What on Earth?

Today in class, I listened and participated in a presentation about Google Earth given by Jeff and Wayde. Google Earth to me, is a program that encourages you to discover and explore the world and learn a great deal about the Earth’s geography. Google Earth allows you to see and view the real life and current satellite pictures of places anywhere in the world. This include; your own house: including clear vision of your street, the cars on your street and even people that where on your street when the picture was taken (street view). When you think about it, it seems almost like an invasion of privacy, that there is actually satellite cameras that take pictures of the world and everything within the world every 5 minutes! To be honest, I myself would feel a little uneasy to know that a picture of me is on Google Earth with me standing outside my house or at a park or even at a University.

In the class presentation, we were shown some pictures that were taken off people via the satellite camera…this kinda threw me off a little, to know that everyday people going about there own business were on Google Earth. Some of these pictures may be viewed by complete randoms and may at times be inappropriate! If you are showing places to children on Google Earth in a classroom situation, do you really want them to unexpectedly come across an inappropriate picture? Click this link, and you will know what I am talking about.

Even though, Google Earth may be seen to invade privacy, the likelihood of someone seeing a picture of you in quite low and I do understand that inappropriate pictures are rare, because the program automatically updates every 5 minutes. I think you just have to take precautions when using Google Earth with children. Although you have to take precautions with any program you use with children anyway.

In order for someone to see you on Google Earth, they would actually have to know where you are in that point in time and go to that specific location. That is; maybe you call up your friend and say I’m standing outside my house right now…look up my address on Google Earth and see if you can see me! How weird, scary, cool and interesting is that!

Although with Google Earth there is the matter of privacy, I believe it is a very educational resource that can greatly enhance students learning. It can especially teach them about the geographical aspects of their country, state or city and encourage them to learn more about particular places and landmarks that are important. Using Google Earth, students are able to experience and view the satellite imagery of many buildings and houses, and students are also given the chance to explore the galaxies (Google Sky), which I found out about in the presentation today. I consider Google Earth to have great educational purposes, as it will teach children about the world in which we live and will familiarise them with their own surroundings.

Google Earth is a program that I have experimented with before, however the class presentation today enabled me to learn more and has encouraged me to continue to use the program for myself, and that I will do! Google Earth is something that I may attempt to use in my teaching career as I think it is a great way to show children to real thing…not photographs, postcards, or drawings…but the actual object, landmark or building shown to the children at its present time.

Living in Two Worlds

Today I gave a presentation on Second Life, with Jessica. I feel the presentation went quite well, and after research and collaboration on the topic we were both able to understand the positives and negatives of using this innovation for ourselves and with students in the classroom.

I believe Second Life is good for teachers in that it can allow us to expand our own creativity and knowledge on particular places in the world and it can also encourage us to interact with other educators from within the virtual world. In regards to Teen Second Life and using this with students, I believe it can be somewhat educational if it is applied in the correct manner and for a sole purpose. Using Second Life with Upper Primary or High School students can encourage them to play, explore, use their imaginations and create and design projects. Within this virtual world, students are able to build and construct new things, visit educational places, such as; theatres, where they can role play, spaceship museums, and university campuses. Students will be given an opportunity to see the places and buildings that they do not have the chance to see in real life. An example of a teacher (Dean Groom) using Second Life with his class can be viewed here. 

I Personally wouldn’t use Second Life with my class, because I am studying Early Childhood Education, and these children are way too young to understand how the program works, and it is simply not age appropriate. I also think that if you do use the Second Life program with your students, safety and privacy may be difficult to control and monitor. I do suggest however, if you are willing to use Second Life with your students that close monitoring must be made, because sometimes inappropriate comments can be made from other users that can not be helped. Parents must be informed also if their child is creating an account. If any one has any suggestions on how they would monitor or control the students while using Second Life, that would great! That means, how would you make sure the students are staying on tasks, not diverting off the topic in this virtual world, and not talking to people they do not know???

My Learning Progress:

Beginning: In the Beginning of researching the wonderful world of Virtuality, I was excited and very interested, because I enjoy stimulation games such as, The Sims. Another reason for this interest, was that I knew it would be a great topic to learn about, seeing as though I knew absolutely nothing already!

During: As I began to gain knowledge and understanding of the program, I was unsure of how it would be educational for students, and I found a lot of difficulty in actually running and exploring the program.

After: By the end of the exploration and the class presentation, I found more purpose for the program and began to identify ways it could be used for teaching and learning in the classroom. I also recognised negatives and positives of the program. I am now more confident in using this program and although I would not use it in my future teaching, I will still continue to use it myself and try and become a more efficient user of Second Life. I also hope I will be able to identify more educational aspects of Second Life in order to help other teachers that wish to use the program with students in Upper Primary and High School.

In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone who came and listened to our presentation. I hope you found it educational and beneficial.

For more information on Second Life, its purpose in education and opinions from other people, Refer to:

1. Jo Kay and Sean Fitzgerald’s Wiki Page, Second Life in Education – EXCELLENT RESOURCE!!!

2. Sue Waters Webpage, Do you use Second Life or other Virtual worlds with your students?

3. Quest Atlantis – A Virtual world designed for 9-15 year olds.

4. Blogs – Lina, Louise, Rachel, Matt, Jess. C, Christina, Kate

5. The Cool Cat Teacher Blog – How Second Life can be used by the visual impaired

Second Life and Education

In my exploration of the innovation Second Life, the 3D virtual world, I discovered many interesting and appealing things. I believe Second Life is a great way to interact with people from all over the world and build your network. However, I am doing a class presentation on this innovation and I am confident that the class will find it very interesting and a fun program to work with, although I am finding it hard to relate the program to its usefulness in the educational world. Has any one out there used this program for teaching or educational purposes? Or does any one have any ideas on how they may use it for these purposes??

Sue - I’m still building up my network and learning about Second Life. Can you ask your networks if they can share their thoughts on Second Life with students?

Becoming a Twitter!

Today I learnt about Twitter in a classroom presentation. I found it to be very useful and interesting for my profession in teaching. The way my class members presented the topic was very effective, as now I feel I can use twitter productively.

Twitter is a free social network micro blogging program, that allows users to send instant messgages and updates (tweets) to the people in their network. Twitter also allows users to write an update using up to 140 characters only. Using twitter, you can also send direct messages to a person.

I believe twitter is a great way to communicate with people and get responses to questions faster than email. This will be a great resource for me to use for feedback and recommendations on teaching effectively in the classroom. Twitter also encourages quick responses and answers that come from a range of different perspectives. If you want to know the answer quick…Twitter is ideal.

I really think that I will continue to use Twitter, because it is very efficient and it helps me get my questions answered quickly.