Webb-ed feet

iReflect - Photo Booth as a Learning Mirror

2011-05-11T16:16:00.000+12:00

This term I have made a point of providing space in the timetable for the children to reflect on their learning. I doubt that many people would deny the importance, for anyone, of taking a step back and thinking about what you have learned, how you have learned, what goals you have achieved (or not) and why.

The typical day in the classroom can pass by with such speed that it is easy as a learner, and as a teacher, to get to the final bell and wonder how you got there. And then the next day it all starts again. It’s no wonder so many parents complain that finding out about their child’s day is like getting blood out of a stone!

All of us value physical reflection. Could you live without a mirror? Or the odd shop window reflection here and there? Clearly some value it more than others (!!). A mirror gives us feedback about ourselves, and we act to make adjustments in order to improve our appearance. So important is this to us that we will often seek out our reflection throughout the day, even just for a glance - it’s a kind of plumb-line I suppose, to stop us veering too far off track (hat hair!!).

Yet reflection on learning is not something that necessarily comes as naturally, especially for children. Writing reflective statements in a journal, or below their maths work before going to lunch can be quite burdensome - more burdensome than the maths itself for some!

Because of this I have started using Photo Booth as a tool to capture the students’ reflections. The nature of recording oneself with a webcam seems to integrate the physical concept of reflection with the inner processes that are occurring. I allow about 10 minutes towards the end of the day to look back over what we have learned and discussed, (including the social learning that occurs the playground). They can jot down a few ideas if they like, before finding a quiet place in the room to record their thoughts.

When we started this some students didn’t really know how they should speak or what they should say. To help with this I have given them some reflection tools, to prompt their thinking. The Stepping Stones cards from The Learning Project are ideal for this kind of thing. I love the quote on their website:

Trying to learn without reflecting and reviewing is like trying to fill a bath without putting the plug in!

We also have a Reflection Circle on the mat at the end of the day, where five or six children can share something they’ve learned, something they didn’t know when they woke up, or something they can do better now, or perhaps a goal for the next day. This doesn’t take up much time, and I believe is worth the investment. It models and normalises the reflective process and is a nice way to end the day.

What tools for reflection do you use in your classroom? Does your timetable prioritise reflection in some way? Please leave your comments below!

No, we won't be needing a graphic organiser...

2011-05-08T13:18:00.001+12:00

I read a blog post today by Dean Shareski, in which he quoted Darren Kuropatwa's question, 'What is it I can do now that I couldn't do before?'. What a great question, and a constant challenge to those lucky enough to have digital tools in their classrooms that would have been undreamt of in the not too distant past.

This past week my class has started a new term, and a new inquiry 'A Bug's Life', looking at arthropods (insects, spiders etc) in our neighbourhood, and the effect they have on us, as mammals sharing this environment. There is so much scope for wonderment and awe when we look at the world of bugs - beyond what Hollywood sci-fi movie makers could think of in the originality, complexity and freakishness of some of these alien-like creatures.

My students are already excited about it, and I have had jars of collected bugs coming out my ears this week, as they have gone about their house and garden looking for strange creatures and bringing them in (one parent told me, "She's gone bug-mad this week!"). Usually at the start of an inquiry I will spend some time finding out what the students know already, and what they want to learn. I might have done this using a graphic organiser in the past, but I love the fact that now we can really bring this curiosity to life, in relatively simple ways, using video and web 2.0 tools.

Below is a very short and simple video we made, stitching their questions together as soundbites, choosing an iMovie theme, and getting some backing music from Garageband. So easy, and so much more interesting (and shareable) than writing this down on a graphic organiser. What's more, it was our first time posting a video on Youtube, so they were very excited about that.

As you will see on the class wiki link above (A Bug's Life), we used Wallwisher to post some of the things we already knew. Another new experience for the children, and fun at the same time.

I'm really looking forward to getting into the inquiry more, and exploring what it is we can do now that we couldn't do before. I'd really like them to become junior entomologists, and create mini nature documentaries in the style of the late Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter) and New Zealand's own Bugman, Ruud Kleinpaste. We could then enter these in the MADE Awards.

What an exciting time to be a teacher!

TMI? Children's disclosure of personal information online

2011-05-01T13:09:00.000+12:00

The world in which children live is inherently full of risk. Some might argue that a risk-free childhood is no childhood at all. However, the ubiquity of the internet and social media in the lives of children today presents a range of risks which differ not so much in kind with those of the past, but in potential. The ease with which information, text and images can be stored, copied, manipulated, replicated and misused, (Livingstone and Brake, 2010) has created a need for vigilance and action on the part of parents and educators.

Children's disclosure of personal information on social networking sites in New Zealand is an issue of high public interest, as revealed by the current media attention given to it, such as this report on Close Up about adolescent use of Facebook. In addition, the 2010 report by the Privacy Commissioner, 'Individual Privacy and Personal Information', identified the information children put on the internet about themselves as the issue that caused most concern among respondents, as it also did in 2008.

However, it remains a desperately under-researched field, making it difficult for parents, educators and policy-makers to make informed decisions about how best to impart the skills needed for children to become good digital citizens, with a high level of awareness of their rights and responsibilities towards themselves and others.

Last year as part of my post-grad study I reviewed a lot of the literature around this issue and drew up a research proposal. Perhaps one of the most significant findings of a number of the articles I surveyed was that generally young people are using social networking websites responsibly and consistently with how they conduct their offline behaviour, and that the actual risk from online predators is very, very low. Yet the small percentage of those who do take privacy risks are of sufficient numerical size (considering the millions of users of social networking websites) to justify considerable concern from researchers, educators and parents (De Souza & Dick, 2008; Williams & Merton, 2008; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008).

Below is a summary of the research proposal I put together that highlights many of the key issues and how I would go about researching them.

TMI? Children's disclosure of personal information online on Prezi

A further implication of the literature that came through again and again is that any effort to increase privacy awareness and protection skills must include parents. Because many schools approach social networking websites with caution, or block them outright, young people tend to spend most of their online social networking time at home, or on mobile devices. Many studies show that parental supervision of online behaviours reduces the amount of risk-taking behaviour, but that the awareness and skill levels of those parents was often not sufficient to provide the support that young people needed (Ofcom, 2008; Berson et al., 2008; Sharples et al., 2009; De Souza & Dick, 2008; Berson & Berson, 2006; Steeves and Webster, 2008;

Youn 2005; Hinduja & Patchin, 2009; Wirth et al., 2009).

Part of this is no doubt due to the rapid pace at which the technology and habits of use of young people change. It may well be that if a school wishes to be most effective in protecting its young people from the risks of personal information disclosure, then the school has a role to play in educating parents through seminars and workshops, and must see this work as a partnership. Hope (2002) and Ofsted (2010) both affirm the importance of schools and families working together in partnership, with schools needing to be proactive in initiating this partnership. The research mentioned above by the Privacy Commissioner, as well as the fact that increasing numbers of older adults are using social networking sites like Facebook, suggests that there could be considerable demand for such a programme.

How aware are you of how your students are using social networking sites? How does your school involve parents in digital citizenship education? All thoughts and comments welcome!

Crop Rotation and Classroom Practice

2011-04-29T15:50:00.000+12:00

These last couple of weeks on holiday, I've probably spent more time planning and preparing than I have for a long time, and as a result, I'm really excited about getting back into the classroom. It's not that I haven't spent time planning in past holidays - rather that in 2011 I have had more time available to think about my classroom practice and where to take it.

Since 2003, after returning from Japan, I have been (almost non-stop) studying part-time while teaching full-time, and I have say, it has taken its toll. Mostly in lost sleep, but also in lack of mental space and available time. Last year I finished a Postgrad Diploma in Education in e-learning, and was preparing this year to begin my thesis research for my masters, looking at children and adolescents' attitudes to privacy and risk when using social networking websites.

For one reason or another, this year I decided to break from the study for a year and to be honest, it's been liberating! Now that I'm not studying I wonder how I found the time to do it. I really do enjoy studying, but when the only time in the day available for it is after the kids have gone to bed and the dishes are done, it can take more than it offers to life. Already one term into the year and the study break has breathed new life into my teaching - ironic really, as that was what I was hoping the study would achieve!

I think I was feeding the theory and starving the practice. More ambitious for qualifications than tried and true experience on the ground. No amount of journal articles read and annotated, no amount of APA referencing, will improve classroom practice - unless one is very deliberate about, and has time to reflect on classroom implications of theory and let these change your practice, and all this requires time.

I think there are some parallels in agriculture, especially around the notion of crop-rotation. I don't know a huge amount about gardening and that kind of thing, but as I understand it, different crops draw different nutrients out of the soil, and if you keep planting the same crop in the same soil, season after season, the soil becomes depleted and the crops weaken or fail. To avoid this, farmers/gardeners will plant different kinds of crop, or leave the soil to rest altogether, to give it a chance to recover.

That is where I am at right now in my teaching. I've been growing academic crops for a long time, and it's time to give it a rest. Time to have the space to experiment with some of the great ideas that I often hear and read about from others, and see how they work for my learners. Time to reflect on practice, and feed this into future planning; time to provide meaningful feedback and create authentic learning experiences; time to redesign my classroom space and try new things.

I'm excited to be a part of the E-Learning Classroom wiki, a project in transforming classroom practice towards genuine e-learning integration, and reflecting as a community of practice, under the guidance of Jacqui Sharp. This wiki, and others that Jacqui has developed, are so rich in resources and ideas, that it will be the hub of my professional development for the foreseeable future. I strongly encourage anyone to spend some time on these wikis and refer them to other teachers you know who are looking to transform their own practice.

Will I return to study and finish my masters? I'm sure I will, but I want it to be from a firm foundation of practice, and that's what I'm thoroughly enjoying building at the moment!

