International Education Week November 11, 2007
Posted by davidit in collaborative, Education, Education 2.0, ICT Integration, International Education Week, Web 2.0.Tags: International Education Week skrbl camstudio inkscape s
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The coming week 12 November – 16 November is International Education Week. I will be taking part in this week, although I suspect not in the way that the organisers wanted! I will not be reading what Condie has to say, no surprises there to those that know me. I will be involved in two projects and indirectly with a third.
Fostering links with other schools in different parts of the same city, country or even time zones requires dedication. The idea of it is great and one that I am sure most of us would like to be part of, but it takes two to tango! I have worked hard in the past to foster links with schools in different countries, but after the initial burst of enthusiasm, the links have often fizzled away. Often, the only link with the partner school was the school name or city name being the same. Generating a purpose for communicating and collaborating can often seem forced and without purpose or ownership, the thing it self seems pointless and worthless. Now where have I heard that sentiment before..?
As I said earlier it takes two to tango with these kind of relationships. In the past I have got the distinct feeling that my enthusiasm for twinning or linking was being tolerated by the poor sap at the other end who unwittingly said yes, and in fact my enthusiasm for the project ended meaning more meant work for them. For these links to work, what happens at either end has to be part of what each individual is doing in their class anyway.
In the past e-mails were the easiest way for classes to communicate, but with the plethora of web 2.0 tools at our disposal communicating is much easier and therefore it is easier to find common ground now and to sustain relationships with other teachers and their classes. And so armed with a bevvy of web 2.0 tools I shall be taking the plunge over the coming week and will get down and dirty in International Education Week.
My schedule for the week includes taking two graphics lessons with Year 4 Students in the UK on Monday and Wednesday. I will be Skyping into their ICT lab and using Skrbl to demonstrate what tools they will need to be using, what the individual steps they need to take to ensure that they can complete the task set. Ideally I would like to have a remote session on their network so that they can see the program being operated. However with Skype giving images and sound and the two way nature of Skrbl I should be able to run through the basics of the program with them. In addition to this I will be using CamStudio to record my end of the lesson, where I will also be using Inkscape locally on my machine. The final result will be a video that I can post to the tohatoha blog so that the students can refer back to my instructions at a later date. This is a clunky way of doing things and over time I am sure that I will find better ways of teaching remotely, but this week will prove that the concept of ‘dial an expert’ can work and once demonstrated will only get better. After Wednesday’s lesson, I will post the link of the skrbl pad that I used to instruct the students. I know that they are looking forward to this lesson.
The reason that this lesson can come about is because at either end of this partnership is a teacher who is passionate about integrating ICT, in its many guises, to facilitate learning for students. International Education Week should be used for that purpose, connecting passionate like minded teachers from other parts of the world, overcoming the tyranny of distance and time to create invigorating and challenging learning opportunities for their students.
Have fun if you are taking part, I know that I will!
Second Life October 15, 2007
Posted by davidit in collaborative, Education, Inquiry Model, Second Life, student engagement, thinking skills, ulearn07, Web 2.0.Tags: collaboration, communities, Second Life, Ulearn 07
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I have long been intrigued with the whole notion of online collaborative gaming and its potential for education. Shoot ’em ups, although strategy games, are still blood baths and not really suited to pre-teen education, I can see the letters from parents now (note not e-mails, what does that say?)! As a result, I have been intrigued but have not persued it further. Second Life, on the other hand, I immediately saw as having huge potential in the education sector, but how?
