Sue Waters

One of my husband’s frustration is the amount of time I spend on my computer (working) which to me is better than sitting with him or the kids watching boring sport or the Simpsons. While he is proud of my websites, and work that I do, he does believe that a “task must serve myself and my family well, provide income, be a healthy past time, make a better world and be a relaxing past time. If some thing fails to satisfy these criteria why bother!”

My motivations are this all helps me learn and I like to share what I learn to others. However it is nice to know that the information I share does inspire others. Just as the information others share inspires me. This is an email that was sent to me:

Hi Sue,

I just wanted to say a big THANKYOU for your website! I’ve been a follower for a while now and I love hearing about “new” ways of using ICT for learning/teaching. I teach Indonesian at Melville SHS and have also just started studying at murdoch, researching LOTE & ICT – so I really appreciate the way you share your experiences!

Ever since I viewed the video podcast of Richard Meagher and his mimio interactive whiteboard , I’ve been itching to get my hands on one. I didn’t even know such a thing existed! So I trawled ebay for a while, had lots of unsuccessful bids… and was finally successful on Friday! A company in Perth had bought a bunch from a mine site and were selling them off… so this afternoon I picked it up and went back to school to play.

Wow – this is going to totally change the way I can teach Indonesian and I never would have known about it without your “podsite”. So thankyou. And please thank Richard for me too!

Salam,

Penny Coutas

I look forward to getting feedback from Penny on how she goes using her Interactive White Board (IWB). One use of IWB she might like to try with her students is using it to create online videos or video podcasts. Both Trevor Bennett from Edith Cowan University and Dr Tama Leaver from University of WA believe that getting students to create podcasts is a much better use of podcasting than teachers creating the podcasts.

That’s Mathematics on the Infinitie Thinking Machine explains how St. Albans City School middle school is getting 6th grade students to create videos on math strategies using the record function of their IWB . I strongly recommend reading That’s Mathematics on the Infinitie Thinking Machine because it gives lots of tips on different ways you can get students to create their own online videos and video podcasts.

Here is an example of the students online videos (they also have an online transcript of the video at Google documents).