The Connective Writing Project
I've been keen to get more of our staff blogging, since I know from first hand experience what a powerfully reflective process it can be. I've always found that taking the time to write causes me to think more deeply about what I do, it makes me more aware of the ideas and approaches that I'm using with those I teach, and it's also made me a much better writer than I once was. I'd argue that blogging really helps improve your communication skills on many levels while building a stronger foundation for understanding your own beliefs and convictions. There is something both magical and affirming about putting your thoughts down in words, and even moreso when you decide to publicly share those words with others. As you can probably tell, I'm a bit of a fan of blogging (or connective writing, to borrow a phrase from Will Richardson)
During 2011, our school had the opportunity to apply for an AGQTP grant. This grant program is funded by the Australian government's DEEWR as part of the NSW Quality Teaching Program and, in the case of our school, administered by the AIS. Its goal is to help teachers develop their own professional learning through the creation of action research projects. Our principal asked me to put a proposal together, which turned out to be about creating a blogging project for our Year 6 teachers and students. It was quite successful, and as well as a complete written report, we also produced this 7 minute video to summarise what we learned.
I remember tweeting about the fact that we were applying for a grant to get our teachers blogging, and getting a reply back from my kiwi mate Allanah King asking why on earth you'd need a grant for that. Allanah, who is not just a fabulous blogger herself but a real pioneer in the ways she has used blogs and other social technologies with her students, found it difficult to understand why blogging had to be a complicated and beaurocratic process. She quite rightly pointed out that you don't need a government grant to blog, you just need to open one of the many free blogging tools available and start writing! And she is correct. But what the AGQTP grant process bought us was the time to do that. By providing the funding to get our Year 6 teachers released from class, we could set aside the time to learn this new skill in a far more focused and somewhat systematic and committed way. While it would be nice to think that teachers would just go and learn new skills in their own time for their own motivations, sometimes that just isn't realistic, so getting some financial assistance to help build teacher capacity was seen as a very welcome thing.
As a follow up, I was also interviewed about this by Selena Woodward from CEGSA in Adelaide after she saw the video. Selena was intrigued by the deliberately open and public nature of our blogging project, a feature that I was insistent was critically important to the project. Blogging behind closed doors, without the potential for writing to an authentic audience, seems completely pointless to me. The South Australian DECS attitude to blogging is somewhat less open-minded. Some people refer to this reluctance as "the Upton effect" because of the shitstorm that DECS created a few years ago when they very publicly showed their cyber-ignorance by closing down teacher Al Upton's very popular class blog, the MiniLegends. The regrettable fallout from what happened to Al seems to have caused many South Australian teachers to be overly gun-shy of any online use that might be vaguely interpreted as "social". It's such a shame.
Back in 2008, I had the pleasure of giving the keynote address at the CEGSA conference, where my topic focused on how important it is to be a connected educator, to form PLNs, to get both ourselves and our students connected and functioning safely in this highly networked world we live in. I blogged my thoughts about that keynote at the time, and looking back at that post now, and hearing that so many educators are still just as wary and frightened of the online world as they were in 2008, makes me sad and disappointed for the kids in their care. It is disappointing that in the last 3 years, during which I believe we are finally starting to see far more educators beginning to understand the really significant shifts in the way technology is affecting the process of education, that there are still such outdated attitudes to learning online.
Overall though, I'm happy with the progress we made with our own blogging this year. It was progress. It wasn't perfect, and there is lots that I'd change next year, but it's a good start.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam.
I've never understood why people send spam mail or leave spam comments on blog posts (in the same way I don't understand why people scribble graffiti tags on trains and walls), but I know that for spammers who really take it seriously there is big money to be made. I suppose in that sense, I DO understand why people create spam if there is the opportunity to make money from it... I guess what I don't understand is how there continues to be constant stream of people who are gullible enough to take action on the messages and, in doing so, continue to generate an income for the spammers.
Let's face it, the thing that keeps spam propagating and growing (and therefore making it worthwhile for the spammers to keep sending it) is the fact that there are enough gullible, stupid people in the world who keep responding to it. If we all were much better at identifying and recognising spam as soon as we saw it, then the spammers would eventually go away because the financial incentive to do so would also disappear. Fortunately for them - and unfortunately for the rest of us - human gullibility (or stupidity) will probably ensure them an income for a while yet.
Having said that, the spam filtering in Gmail is pretty darn good. I currently have a few hundred spam messages sitting in my Gmail's spam folder which have thankfully been identified and filtered before they get to me, so I don't ever need to see them. They just disappear from the system after 30 days. Thanks to Matt Cutts and his team at Google, Gmail does a great job keeping the spam away. Thanks Matt!