When is the best time to tweet your blog post?

2011-04-27T21:34:00.001+12:00

I got thinking today about the fact that many people read blog posts because they pick them up in their Twitter feed, and there seems to have been a shift away from RSS readers.
So if you write a blog post, what is the best way to let people know about it? If you tweet it, there's a good chance that many of your followers are not online at that point in time. If you keep tweeting it, do you run the risk of over-doing it?

I figured there must be some sort of netiquette for this sort of thing, so I googled it. I came across this post which asks exactly that: "How many times should you tweet your blog post?" They quote @GuyKawasaki who suggests tweeting four times, eight hours apart. Among the reasons are the fact that your followers live in different timezones, and, as mentioned above, they are not always online anyway.

Then I wondered, are there any particular times of the day when tweets are most read? Surely someone has asked this question before. Sure enough, googling this question got me 164,000,000 hits! I came across @danzarrella the 'Social Media Scientist' who suggests tweeting late in the day and late in the week for the highest click-through rates.

Malcolm Cole did some research concluding that 4:01pm is the best time to tweet if you want to be noticed. The Social Media Guide, on the other hand, recommends 9am Pacific Standard Time, because it works well in three other timezones in the USA and UK. Unfortunately that corresponds to 4am here in New Zealand, and at that time I usually have better things to do than tweet.

So what is the upshot of all this?

It's ok to tweet about your blog post more than once, to give people a chance to see it. Maybe four times over two days?
Afternoons and evenings might be best, especially nearer the end of the week - but you can't please every timezone.
Obsessing over this kind of thing means one's life is a little out of balance!

Tweet freely for others and blog freely for yourself - can't go wrong.

Google Instant - Help or Hindrance?

2011-04-23T07:47:00.000+12:00

One of the features of Google search that I have mixed opinions about is Google Instant. This means that when you are typing a search query, predictions and results will appear as you are typing.

As a user I find it very useful and efficient, and it can offer the phrasing or search terms I was looking for and save a lot of time. But as a teacher, I wonder whether or not the pros outweigh the cons. The pros, of course, are that students are given the same efficiencies I am while searching. They can begin a query, and then if their question is listed below in the predictions, they can click on it, avoiding the need sometimes for having to spell tricky words.

It is the unpredictability of the content of the predictions that worries me. Even with strict filtering on, Google Instant can give pretty dodgy predictions, especially if a student's search query begins with the same spelling as something less savoury. Try "How to make ..." and you will see what I mean, depending on what the next words starts with.

Fortunately, from Settings at the top right of a Google page, it is a short step to switch Google Instant off.

I have put this setting on all of my students' computers for now, erring on the side of caution. In the Advanced Search menu there is also the option of selecting the reading level of results. This would be great if it were a setting that could be applied to all search results, not just individual searches.

The other option, of course, is not to use Google at all, but one of the many search engines that are designed especially for children. A favourite of mine is Kidrex, which I have linked to our class wiki, but there are others such as KidsClick (which seems to be under construction at the moment) and CyberSleuth. A great option for teaching children effective search strategies, using AND, NOT, OR and other boolean techniques is Boolify, which uses these phrases to jigsaw the search terms and narrow down the results.

What is your search engine of choice for children? Do you think I am right to switch off Google Instant for my 8-9 year olds? How do you teach your students to search safely? Please leave your comments below!

Putting a daily timetable on my class wiki using Google Calendar

2011-04-22T17:01:00.001+12:00

I've recently been giving my class wiki a bit of a re-vamp (always a work in progress!) and one of the latest additions is a Google Calendar. I already had one of these, showing important dates for the class, trips, deadlines etc. on a page of its own.

The difference is that the new one is on the Navigation bar of the wiki, and shows the 'Agenda' format, listing just that day's events and when they are happening. This makes the daily timetable accessible, no matter which page of the wiki they are using.

This is how I did it:

The great thing about a Google Calendar is that you can have one off events, or have them repeat weekly or daily, which means that once it is set up, it just needs a little tweaking here and there.

Try adding one to your wiki sidebar, it's a good way to keep everyone informed. And now I don't have my students saying, "What are we doing after lunch, Mr Mac?!"

From 'Class' Room to 'Living' Room

2011-04-09T08:31:00.000+12:00

I have stumbled across a wonderful e-Learning wiki in the past few days called the e-Learning Classroom, and as a result I am now really having a close look at my use of classroom space, and what this says about my pedagogy.

My first thoughts were that my desk was too large and my chair too comfortable! And of course one of the things about having a large desk is that it soon gets covered in 'stuff', the detritus of procrastination. I think it also sends a message to the class that MY desk is HQ, the hub, the sun around which the planets rotate. Which of course, is not how it ought to be. How much time should a teacher spend sitting at their desk, during class time? I think, on reflection, that there are not many times at all when this is necessary. Perhaps when a child is reading to us? But then we could easily sit next to them where they are, or sit on the sofa. Hmmm...

So after school yesterday I got rid of it! My desk that is. I've replaced it with a smaller desk, the same as the students have, just so I have somewhere to keep my laptop off the floor, and to stash a few stationery items. As a result, I have instantly created space which I can now consider how to use. I still have the office style swivel chair, but am thinking that it might be more effective to get rid of that - at least during class time, so that I can be mobile in the classroom, actively moving around, supervising, assisting and, well, teaching. Maybe this is 'm-teaching', where the 'm' refers to the teacher, not the device.

What I'd love to do next is try to open up the classroom by doing away with as many of the students' desks and chairs as possible - perhaps replacing them with low coffee tables. It seems to me that a lot of children enjoy working on the floor anyway, and it would create a level of flexibility that I don't have at the moment. I have put out an email to my parent community, as well as other stuff members, to see what surplus furniture might be lying around. Come to think of it, this could be a class project - they could, in groups, raise a small amount of money, which could be used to source a cheap table on TradeMe, something on $1 reserve. It probably would not take too long at all, or cost too much. And imagine how much more space I would have without 27 desks and chairs!

The use of coffee tables, sofas, armchairs, perhaps the odd round dining room table for those who prefer chairs - what does this remind me of? It seems almost like a recreation of the dining/living area of a home. I think this is good. The living room is a space that most students will associate with relaxation, family, informality - which incidentally are ideal conditions for learning. If learning is about living, and living is about learning, then why not try to transform our 'class' room (what does that tell us, anyway???) into a 'living' room.

So, a work in progress. Watch this space!

Conscience-based Teaching

2011-04-06T22:42:00.001+12:00

I have been reflecting on the Apple Bus Tour I went on a couple of weeks ago. I have to say that beyond the innovative use of digital technology that we saw being implemented creatively in so many schools, what has impressed me and stayed with me the most has been the level of commitment shown to the learners in the schools we visited.

I remember in my first year of teaching in Christchurch having a conversation with a colleague about planning and the amount of time we put in to it. He said that he didn’t mind the time consuming nature of teaching because “teaching really is a job that is worth doing well.” It’s something we need reminding of from time to time, when we are feeling it is just a job, or feeling resentful of the long hours, or feeling the beginnings of a cynicism that will be tempted to uncritically download unit plans from the internet and take other shortcuts. But teaching really is a job that is worth doing well. The time we put in bears fruit, in ways that we do not always see, but sometimes are often privileged to see in amazing ways.

The uses of technology we saw in the schools we visited were far from being shortcuts. It was clear that hours and hours, often years, of deep thought, experimentation, trial and error, reflection and genuine concern for learning were behind the innovations. Not shortcuts, but a vision of the powerful potential of technology to leverage the learning possible and improve the lives and futures of students.

One of the most powerful demonstrations of this that we saw on the Apple Bus Tour was the incredible things happening at Point England School in Auckland. Anyone who has visited the school or followed Dorothy Burt on the Manaiakalani blog will know exactly what I’m talking about. There seems to be such a high level of integration, on so many different levels: Integration of the school culture into the atmosphere of each class; integration of pedagogy and technology; integration of hard data into living learning goals; integration of multimodal forms of expression, embracing non-print literacy without letting go of the fundamental importance of being able to read and write. The Literacy Cycle they have developed is certainly something I want to explore further in my own teaching.

I wonder how many other people experience what I have come to call the ‘teacher’s conscience’. In other words, I know when I’m taking shortcuts, winging it a bit, trying something new for novelty’s sake - and it doesn’t feel quite right. I know when there is more icing than cake.

On the other hand, I also know how good it can feel when all the pieces are in place (in as much as they can be in teaching), when the pedagogy is there, the learning goals and processes are well thought through, attention is giving to individual learning needs, and I can see the progress being made. My ‘teacher’s conscience’ says “Yes!” Perhaps there's a new pedagogy there: Conscience-based Teaching...

But I can’t get there without an investment of my time. Seeing what I have seen on the tour has reminded me that it is worth the investment we make in our learners. Yes, there are new things to try, tools to use, but actually the Apple Bus Tour has sent me back to basics - pedagogy. planning for learning, assessing effectively. Yes time consuming, but it is a job worth doing well.

Apple Bus Tour

2011-03-27T16:01:00.000+13:00

I have just spent the last week traveling around schools in the North Island (Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga) on the Apple Bus Tour, getting a glimpse of some of the incredible ways schools are innovating with their integration of technology. The Tour has been as described in the Education Gazette as "the most popular tour and longest running tour of schools looking at eLearning. In the last 15 years over 1500 teachers have taken part."

I can see why it has been so popular. Each day presented an avalanche of possibilities and reflection points, and a great deal of reassurance as to where New Zealand schools are at with e-learning. I took copious notes, and I won't reproduce everything here, but over the next few posts I'll reflect on some of the things that made a particular impression on me.

