SimpleNote as a Web Page

Well, the Year 12 Lit students have had their last class and are now firmly in revision and study mode (I hope!)

However, that’s not quite the end of it. There’s nearly ten days until the Lit exam so I’ve scheduled three online meetings in the evening next week to have a last chance to discuss the text and answer any questions. Session 1 is to be on Frankenstein, session 2 on Hamlet and the final session on Gwen Harwood’s poetry.

I’ve setup online meetings like this for the last couple of years using the Adobe Connect software, which the school has a licence for. You can try it for free for three users HERE.  Last year the first session had only about six students, but as word spread that it was actually useful by the final session I had most of the class online, which was great. I hogged the microphone and turned the video off, and the central window was a big chat where they could ask questions and answer each others questions. The hardest thing in the end was getting them off the site at the end. They wanted to keep talking!

I also meet students individually in that last week and try to get them to book in times I’ve put aside. This year I’m using the great little iphone app SimpleNote to put up the schedule as an ultra simple web page.  I simply keep the text file updated on my PC or my Ipod and the web pages is updated online. You can see how it looks HERE. I could have used a wiki for this, of course, but for a quick and easy web page I couldn’t imagine anything much simpler.

Podcasting made easy

I’m halfway through putting together a series of audio pieces on Gwen Harwood, a mix of students reading the poems, to students and teachers discussing the poems: Harwood; the album! I enjoy listening to podcasts, and have tried making them in the past, with limited success.

This slideshare from Andi Kenuam shows how to get started. There’s more at Free Technology for Teachers