EduStar

While I was on placement I had the opportunity to attend some EduStar training put on by the Hume region. For those who don't know, EduStar is a collection of software provided by the Department of Education for students and teachers to use in the classroom. Some of it is freeware (e.g. Google Sketchup), while others the department had to pay for. I wasn't able to have in installed on my personal laptop due to licensing issues so I haven't had a chance to play with it since the training, but it gave me a good introduction to the package and got me thinking about how I would use it in my classes.

Some of them were not related to my subject areas, such as Stellarium which allows you to look at the stars from a range of different places in the world. If you are a science teacher (or a star nerd!) I recommend you check it out.

A program I really liked was called Kahootz (http://www.kahootz.com/kz/). It allows students to make a 3D world, similar I suppose to the Sims games, but with more graphics. In the short time I had to play with the program, I made a dragon who roared and flew around the mountain. I can see this program being useful for a lower secondary creative writing task in English as you can add a voice over so you could make a mini film of your story. While the finished product would be very impressive, it would take quite a bit of time to the learn how to use the program, and you could argue that it would take away from developing creative writing skills. There is also the risk that the stories may be dictated a little by the graphic available, so you would end up with multiple stories about dragons. From memory there was quite a range of scenes and characters, but it is never going to be as broad as a child's imagination.

As with all software program, you need to question whether it will add value to the lesson or whether it is just a gimmick. If you could do a better job with an old fashion pen and paper, I would do that instead. But EduStar does offer a range of ways to engage student students through ICT.