Wordle

A very clever little program. Can be used to find the main idea in a piece of writing, though I haven’t tried it yet.

based on the Connect Learning with David Warlick podcast episode 98

I was listening to the podcast with Chris Lehmann about Educon 2.0 Conference. Chris Lehmann is the “Principal” of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. It is a school with Year 9 and 10 students -and growing- with a progressive philosophy using web 2.0 technology to achieve their goal. They collaborate with their students in all matters, work closely together as a staff and always have the “scientific” approach as the understory for their pedagogy.
Inquiry Research Collaboration Presentation Reflection
It sounds like a dream school, one that is beginning to look like a true school of the future, one that has stepped out of the mould away for the stereotypical institutions that we know as schools. It is no wonder that Chris Lehmann talks so enthusiastically about his school.

Secondly, this is the second podcast that I have heard the same story told the by podcast author. In this scenario David Warlick had his podcast notes on iTunes infected by porn spam and he had only found out about it through his Twitter network. He didn’t know the person who had found the spam bu the way that the spam was discovered was by a podcast user who didn’t know David but made a comment on Twitter for someone to tell the him of the spam. This is exactly the same as the previous story but different people. “An example of the “bigger mind” a community of people who you are in conversation with.”

This is the whole point of Web 2.0. It is about the community of like-minded people who you may never have met but are “in conversation” with.
I feel I am at the edge of this conversation not quite in there. I know it is difficult at the beginning to build the conversation because a conversation can’t be one way. It means having to have something to say too and being prepared to make comments and read what others have to say. I know that it is worth it because I can see the conversations that others are having.

It is the biggest revolution in professional communication in my lifetime. Instant messaging is huge but the way this has grown to become a tool for Personal Learning and Professional Growth is powerful.

Drupal a dutch word to mean drop even though the original idea was to name it dorp as in small village or community (typo). Another powerful open source product that might help revamp our very static web page into a dynamic one where a number of people can contribute. Drupal is for web site design but promotes a collaborative ownership.
It is interesting how quickly State of the Art web pages become old hat. The only way really to manage to keep it up-to-date is share the input. The static nature of web pages was a result of the specialised knowledge in designing web pages, uploading material, and or using html. According to John Jones Drupal may offer a solution.
I like the idea of letting some students have leadership for their grades in knowing the “how to” put it up with the support of their class teacher and peers in choosing “what” should represent their class on the web. I think I will try something like this next year.
The idea of having a consultant building or supporting schools to build web sites (as John Jones does) would be fantastic if it was funded by the education department. Think of the promotion for government schools!
“Moving at the Speed of Creativity”
Podcast259: Drupal for Education by John Jones 1:05:10 18/06/08 This podcast is a recording of a presentation by John Jones on June 12, 2008, titled Drupal for Education.
The Drupal web site looks to me like it would take some serious work to learn Drupal but it assures me that if I wanted to invest some time it would be possible. Maybe next holidays…

I had a great day at the ICTEV annual conference on Saturday despite
the fact that it was Saturday! It never ceases to amaze me how the
networking is one of the best things that you get from the day. Within
every session there is the primary message and the other message that
you happen to get from the person sitting nearby or next to you. I
recommend sitting with people you don’t know because you never know
whom you will meet, what you will have in common and what you can share
and or swap.
TWITTER:
If you weren’t on it you missed the other conference! The twitterverse
was a conference within a conference. Not only did I get an instant
lesson in Twittering but gained a great network of twitterers and
bloggers to follow.

Reading through the “tweets” that went on throughout the day it seems that everyone was keeping in touch and informed through the instant messaging system. Some kept and shared notes on the sessions using twitter and on the extra activities in the intervals such as interviews and podcasts. It reminded me of the way teenagers like to work when they have their preferred instant messaging open while they are doing their homework. I think the only difference is that the twitters were trying to at least keep an educational content or purpose to their communications. (This may be a bit too harsh on teenagers but I think banning IM systems only encourages communications outside the educational sphere of learning.)
I wonder if we could use IM for the same good purposes in secondary schools with students who struggle to maintain focus. Taking notes in the traditional way doesn’t appeal to many but let them send “tweets” or other IM about the key points of the subject they are learning and I wonder what would happen? This could be an organised network with the teacher having access to the messages.

