Putting a daily timetable on my class wiki using Google Calendar

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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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

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?

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

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.