Monday, October 24, 2005

Schools can be joyful places

An interesting blog re education. You can take some ideas from Marilyn's blog to help you with your own.Schools can be joyful places

Friday, October 21, 2005

Programme approved.

The Diploma in Educational Technology programme has been approved by the University and all students should complete the application and registration forms next Thursday. Mr. Paddington suggests students should come early, at 8.30am, in order to not disrupt the digital audio class.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Update on server and assignment

Mr. Paddington has responded re the server issue and the assignment.
"The assignment was that the students would write and post a blog and develop the first page of a web site using Mambo or HTML."
About the server, he has indicated that he will finalise the permissions today. As soon as I have the go-ahead, you will receive emails with the location of each website space.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Web Logs Go to School

An interesting article on using blogs in the classroom.

As a middle-school teacher, Clarence Fisher is used to spending some time each evening grading papers and reviewing lesson plans. But this year he's got an additional after-school task: updating his students' blogs. Fisher set up online personal journals--Web logs or blogs--this fall for each of his students at Joseph H. Kerr School in the Canadian town of Snow Lake, Manitoba. His combined seventh- and eighth-grade class generates about a dozen entries a day on topics ranging from classroom assignments to weekend plans, which Fisher reviews before posting online.

He's more than glad to do it. Like other teachers bringing blogging into the classroom, he thinks the online journals will spark students' enthusiasm for computers, writing and opining.

"They're learning the technical skills, but they're also learning that they have a voice online," he said. "They may be from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but they're writing online, people are commenting on it, and they're learning that they have a voice."

Fisher is among a small but growing number of teachers and professors experimenting with classroom blogs. The exact number is hard to pin down but it's well into the thousands, said Will Richardson, author of "An Educator's Guide to Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Cool New Web Tools that are Transforming the Classroom," which is set for publication next year.


Monday, October 17, 2005

Another Mambo tutorial

What makes this guide different from others, is that it is written by someone relatively unfamiliar with the concept of Content Management Systems. So this easy simple guide is aimed specifically for newbies. It might help those of you who are having difficulty with the concept of a CMS, even though youhave the manual processes covered.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Mambo Hosting Providers

In reply to the requests about hosting a website, here's a link to a series of hosting providers who support Mambo.
Mambo Hosting Providers

Friday, October 14, 2005

The RSS feed for this blog

http://uwiclass.blogspot.com/atom.xml
In case you want to add it to your newsfeed list in your Mambo site.
It would be good to create a wiki page with useful feeds - feeds and links that you find interesting and useful in your work. The Wiki is at http://uwiclass.wikispaces.com/

Yeah! The Wiki is up...

The wiki for the class is up at http://uwiclass.wikispaces.com/.
A Wiki is a website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. Excellent for working on a group FAQ. The Wikipedia is a hugeonline encyclopaedia, that's edited collectively.
A wiki is a great tool for class use, as group projects are made very easy using it.

Useful Mambo Links

Mamble.com is a Yahoo style webdirectory for the Mambo Open Source content. You can find links to dozens of templates, components and commercial weblinks. www.mamble.com
Official Mambo site - www.mamboserver.com
Download Mambo - if you have the prerequisites on your PC, you can download and install a local copy of Mambo - www.mamboforge.net
Mambo Forums - Discussion boards about Mambo - how to use, how to administer, development. Try Mambers - www.mambers.com or MamboForum - www.mamboforum.com
MamboNotes.com - Web Links An online repository of instructions, observations, tips, hacks, website links, and other bits of information that have been compiled by various developers. www.mambonotes.com

About the assignment - from Jacqueline

The assignment is something that you will have to confirm with Mr. Paddington, as he set it. I am not sure what it is exactly, yet. In our original discussions he suggested that the final project was to create a website. Period. Using whichever tools that were taught. I believed that it would be a final assignment ustilising all the tools/workshops - as it is pretty much impossible to build a really good site without having a good grasp of images and image editing as well - which you haven't yet done. Podcasting and audio/video are also very useful tools to include in any comprehensive final project.

If the assignment is per workshop, and you have to do a site with what you went through in the workshop over the past two Thursdays, then you can do a site with either a blogging tool or with Mambo, using a template.

When the Internet hosted Mambo server location is agreed, it will be posted.

In the meantime, I believe the server that was used for the class is still up and running. If so, you can use it for training purposes. You can check with Mr. Paddington.

UWI Class - intro to Internet and CMS/Webdev Support

The UWI class is about multimedia in education. The students (who are also teachers) have done a lot of workshops to introduce them to different areas on ICT and multimedia, so that they can apply to their own work.
This is the blog that the web and CMS training team (Jacqueline Morris and Kayode Anthony) have put together so that the students can refresh the information that they learnt as well as ask questions, and build a FAQ.