One of things that happens to any blog as it grows is a substantial increase in the amount of spam comments it receives. Most spam comments are just plain annoying, and many are quite laughable, but it's a good idea to deal with them before they have a chance to be published. For example, this blog receives many comments that are never published thanks to the powerful Akismet spam filter running on the backend. This WordPress plugin tracks my spam statistics, and in the two years that this blog has been running on its current server, the Akismet spam filter has trapped almost 11,000 spam comments with an accuracy rate of 99.8%. That's an awful lot of comments that never see the light of day!
I wanted to share some of the most recent spam comments because they are kind of insidious. On the surface they look harmless, perhaps even positive. For example...
My brother suggested I would possibly like this blog. He was entirely right. This publish actually made my day. You can not imagine just how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
A very impressive article. Well prepared. Very motivating!! Set off on to way
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I dont genuinely know what youre talking about here. This cant be the only method to believe about this can it? It seems like you know a whole lot about the subject, so why not explore it much more? Make it much more accessible to every person else who might not agree with you? Youd get a whole lot a lot more men and women behind this if you just stopped making general statements.
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On the surface it looks like people are leaving positive comments in response to something I'd written. However, aside from the extremely poor grammar, often a reliable indicator of spam, these comments are so generic as to be completely meaningless. By constructing comments in this way, spammers can spray them across thousands of posts on thousands of blogs in the hope that some will get posted. Unsuspecting bloggers, especially newer bloggers who are often keen to receive any sort of comments, sometimes fail to see these comments for what they are. Not surprising really, since the whole point is to trick you into publishing them.
I'm still not really sure what the point of these generic spam comments is. They don't contain links to click, so they don't appear to be able to lead you to an outright scam or scheme. They generally aren't asking for money, or have any real call-to-action. They are just annoying. They gum up the Internet, clutter our email and clog up our blog feeds, but for no apparent purpose.
Let's all be more vigilant about spam. If you don't already, using Gmail is a good first step. Installing Akismet on your blog helps a great deal too. But mostly, stay aware of what spam looks like, and never, ever respond to it. Ever.
CC Photo by trustypicshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/trustypics/5423704576/in/photostream/
Popularity: 8% [?]
My Edublog Award Nominations 2011
2011 has been an interesting year for blogging.
I feel like my own personal blogging has been really suffering lately, not just from being really busy at work, but also from the endless distractions of Twitter and Google+ which, if I let them, could easily become my sole places for sharing stuff online. Certainly, there are some people, like Mike Elgan, who use Google as their sole online presence and funnel all their other online stuff into G+. It's a potentially intriguing strategy, as the engagement factor on G+ is certainly very high. You could also argue that Twitter has replaced a great deal of sharing that was one done via blogs, and there's little doubt that between the "Big Three" of Facebook, Twitter and Google+, the nature of blogs and blogging has shifted considerably since I first started using them back in 2005. I'm blogging less, for sure, and it definitely leaves a void that I miss filling.
However, this was also the year when I introduced a whole bunch of new bloggers to the wonders of blogging. At my school, I encouraged the teachers of Reception, Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 to give class blogs a try. It's been resoundingly successful, with the Reception and Year 2 classes in particular really running with it.
Then, our Year 6 teachers, librarian and kids took part in a well-structured blogging project as part of an AIS-funded AGQTP Action Research project. The Year 6 teachers got time away from classes to learn about the culture and skills of blogging, and then they shared it with their students, who each got a blog and used it quite extensively during the latter part of the year.
Our junior school librarian also jumped on the blogging bandwagon too, and created both a Junior School Library blog which she regularly updates with library news and information, as well as a Book Review blog that is growing in popularity.
All in all, it's been a busy year of blogging for many people I work with!
My Nominations
I would love to recognise some of these school-based blogging efforts that have emerged this year by nominating some of them for an Edublogs Award. Bear in mind that these are all brand new bloggers, people that have never done it before and were willing to get in and give it a go. I really admire their willingness to try something new and learn some new skills. I'd love to see their efforts rewarded with some recognition, and of course some additional traffic. I think they really deserve it.
So, my nominations are...
Best Class Blog: From Little Things Big Things Grow: The PLC Reception Class Blog, by Sophie McKendry and Jaclyn Casella - In their simplest form, blogs make brilliant journals, and this Posterous blog has been a fabulous journal of the year's activities for this class of 4 and 5 year olds. With 39 posts over the course of the year, they have added photos, audio recordings and writing to document the many important classroom events from 2011. The reaction from parents has been overwhelmingly positive.
