Nature' s beauty

Chat in the classroom.

A location on the Internet where communication can take place in 'real time'. After you log in to a chat room, everything you type appears on the screens of everyone else who is at that Internet location to participate in that particular chat.



Each participant's statements are labeled with a nickname to identify who is talking. Participants choose their nicknames and often decide against sharing their real names, either to preserve anonynity or to take on a new persona. Chat rooms are usually organized around a particular topic and provide a place to "meet" people who share similar interests.

Using data (ICTs) to make sense to the world.

Developing capability in ICT helps all pupils become part of the rapidly changing world in which technology is an essential part. ICT helps pupils take greater responsibility for their own learning, plan and organise their ideas, and produce and present work of a high standard. It can also encourage creativity.
In particular, ICT offers pupils with learning difficulties opportunities to:work with increasing independence in communication, language and literacy; work on skills across the curriculum with increased confidence and understanding; develop and enhance their work in all areas of the curriculum;become fully involved in physical and practical activities using tools, such as switch technology which allows control of the immediate environment and aids mobility; work on joint projects with others; present work of a high standard; access a wide range of ideas, information and cultures.

Lets think about cell phones not as villains of the classroom, but as teaching and learning tools.

Educators, it is time to embrace change again. We are learning to incorporate computer technology into our classrooms, so why not incorporate cell phones too. Children love their cell phones, so how can we get children to use cell phones in a manner that might help build their literacy skills?! Here are some ideas from the Journal, (2008) on how to use cell phones:

• Have students type their own cell phone novels or poems. Make sure to okay this with parents in advance! Text messagging can be expensive without a prepaid package!
• Have student make a photo documentary using the camera function on their cell phones. After they take a sfficient number of photos, they can upload them to sies such as Flicker and type narrative descriptions for each picture to share with their classmates, family and friends.
• Have student create educational podcasts with their cell phones using free services like Gadcast that allow users to record podcasts using their phones. The podcasts can then be loaded to blogs or other multimedia sites to share.
• Have students text message their parents homework assignment so that after school there is no confusion as to what is due the next day.

Social software and the free and open content

I really hope that in the late 2000 social software and free and open content will make a real breakthrough in the field of educational technology.

The pedagogical thinking behind the social software and the free and open content can be located to the social constructivist theory and cultural-historical psychology. “Any true understanding is dialogic in nature” wrote Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky wrote that “all higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals”.
Learning with computers is not about programming or drill and practice, nor about multimedia, nor about fast updating or cost-efficiency- Don't you think is it all about people sharing ideas?

Kids love an audience. Give a kid an audience and you’re sure to get a show. What better audience could one have than the World Wide Web and what better way to “Show What You Know” than publishing via digital portfolios.

Can e- Portfolio be a method of motivating learners to solve real-world problems?

Yes, I think....

• e- portfolio benefit learning most effectivelly when consindered as part of a joined-up teaching learning approach, rather than as a discrete entity. The approach should include online repositories, planning and communication tools, and opportunities for both learners and teachers to draw out and present e-portfolios at particular times and for particular purpose. There is then likely to be substantial impact on both learning processes and learning outcomes (Becta, 2005).
• e-portfolio processes support both pastoral or social needs and curriculum outcomes
• e-portfolio processes and tools for organisation and communication support the learning outcomes of students with a wide range of abilities
• e-portfolio make progress and attainment more obvious to both teachers and learners, because viewing and revisiting the respository of work reveals development, achievements, strenghts and weaknesses
  e-portfolio and tools for organisation and communication support the learning outcomes of
  e-portfolios make progress and attainment more obvious to both teachers and students, because viewing and revisiting the repository of work reveals development, achievements, strengths and weaknesses(Becta, 2005)

Using ICT tools

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is to facilitate knowledge exchange.
Among the many ICT tools, such as blogs, e-mail, and wikis, is usually used to develop participants’ global awareness through collaboration and information exchange with other countries. These tools reduced the distance among the participants and provided them mutual form of communication and interaction. These ICT tools share similar features. They are affordable, easy to use, compatible with multimedia format files, and enable interaction. In addition, information on the blogs and wikis are achievable. Blogs allow the instructors to invite participants from multiple sites, to categorize information, and to publicize or hide the blog if privacy is an issue (Wang & Hsu, in press). The impact of these ICT tools is to increase participants’ awareness of the greater international cultures in an educational context, to enhance cross-cultural interaction between other countries, and to provide participants opportunities to use ICT tools.

The impact of multimedia

As a professional communicator, it is important to understand that writing for any media requires adaptability. Just as different topics require varied approaches in style, computer-based multimedia necessitates that a writer become knowledgeable about audio, video, text, graphics, and animation. In other words, you must expertly write for the medium you are using.



Every living, breathing human being has the potential to be creative. Each of us is a unique individual capable of creating--it comes with the human territory. We are, simply, quite a creative species.

All people can be creative but those who are recognized as being creative have an awareness that others do not. Creative people seem to be able to tune in more to their thought patterns and glean great ideas. People who do not use their creative potential do not know how to do this or are not even aware it is possible. Creative people can start thinking about something, and then forget it.
Meanwhile, their brains are still thinking about it. Later on, the person will start thinking about whatever it was again and their brain will say, “Excuse me, I have been thinking about this while you were off doing other things and I have a few ideas. Care to hear them?” Non-creative people do not know that their brains are working for them off-shift - they don’t know what they don’t know!

Building 21st Century Education System

There is an increasing global focus, shared by national governments and non governmental
organizations, on expanding and improving educational opportunities for
children. This interest is driven largely by the belief that as the economic systems are
globalized, the health of national economies will depend increasingly on the ability of its
young adults to take on the challenges of living and working in rapidly changing
circumstances, across multiple cultures, and with large amounts of complex, dynamic
information about the world around them. An indicator of the international interest in the
topic is the broad international consensus, documented in the Millennium Development
Goals, to extend universal quality education to all children by the year 20151 in order to
meet the challenges of the 21st century. Governments around the world are struggling to
create 21st Century education systems that have the human capacity, the technical
infrastructure and the curricular resources they will need in order to provide young
people with the skills and competencies they will need to succeed in the future. At stake
is students’ ability to become active citizens and to compete in the workplace, which will
have significant implications for national competitiveness in countries at all levels of
development (OECD,2002).