Discussions

Your Name and Title:
Gail Casey

School, Library, or Organization Name:
Teacher: Geelong High School,
PhD Student, Deakin University, Australia

Country from Which You Will Present:
Australia

Language in Which You Will Present:
English

Target Audience (such as primary school teachers, high school administrators, students, etc.):
High School & Teacher Educators

Short Session Description (one line):
Integrating social and participatory media into the global classroom

Full Session Description (one paragraph minimum):
This session will focus on the eleven global projects setup within the WebToWhere online social media environment. Projects included themes such as: the clothes students wear, the food they eat, information on the student's school and the use of Google Earth. Examples of student work, peer feedback and peer assessment will be shown.

The WebToWhere environment developed a framework of learning and teaching that took advantage of many new developing technologies created for social and networked learning. The use of Web 2.0 tools was continually encouraged as students participated in specific international projects on the WebToWhere Ning in a group called 'Global Classroom Projects'. Each of the eleven global projects was set up as discussion forums within that 'Global Classroom Projects' group. Each project was linked to their own Ning discussion forum on a new page where initially it was planned that student's work would be published, relevant comments posted and content uploaded on these specific pages. It was not expected that students would work through all of the global projects in order; rather, that they would select particular projects that met the teacher's curriculum priorities or their personal interest.

The WebToWhere Ning was developed as part of Gail Casey's PhD action research study which explores the combined use of social and participatory media with face-to-face teaching. Gail is a classroom teacher at Geelong High school and also the researcher. In consultation with other global project teachers and critical friends, she set up the projects. These were created to provide an environment that supported New Literacies and multimodal methods; these were 'expected' rather than an 'add on' to the learning program. The WebToWhere Ning was created to allow Gail's one Year 7 ICT class, with twenty-five students from Australia, developed solid collaborative links with three students from an English as a second language (ESL) extension class from Russian and twenty-six ESL students from Romania (these students came from two different Romanian classes). When using social and participatory media for collaborative international projects, this study had three foci.

1. The needs of the teacher.

2. Enabling students to use their previous experiences in the teaching and learning process while valuing them as active participants in the global setting.

3. The development of appropriate scaffolding to ensure that student-centred learning could take place; learning which supported multimodal methods and the New Literacies evolving in our world today.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
http://webtowhere.ning.com/  and  http://gcasey.wikispaces.com/Presentations