Website Layout Success But Problems Embedding Prezis

I've just finished wrestling with a new website for the Year 11 Ecosystems topic that is beginning in a weeks time. After about 4 full weekend days of creating resources, uploading, fiddling with annoying layout issues and creating buttons that are at least a similar size to one another I'm finally happy with how it looks. 

Along the way I discovered that I don't know how to embed Prezi presentations, so to get around that I tried using Quicktime screen recordings and publishing them through iMovie and Youtube. It worked fairly well (but took a while), and another limitation is that students will need to pause the video if they want to read slower or read again, rather than clicking through a Prezi at their own speed. 

If someone knows how to embed a Prezi then I would be very happy to find out! 

I also found out that you can put tables within tables to help with the layout, and also how important it is to not turn the tables invisible until you're completely done with moving them around.

To make buttons of a similar size I created a background pattern using colorlovers, took a screenshot that was the size of the button I wanted, and then added text to that screenshot in picmonkey. It's taken me about 5 different websites to realise that if I just take a small (button-sized) original screenshot from colorlovers, then I can just take a screenshot of that full size when I'm finished in picmonkey, rather than guessing at how large I should drag the final screenshot.

Now I'm looking forward to seeing how the Year 11's react to the site and the work!

Linking and Using Google Sites and Google Docs

Today in our MDTA training we learned how to make a screencast with sound.I chose to make my screencast about how I used Google Sites and Google Docs to help create an online, e-blended learning environment incorporating games, shared docs, videos, forms and spreadsheets, research on other sites, student reflections and the commenting feature on docs. My goal was for the doc to act as a learning log or folder for all of the students' working.

I was very excited about the site and doc but after a week I realised that it wasn't engaging the students as much as I had hoped. To add to this I was trialling the effect of 'learning' in class before moving on to the effects of 'creating.' The first week we used the doc was fairly content and online-activity heavy as I was trying to do the 'learning' in one block, leaving more time at the end of the unit for concentrated 'creating.' 

It quickly became clear that was not a great idea. Students NEED to do something with information. Passive learning - even if that passive learning involves online games and collaborative docs and competitive researching - is not as engaging for students.

I sought feedback from students on these tools for learning - they did not want to purely work online and in the doc all the time. Our conversations reminded me there is still a place for direct teaching and definitely a need for active and creative learning. 

I would use a doc like this again with a site, but I would make it more explicit to students that it is a record of their learning - a log. I would teach everyone how to take screenshots at the start of the unit. I would move slower through the online games and activities and ensure students write reflections beneath the screenshots of their learning. And I would get students to take photos of active learning activities and insert them into their docs with reflections too. Like a digital diary of their time in class. I think it would be even better if they could have a blog to share descriptions and explanations of their learning.

The link to my site is here.

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