Sunday 1 February 2009

Images4Education and Online Workshops: CPD on Tap?




Before Christmas I came across a new Ning network, Images4Education , advertising a six-week online workshop offered through the Electronic Village Online with the aim to introduce its participant to various online image manipulation tools and exchange ideas on how to effectively incorporate these resources into their teaching practices. Creative uses in educational settings include photo sharing, storytelling, slideshows and comics creation.

There is also a section of the workshop dedicated to Creative Commons licensing and how it can be beneficial for classroom use.


The group now consists of 386 members from all over the world and the project is supported by a Flickr group, a Diigo group, a FriendFeed and a wiki.

There are weekly tasks set but the emphasis is on progression rather than deadlines.

One of the most powerful aspects of the project is to make you realize that anything around you can be a resource. This is all the more powerful that your everyday surroundings can be “swapped” with educators from all over the world. Check my photos for ideas...

Teaching about where people live in England? Ask me and I will upload a few pictures from the houses near me. I am teaching about places in town (in Spanish), can you help? This is the picture of a bullring from Venezuela…

First the students had to identify the place, then learn what it was in Spanish and then they had to guess where the picture came from… hopefully showing an awareness of where Spanish is spoken in the world. This is global collaboration!


2 comments:

mmehenderson said...

I am so grateful for your post regarding these online courses. I'm taking the Images course (along with three others) and I find that it really gives me great ideas of how to exploit an image. I am amazed by the posted work of the other participants. There are some really talented people in the group! Thanks again for leading the way!
Andrea Henderson
http://mmehenderson.typepad.com

Isabelle Jones said...

Hi Andrea
You're welcome! Like you I am really enjoying the course and I feel I have learnt so much already from everybody in the group. I love the idea that our everyday surroundings is of interest to somebody...