IWB and del.icio.us

As I sat down this afternoon to prepare my lessons for tomorrow, the first day of the school week, I resolved to put together a tight concise sequence of learning. I've been out of the school a fair bit over the last fortnight so my resolve was to make a concerted effort to harness the power and potential of the IWB. (OK, I just didn't want the ACTIVboard standing there unused mocking me, and I've got a student teacher coming in for the first time who will wonder why we've got one in the room if it isn't in full swing!) I started to plan out a lesson on apostrophes, contraction and possession, which is essential stuff for my age group of students. I opened up the flipchart and put in a bunch of contracted and uncontracted words for the class to match up. That took a while, then I started another page where they could write up the answer in front of the class. Then I went online to find some interactive websites on contractions that we could use to help "cement" the concept into place and so on went the process.....type, link, cut, paste, save and then nearly two hours had expired. The problem is that the lesson only goes for 45 minutes and my energies and time being used were not in proportion to that. I have to be a bit smarter and have the websites, interactive links etc. at my fingertips a bit more so to speak. So that I don't forget, my great idea is this. Last week, I dreamed the idea of our school's IWB "digital curriculum" being tagged in a del.icio.us account so that one only had to log on as that user (iwb.user) and specify the Learning Area (maths, english, sose, lote, science, pe&health etc.) and the links that I or anyone else on staff have tagged in this way will come up. So, from now on, anything that looks remotely useful to anyone else using an IWB will be tagged by me in this way and then I have the beginnings of a really useful resource on the biggest social bookmarking service there is. If you want to help me out - when you see something that looks good tag it for:iwb.user and I'll do the rest.

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5 thoughts on “IWB and del.icio.us

  1. Jo McLeay

    Hi Graham, don’t know if you can use my links on del.icio.us? I tagged mine with whiteboard and then added the tag iwb.user after I read your post, not properly though, obviously. There’s about 32 of them, most of which you probably have but have a look at del.icio.us/tag/iwb.user.
    Jo

  2. Graham

    Post author

    Thanks Jo, got them all and a major boost to the start of our “digital curriculum” – now I’d better add my own to the stockpile.

  3. Judy O'Connell

    Hi,
    I can see there are lots of things tagged IWB already, and so I also adopted this tag. What you are suggesting is a toolkit for primary teachers perhaps? I also added IWBuser to my network, but I can’t see the 32 tags that Jo added?? So what am I doing wrong? and is this process duplicating what the IWB tag already gives us?
    Just thinking aloud here…but driven by the notion that folksonomy can work for us or against us if we don’t think about tagging a bit more. Judy

  4. Graham

    Post author

    Judy, thanks for your contribution (ironically it’s from Activboarding – the other blog I run!) I have only worked out today that all of Jo’s contributions are stored in the links for you section until I go and save them to the main iwb.user account. That’s why you couldn’t see them! I guess this is a toolkit for primary teachers – I thought the term “digital curriculum” sounded fancier. My idea (if it works) is timely as I received an email from a colleague tonight who is starting out with her IWB, lamenting the constant re-invention of the wheel as we all search for suitable digital content and activities. I could have negotiated the tags with my staff but I thought that getting the idea started would give it momentum – which goes against the notion that lasting change needs as much time spent in planning as in implementation! Too eager and wanting to ease the burden a bit is my problem. Thanks for your thoughts.

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