demanding than my earlier experiences, particularly in technical aspects, meaning I am on as steep a learning curve as my AS learners in taking a subject for which they have no prior experience. All this compounds to formulate a very trying term. ...

This term, I am researching the use of Assistive Technology (AT) in classrooms around the world. AT is anything that assists learners who require additional support in accessing their work and being successful. I included a video in the form to explain what AT is to help my audience. As I work in a school where technology has yet to be introduced fully, the people I can consult are limited. In addition, my previous schools have all finished for the summer already. To combat this dilemma, I created a Google Form that I was able to share on Twitter for anyone to be able to complete. I felt this broadened my chances of getting some information from people who had experience using AT. My form can be accessed HERE  and my paper regarding these results will be published here soon. If you have, or know of anyone who has, experience using AT in the classroom, please share and complete this form to help a life-long learner with her research. Thanks.

TED-Ed is not something I was aware of until recently. It is a "an extension of TED’s mission of spreading great ideas" and allows users to "take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around" it. TED-Ed houses a  library of lessons  that are "carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform." Types of Lessons Creating an account is easy - if you are already registered with TED, you can use the same one. It will require some additional information such as the ages and subject you teach. Once registered, you are able to search existing content by filters such as subject, content, student or duration. Once selected, you can customise the lesson by adding "context, questions, discussion items, and follow-up suggestions to any video on TED-Ed or YouTube" to personalise the learning...

For my current MEd. module, I am exploring Web 2.0 tools that can enhance learning. WebQuests are characterised by inquiry-based learning activities often involving an element of collaboration. I decided to look for tools in this area, as successful well-designed WebQuests address essential twenty-first century skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity, and are a way of bringing together the most effective instructional practices into one integrated student activity. The first WebQuests were used in 1995, by San Diego State University’s Bernie Dodge and Tom March. They developed a type of lesson plan that incorporated links to, from, and along the World Wide Web that they termed a “WebQuest” (Zunal, 2001). I first studied WebQuests in a previous MEd. module and used Weebly to develop a scavenger hunt using a WebQuest structure called, ' The Hunt for Dracula ' (Fairbrother, 2014). I found that successful WebQuests should engage learners in p...

White Sand Beach, Coral Island nr  Tioman Island Since last July, I have had the privilege not only to have lived in Singapore but to have visited Thailand twice - Phuket last summer and Hua Hin for Christmas - Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Qatar and the beautiful Tioman Island in Malaysia three times! In fact, my family and I just spent the last three weeks on Tioman after a very stressful few weeks of job hunting (see Testing Times ) and packing up to leave Singapore. Upon our return from Tioman, we spent a lovely busy four days in Singapore visiting and saying goodbyes to all the wonderful friends we had made, before finally flying out to a new adventure in Qatar, where we arrived two days ago. In the middle of all this, I have been offered the opportunity to Project Manage one of Julie Lindsay's Flat Connection projects, Global Youth Debate (formerly Eracism). This exciting project joins schools across the globe and provides essential skills of research, collabora...

I am currently planning an inquiry based unit asking learners to think about the future of fiction. Where fiction is going is of great interest to me. I own a few Kindles, though personally, have not fully integrated myself into this realm. I love the fact I can have a book in seconds - but, I still go out and buy the 'real' version of any I read and love on my Kindle. I do not think you can beat the feel and smell and sound of a brand new book. Geek that I am, nothing excites me more than an hour or so to wander around  Kinokunyia  (Singapore hosts the largest store outside of Japan), or my  lastest  arrival from Amazon, of a stack of books to explore and lose myself in. Throughout my  MEd ., I have been focusing on where reading and writing might be going for learners growing up in a digital age. I wrote an essay about  Kindles , exploring whether they may re-engage learners who read less and less. I also wrote an essay entitled The  ...

As part of my the Information and Media Literacy unit I just completed for my M.Ed in Integrating Technology, I had to explore personal learning networks. My post  PLN: A brief review  outlines the new one I tried - The Educator's PLN ( edupln.ning.com ) - in comparison with my trusted favourite , Twitter ( Twitter.com ). Twitter, of course,  came out tops. I have been using Twitter for over a year now and I find it invaluable as a resource for ideas, support and news. I recently spoke at the Google Summit KL, and in the scripting session I attended by Evan Scherr*, he finished by asking how many of us in the room were on Twitter? I was shocked at the poor response, but glad he then evanglised  about how educators must be on Twitter. I agree with him whole-heartedly , it is an essential tool in being conected  with a global network of like-minded educators - and if you are not connected, you are missing out.  This morning I read a great p...