compiled by John Borst

The Catholic Education Office of Diocese of Parramatta, in Sydney, Australia has a blogsite titled

Catholic Education Parramatta Learnscope Team which is experimenting with Web 2.0 and student learning.

Its purpose is to “to increase the skills and knowledge of VET professionals in e-learning.”

Some recent posts are:

Do you have a personal homepage?

August 1st, 2007

Are ‘personal homepages’ a useful web 2.0 tool for you, both for your own use as an education professional, and in the classroom? Others call these new tools open placeholders, start pages and widget desktops but in simple terms what they allow people to do is bring together all “the applications they use in one central, organised location for quick access”.

Sharing the load – online safety for our students

July 23rd, 2007

On the weekend, here in Sydney, there were many newspaper column inches dedicated to issues around privacy and security online. There was talk of information being accessed for reasons many users would not predict – on Facebook and the like – not to stalk and bully (a whole other topic) but instead being stockpiled by governments (in this case, the US) in files on ‘people of interest.’

Where are you going, and how will you get there?

July 19th, 2007

Hello and welcome back after the holidays! Late last term, Pat and I met with Vera and Heather to discuss how we would move forward with their assessment validation project plan (please see the wiki for more details of what they are planning.) We firstly considered web conferencing with one of the many tools including DiscoverE, Elluminate or Adobe Connect but the team members decided they wanted to keep their teachers’ focus on learning to collaborate, initially in a more familiar environment.

Privacy and sharing on the web

June 29th, 2007

This week, issues about privacy and sharing on the web are being highlighted by team members. Bob’s latest blog post raises the importance of discussing password protocols with all students, and Dean has posted a thought-provoking youtube video on his blog (which has had some impact at his school).

Back to Blogs …

June 21st, 2007

From our discussions over the last couple of days, I know that some of our team use blogs regularly, for a range of outcomes, with their classes. Others blog to share information and inspire the teachers in their schools, and still more are just starting to get the hang of the idea, and read a few blog entries here and there.

Australian resources online

June 14th, 2007

There are many amazing online resources available to support our work as educators. edna (Education Networks Australia) provides both a collection of current, Australian resources and a place to collaborate with other education and training professionals.

What is RSS?

June 7th, 2007

RSS is variously supposed to be an acronym for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. But what is it? Click play on the following (truly excellent!!) short video and find out …

Podcasting in education

May 31st, 2007

One tool we have not yet investigated in our team is podcasting, although some of our schools are already planning and piloting its use in learning and teaching, which is terrific!

What is podcasting? I have come across a simple, clear explanation at the Education Podcasting Network (courtesy of David Warlick and the Landmark Project):

Wikis and blogs in senior secondary classrooms

May 23rd, 2007

We know that wikis and blogs can be used to support learning. But what do they look like in the classroom? I want to share with you an example of one blog and one wiki being used currently in two senior secondary classes.

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