I recently embarked on an experiment with Helen in the UK to see how we could exploit Second Life to enhance our learning partnership and to really develop a sense of community between our two schools. I wondered if we could not work together on a collaborative construction project as devised by the students. I envisaged many student avatars all working collaboratively to create some edifice and leaving instructions and queries for the next shift as we sailed through time zones…
Helen and I both created our Avatars, mine is a hopeless representation of me! I tried to be honest about my appearance and my efforts ended up looking like some ring worm suffering alopaecia sufferer! Anyway our experiences on Linden as newbies were enough to put us both off! Helen was bored to tears with some overbearing architect with too much too say. I guess that if you are a bore in your first life you bring that imprint with you into Second Life! I just jumped straight in and clicked on the first ‘popular’ tag that seemed to be in the centre of Linden and promptly ended up in a strip club! Now I could definitely not only see the letters from the parents if I let my students loose here, but my resignation letter too! My only defence being that it would have been genuine discovery learning!
My interest in Second Life was re-kindled at the recent Ulearn07 conference, when Tony Ryan talked about not only our Second Life, but our Third and even Fourth lives. Since then the I have seen the following:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7038039.stm
http://rampoislands.blogspot.com/2007/09/need-more-evidencee.html
I have come to the conclusion that there is too much here not to be used by students, but still the un-restricted access issue is one that has to be wrestled with. Not least the fact that Second Life is filtered on School Zone and I have a sneaking suspicion that the ports that it communicates on are locked by our tech support company, just as Joost is (an easy fix but an irritation non the less). How do we protect our students from the adult aspects of Linden? If a 10 year old were to attempt to walk into a strip club in our First Lives, they would be prevented from doing so by the moral imperatives of the adults in or around the establishment, not to mention the legality of the situation. Second Life has no such moral or legal imperatives, it is the wild west and that, for many, is its appeal and I for one would not want to restrict or control that, for adults. Second Life is a masque ball, we can be who we want to be, the assumption is that all around us are voters and tax payers, ie adult. Our Avatars have and give no visual clues to the genuine age, gender, ethnicity and identity of those whom we meet. That is Second Life’s appeal for adults and its Achilles heel for students to use it. So how do we get our students into Linden without invoking the wrath of parents?
I have been discussing this idea with Fiona and she has come up with a fantastic idea that we are going to be working through this term with my G+T students. The students will be observers of Linden, by proxy though our Avatars. I think that this has potential and am looking forward to it. We will be the guides and as such can teleport our students to resources and experiences suited to their needs. This however will not enable the students to ‘experience’ and explore unfettered the environment of Second Life. What is needed is an island that is the sole preserve of educators, who will be able to allow their students to roam freely. Until this happens or some other solution is devised, our students will be passive observers of a world that is not meant experienced passively. In the mean time resources such as the ‘International Spaceflight Musuem’ are too good for education not to utilise. I will keep you posted of our progress. If you would like to be part of this experiment, let me know and I will work out a way to include your or your students. I am planning to do this on Friday mornings at 11:00, but will keep you posted. If you want to find me in Linden I am ‘Alban Sicling.’ If you see me in a strip club, it is not me, but my identical twin, honest…
Ulearn07 – Auckland October 7, 2007
Posted by davidit in class blog, collaborative, Conference, Education, Education 2.0, student engagement, thinking skills, ulearn07, Web 2.0.2 comments
I have spent three days in the company of 1200 other, largely like minded, teachers. It was a stimulating and thought provoking event. You can read my thoughts/reflections on my wiki. It was great to meet some new faces and to finally meet some bloggers in person.
As broadcast on the sub-ethernet in ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’
“…the secret is to keep banging the rocks together guys!”
We will get there, and if in your moments of frustration, and you happen to have two rocks in your hand, ensure that a dinosaur’s head is in the way! Makes a change from flogging and perhaps the message might get through a little more stridently to those currently not listening! Not only that one of Tony Ryan’s tenets for success will have been met, self worth!
E-Cast September 21, 2007
Posted by davidit in collaborative, Education, Education 2.0, ICT Integration, Inquiry Model, thinking skills, Web 2.0.add a comment
I attended one of those promo events last night that masquerades as a training seminar. Fortunately it was an event that was well worth attending and that was not just because the flat whites were free and there was brie and biscuits on hand too! The seminar was held at RED (Renaissance Education) in Onehunga, Auckland. This post is really a heads up for New Zealand schools. A product is about to hit the market that has huge potential for those of us dabbling with the inquiry process, fully immersed in it or even for those of us constantly on the search for fantastic resources. Well this is one of them. A company called e-cast has spent the last couple of years putting a service together and a considerable amount of time in dark rooms negotiating with lawyers to get this product to market.
