ICTeD Services

Visualization, Infographics & Twitter

I've been with Twitter for about 3 years now - 22.04.2008. - 980 days according to Twopcharts - Melbourne. http://twopcharts.com/userprofile.php?source=melb&user=ictedservices. I'm not a super user, but have 1523 followers, follow 1786 and tweets 1.3 times per day.
It has been a great social networking tool for me and a way to publicise my blogposts, favourite links etc. But came accross this tool attached recently which visualizes my Twitter network. Called mentionmaps, http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/#, it visualizes your Twitter networks. Great stuff!

See this

 

Graphic Organiser Compendiums

I've always found that http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hme/k_5/graphorg/ was the most comprehensive website for graphic organisers that I had discovered up to now. [And it is great too, with over 30 worksheets.]
However, I've just discovered http://www.worksheetlibrary.com/subjects/graphicorganizers/. While many of the worksheets are subscription only, and least one in each category is free, and the thumbnails indicate the nature of the others in each set.
The categories are
5 Ws  [Who, What, Why,When & Where]
Cause and Effect [Reading Organizers & Topic Building]
Charts  [Organize Data & Chart Thoughts]
Clocks [Blank Clocks &Time Divisions]
Cycles [Circle Cycles & Rectangular Cycles
Decision Trees [Pros vs. Cons & Brainstorming]
Fact / Statement / Opinion [For Decision Making & Critical Analysis
Persuasion [Position Analysis & Growing Writers]
Relational [Help Make Connections & Critical Thinking]
Story Maps [ Reading Organizers & Thought Provoking]
Timelines [Horizontal & Vertical]
Venn Diagrams [Simple to Complex & Multiple Venns]
Vocabulary [Introductory Organizers & Meeting New Words]
Writing [Character Analysis & Fishbone Organizers] I think the Fishbone Model Organiser would be great to plan out multimedia presentations or websites
These will give any educator an idea of the repertoire of graphic organisers available and the website also has pages on How to Use Graphic Organisers to Enhance Learning & What is a Graphic Organiser and how are they helpful. While some don't relate directly to ICT, I want to investigate this site further. [There are worksheets also categorised by subject and National Standards - USA]. Let's not go there now... I might write on the Australian Government's Education Revolution at a later date, but I fail to see how worksheets can be tied to National Standards, let alone get students to achieve them!

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats & Six Action Shoes

I just purchased a copy of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats. Just re-released in the Popular Penguins series.
The Six Thinking Hats are widely used in primary school education. I haven't been a big fan of the thinking hats up to now. [I've tended to use other tools instead.] So I will be interested to read to the book to re-evaluate my thinking about Six Thinking Hats.

However, a De Bono tool I have used during this term, and one which I am impressed with, are the Six Action Shoes. I used this in the Big Wrapper '08 web design activity we ran earlier this term. Read more about them here. Download debono_six_action_shoes.pdf

UUorld: Next Generation Data Visualisation

Was just packing up for night when I got the latest  Ed Tech Crew Update from Diigo Groups.  It was for UUorld [ how do you say that?]. It is a fabulous application which shows economic and geographic data in a very visual way. You can pick from a wide variety of statistical categories and then pick from a list of geographic zones. UUorld then generates a visual and animated report for those factors over the past decade. This report can then be recorded as a video file [4 formats available]. Great for presentations, websites student projects etc. The example below is screen dump for infant mortality in Africa [it's hard to see in the blog size, and obviously isn't animated]. The movie version is great on a computer screen and even better on a digital projector etc.]
I'll use this one, plus another showing infant mortality in the Americas as a discussion stimulus for day two of Big Wrapper '08.

Big Wrapper '08 [Day One]

Day One of Big Wrapper '08 [see previous post 13.07.2008].
Today the 25 students met for day one. [Click here to see program, resources & links.]
The students came together from the three cluster schools of the ENC. They range in school levels from year 5 to year 8.
In Big Wrapper '08, each school has to make a website using iWeb about food consumption throughout the world, the inequalities of this between the First and Third Worlds, the diets around the world and the necessity of and environmental concerns of food packaging throughout the world.
Each student authored website will have a home page, facts pages, podcasts, movies/animations [using iMovie. iStopMotion or Kahootz] and comics using Comic Life etc..
In today's session students had to deal with a lot of concepts and detail, [this first session lasted 90 minutes before the groups started to plan their websites].
More time would have been nice, but two days is the maximum for the total activity.
Big Wrapper '08 is also as much documenting the learning process and the production of a glitzy website on the internet!
There was an Icebreaker and we used DeBono's Action Shoes and posters from the Packing Council of Australia's Pack Pack as our thinking task.
Each completed website will have to include an action component to encourage household / school change in either food consumption or food packaging.
An ICT for Visualising Thinking MindMap model was presented to students as a guide to link their website planning with the iWeb templates.
It was interesting during the day to see students as well as working on their website components, to reflect on the day's works in school wikis [not greatly though] and in the diary room [a lot of footage on individual student reflection was captured here by the student film crew]. We will be interested to see what it the footage is like when it is downloaded tomorrow or next week.
Students have work to complete before the next session.
Second and final day is 20/8.
Watch for another report then, or use the comments box if you want to now more!

Using Gliffy to Assist Students Planning iWeb Projects

Continuing planning my Grade 3/4 unit which will teach students the use of iWeb for making digital portfolios. [See blogpost below.] Students will have to make a Mind Map of their portfolio before starting to use iWeb. I have made two examples as models. The first one is a simple spider map, with one "leg" for each page of the portfolio. See http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1463553/. The second  one has a "leg" for each type of iWeb page template, which then goes to the digital content that will be displayed using that page template. See http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1463542/
Have just started. planning the Grade 5/6 unit, which will also teach students the use of iWeb, however, they will make a website of natural disasters. They will also have to use a Mind Map for planning. My example is at http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1463683/

ICT for Visualising Thinking

I've been putting some of my ICT for Visualising Thinking resources on my www.ictedservices.com website. While there are only seven at the moment, they have all been road tested successfully in classrooms. I will continue to build on these. If you use them let me know how you go with them. I've used Gliffy www.gliffy.com in presenting many of them. I love this tool!!