Ancient Rome in 3-D, so what? November 13, 2008
Posted by davidit in Education 2.0, student engagement, Web 2.0.Tags: dakinane, Google Earth, Google Sketchup, History, Maori, modelling, Pa, Rome 3-D
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Google Earth have just launched a new layer in their Gallery, it is called ‘Ancient Rome 3-D’ and it does exactly what is says on the tin. The Google Guys have created a complete rendtion of the famous landmarks and buildings of Ancient Rome in 3-D for us to all explore. It is brilliant. You can read the development of the project here.
The so what of the title is… So how could we use this tool in a similar fashion to make the history of the locality that we live in come alive? I am currently working on a project with a year 5 class where we are using Google Sketchup to create a 3-D model of our school to put into Google Earth, this is exciting enough. However imagine re-creating a Maori pa site in 3-D that once graced the sides of many of the volcanoes in the Auckland caldera! How much more dynamic and relevant a field trip would be if you could also envisage the current grassy hills as a vibrant communtity. I think that there is much scope and potential to this idea. Making history relevant and leap off of the pages of dusty tomes is always a challenge to history teachers, however to synthesise the past with modern technology, all a the bargain basement price of $0, is surely too good an opportunity to pass up. The next extrapolation of this would be to mash up Google Earth and Second Life to recreate events from the past in the environment that they took place… Would this be considered a primary or secondary source if the detailing was accurate? The potential is very exciting.
Any community, building, structure, event from the past could be treated this way, even battle fields! History experienced in a 3-D world that can be moved through and examined from differing angles, to help decipher why certain actions were, or were not taken, what a concept, what a tool! Any takers to help me build a pa?
Shapeshifter – online animation tool November 27, 2007
Posted by davidit in Aniboom, Education, Education 2.0, ICT Integration, shapeshifter, student engagement, Web 2.0.Tags: , Aniboom, animation, online, shapeshifter, student, web2.0
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I have just found this great tool called Aniboom Shapeshifter. This is another animation tool, it is free to use (of course) and has a thriving community, a lot of whom are schools, associated with it. It is rather like Pivot in that it has some basic shapes that you can edit and add to. But where this application might score over Pivot is that it is online, no programmes to install and that it can go beyond the stick figure format of Pivot. Oh and it has colour, you can group objects into one and you can organise objects onto layers. You can check out the basic tutorial here. I think that this application is a winner and will be trialling it in my lunchtime sessions this week to get student feedback.
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!
More Preaching to the Converted August 16, 2007
Posted by davidit in Education, Education 2.0, ICT Integration, Inquiry Model, learning continuum, student engagement, Web 2.0.2 comments
I have been working on developing our inquiry model for most of the day. I am completely over all the philosophy behind it now and just want to produce a practical model that I can take to the staff so that they can start to see what the model for our school might look like. I have tentatively called it the “Umbrella Inquiry” model and is loosely based around Ian Jukes’ 5A’s model. The model has five strands to it, with Literacy and Numeracy on a sliding scale of teacher intervention and two srands of thinking tools and what I call ‘thinking landscape’ These last two have a sliding scale for student expectations too with more expectations the older they get. The fifth and final strand is the inquiry model itself. I have to say that at this skeletal stage I am quite pleased with what I have done so far. Even if the staff tear it to bits, it is at least something for them to bounce against, just so long as we get the ball rolling.
Not sure if any of you noticed the Teacher Tube site was down this week? Initially the site said that they were down for routine maintenance, but after 6 hours I had the feeling that something major was going on, coupled with the fact that when I could logon my videos had all disappeared! They have all now come back, but the ‘viewed’ data is all wrong, shame really as one of mine was always on the most viewed list, it was getting lots of hits a day and still is. So what is the point of all this? Well I have to say that I panicked when the videos had all gone, it made me wonder what the implications might be for the future if we put all of our stuff online and one day it was all gone, a kind of Skynet (Terminator) and Die Hard 4.0 scenario, not good!
Well while I was on Teacher Tube today I stumbled upon the following video. The video was made in 2005 and is interviewing University students in America. I know that University education is not relevant to what we are doing on the Supertanker, or is it? I found that what these students had to say had resonance with what our inquiry model is trying to address, but it also had some chilling throw away lines. The students all complained that all that they were getting was regurgitated knowledge from one person, that the system was not flexible to their needs and learing styles. One student noted that employers wanted flexible, creative thinkers, yet the university system was anything but that. They all said that they were all visual learners and that they were wired for the web, but university was not. One student said that what he was having to endure to get his degree was simply not relevant and made the point with fees being so high, why bother with a degree? Perhaps most chilling of all was the throw away statement that you have to listen hard to hear, was when one of them complained that the careers that university is preparing them for have all been outsourced.
If these statements are not the basis for a manifesto bring about a root and branch change in the education system, I do not know what is. When outsourcing means that 1.3 billion people can undercut your salary system and career structure. When access to a computer and Google gives everyone access to the same information, what is the point of difference? An individual’s ability to think creatively, problem solve and create new learning from the common body of knowledge is the point of difference. It is imperative to develop these skills within the students that we teach. We need to change and change fast, but you already knew that!
Currently I can not get into Teacher Tube to embed a link for you! However if you search for ‘digital students @ analogue schools’ you will find the video. When the site comes up again, I will put the link here. You see, technology, you just can’t trust it. Bring back the wax tablet I say! Nope, I went to You Tube and found it. Long live technology!
Turning the Supertanker 