Image from http://theclasswithoutwalls.wikispaces.com/

One of the best integrations of wikis, blogs and social networking in a class was Dave Beehre's set up. Clearly the result of hours and hours of thought and tweaking, Dave has blended his class's physical space with a number of virtual learning spaces, centered on the class wiki, "the class without walls". If anyone is looking for an exemplar of educational wiki use, make this your first stop. In fact, it's not a wiki, but a collection of interlinked wikis, that provide the space for information, timetables, links, protected planning and assessment spaces and tutorials as well as links to other learning spaces like Twiducate and Kidblog.

What impressed me in particular, was that this was not just e-bling for the sake of it, but the result of some serious thinking about the role of technology in pedagogy. If you haven't yet checked out Dave's blog, Web Tools for Schools, go and put it in your Reader now - well worth it!

Where would you put this on a keyboard?

2010-03-29T20:31:00.006+13:00

Just when you thought the punctuation canon was closed, it appears we have a new symbol!

Called the 'SarcMark', it has been designed by an American firm to indicate sarcasm. Check out the ad below:

As this article in the Telegraph points out, without the benefit of tone of voice, expression sarcasm in print can be fraught with risk. But alas, we now have something which will make explicit that which may have been intended to be subtle!

I'm just itching with ideas about how I can teach this new one to my students! Free download here.

(Hat tip: Kathryn EDEM629 for this!)

Loving Mindmeister

2010-03-28T20:16:00.008+13:00

When it comes to Web 2.0 tools, it seems so many come my way through Google Reader and other sources that it's almost inevitable that most of these remain unexplored. For me to really go and have a sniff I might need to hear about 4 or 5 times from different sources to be convinced that it is worth exploring.

Various concept-mapping tools are very similar. Where do you start? With so many options out there, all of which look worthy of investigation, which to choose? Until now I have used Bubbl.us with my classes, largely because it is so easy to use. It is a simple concept mapping tool, it allows collaboration, is fun, but on the whole has fairly limited functionality.

But now I have been introduced to Mindmeister and I think there is no going back! Visually it is impressive, functionally it is easy to use, and it has a lot of extras that leave me wishing I had started using it a long time ago. One of my favourite features is the ability to playback the creation of the mindmap at a speed of your choosing, and as it does so it tells you who added what, and when:

You are also able to add notes to your ideas, plenty of space for this. In addition, there is the Wundernote button which will automatically add a note about that topic (for example, a definition of a word).

The downside? Well, it comes down to money... I have been using the Basic plan, which I am sad to learn only offers three mindmaps, and does not offer the ability to upload images or attachments as is possible on the other plans. Isn't it interesting that these days we (unfairly) expect everything to be free? Outrageous really.

The good-ish news is that Mindmeister have an Academic plan, which although not free, can get your class brainstorming for a year for $US18. I haven't signed up for this yet, and am still weighing up whether I should. Afterall, my students have got Inspiration software on their computers. This is very good, but I'll always prefer a Web 2.0 tool as it allows more continuity between home and school. And for my age level (8-9 year olds) maybe Bubbl.us is sufficient. Hmmm. And I have to pay in $NZ, which makes it a bit more pricey!

Anyway, it is definitely worth having a look at their 4 minute intro video below:

A Tour of MindMeister from MindMeister on Vimeo.

If you have found any other concept mapping tool in the classroom, please tell leave a comment and tell us what you thought of it.

Back to the Future?

2010-03-27T14:04:00.007+13:00

This is great. When thinking about the challenges of introducing technology into developing countries (such as access to internet/electricity), we tend to think the answer will lie in the technology of the future rather than the past.

A group of undergraduates, calling themselves Team One Beep at the University of Auckland have developed a new kind of software which can get data to laptops without using the internet. Instead, they are using the am/fm radio network that already exists widely in many parts of Africa and South America, to transfer data on to OLPC laptops.

It does this by converting text and images into sound, broadcasting over am or fm, and the signal is then picked up by any old am/fm radio, and by means of a headphone cord into the laptop microphone, the data is reconverted back into text/image.

Many of the places where OLPC laptops are deployed have no internet access, often no electricity or even running water, which makes this seemingly simple solution all the more impressive. We are not yet talking about the data quantities that would allow the likes of Youtube and so forth, but this is a step in the right direction.

The next question is whether it is possible to work the system backwards, creating text/images and sending them out using this technology, the very thing which distinguishes Web 1.0 from Web 2.0. Jeet admits they are not quite at that stage yet, but they are working on this capability. Here is a link to an audio interview with Vinny Jeet (13 minutes) from Radio New Zealand's 'This Way Up' programme with Simon Morton.

So here's to using 'old' technology to solve the problems of the new!

(Image from 'My Friends Call Me Jack' on Flickr)

Barriers to Change in ICT

2009-09-30T15:20:00.009+13:00

Do ICTs in and of themselves lead to more constructivist styles of teaching, and if so, how does this affect the diffusion of innovation in a traditional context, such as in a developing country? The change in pedagogy could be the biggest change of all, rather than getting to grips with the nuts and bolts of the hardware/software.

While researching for a Masters assignment about ICT diffusion in Africa (the NEPAD E-schools Initiative in particular), I came across this article by Bude Su, which looks at exactly this issue, comparing traditional and constructivist approaches.

Barriers to adoption involving the technology itself (and the training and support they entail) are called first-order barriers, which are solved by the introduction of the technology and support systems. In other words, if there is no access to the internet, this first order barrier can be solved by introducing wireless capability, for example.

Second-order barriers, on the other hand, are those which are "deeply rooted in teachers’ pedagogical and psychological beliefs about teaching and learning" and these barriers are more fundamental. One of the most tragic responses to the introduction of the amazing technology we find ourselves surrounded by is to apply their use based on the old assumptions about how learning happens. Su argues that only a systemic approach is likely to overcome these barriers and this takes time and commitment.

"Making such fundamental changes is surely a challenge for many teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders. However, we know such a systemic change is doable as there are successful cases in the literature. Fullan (1993, p.26) remind us over a decade ago that “successful schools do not have fewer problems than other schools – they just cope with them better”. If educators use a systemic approach to deal with both first- and second-order barriers, success will ultimately come."

Any implementation of e-learning initiatives, whether in developing or developed countries must focus as much, if not more, on the pedagogy (how to fish) than the tools (the fish).

Su, B. (2009). Effective Technology Integration: Old Topic, New Thoughts. International Journal of Education and Development using ICT [Online], 5(2). Available:http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=620.

Image credit: Computer Lab, Vukani Primary School, by teachandlearn, http://www.flickr.com/photos/teachandlearn/2845017277/

The Digital Divide: Web 2.0 just for rich kids?

2009-07-25T19:44:00.006+12:00

I've blogged here before about my doubts about just how relevant digital technology really is when compared with some of the immense problems in the world, such as hunger, child labour and extreme poverty. My thoughts have been heading in this direction once more recently, especially as I have been planning a Social Studies unit on child labour.

I've found huge amounts of material and ideas that I could use with my class, with this World Vision site 'Born to be Free', and this child labour webquest being most helpful. Yet the content of these and other sites has been almost overwhelming. Seeing such hopelessness and despair forces me to consider what my response needs to be. And there needs to be a response.

To be honest, it really made me wonder if I was doing my masters degree in the right area. I had to ask myself, "Is this just a degree in cool gadgets for rich kids?"

So I had a hunt around over the last week on the internet to see what was out there in terms of the role of ICTs in development contexts, where perhaps these equity issues are at their most extreme and I was surprised to find a whole field that I didn't know existed. It is known as ICT4D, or ICT for development, and is focused exactly on bridging the digital divide that exists between the haves and the have-nots.

The wikipedia entry gives a good overview of the field and provides some links for those who want to explore further. This ICT4D wiki has a huge number of links to resources, journals, blogs, people, and institutions, all devoted to ICT4D.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a good example of an organisation, which, with corporate sponsorship from the likes of Google, Apple and others, is trying "To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning."

(Image credit: Kicukiro2 by OLPC, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License)

At first I was a little cynical about this. After all, these people need food, not web 2.0, right? Well, yes, obviously in the most dire cases. Yet access to education and information is fundamental to escaping poverty. I highly recommend this short video, Zimi's Story, about the effect having one of these laptops has had.

Of course the digital divide exists not only on an international scale, but locally as well. One only has to look at the amazing work done by Dorothy Burt and the crew at Pt England School to see the impact that effective use of digital technology can have on motivation and learning in a low socioeconomic context.

My current paper is called 'Change with Digital Technologies in Education', and I think there will be scope to really explore some of these issues in much greater depth. In fact, I'd like to gear the remainder of my course in this direction, if at all possible (and I think it will be).

Digital technologies are not just for 'rich kids'. They are a tool with the potential to really change lives around and provide a way out of poverty.

Classblogmeister: Motivating with ClustrMaps

2009-07-04T14:11:00.007+12:00

I've blogged here before, on a personal level, about how motivating it can be to have a real sense of audience. If you know that what you are writing is going to be read, there is much more chance that what you write will be written with that audience in mind. Hopefully this results in a more interesting, coherent and well-structured post.

It is easy to feel, when blogging, that you're speaking to an empty room, and unless there is some way of knowing who is 'out there', it is easy to lose that drive. The statement below can be easy to believe, and can sap motivation:

(Image credit: http://despair.com/blogging.html)

However, I have really seen evidence with my class of how proof of audience can increase motivation. Classblogmeister has a built-in feature which allows student to see how many times their post has been read.

You can see that this post has been read 111 times. I didn't point this feature out to my students, but it didn't take them long to find it (rather excitedly, I might add!).

Early on I wanted to capitalise on this motivation by having them add ClustrMaps to their blogs. To guide them through the process I made a page explaining how to add a ClustrMap to a classblogmeister blog, which went through the steps and included screenshots of what they needed to do.