Best Class Blog: The PLC Year 2 Blog by Catherine O'Doherty, Lisa Case and Katrina Avery - This blog has been used to connect, collaborate and communicate with our parent body and the world, and has generated an enormously enthusiastic response from the teachers, parents and students alike. It contains student work samples, photos, audio recordings, scans, and writing. It also documents the adventures of Cocoa, the class mascot. The blog has had 147 posts during the year and over 11,000 views. It's an amazing first attempt at blogging and deserves some recognition.
Best Library Blog: Library Matters by Sandra McMullan - I think this brilliant new library blog deserves lots of recognition. It was started by our junior school librarian, Sandra McMullan, as a way to showcase the many great things that happen there. It contains posts, photos, stories and booklists, all designed to encourage greater dialog and exposure to what goes on in the library. It's a stellar first effort at blogging, and really think it deserves some recognition. In addition, Sandra started a second blog for book reviews which links of the front page of her main blog.
After a fairly full-on year of introducing blogging here at PLC Sydney, there are lots more blogs floating around (including a blog for every student in Year 6). While they are all interesting, I think the ones listed above have been the real standouts, and deserve to be nominated for a 2011 Eddie.
Now please go vote for them!
Popularity: 12% [?]
Happy Snappy
I post them all to a Posterous site I set up called 365 Days of Light, which in turn crossposts to Twitter, Identica, Flickr. and PicasaWeb (which is really Google+). It also used to post to Facebook until I quit my account there). Here is a link to the collection so far... (minus the first few days of January which I forgot to include back then)
Part of the challenge for me was that I didn't want to take a photo of just anything, but rather to try and find something of real visual interest each day. I wanted it become to a collection of interesting artistic images, not just a bunch of point-and-click happy-snaps. Whether I've actually achieved that aesthetic goal is probably debatable and certainly not every photo has been a winner, but I must say that there are quite a few photos in the collection that I'm very, very happy with. It really has forced me to try and be both disciplined and creative every day. Trying to find a new angle, to not be too cliche or derivative, and to still find something interesting each day has been a real challenge, but I'm pleased with how it's gone so far.
I'm looking forward to the final month ahead, and to get to the end of the 365 days. My plan is to turn them into a printed coffee table book as soon as I finish taking all 365 photos, and publish a few copies for family and friends. In the meantime, feel free to +1 any you like... I know which photos I'm happy with but I'd be curious to know which ones you like.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Coincidence or Connection?
One of the things that my American friends are always very proud of is that they claim to live in a country where dreams can come true and where everyone has an equal opportunity of success. They call it “The American Dream” and all over America young children are told that anyone - even them - has the opportunity to grow up and become president one day.
Of course, if you’re a young American, the reality is that while anyone can potentially become president, the probability of it actually happening to you is somewhere around 1 in 307,006,550 (which is roughly the number of people living in the USA at the moment). So while you possibly could become president, it’s far, far, far more likely that you won’t be!
If you did happen to somehow end up as the President of the United States, the odds get even more staggeringly unlikely that your son or daughter will also become president. Mathematically, the chances of two people from the same family both becoming President of the USA are around 1 in 9.42530217 × 1016, or, as my math teacher friend Darren Kuropatwa likes to call it, zero. While both people may have the same opportunity as anyone else, the statistical likelihood that two people from the same family will both end up holding the office of president starts to become so unlikely that you might as well call it impossible.
Yet, we all know that this has indeed happened in the past. George Bush Sr held the top US job between 1989 and 1993, and then his son George W Bush held the same position from 2001 to 2009. The odds of two people from the same family both reaching the office of President are very, very unlikely, yet it happened.
And this is not the first time it’s happened. Back in 1797, John Adams earned the US presidency and then his son John Quincy Adams took on the same position in 1825. And let’s also not forget William Henry Harrison, who became president in 1841, and then 41 years later so did his grandson Benjamin Harrison. What’s going on here? How can something so unlikely keep happening multiple times?
It’s not just politics either, it happens in other fields of endeavour as well. In sports, the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, have done a similar thing, with both of them being ranked as the number one female tennis player in the world at various times. The statistical likelihood of getting to be the world’s best at anything may seem unlikely, but the chance of two from the same family should be nearly impossible.
Australian readers will remember the Waugh brothers who played cricket for Australia back in the 90s. Like becoming president, becoming an elite athlete is hard work and requires a great deal of focus, dedication and effort. Rising to a world class level is highly competitive and although many try to get there, few actually do. And yet Mark, Steve and Dean Waugh bucked the odds when all three brothers from the same working class family in southwestern Sydney ended up representing their country in cricket. The chances of one of the brothers playing cricket at the elite level is slim, but you’d imagine that the chance of all three of the boys doing it would be near impossible.
