Russell Ogden's Page

Oh, Russell, this is really good to read. Reflections do a lot. We had a few problems, including the fact that I had booked for a Wed session and not Tue. Anyway it all turned out really well. I have a challenging year 9/10 group that includes many disengaged students and I got ideas from Linda's session today. Here is the link to the recording Dont miss it, as it was fabulous. Have a good night!

Hi Russell, thank you for commenting back. I think little steps is the only way and that we need to try some aspect of the ultranet that is applicable to us, that has a purpose thereby exploring what can be done and it will escalate from there. Here is an interesting blog post on Blogging in the Ultranet http://bit.ly/hfjwL8
I also think that I am going to use my students to see what they can discover the ultranet will do as they will push it to the boundaries and discover uses that I may not have thought of. This year I am teaching accounting to students across three schools - one is from a small rural school that is so adaptable and approachable and willing to unblock web2.0 tools that I need to use with them, the other is a big city school, that will not bend. So, the ultranet is the only way that I am going to be able to offer the best approach (at this stage), so I will have to look into that further. The problem is that time is so precious and it takes a lot of time to explore.
Hope you can make Tuesday session with Linda Yollis - it should be great. If you could make Wed night, that one is specifically on the Student Blogging Challenge and another great webinar.

Hello Russell, I have procrastinated on my response to you and I do sincerely apologise for that. I am sorry that we did gloss over how to overcome negativity at the recent Ultranet Share 'n Tell webinar. This is such a difficult question and I don't know if we have any or many answers to it.The matter has been raised in previous sessions and discussed but there have been no 'quick fix' solutions.  Unfortunately, it is prevalent in my school too, as so often we have tried to use elements of it without success. Bringing parents on board has also been extremely tedious. So, we are on hold with the ultranet at the moment.Some teachers are creating spaces but many are doing nothing at all. I shall make sure that we raise this matter fully at our next webinar. Although it is great to see what others are doing, it can be very daunting and overwhelming for all of us, but at least it gives an idea of what can be achieved.

I also experienced some setbacks as I very enthausiastically registered my 2010 class of year 12 students onto the ultranet in order to share documents etc and for them to upload docs so that they could access them from home. It did not work! However, this year I am teaching accounting to students from three schools and I the ultranet is ideal for me with the varying filtering issues at each school, so I shall chip away at it as well. It will take a long time to trickle through and it will need a couple of really enthausiastic staff to run with it, show what can be done and then hopefully it will increase in use.

As to student blogging, that also took time in my classroom. I found that I had to teach many different engaging tools for them to use in their posts and connect them to other students in other countries, so they could get that all important audience, evidenced by red dots on their clustrmaps or as comments.  The Student Blogging Challenge is about to start. Would that be a go for you.