I followed this with an example, using one of my learners' blogs. This helped most of them understand what was required. I was surprised by how easy they learnt how to do this, and this skill will be useful for them later when they wish to add other kinds of widgets as well. My learners were enthusiastic about this, and when I suggested that they tell any family or friends living overseas about their blog, they seemed very keen to do so, so they could start seeing little red dots appear on their map.

These ClustrMaps also came to me for moderation, and were incredibly easy to approve using the New Approval Tool on the teacher account. I was able to approve as they came in and had them all done in about 15 minutes.

One morning I called over one of my students after noticing her Clustrmap was indicating some international attention (still not sure why this one in particular received so much attention!). She was blown away by the thought that she was being read on a number of continents. I asked her if she felt more motivated to blog again having seen that: "Definitely!" came the response, giving another reason why blogging is such an effective writing tool.

And now for a little perspective...

2009-06-26T20:28:00.002+12:00

In the midst of all the hoohaa about swine flu, it's worth keeping in mind some of the world's other problems...

(Image credit: http://graphjam.com/2009/05/06/song-chart-memes-people-killed/)

Building Planes in the Air

2009-06-24T22:31:00.003+12:00

I love this. I believe this is such a great metaphor for what we are trying to achieve as teachers. As tempting as it may be to try to keep the plane on the ground until it's perfect, we need to get our kids flying, and do the rest while we're up there.

Hat tip: Peggy Lee

Priceless

2009-06-19T19:53:00.003+12:00

Says it all really...

(Image from http://despair.com/)

Getting started with Classblogmeister

2009-06-13T07:45:00.011+12:00

Before we went ahead with the set up of the students' own blogs, we had a good discussion about what blogs were and how they were used, as well as addressing some issues of internet safety.

To see how much they already knew I elicited from them the features of a blog that might distinguish it from other kinds of websites:

The ideas in green are those they came up with at first. Those in purple are what they added after watching the following short video from CommonCraft, 'Blogs in Plain English'.

To introduce the class to the set-up process I demonstrated this using a data projector. Firstly I showed them the main class blog and where they could find posts, comments, links, and importantly, the link to their own blog (as yet unactivated). I set up a dummy student blog that I could use as an example, called C3B4Me, and used this to show them what to do.

In order to make the steps really clear, I gave them a hard copy of a document that I adapted from the Commlab wiki, which takes students through the process step by step with screen shots along the way.

Students also had to choose a name for their blog. I showed them my blogroll on this blog, to give them an idea of the kinds of names they could choose (eg play on words, focus on particular interest etc.). We also discussed the kind of things they could and could not write in the 'About Me' section. All of them seemed to have got the message in our Internet Safety discussion, as they talked about not giving any identifying information, but including some interests. Some even put fake locations (eg Brunei) here, although when we put on a ClustrMap that may blow their cover!

One concern I had here was being unsure whether the 'About Me' section also came to me for approval, along with blog posts and comments. Blogmeister have set up a Ning for educators who are blogging with Blogmeister, and this has a forum (along with some other very useful things like video tutorials). I posted this question on the forum and received a reply within ten minutes, which informed me that this information does indeed come to the teacher for approval and is very easy to approve using the New Approval Tool on the main blog.

This is a key advantage of Classblogmeister for learner bloggers - EVERYTHING comes past the teacher first, yet it is possible to relax this later on when students demonstrate their competence. Perhaps student bloggers could work towards a solo 'blogging license'!

Classblogmeister, Parental Consent and Internet Safety

2009-06-07T20:13:00.004+12:00

When setting up our Classblogmeister project, one of my initial considerations was the importance of getting parents onboard with this project. Parents often have reservations about their children having an online presence, due to fears about cyber-bullying and predators.

Here are some of the websites I found that had good resources and example letters for informing parents of the intention of the project and how internet safety concerns could be addressed:

1. Bud's Blogging Parent Letter - a useful starting point, easily adapted. He also has this letter, which I largely based my letter on.
2. Beyond School has a great letter and rationale, giving parents options for privacy settings.
3. This one from Ed Warkentin specifically addresses Classblogmeister.
4. Andrew Churches published this excellent Acceptable Use Agreement on his blog that he developed for his school, which is based on the concept of digital citizenship: protect and respect yourself and others, and do not steal (E.g. plagiarise). Unfortunately, I had already gained parental consent when this was published, so I was unable to use it this time.

I found that there are many resources, blog posts, wikis, articles about internet safety in regard to blogging as well as more generally.

When discussing these issues with the class I found the following two short videos very effective.

We followed this viewing with a discussion about 'digital footprints', and how once you put something online you lose control over it. Many of the students had conceived of the Internet as a private space, rather than a public space in which the notions they hold of privacy may not apply. Prior to watching, several had expressed regret at the fact that we were to have rules about what we could and could not post online. Afterwards, they all understood the necessity of this.

These videos made a strong impression on the class. Several of those who have social networking sites said they wanted to get home as quickly as possible to change their security settings, delete information and photographs, or in one case, delete their account altogether! My basic advice was this: do not put anything on the internet that you would not want your parents, teacher or future employer (etc.) to see.

Once the point had been made, a lot of the students wanted to share their stories about people they knew who had had bad experiences as a result of inappropriate things being posted online. As a teacher I needed to acknowledge the real dangers that exist, without scaremongering. The key point is that learners need to have awareness in order to make safe decisions.

As a result of this conversation we developed some rules for blogging. I had previously found a number of good websites with suggested blogging rules, and had harvested the relevant ones, so I was able to guide the conversation in this direction.

Websites I found particularly useful were:
1. This page by Ann Davis outlining their elementary safe-blogging policy.
2. Arapahoe High School Safe Blogging Policy

One observation I had when I introduced the way Classblogmeister worked was that I met with some resistance from several students to the idea of me moderating their blog posts/comments. Examples of such comments are:
"But I don't want to you to see my post."
"Why do we have to send it to you first?"
"I can do whatever I like on my page!"

To each of these comments I explained the nature of the blogs we were using. That is, that the blogs are a classroom space and should be treated as such. They are not private Bebo or Facebook pages, which they might also use. In the same way as I collect their exercise books and give feedback, I will look at their blogs and show them how to improve them.

It may be the case that these learners consider their online experience to be something completely within their control, out-of-school, and without relation to what is done at school, and therefore have difficulty conceiving of an online experience like blogging that is an integral part of a classroom programme. I have never seen a student as defensive over an exercise book as some were over their blog!

Deciding on Classblogmeister

2009-06-03T15:31:00.006+12:00

One of my first decisions with my class blogging project was which blogging platform to use.

My first choice was Blogger, because I have seen it used successfully for student blogs in NZ and overseas, and it is the blogging platform that I use for this blog. Because of this I am confident with its features and how to use it effectively and so wouldn't be starting as a beginner. I also found a number of useful resources on the internet about how to set up blogging with students using Blogger, such as this set-up guide from Rachel Boyd.

My reasons for deciding against it were primarily because as a teacher starting out with class blogging, and with students unfamiliar with the blogging process, I wanted maximum control over what ended up online. I also wanted an option that reassured parents of their children's safety and which allowed me to give effective feedback. Using Classblogmeister is like blogging with training wheels on at first, which is exactly what I wanted for my class.

There are a number of blogging platforms specifically designed for educational use, including:
1. Edublogs
2. 21Classes
3. Gaggle
4. Classblogmeister

This blog post by Mark Ahlness was pivotal in winning me over to classblogmeister. As he says in his post,

First, it's not blocked. Next, it offers TOTAL teacher approval before any student post or comment on a student post (take that, MySpace fear mongers). Teachers can leave online feedback for students to improve their writing (like if they want to get it published) that is hidden from public view. Next, it's free (thanks to David W's generosity). It also has a very active list on Yahoo! Groups for sharing and problem solving. Last, I have never, in 25 years of teaching, seen a more powerful classroom tool for motivating students to write. Nothing else even comes close. It is the perfect blogging tool for teachers.

Despite this glowing endorsement, I had reservations, mostly revolving around my first impressions of the visual appeal of the website (as shallow as that may seem!). It seemed to lack the clean, user-friendly look of 21classes and Edublogs. Nevertheless, from what I'd read I believed it was definitely worth my best shot.

Because a school code is needed before establishing a blog I had to email the creator, David Warlick, and request a code. This arrived in two days and I was then able to set up the main class blog, as well as each student's blog, assigning them a password which only they and I would know.

As it says on the Classblogmeister homepage, there are over 700,000 blogmeister blogs, and so it's unsurprising that there is a considerable amount of information and support available out there. I spent a fair bit of time searching for this, and was able to find a number of useful links that helped me in my planning, which I have bookmarked on Delicious. There is also a Classblogmeister Ning, with a lot of video tutorials, links and forums. Throughout the project if ever I had a question or problem, I found that it was answered on this Ning within a few hours. That level of support has got to be a key factor in deciding on Classblogmeister.

I see it as a clear advantage to use a platform that is purpose built, has a feedback tool built in to the process, and has a large edublogging community around it already.

Blogging with Classblogmeister - Part One

2009-06-01T21:04:00.005+12:00

While this blog has been somewhat dormant of late, I have nevertheless been active in the blogosphere, introducing my class to Classblogmeister. This has been part of an action research project for my MEd, in which I set out to determine whether using blogs brought about an increase in the motivation of my Year 7 & 8s to write. Here is a link to the blog, Bouncy Castle 29. From there you can also access the students' blogs as well (feel free to leave comments on their blogs!)

It's been a great experience so far and I have really enjoyed introducing my class to the sense of connection and audience that blogging brings. I learned a lot along the way (still learning!) and found some great links and resources that others might find useful, so I intend to share some of that here over the next week or so.