And yet, these things do actually happens far more often than you might think. You don’t have to look too far to find plenty of examples of people from the same family, group, team, organisation or school achieving significant unlikely success together. If you just look at it from the perspective of statistical probability, getting multiple people from the same family or group or school to succeed at a high level might seem unlikely to happen, and yet it does happen with surprising frequency. So what’s going on here? Are some people just in the right place at the right time? Are they just lucky? Or is there something else going on?
When you stop and think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. Although it may seem almost paradoxical at first, the notion that your own performance can be raised up by the associations and connections you create with those around you in the same field is really not all that surprising. When Venus improved her game, it probably spurred Serena on as well. When Serena learned to improve her serving technique she probably passed on some of that learning to Venus. Being around other people who are achieving excellence doesn’t reduce the likelihood that you’ll learn from them, it dramatically improves it!
If you know someone who has reached the top of their chosen field, and you spend a lot of time with that person, it usually makes it more likely that you will succeed, not less. You get to share their passion and their enthusiasm, which often drives your own passion and enthusiasm forward as well. You get to learn from them, which helps you avoid some of their mistakes while benefiting from their experience. You can get caught up in their competitiveness, which often drives you to be better, to try harder, to practise a little longer. Despite the apparent odds of more than one person succeeding at an elite level, it would seem that associating with like minded people who share your passions dramatically improves your own chances of success. As any sports star will tell you, the best way to improve is to regularly play with other good players.
How does this principle apply to you as an educator? What are the associations and connections you surround yourself with? Who are the people you associate with and learn from? How do you get to be part of an “all star team” that can drive your own learning and professionalism forward?
I’d suggest that the analog for committed educators is to development a strong Professional Learning Network, or PLN. I’m sure that those of us who are connected through tools like Twitter, the blogosphere, Skype, etc, can attest to the remarkable difference it makes. Not just a little bit, but an enormous amount. Being connected to the right people, being part of the right networks, sharing ideas and conversations with the right people… I would rate the idea of being a “connected educator” as the single most crucial thing you can do for your own ongoing professional development.
This all struck me as I was sitting in a meeting in Melbourne today with a group of leading Australian teachers. Many of them I consider to be some of the best educators I know. Many have enormous wisdom about teaching, about learning, about education, about schooling, about educational technology, about being an effective and fluent citizen of the 21st century. In short, these were a bunch of fine educational minds. At one point, it was noted that although many of us had never met in person before, we already shared many connections and the fact was cited that nearly all the people in the room were active members of the OzTeachers List (one of the longest running and most active educational online communities in the world).
Someone commented that it was quite a coincidence that, in a room full of leading educators, so many were all OzTeachers members. To which I would respond, it’s not a coincidence at all. In fact, it’s more likely the whole reason we were there in the first place. This was not a room full of random teachers who, surprise, surprise, all happened to belong to the same online community. Out of this “random" group of teachers, virtually everyone there could claim to be part of numerous shared networks of connection; ADEs, GCTs, Edubloggers, Classroom 2.0ers, Twitterers... The room was full of people who already knew each other from online networks. Coincidence? I think not.
This was a room of teachers who were already connected in numerous networked ways, and it was undoubtedly these connections that were the very reason they were asked to be there in the first place. It’s through being connected, belonging to shared communities of practice and being part of each other’s professional learning networks that makes leaders, not the other way around.
It drives me crazy when I meet teachers who continually resist the idea of belonging to online networks of like-minded educators. Like so many others in that room in Melbourne (and around the world in many other networks of connection) I know the undeniable value of being connected to others, of sharing ideas, of speaking a common language. I know what an amazing difference it makes when you expose yourself to a steady stream of innovative ideas, resources and people. Being connected to other passionate people exposes you to more good ideas in a single day than most unconnected educators will stumble across in a year. I honestly believe that being connected to others is the single best thing you can do for yourself and your own professional growth. As Steven Johnson says, “Chance favours the connected mind”.
So if you’re already a connected educator, congratulations... I’m sure you can attest to what a huge difference it makes in your own professional life. If you’re not, then maybe it’s time to finally bite the bullet and do it.
I’m sure Venus and Serena would agree.
Photo by emmettanderson
Popularity: 18% [?]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:01 — 10.3MB)
A Photo a Day
I like photography. In fact I like imagery in general, which is, I suppose, why I enjoyed art school so much. The combination of not only interesting images, but also interesting ideas, made the four years I spent at art school some of the best years of my life.