What a day- I just wish I was part of the twitter network from the beginning of the conference!I

Great Podcast from the ICT guy (ICTGUY0804 – Voice Thread, Remote Access & 1 to 1    Podcast number 4 April 7th, 2008. )-  The impact of Operating Systems (OS) on the way that students and teachers work was very interesting. Comparing the 3 OS, Windows, Mac and Linux and what the computer comes with suggests what they will be used for. The Mac systems come with a creative suite of tools that students use to create multimedia products, the Linux system comes with very little hard drive space but links to online communities encouraging collaborative and communicative work, while the Windows machines come with the Microsoft Office products suggesting that they will be used for….

An interesting idea but isn’t that often how change actually takes place. For example if we want to start using the intranet in our school as the main form of communication to reduce paper we actually have to stop giving people the option. Change will only genuinely happen when we eliminate the alternative- that is the paper version.

If this is true then educators can affect a change in the way students use computers through the operating systems of the computers so they must consider carefully what they want for their learning community when they are providing technology for the classroom.

In this podcast there was also a great recording from a conference about the benefits of one laptop per student in classrooms.

ICTGUY0804 – Voice Thread, Remote Access & 1 to 1    Podcast number 4 April 7th, 2008.

How can students use digital audio?

Our school has a goal to be a leading school in audio eLearning.

What does this look like or what will it look like?

via Flickr

For a start the students have a live one-hour radio show on a community radio station each week (97.73SER Wed 2-3pm). All students in grade 5 and 6 who want to present a radio show have the opportunity to do so. The show involves script writing, collaboration with peers (they work in teams of 4), careful selection of music and practice to deliver their scripts with a credible and interesting voice. Their teacher operates the sound panel to for the show so that’s pretty intense too.

The program has certain elements that students are expected to talk about such as their interests, a community link and a link to the current classroom inquiry unit but it can include other original material such as stories, poems, songs etc. The radio show provides a genuine audience and authentic purpose for their work. The focus is clearly on developing oral expression and the digital recording equipment is the key to helping students evaluate and improve their skills. Soon I think there will be elements of the program that we will be able to podcast on our website as well.

Our school is quite large so it involves a lot of training and commitment to deliver a quality program each week.

We are also working toward using audio recordings to enhance students’ work in other areas of the curriculum such as movies, reflections of learning, storytelling and poetry. At the moment for example the students are using voice to annotate their understandings of their learning styles and intelligences on a PowerPoint slide show for their digital portfolios.

Students love the opportunity to use the recording equipment and even though they are sometimes shy when they first start to listen to their own voices, once involved they are engaged at a high level while they are producing the recordings. For teachers, work that has the annotated recordings show instantly the students’ understanding of the task. (Students are required to “tell the story” not read the text.)

The issues that we have, as a school who wants to use audio regularly in the program for students, are those highlighted in the notes for this topic:
We have to buy better sound cards for our Windows computers, and if we want audio to be part of the regular curriculum for all students that means all computers, so this quite expensive. Microphones and headphones are also necessary. Unidirectional microphones are a must in a classroom with a lot of extra noise to compete with and these are becoming harder to source. (Apparently there simply isn’t enough of a market to warrant retailers stocking them.)

The Apple computers don’t even have a way to plug in an external mic without an external sound card. The internal mic is omni directional and will pick up too much surrounding noise for a good clear recording in class.

Mics and sound cards are expensive but we think the benefits for students are worth it. We are even planning to run an Action Research project this year to see if reading and comprehension improves when students regularly listen to recordings of themselves reading.
Digital audio has many applications in classrooms other than music and offers the first practical way for students practise their oral language skills, in a creative and reflective environment where they can record, evaluate and plan for improvements, and make creative adjustments.