So here was my situation:

The students in this class are provided with opportunities to write daily. Some of this is guided formal writing, such as recounts, arguments, letters and so forth, while some is free writing. The students follow a writing process which takes them from the ideas stage, through drafting and in some cases, publishing.

Generally, this writing is not shared with anyone beyond myself as teacher and their immediate peers in the class. Some in the class enjoy writing and are naturally motivated to put their thoughts into writing, but many are not motivated and produce very little.

My action research project sought to investigate whether or not the use of weblogs has an effect on learners' motivation to write. The key affordances of a blog that might generate this motivation are:
1. The prospect of an audience.
2. Receiving feedback from others, including friends, family and the teacher.
3. The digital medium itself, as opposed to pen and paper, which allows the multimodal presentation of ideas.

I was also investigating the usefulness of Classblogmeister as a platform to achieve this, in terms of ease of use for teacher and students, teacher control and internet safety.

Rather than give the learners complete freedom to blog about anything, I felt it was necessary to provide a particular context for their writing, one which would lend itself well to teaching, modelling and practising the conventions of blogging, including such skills as the appropriate use of someone else's material.

To do this I decided to make the blogging part of our class Current Events programme. The structure I gave the students is based on one of the key tasks of this Webquest about blogging by Anne Davis, called 'Blogging: It's Elementary!'. The instructions/steps/process were a large part of the content of my first blog post on the class blog, Bouncy Castle 29.

Essentially the students needed to:

1. Choose a news story that interested them from the categories discussed in class, making sure it is something they are interested in so they feel motivated to find more about it.

2. Choose three questions that they would like to investigate. Choose at least one from each stage (questions given were presented in three stages, stage one being lower order thinking, stage three higher order thinking).

3. Try to find out more about their topic so they could answer their questions. They needed to watch TV news, read the newspaper, look on the internet (using links provided on the class blog) and ask their parents and friends what they think about it. As they read/listened, they needed to start to form opinions of their own about the topic. I encouraged them to take a few notes so they could use them when they started writing.

3. Write a blog post a couple of paragraphs long, summarising the story/topic and what they found out about it, and giving their opinion about it. I stressed that their writing MUST be original! They should not cut and paste from other people’s work, but could link to it from their blog.

4. End with a thought-provoking Stage 3 (high order) question that will encourage other people to leave a comment on their blog.

So that sets the stage! Next post I'll look at issues to do with internet safety and parental consent.

I'm in love with Nota

2009-05-07T23:55:00.008+12:00

There have been a number of cool applications that I've come across recently, but I really want to sing the praises of Nota. I love it! According to its developers, it is

"a unique, cutting-edge collaborative web platform that allows users to create, share and collaborate on presentations and virtually any other form of online material. Using Nota’s proprietary toolset, users can instantly integrate text, video, maps, clip art, photos from web album or on the local computer, or license-free images from Flickr, and material from an ever-expanding array of sources. Users can then instantly embed their work in Facebook or blogs, and can share and collaborate with friends."

In other words, everything you ever dreamed of. Well, that may be overstating it a tad. Today I used it to take notes at a professional development workshop led by Rochelle Jensen, E-Learning Advisor from the University of Waikato. The workshop focused on the uses of ICT in Education, and I found that taking notes on Nota, I could create moveable text boxes, grab a youtube clip (that Rochelle had shared) by doing a quick search on the sidebar and positioning it wherever I wanted on the page, and I could hyperlink to all relevant pages with ease. Here are my notes from today's session (heaps of excellent links from Rochelle, by the way, so worth having a look!).

What's more, a reader can make comments on a particular part of the page by clicking on it, making it an extremely useful feedback tool. It's also fully embeddable (is that a word?). In fact, rather than just link to it, I'll try embedding it now...

Great! Even embeds with scrolling. Try clicking on it and see if you can comment, or scroll through the comment bubble options. Very cool. Please check it out, especially their one minute demo video and this page about educational uses. I'm thinking about the possibilities of using this as a platform for e-portfolios with my class, as one possible use. My wiki of choice for now.

Another thing I'm using Nota for is to report on a small scale action research project I'm undertaking for my MEd which is about the effect blogging might have on learners' motivation to write. When I finish I'll post a link here at Webb-ed Feet so that you can read it if interested.

On the blogging note, this week has seen my class set up individual blogs using David Warlick's classblogmeister. So far so good, a few teething problems which I'll save for another post, but on the whole, great to be getting them connected. I'll provide links once the posting really gets going.

In the meantime, go and sign up at Notaland and have a play!

Google, the Gatekeeper and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

2009-05-01T06:40:00.001+12:00

I've been doing some reading around digital literacy for an essay due in June, and came across a great article by L.A. Henry (2006) called 'SEARCHing for an Answer: The Critical Role of New Literacies while Reading on the Internet'.

In the article she provides a great overview of a framework (SEARCH) for showing learners how to navigate such an unwieldy beast as the Internet:

1. Set a purpose for searching.
2. Employ effective search strategies.
3. Analyze search-engine results.
4. Read critically and synthesize information.
5. Cite your sources.
6. How successful was your search?

The thing that stood out to me most of all was the need to train our learners how to use a search engine (Step 2 above). I think we can assume sometimes (and our learners assume too) that everybody knows how to 'Google' something, but this is simply not the case. The results of an inefficient search strategy can be incredibly time consuming. Henry refers to this skill as a 'gatekeeper' skill in online reading:

Students who can quickly read and locate information are then able to use that information for learning and move on to other elements of reading on the Internet; students who cannot are unable to move beyond the search process. Because searching for and locating information are such critical parts of information use on the Internet, they demand our attention. (p.616)

There are a number of search tools/engines that I've found recently, that have been specifically designed for younger learners, and could be useful in helping this 'gatekeeper skill' of effectively locating information.

The first of these is Kidsclick, a website designed by librarians. They developed this to help develop the skill of locating information. It doesn't block any sites, being intended to 'guide users to good sites, not block them from bad ones.' It uses the SWISH-E search engine.

The next one I found is Ask Kids, designed for 6-12 year olds. This website is filtered, and each website in their core index was selected by their editorial team as child-appropriate and relevant. Great visual layout, and easy to navigate.

The last one I'll talk about today is Kidrex, which uses the Google search engine. This site has a page for parents with tips on how to help their children use search engines effectively and stay safe online. This one is also filtered and tested daily by reearchers to make sure it's working as it should. They also have a webpage removal request tool, so that you can report any inappropriate sites that do sneak through. It doesn't have an index like the sites mentioned above, just a search window, so it could be a little harder for kids to use.

Once at the website, of course, students need the skills to know whether or not a website is credible and worth reading. I wonder how many of my learners would be able to pick this website about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus as a fake?

Kathy Shrock has some great resources designed to help learners take a closer look at a website and evaluate it.

I particularly like the '5 W's of Web Evaluation' and her Critical Evaluation of a Website sheets that students can fill out to evaluate websites. These tools are great for developing information literacy skills.

Andrew Churches has a good collection of links to some great boolean search tools here.

The internet is a vast space with some wonderful opportunities for learning. Learners can miss out on this if they lack the skills to even get through 'the gate' and efficiently find what they are looking for.

Long Live the Pen Tappers!

2009-04-20T22:58:00.006+12:00

I have to say - and I don't know if this is just me - that one thing I just cannot stand in class is students tapping their pens - incessantly! Maybe it's some primal urge to express ourselves in rhythm or something, but I seem to spend a lot of class time 'hammering' the tappers.

And then I watch this...

This is Erik Mongrain from Montreal. I stumbled across this video this evening and was blown away. Reading his bio I see that he is completely self-taught. To develop a style like this surely must require a good dose of the tinkering mentality and the space just to be creative.

Now I have no doubt at all that if I were to speak to his old high school teachers, they would tell me that he used to tap his pen in class. If that is so, all I can say is, "Long Live the Pen Tappers!"

Digital Thugs

2009-04-15T15:48:00.006+12:00

In the weekend I watched an ABC report on Four Corners about cyber-bullying. As an educator with a strong interest in educational technology, this is something I take very seriously. There is so much scope for wonderful learning experiences and connections made across the planet - yet there is also so much scope for harm as well. The dark side of ed tech.

It was heart-breaking listening to the parents of children who had experienced cyberbullying, and in one case had committed suicide because of it. The one thing they all said was that while they were at home in the evening, watching tv or whatever, they thought their child was safe because they were in their bedroom. These days it seems even a child's own room is not safe, as the bullies are right there on the screen that the victims themselves just can't seem to pull themselves away from.

On a related note, Andrew Churches has just blogged at Edorigami about the phenomenon of 'sexting', and what the implications of this are for bullying and for young people's digital footprints:

But it does not end there, Bullying resulting from sexting is claiming lives as young people are stressed and harassed to the point where they feel that suicide is there only way out.

This six minute video that I found at Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com is a great portrayal of what some kids suffer because of cyberbullying. Definitely worth watching, and even showing to your class as a discussion starter.

Professor Donna Cross was interviewed on the ABC show, and claimed that one of the biggest reasons that young people do not tell their parents about cyberbullying, is the fear that they will lose the right to use their computer if they do.

So in a way, the bullying is the price they are prepared to pay to stay connected. This is how important it is to them. (Imagine if someone threatened to take away your computer! Aaarrrggghhh!!!) I have experienced this parental reaction with a student in my own class, complete computer privileges withdrawn - not for bullying as such, but for fear of the prospect of personal information being put online.

We really must as teachers try to see things from a parent's perspective. There are real dangers out there, and we teach under the principle of in loco parentis. This is a serious responsibility, which demands that essential parental balancing act of urging learners forward into new challenges and experiences, yet not dropping them out of the nest before you know their wings work well enough to survive the experience.

