My First Storybird! Thank you Thank you :P

Friends - My First Storybird ^_^

Thanks to the very cute illustrations by Irisz Agocs. Here is my first ever attempt at Storybird creation. The story can be viewed if you click the title on top of the cover image. I have set the story as Publicly Published; hence, hopefully you should be able to read it. Haven't quite figure out the embedding part. I will try to work on that in the future.

Haha, due to the word limit, I can't have my Sunflower tell you all the story. I think multimedia in the classroom is great. It encourages children's creativity and their engagement. Some kids may find it difficult to operate at first as there are some certain steps and processes that need to be followed. However, that's why as future teachers, we need to start 'playing' around these technos NOW and to let the kids be impressed when we get into our teaching career! On the other hand, as these sites can be viewable to the public, we need to make sure that we teach the kids as well as ourselves about cybersafety matters. For instance, don't make a Storybird and suddenly it tells all about yourself like when you do a presentation of About Me in the classroom - the Internet is not the same as your classroom.

Proyecto Facebook

Proyecto Facebook

The first time I saw this video was on the blog post Learning in a Participatory Culture: A Conversation About New Media and Education (Part One) from Henry Jenkins Weblog. It was Spanish; but luckily, both Henry Jenkins and Sir Ken Robinson can speak English and even better - I can understand English!

The video and the comments made by the two education professionals are quite interesting, not just because the video was funny. It makes you wonder about what school is really about and why do we go to college? Do the world really need more and more university professors? Proyecto Facebook, translated as Facebook Project was an experiement and a demonstration of collaborative learning. Sir Ken Robinson commented in that video "The Internet is based on collective intelligence. We learn from each other." On the other hand, as shown in the video, school should be about 'real learning' - not to make everybody look 'good' or the same like robots.

It is amazing what you can find on the Internet these days - almost everything you want to know! or should I say, it is everything? These are the results of collective intelligence of people all around the world. Wikipedia, being one of the greatest inventions ever as I'd like to think so, has become something quite big. When I talk with my friends and if we come up with something that we are curious to know or just not sure, we look up on Wikipedia. It is usually quite satisfying for our curiosity and we always find out more than what we want :)

Although it has its possibilty of errors and inaccuracies, Wikipedia is evidently a quite powerful tool for learning. Being in the 21st century and as technology is rapidly evolving, schools should make their ways towards the future of eLearning (of course, not all places can afford that.)."Schools need to prepare young people to use these new resources creatively, effectively, and responsiblity" (Henry Jenkins, 2010) - creatively, because creativity makes great things happen; effectively, because the world spins quite fast; responsibily, because not all things you see or hear are always true.