Below are the links to the sites I have made so that you can compare them for yourselves. Leave me a message and tell me what you think.

Scratch and MicroWorld’s sites
Blog – http://loisath.wordpress.com/
Wiki – http://scratch-n-microworlds.wikispaces.com/

IWB@BLPS
Blog – http://loisath.globalteacher.org.au/
Wiki – http://berwicklodgeps-iwb.wetpaint.com/?mail=1124&t=anon

The following site gives a summary from some students’ perspectives that I think sum up the key differences.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-students-compare-and-contrast-wikis.html

“Synopsis of their posts
The most meaningful point that they have brought out for me is that they see wikis as a place to share information and they see blogs as a place to share opinions and discuss.”

MY EXPERIENCE
It was while I was completing my major project that I started to realise the WordPress blog site was not quite what I wanted. I didn’t so much want a blog that would be mostly my ideas but a place where all teachers could contribute equally. By this time however (because I was quite excited by the new found possibilities) I had already started a second blog for the Interactive Whiteboard Team at our school. This time I was using a blog for educators – globalteacher.org.

Increasingly I was becoming frustrated with trying to upload files. The first blog was difficult to upload video files, the second refused to upload Smartboard notebook files. SO I decided to try out a wiki instead.

It wasn’t difficult to copy and paste the blog pages into the WikiSpaces wiki. I was in fact very pleased with how easily all the files transferred across. WikiSpaces doesn’t look as flash as the WordPress site but it was very user friendly. Now that I was confident that wikis’ were the way to go for collaboration, sharing, and uploading I decided to transfer my Globalteacher site to a wiki as well. This time I thought I’d try a WetPaint wiki. I had just happened to see one at the ICTEV conference, that another teacher was using with his students. This time copying and pasting wasn’t quite as easy. There were some pages on the WetPaint template that I would like to delete and can’t. I’m not convinced that the WetPaint Wiki is as flexible and user friendly as the WikiSpaces.

Of course there are still new wikis to try. It is amazing what is out there for free especially for education. If you email the administrators of the wiki sites they will take the ads off your pages as well.

I listened to two podcasts today, one from the USA (The Teachers’ Podcast Episode 6: New Literacies Make the News, Show Me the Money!, Tech Knowledge Product Review, teachers podcast) which featured a discussion about New Literacies. The discussion was about helping to students recognise genuine information and to read and evaluate internet material. They introduced the concept that ‘classical reading’ has changed. When reading online articles, reading is no longer linear because we can jump around with hyperlinks. I think as teachers we need to consider this in our lesson plans and instructions and be explicit about the reading that might be required. Multiliteracy in this case referred to online reading and the new skills that it requires as distinct from classical linear reading.

The second blog was (ICTGUY0803 – Blogs, Comic Life resources & Visualisation of data ) This blog had a great reference to presenting visual information so that it has the most effective impact on the audience. The evidence was based on cognitive scientific research of Kosslyn “Clear and to the Point, Kosslyn explained that the four rules of PowerPoint are: The Goldilocks Rule, The Rudolph Rule, The Rule of Four, and the Birds of a Feather Rule.” (The address for this information is: http://io9.com/tag/powerpoint/). The rules are simple and could be used as guides to help students create effective visual presentations. Perhaps a skill that is increasingly important with emerging technologies on Web2- (just look at YouTube, podcasts, messenger services, mobile phones with videos etc. etc…).

Multi-literacy to some means the ability to read, filter, and evaluate information on the web and to others to be confident and capable enough to utilise the suite of tools available on Web2; tools that communicate predominately with images and sound as well as the written word.

Post on March 10 2008

In an effort to be “well informed” and to utilize time wisely I’ve been investigating various podcasts that I could listen to on my way too and from work – about 1.5 hours each day. There are quite a few free subscription lists for educational podcasts. I think the e-learning insights and the virtual staffroom have possibilities but I plan to keep looking.