This is where I believe digital literacy meets digital citizenship. I would suggest that one cannot be digitally literate without an understanding of the responsibilities of digital citizenship. I have just been reading some research by Eshet-Alkalai (2004, Digital Literacy: A Conceptual Framework for Survival Skills in the Digital Era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(1), 93-106). It includes 'socio-emotional literacy' as an essential aspect of digital literacy. This type of literacy is all about the ability to manage one's identity and relationships safely in a digital context.

This makes me consider exactly what I want the group of learners I have responsibility for to leave my class with at the end of the year. Yes, it would be great for them to know how to use a few cool digital tools, but most importantly I want them to have a sense of digital citizenship, an awareness of the traps that exist and strategies to confidently navigate around these.

By the way, I found a great webquest about cyber-safety called 'Playing it Safe'. It looks as though it hasn't been updated for a while, but looks good nevertheless, and could easily be adapted. I'm planning to use this with my class next term, and will let you know how it goes when it's finished.

David Warlick has blogged recently about 21st Century literacies. He quotes extensively from Howard Rheingold. These comments struck me in particular:

And don’t swallow the myth of the digital native. Just because your teens Facebook, IM, and Youtube, don’t assume they know the rhetoric of blogging, collective knowledge gathering techniques of taggers and social bookmarkers, collaborative norms of wiki work, how to tune and feed a Twitter network, the art of multimedia argumentation - and, by far most importantly, online crap detection. (Rheingold)

This comment could apply equally to the socio-emotional literacy our kids need. Digital natives? Digital citizens? A citizen of anywhere needs to be inducted into the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and it is a mistake to mistake technical fluency with ethical and responsible use.

One Month of Webb-ed Feet

2009-04-07T12:41:00.009+12:00

Yes indeed, my one month blogoversary! Not all that long really, yet I really feel this has become a big part of my life and has changed my 'metacognitive processes'.

Blogging about blogging does seem a little indulgent, and posts have been written cursing the practice of 'metablogging'. Nevertheless, it is worthy of a personal reflection, and why not share that?!

These are some of the ways that blogging has changed the way I think:

Blogging has 'forced' me to make connections between ideas. Maybe it's the 'pressure' of finding something new to blog about (!), but I find that when I read other blogs and comments, or articles about teaching/learning, and when I think about my own practice, I am always looking for ways that these things connect. Taking several separate ideas and connecting them, and perhaps developing some new ideas. New for me at least. In this way I'm a much more reflective practitioner because of the blog.

Will Richardson, in writing about connective writing defines the ultimate goal in blogging as "extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links and comments." That's what I aspire to as a blogger, and what I want to model for my learners.

Blogging has also given me a sense of accountability about my teaching. I have such a clear idea in my head of what I would like the learning in my class to look like, but inevitably this is a step by step process, day by day on what can seem like a long journey. It's great to blog about amazing things other educators are doing and to discuss new ideas, but are these ideas and practices filtering their way into my classroom? Is what my class is doing/learning worthy of comment? I want it to be! Not so that I can blog about it, but because it means exciting things are happening which I want to share.

As teachers we experience a kind of professional isolation of sorts. We're all in this together, but each in our own room doing our own thing. I would love to have a look in the classrooms of the people whose blogs I read, but how often do we get that opportunity? Clarence Fisher recently gave us this opportunity in posting a short video of his class and what they are about on his blog.

Inspiring stuff, and great to see the real everyday context of an educator whose work I admire a great deal. Yes, I am overcome with self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy when I view this (!!), but it makes me ask the questions: What would a video like this of my class look like? What would I like it to look like? Being here in the blogosphere spurs me on to make it happen.

This post by Steve Dembo (definitely subscribe if you have not already done so!) explores the question of what success as a blogger really means. Is it audience size? Posting frequency? He suggests these three questions to ask ourselves as bloggers:

1. Do you get a good feeling after publishing a new post?

2. Did you enjoy blogging even before anybody knew your blog existed?

3. Would you keep blogging if the comment system didn’t exist?

Great questions, and like Steve, after one month I believe I can also answer these questions in the affirmative!

So glasses raised, and here's to more adventures in the blogosphere!

i-Solation

2009-04-05T20:38:00.009+12:00

Tony Foster, in his recent comment on this post, alerted me to this article in the Biologist by Aric Sigman, "The biological implications of 'social networking'". Let me quote Tony's comment:

Where online contact replaces, rather than supplements, F2F interaction (and this is becoming the norm), biological changes, he claims, make us more vulnerable to physical and mental illness. "Social networking is in many ways an oxymoron ... and is not a substitute for flesh-in-the-flesh relationships." (BBC Radio 4 interview, 19 Feb 09 - the technical shortcomings of blogspot.com prevent me from attaching the 5-minute clip.) His argument rests on the thesis that virtual interaction is actually perceived by the body & mind as loneliness, and this in turn can make us susceptible to a whole range of potentially serious diseases. Well worth considering, if this is what we're actually encouraging by promoting online interaction.

This certainly raises some interesting questions for us as educators committed to developing digital literacy in our learners, and harnessing the incredible potential for connectivity that the Internet brings. This is our vision and we are excited by the possibilities, but is there a chance that by 'going digital' with our learners we are contributing to the breakdown of face-to-face communication (not to mention the onset of a few diseases)?

I love the phrase Sigman uses in this article, 'iPod oblivion' referring to those so zoned out by their iPods, Blackberries etc that they become oblivious to their immediate surroundings, sometimes with fatal consequences. (Just as an aside, there's an interesting discussion going on over at Open Educator about whether or not students should be allowed to use their iPods at school.)

Sigman's article goes on to say,

A decade ago, a detailed classic study of 73 families who used the internet for communication, The Internet Paradox, concluded that greater use of the internet was associated with declines in communication between family members in the house, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their levels of depression and loneliness.

The first thing that stands out to me about that quote is that a decade is a long time in the world of the Internet. Now we have Web 2.0! Does this make a difference? The fact that people can participate so much more in what used to be a read-only environment, surely must mitigate against these other negative effects??

In this regard Sigman points out that

A recent editorial of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine made the timely point that social networking “…encourages us to ignore the social networks that form in our non-virtual communities. … the time we spend socialising electronically separates us from our physical networks.”

Dr Gary Small's new book iBrain looks at neuroplasticity, and the way that digital natives' brains are actually biologically different because of the 'constant presence of technology today'. Interestingly, his book includes a section on 'social skills for reconnecting face to face', and 'empathy upgrades for digital natives'. (Hat tip: Edorigami)

The balance we need to strike is to make the most of what we have digitally (and what a great time to be a teacher/learner), yet never lose sight of the importance of our PLN (physical life network). We could end up with a generation that is digitally literate, but sociophysically incompetent.

Political Pinocchios on Wikipedia

2009-04-02T23:44:00.009+13:00

I had to laugh watching the news this evening: a government minister, Richard Worth is currently involved in a conflict-of-interest scandal, (which is not really all that uncommon for a politician). The thing that made me laugh was that he was exposed as having edited his own entry on Wikipedia so that it noted not a 'potential conflict of interest' but a 'perception' of one! In doing so he earned a telling off by the websites editors.

On the same page is a story about a Labour MP who fell victim to an April Fool's prank when someone set up a Twitter account in his name and started 'tweeting' from the House that he was upset about not being able to ask more questions. He accused a 'right-wing blogger' of pulling the prank.

It made me wonder how many other politicians have been caught out by web 2.0. Worth is certainly not the first politician to realise that web 2.0 has a huge amount of power to control discourse, and also not to realise that there are so many observers in cyberspace that this kind of malarky is unlikely to go unnoticed. You just can't get away with editing out all the embarrassing stuff from your Wikipedia entry!

This site has tips for budding politicians on how to avoid embarrassing themselves on Facebook, and this article (referring to Twitter) claims that, "Finally the Web has generated a product that is shallow and narcissistic enough for (politicians') needs."

Anyway, the education connection: this story (and the others like it) show us how important it is to teach our learners to be critical consumers of information on the Internet. How many of our learners know that anyone can edit Wikipedia, and the implications for the accuracy of the information found there (which some studies have shown to be incredibly high)? Perhaps more importantly, how many of them know that if you do make changes, the changes are recorded for all to see?

How do our learners know that the person whose tweets they are reading really is that person? I believe that the learners who have learned in an environment where these tools are used all the time (and used appropriately) are going to be so much more aware of how they can be misused as well. Those who know their way around a wiki will read other wikis more critically and know to check the history and discussions.

Those politicians running for office when our students are old enough to vote: Beware! If we as teachers do our job properly, you won't get much past them!

Twitter, TED and terrorists

2009-04-01T19:52:00.002+13:00

I've just been watching Evan Williams on TED, recorded in February this year. For those of you who don't know, Williams was one of the co-founders of Twitter and Blogger (both started as side projects, as he explains).

The focus of his talk is the concept of Twitter itself and how its uses have been adapted by its users (now numbering an estimated 4-5 million) since it was launched in March 2006.

Some of the more interesting factoids he mentions are that plants (yes, plants) can tweet for water, and even babies can tweet when still in the womb! Talk about digital natives...

He ends his talk on a hopeful note, saying, "When you give people more ways to share information, more good things happen."

To demonstrate the power of the tool, by end of talk over 50 tweets about the talk itself were already on Twitter, providing an instant feedback mechanism (for better or worse, as you'll see at the end).

I hope he's right about more good things happening when people share information. That's our hope in education, of course. I'm not so sure the US military shares the enthusiasm, according to this report in the Washington Post, which claims that this very 'information sharing' capability could lead to Twitter being used as a tool by terrorists! They give three examples of how this could occur, which I couldn't help but think was just giving the terrorists ideas!