What they offer is this, 37 channels of TV from all over the world for you to download any of their broadcasted programmes to your school and then you can do with the content as you wish, so long as you do not then republish it beyond your school. Not only that, you can create your own videos and submit them to their servers. This means that if your students wanted to research the impact of bottom trawling on Pacific fish stocks, they could search the library of recorded documentaries from all around the world, download the relevant programmes, edit the differing content and publish on your own networks. If they then create their own original content they can then upload their videos, for the rest of us to access. Not only that you can select and book upcoming transmissions that you might want to use, these will be recorded and you can then download them to your school after transmission.
For schools such as mine, where bandwidth is a major issue and a service like this would knock it over in about 2 seconds flat, they also have a service, yet to be tested, but coming, that utilises the spare bandwidth on a geo-stationary satellite for schools to download their content. How cool is that?
I have been so impressed with the content and the service that I have signed our school up today for a free trial and have also put my hand up for consideration for the satellite trial. I know that when the demo is set up in school it will really impress the staff as it impressed me. One of the channels is NASAtv. As we were waiting last night we were watching the live stream from NASA. They have over 40 years of archived footage for us to use, we may yet be able to put the did they go therory to bed!
I was very apprehensive that such a cool system would cost the earth. They have two cost structures a pay as you go download system and a fee based on your EFTS. The second option was so reasonable it really is the only option! The good news for Australian schools is that they are currently looking to move their service their too. However, even though they claim that this is a first, services like Joost from Skype will also soon be on the horizon for all of us and as these services proliferate we will be spoilt for choice from the differing video archives from around the planet.
Meme: 8 Random Facts – virtual tag August 10, 2007
Posted by davidit in collaborative.2 comments
I too have now been tagged by Fiona and in true pyramid selling I have to now pass the tag on to 8 others. Should be fun, and as it is a kind of viral advertising the Supertanker and its course change will become known to a wider audience. So here are the rules:
- Post the rules prior to listing your own 8 random facts
- List 8 random facts about yourself
- List the 8 tagged indivuals at the bottom of the post
- Leave a comment on each of their blogs letting them know that they have been tagged
OK so here are my 8 random facts:
- I have emigrated to New Zealand 3 times
- I used to be an advertising photographer in London
- I have yet to complete my Masters in Modern European history
- I have subscribed to National Geographic for over 20 years
- Brakspear’s Brewery at Henley-on-Thames brews the best ale on the planet
- I have travelled a lot, but not enough
- Henry Maudslay is the unsung hero of the Industrial Revolution and deserves a biography, another one of my projects
- I am currently reading the biographies of London and Alan Turing
And the winners are:
Well actually all the people who I wanted to tag have already been tagged and so in an effort not to annoy them I have whittled my list down to just one. This person is a good friend of mine and travelled around the globe with me in 2004-2005, our exploits may well be posted to this site one day. He is on his travels again and in the company of someone far more pleasing on the eye than me, so enjoy being tagged Johnny! And enjoy your trip!
ToonDoo July 31, 2007
Posted by davidit in collaborative, Education, Education 2.0, ICT Integration, Toon Do, ToonDo, Web 2.0.7 comments
Edublogs is two years old today. I was searching through their tag cloud and found the following post on this blog. This is yet another example of a cool web2.0 tool that has lots of potential for the classroom. It is embeddable as you can see in a blog or into a webpage. My humour is based on those amongst us on the supertanker who are the proverbial ostriches!