The nature of web 2.0 tools makes them neutral in the hands of their users. Is this malevolent kind of use inevitable?

Delicious highlights #1

2009-04-01T05:20:00.003+13:00

Since I opened my Delicious account I have noticed I am so much more likely to bookmark a website than I was when I just stored them on my laptop. I think maybe one of the key things for me, apart from having my bookmarks available online, on any computer, is the fact that I am adding to a collective pool of recommended sites. Recently I have been turning to Delicious to do a search rather than Google, and usually finding that if I enter the right search tags I can find exactly the kind of websites I was looking for. What's more, I can search my own bookmarks, my network's bookmarks or everybody's.

Anyway, because it is a virtual treasure trove for me, I thought I'd pick out some of the highlights from the last week and share them with you here:

The New Media Literacies - this is a reasonably short YouTube video about the way our conception of literacy is changing in the 21st Century. I found this over at Lunchbox.
Spelling City - I've put my students on to this one already. A great spelling site, and thing I like most about it is that the students can either choose from lists on the site or enter their own list, and the website will test, teach and create games using those words. Great!
KEEPVID - Many schools have blocked websites like YouTube, and teachers know how frustrating it can be to find something really useful but not be able to show it. KEEPVID enables you to easily download a video so you can play it back later from your computer. Problem solved!
Youtubetime - while we're talking about YouTube, here's a useful website that provides a way to link to a specific part of a YouTube video.
Teachers TV - As the website says, 'Thousands of education programmes on TV and online.' Andrew Churches put us on to this at his workshop last week.
Graphic Organisers - teachers love this kind of thing: lots and lots of free graphic organisers in pdf format.
LibriVox - ok, last one: this site provides free audiobooks from the public domain, and the option to record chapters of books in the public domain. I have some students who are excellent listeners, but who really struggle with reading. Sites like these have the potential to turn these students on to books and literature. (hat tip: Andrew Churches)

Well, that's it for last week's highlights. I wonder which websites out there are waiting to be discovered this week! Hopefully you found some of these useful, and by the way, don't forget to bookmark Webb-ed Feet on Delicious using the tag at the top of the sidebar!

Andrew Churches Workshop

2009-03-29T07:53:00.006+13:00

We had a whole day workshop yesterday at school led by Andrew Churches. The focus was 'Learning Styles, Learning Tools', and it was very, very cool. It was one of those sessions where you just couldn't type fast enough to get down everything you wanted to, and it was bursting with links and ideas and new ways of doing things.

He started by showing us this video by Don Tapscott, 'You are the Dumbest Generation'.

It really is a welcome breath of fresh air. It's easy to believe the cynical way young people are seen these days, when actually, there is very little evidence to back it up. I'd quite like to show it to my class. Hmmm.

Just while we're on video links, another amazing one which Andrew showed us is this one called 'The Lost Generation'.

What a great ending!!! Now this is a format I will definitely try with my students. I'm sure it will work if you use the structure on every second line. Very powerful. And hopeful too. Watching this kind of thing really does make me think that what we do as teachers matters a lot. Really matters.

Andrew then took us through the different learning styles, multiple intelligences and showed us some digital tools that could be used to really engage learners who have those particular learning preferences. I won't list them all here because you can see them for yourself on Andrew's wiki page, along with how it fits with the learning style/MI theory.

The key thing for me was that when looking at what digital tools to use in teaching, we need to look for areas of overlap, because no individual learner is exclusively one style/intelligence, but rather a composite that changes with factors such as (as Andrew outlined) the task, the teacher, the topic, what is being taught and how. Also, no particular digital tool is exclusively suited to one learning style/intelligence. Most of them these days are multimodal.

Multimodal literacy is something I'm preparing a paper on at the moment, so it's an area of interest, and I'll probably post about some of what I'm learning as I go. We live in a multimodal world, and our learners must be literate in that world. What exactly that means and how we achieve it is contested, but fascinating nevertheless.

Andrew also brought along one of his robots that I referred to in a previous post, so it was cool to see that in action.

OK, last snippet, which I found very interesting indeed: apparently employees of Google have 20% of their total work time designated 'play'! How cool is that! The rationale is that it is when we play that we are our most creative and discover new things. The Wikipedia entry says this:

In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, stated that her analysis showed that half of the new product launches originated from the 20% time.

Google has decided that this is fundamental to innovation, and I think they're right. So, implications for classroom practice? Hmmm. It's all about creating opportunities for creativity and valuing it for what it could be.

Embrace the chaos!

The Tinker Table

2009-03-22T14:33:00.005+13:00

Some of you may have read this post by Clarence Fisher about 'tinkering'. I read it a few weeks back and found it quite inspiring, and so decided to set up a Tinker Table in my classroom, the grand unveiling of which was just last week. What a success!!!

The prospect of being able to take to an old piece of electronic equipment with some screwdrivers, pliers, wirecutters - they were just delighted. At this stage I just have an old TV and stereo and students can use it three at a time, for 10 or 15 minutes before the next rotation have a go. I have been really surprised at who has been interested in it. I had wrongly assumed that it would be something mostly enjoyed by the more physical boys in my class, but I heard a number of "yay!"s from some of the quieter girls as well, in fact, everybody.

No matter who is using it, one thing is consistent, and that is the absolute focus and fascination of the users. This is something that I observed during their Technology time as well and blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

Now, to be sure, what I have set up is what I'd have to call 'crude tinkering' or 'destructive tinkering' in that all they are doing is dismantling the object. It is more focused on curiosity than creativity at this stage. That said, isn't curiosity the mother of creativity? I think this is something that will evolve over time, especially as I hear what others are doing.

What I'd love to do is get a robotics programme going with my class, or as an extra-curricular activity. Andrew Churches has been blogging a lot about this recently with reference to Lego Robotics here, here and here. It looks fascinating, and after seeing my students at tech and tinkering, I can't think of a single one who wouldn't love this. I'll need to find out more about this, cost, resources, software etc.

My overarching goal is to develop the 'tinkering mentality' and apply it to lots of things - the way they use language, their ideas and how they find new ways of using digital learning tools. Most of what I have learnt about using web 2.0 tools has been by tinkering, and as educators we need to make sure we create the space for this tinkering to happen.

One added spin-off is that it has also become a classroom management tool, because they know that the 'right to tinker' needs to be earned by being on-task with other classroom activities.

Follow the links at Remote Access if you are interested in reading more about this. Highly recommended!

Asynchronous Conversations

2009-03-20T05:26:00.009+13:00

The paper I'm doing at the moment is called 'E-Learning Pedagogy'. I'm doing this as a distance student and the participants are spread across the country, one even as far away as Kuwait.

There was a time when I considered it a disadvantage to be studying online and not face-to-face in a classroom, which was a luxury afforded by those not needing to earn money at the same time! Well, I think those days are over, and I'm a true believer in the asynchronous conversation.

In many ways, the conversation in a classroom, although dynamic and often very interesting, happens too quickly for real thought/learning to be taking place. Often it's after the class when you replay the conversation that you have your best thoughts and realise what you could have said in reply to a particular point. Unless you are an extroverted person, there's a good chance that you end up being (largely) an observer of a conversation between those with the classroom confidence to state their opinion, challenge others' ideas and engage in debate.

Online learning avoids these pitfalls. In a discussion forum you can read someone's ideas and chew on them for as long as you like before responding. You can go and check out a few facts or do some reading before responding, and you can even get eight hours sleep before answering the question (which might be considered somewhat rude in a face-to-face!).

What I'm interested in at the moment is creating space for asynchronous discussion in a face-to-face class. I've set my class a homework task this week, which is to respond in the comments section of our class blog to a thought-provoking question I have posted there. As the comments come in for moderation I usually give a brief reply. Over the course of the week there's been this other extended conversation happening, over and above the cut and thrust (and noise) of daily classroom life. I've really enjoyed it and have seen a different side of my students, especially those who do not often put their hands up or participate in discussions. The Internet is the new Equaliser!

So I'm thinking of ways to build more of this into the classroom. Twitter could be worth experimenting with in this respect. Hmmm. Still thinking about that one.

One side effect of online learning (and blogging) is that everything I read now (even a magazine) I expect there to be somewhere to post a comment! Even watching TV or listening to a professional development seminar. I think the whole process enables a higher level of metacognition and reflection, and that could be the real benefit of integrating this into my class.

Voxopop (formally Chinswing) is a Web 2.0 tool that enables asynchronous conversations. I haven't used this yet, but at a glance I can see a lot of potential for its use. Here is a post about using this in language learning, where students often need more time to formulate responses.

Voxopop enables you to start your own 'talkgroup', which could be open or closed, and you actually record your own voice, rather than typing. This would be great for junior students who are still getting used to a keyboard.

Voicethread is another application which is essentially asynchronous, enabling comment around an image, video or topic.

Hmmm.... Lots of possibilities! I think I'll think about this a bit more and come back to it at a later post. Please share your experiences below if you've used these tools or have other thoughts on the matter. Let's have our own asynchronous conversation!

Wonderment and Awe

2009-03-18T05:13:00.013+13:00

Recently I've been talking with my class about Art Costa's Habits of Mind, and focusing on one of the 16 each week. One that really resonates with me is 'Responding with Wonderment and Awe'.

I remember when I was at university (the first time!) seeing a picture in the National Geographic, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. According to the description, the Hubble had chosen an area of sky about the size of a grain of sand, that appeared completely empty, and then zoomed in on it for an extended period of time. This is what they saw. Mindblowing. Each speck of light there is a galaxy, containing hundreds of billions of stars. This is a vastness our brains are not really wired to comprehend, and you can only 'Respond with Wonderment and Awe' and feel very tiny.

I came across an image on the internet recently, which invoked that same feeling. Ever wondered what the Internet looked like? Try this:

This image is from the Opte Project, who are using special software to 'map' the Internet. It looks to me as though it hasn't been updated for a while, but incredible nevertheless. I have this image on my desktop, and I think most of my colleagues think it's a fireworks display (!). To me it's a visual representation of collaboration and connection on a grand scale. I believe that relative to the future, this image may just be a seedling.

Ultimately, when working with Web 2.0 in the classroom, this is what we are teaching our students to navigate and use effectively. And unlike space travel, which takes light years, to get from one end of the Internet to the other only takes a couple of clicks, and there are plenty of black holes on the way.

As part of my course I'm reading Will Richardson's book 'Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom'. It has some incredible statistics.

"In early 2008, Technorati.com, one of the many blog tracking services, listed over 110million blogs ... At this writing, the service was adding 120,000 new blogs and 1.5 milion Weblog posts each day." p.2

He also discusses Wikipedia, which often gets a hard time from critics. Richardson's comments here are worth reading too, particularly regarding the accuracy of Wikipedia.

"No one person, or even small group of people, could produce Wikipedia, as currently edits appear at a rate of around 400,000 per day. Everyday, thousands of people who have no connection to one another engage in the purposeful work of negotiating and creating truth. They do this with no expectation that their contributions will be in some way acknowledged or compensated, and they do it understanding that what they contribute can be freely edited or modified or reused by anyone else for any purpose. The extent to which this happens and to which it is successful is truly inspiring." (2009 p.57)

Inspiring indeed. Go forth, in Wonderment and Awe.

Am I a StatCounter-holic???

2009-03-16T06:51:00.004+13:00

Well, Webb-ed Feet is just over one week old, and I have to say that I'm really enjoying being an active participant in the blogosphere, after many years as a 'lurker'. That said, you do learn a lot as a lurker, and you never cease being a lurker on some sites. I do think that having your own blog gives you more confidence to comment on others, and maybe commenting on others' gives you more confidence to blog.

However, one thing I've noticed is that I've become a bit of an addict, and I'm blaming it on my StatCounter/Feedjit/Clustrmap! It's hard to resist the urge to open the old MacBook for a quick peek, see if the counter's gone up, ultimately to see who, 'out there', is reading. I get a bit of a thrill seeing those little red dots pop up, and wondering who it could be in Venezuela or New York that's reading.

I'd love to hear from other bloggers out there - do you experience this as well? At least did you in the early days? Clearly those bloggers with thousands of readers are not going to jump up and down over one more red dot. Or are they?... Here's one example of similar sentiment, and the StatCounter User Forum even has a thread on this.

Thinking about my own experience here, I think when getting students to create their own blogs, I would almost certainly recommend that they put a Clustrmap on their blog. One of the key advantages of blogging as a student publishing tool is that it connects them with a real, global audience, and Clustrmaps etc, give them proof that they are being read, and hopefully will motivate them to write more.

Even better than red dots, however, are comments - a blogger's food. This to me is really what blogging is all about - starting a conversation and developing ideas as others add their perspectives.

So, as always, comments please!

The Smell of a Good Website

2009-03-14T07:31:00.008+13:00

The feeling I get from following other people's links and searching for good stuff on the internet is the same feeling I get when I'm browsing in a second-hand bookshop. There's always that anticipation of finding some hidden treasure somewhere. I love the smell of old books. I wonder what old websites smell like??!!

Over the last few months I've found a number of blogs and sites which have absolute 'must bookmark' and have harvested them to my delicious page.

Here are some very worthwhile places that you might like to check out (if you haven't already!).

Turning the Supertanker was one of the first e-learning blogs I came across. A great record of one Auckland school's journey in digitising practice. Definitely check out the Resources page, as it has great links to Web 2.0 resources, and the 'How to' page and excellent video tutorials on how to use some these, like Voicethread, Inspiration, and Audacity. Definitely worth a visit.

Andrew Churches' blog has a lot of great information, and the accompanying wiki is a storehouse of ideas and resources for those wanting to integrate e-learning into their classroom. Particularly useful are the Starter Sheets he has here, pdf sheets introducing web 2.0 applications to the classroom, suggesting classroom adaptations, and importantly, tying these in with Bloom's and learning styles.

Will Richardson is usually on everyone's blogroll, and for good reason. He wrote the book (literally) when it comes to using the Read/Write Web in the classroom. You could spend hours exploring this blog and following all the worthwhile links. This blog introduced me to RSS and the possibilities for its use in learning. If you're unfamiliar with RSS or want a good place to refer other people who are new to it, check out this page. After reading that I set up a bloglines account and now enjoy my blogs coming to me!

If you enjoy reading my blog (for example) you just click on the RSS Subscribe button in the side bar, and then choose your feed aggregator, and then whenever this blog is updated you'll be notified immediately, rather than having to check to see if there's anything new.

OK, last one for today! Graham Wegner's Open Educator blog is always thoughtful, challenging and refreshing. And his Shared Items are always worth checking out too. Definitely one to sub on bloglines!

The Unpredictability of Creativity

2009-03-11T23:20:00.006+13:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the whole place of 'creativity' in education, and in particular whether we should see it as the means or the ends of the learning process. I have to say that my general position has been that we should give opportunity for creativity in our classrooms, because real learning may come from this.

But I'm beginning to feel now that all learning that takes place should not only include the creative process but be directed towards that end. Perhaps it's chicken v egg stuff.

There's something about human nature, the one thing, in my humble opinion, that really sets us apart from the other wonderful species on our planet, and that is our creative urge. We need to create, and to see what we have created and share what we have created, be it tangible or intangible.

I spent all of Wednesday with my class at their off-site technology programme, and I was blown away by how engaged they all were. You could see it in their faces, that their mind's eye had a vision of where they were going, and they were going for it. It really challenged me to think about my own classroom and what opportunities there are, on a daily basis, to be creative.

If you have the time, watch this inspiring talk by Sir Ken Robinson, "Do Schools Kill Creativity".

He suggests that we are prioritising the wrong things, and I can't help but think that perhaps it is because if the ideas come from us as teachers, this is predictable (from our own point of view) and can be planned for. However, what comes from the learners is completely unpredictable and out of our control. It's risky, it's messy, but it's what learners crave.

When we look at the way Web 2.0 is developing, it is completely about people taking something there, changing it, improving and sharing it. And finding some fulfilment in doing so. The tools of the read/write web are tools for creativity, and that has to be our deciding criterion when considering whether or not (and how) to use them in the classroom: how well do they excite the creative imaginations of our learners and give them an outlet? Or are they just bells and whistles...

Ahead in the Clouds

2009-03-10T05:42:00.005+13:00

There are so many great web 2.0 applications out there these days that we're really spoiled for choice. One that I'm using with my class at the moment is called Wordle, which allows you to paste in any text, and it organises it into a word cloud with the highest frequency words being the largest.

Here is a Wordle of the comments from my first post, Engagement is Learning (hat tip to my course tutor for this idea!).

I'm using this in my Current Events programme. As a class we are looking at a particular news item that we want to explore in greater depth. After a general first reading we discuss what we think the main ideas and key concepts are, and then paste the story into Wordle and see what stands out. My students really love the visual aspect of it, and the fact that you can randomise or customise it to change its shape, colour etc.

I can also use this to add to my spelling and word study programme. They can select several relevant words from the article, and avoid selecting low-frequency words that are a bit obscure or chosen just because they looked difficult!

Another cool tool is one you'll find on this blog, called AnswerTips , which allows you to double-click on any word on the blog that isn't a link, and it provides a box with a definition, synonyms, etc. Great for the class blog!

Death, Destruction and the Internet

2009-03-09T05:38:00.004+13:00

I was watching the news yesterday evening and there was a clip about the things happening in Sudan at the moment. Really tragic images

that stop you in your tracks and make you rethink your current enthusiasms and their relevance.

After all, what could 'e-learning' possible mean for the person in this image? Where does e-learning fit on Maslow's heirarchy of needs?

Then it struck me that of course the Internet has no relevance at all for this person, BUT, it does have incredible power to make this kind of thing relevant for the learners that I'm responsible for. The internet is all about connection, and although things like third world poverty seem a million miles away from my classroom context, I can show my students that the world is smaller than they think, that the world is a village, and that we need to be responsible citizens of that village.

On my MEd course recently we've been discussing the importance of our learners not just finding and presenting information on the Internet, but also going that extra, essential step of generating new knowledge, being creative with what they find there. However, it can't stop there. Surely this new knowledge is useless unless that in turn is followed by action.

Confronted with images like this, we need to discuss with our learners, "What can we DO?".

Engagement is learning

2009-03-08T13:55:00.007+13:00

Well, here is the inaugural post for what I intend to be long and enjoyable journey through the edublogosphere!

Because education is concerned with learning, and 'learning' and the way it's defined is somewhat contentious (to say the least) I would like to venture out and ask the question: Can learning ever occur if a learner is not engaged with the process and content of the learning? Put another way, if a learner IS engaged, does it therefore follow that they are learning? Can a learner be engaged but not learning?

I don't think so, and that's a huge part of the benefit of e-learning opportunities. Not many other tools in education have such a power to draw the learner in and help them to see things in different ways, and to be constantly discovering the 'new'. And discovering something new and getting a thrill out of it is, in itself, engagement.

I was looking at the weblogged wiki yesterday (this is Will Richardson's wiki), in particular what he had to say about connective writing, '...the ability to publish in a variety of media with the intention of connecting it to others who share an interest (or passion) in the topic'.

I really believe this is the way forward for engaging students in authentic learning. This is what Web 2.0 is all about.