The site that my humour is created on is ToonDoo. This tool has lots of options for students to create short cartoon strips of ideas that they wish to express, or even collate their ideas into a book that can then be embedded into their blogs, wikis or websites. Check it out.
Web 2.0 Assets and the Classroom May 21, 2007
Posted by davidit in collaborative, Education, ICT Integration, Inquiry Model, thinking skills, Web 2.0.add a comment
When I first saw the following video, it really blew me away, it opened my already open eyes to the potential of the web as a fantastic educational tool. In a burst of evangelical zeal I busily sent links to all my friends, encouraging them to show everyone. One of them rather sagely said that if you showed that to the staff at school I would probably confuse them at best and completely alienate them at worst! And on reflection she was probably right. I expect that many of you have seen it, but it is still worth a second look, for what it did for me was make me think how can we harness that genuine communication and collaboration power of the Internet in our classrooms. We constantly search for authentic learning opportunities and genuine collaboration and with the newly emerging Web 2.0 tools there is much that we can already utilise to ensure that this can happen within our classrooms.
Knowing quite what web1.0, as it is retrospectively known, is or quite how web 2.0 works is not relevant and in many, if not all circumstances only serves to confuse and alienate the TT’s amongst us (see below). However, it is important to know that there are some fantastic tools out there that can be used easily in the classroom, between classes and between schools. The key word perhaps to bear in mind when thinking about using web 2.0 tools is collaboration. What the proliferation of web services like Youtube, Flickr, Bubbleshare Net Vibes, Skrbl etc allow is collaboration and interaction on the behalf of the user. The user/viewer is no longer passive but is an integral part of the Internet process. Sharing information on the Internet is no longer the preserve of the nerd or the geek, we can all communicate and share. So what is there out there that teachers can use to help collaboration happen?
If you have tried to get students to work collaboratively on a Word document you will know that it is not really possible and track changes is not the most user friendly Office tool to use, especially for seven year olds. It is just an alien concept and if you used it in your class you would probably resort pretty quickly to butcher paper and marker pens for a collaborative document! Now this is fine in a class, but it does not meet the demands of A3 learning (A Cubed or Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere). The reason is that the original source document stays in class and once the school bell has gone at the end of the day no one has access to it, so students who wish to continue working on it at home can’t. This is where the new Web 2.0 tools come into play.
Google Docs: Google Docs is just like word or Excel, but it is on the Internet, the big difference is that the document can be shared, so that it can be accessed after hours, it is simple to use and only requires that the users have an e-mail account. Its main advantage is A3 access. This is an example of asynchronous communication/collaboration, but if you are working with other schools in different time zones, this drawback is negligible and could even be considered an advantage.
Skrbl: This is my current favourite synchronous on-line tool, it is an on-line whiteboard where you can post images, or files to share with others. You can write text or even draw (in a limited way). All contributors can comment at the same time, it can be chaotic, but everyone gets a chance to say or scribble what they want. It is simple to use and great fun, but also has a real purpose. Everyone can brainstorm and the brainstorm can be seen by anyone, anywhere anytime.
Talk and Write: This is a Skype tool and is really aimed at the commercial market. It is just like Skrbl only more sophisticated, the tutorial videos are easy to follow. As with all things Skype there is a free version, but your board time is limited to 10 minutes. The fees are not exorbitant for the full service, but before I paid out for it, I would use Skrbl first in order to create a habit of use.
These three collaborative tools lack one thing, partners to collaborate with. We are using these tools in a small way within school across our network, but to fully utilise the potential of these tools and to make the learning authentic we need partners. As we start to develop our inquiry model our students are starting to look beyond their classrooms and beyond the school for other students to work with, share information with and crucially collaborate with. We are bursting with ideas and programmes such as Gamemaker, Lego Mindstorms, MSW Logo allow us all to collaborate, test and evaluate projects. If you would like to collaborate with our classes, please let me know via the comments and I will mail you back.
The future’s bright, the future’s Web 2.0!
Turning the Supertanker 