However, it was only after I taught art for a few years that I discovered that, while I liked art, I didn't necessarily like teaching art. I've since spoken to many people who proclaim that the quickest way to kill your passion for something is to do it for a living. I'm not sure that's the case... what I do now, working with kids and technology and the future, is what I love doing. But I understand what they are saying... for many people, their passions need to be unshackled from the daily "must do" so that they can be enjoyed as a "want to" instead.
So, working with imagery and design and graphics and photography remains something I enjoy simply for the sake of it. I like to take photos, or mess about with Photoshop or Illustrator, but I like to do it on my terms not someone else's. And yet, with such a laissez-faire attitude to these things, it's easy to let these interests slip away in the busy-ness of life, where they simply don't happen with any regularity.
I've seen people doing the 365 Day Photography Challenge over the last couple of years, and I really like the concept. Take a photo each day for a year and publish it online. It's a nice idea. I've tried to do it myself for the past few years, starting several times, but for one reason or another I've just found it difficult to maintain the momentum of doing it. All that messing about, taking photos and uploading to the computer each day and then publishing to a blog. Sure, blogging a photo is a pretty easy thing to do, but I've just lacked the discipline to do it every single day.
Coincidentally, I visited my buddy John Pearce at his home near Portarlington last week. John is a far more disciplined blogger than I am and over the last few years he's been particularly good at taking - and blogging - a photo a day. As we walked along the beach in front of his home, he was telling me what a rewarding experience he's found doing his 365 Day Photos. He extolled the virtues of it forcing you to look at your surroundings a little more carefully, of the discipline it creates in doing something every single day, and his enthusiasm for the idea just generally made it sound like a good, fun thing to do.
Even more coincidentally, our conversation took place on January 1. The first day of the year. I mean seriously, if you're going to start a 365 Day program for anything, is there a better day to start it than January 1?
The thing that really clinched it though, was John's enthuiasm for a couple of software tools that would clearly make this a far simpler, more doable, proposition.
One was Posterous. I've been dabbling with Posterous for a few other projects lately, and it really is a very impressive blogging tool. It's ability to take content from something as simple as an email, and to manage any associated digital media files like photos, videos and audio is super impressive. It's rather remarkable ability to then automatically crosspost to other services like Twitter, Facebook, Picassa, WordPress, Blogger - you name it and it probably crossposts to it - made the whole idea just too interesting to pass up.
Then John told me about an iPhone app called PicPosterous, which specifically uses the phone's camera (and on the iPhone 4 it's a pretty darn good camera!) to enable images to be sent directly to a Posterous blog from the phone. Yes, I know it can be done with a simple email, or a dozen other easy ways, but I really liked the elegance of the PicPosterous solution. I dabbled with it over our lunch, and was really very impressed with its simplicity and ease of use.
So. A good camera on the iPhone. Easy upload with PicPosterous. Nicely packaged into a blog with Posterous. Broad distribution with the crossposting options. Oh, and of course, it was January 1. With all of that conspiring together, how could I say no? The fact that we were going to be driving the Great Ocean Road the following day - possibly one of Australia's most photogenic areas - might have also helped!
So, I'm in. 5 days down, 360 more to go. You can find my daily pics at http://365daysoflight.posterous.com, where there is even a nice RSS feed to subscribe to. I also send them to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Identica and Buzz. (I didn't include Twitter... I figure I already make enough noise there) It will be interesting to look back over the photos this time next year to a) look at a neat visual record of my year, and b) to see if my photography has improved any. I'm looking forward to that. Not to mention that it's a great way to engage with new tools, new techniques, new ideas that I may not otherwise dabble with. This is how you learn stuff.
As my own enthusiasm for the project has grown, I've found myself taking a lot more notice of some really interesting photography apps for the iPhone. Having a focus of taking a photo a day has made me much more interested in finding out what I can do with the iPhone as a camera. I'll probably write a post in the next little while to share a few of the cool photography apps I've discovered, but one I'll just mention now quickly is HDR Pro. With a hat-tip to Allanah King, another 365er, who showed this to me at ULearn last year, it really is a pretty amazing app. It uses HDR - High Dynamic Range - techniques to produce some stunningly good looking images. Shooting in HDR takes multiple images of the same scene, one underexposed and one overexposed, and then merges then together to form a single photograph with near perfect exposure in every part of the photo. The example you see above is shot using HDR Pro and I think it's pretty good for a phone camera! Even though it was shot looking almost directly into the sun, the exposures are still pretty good with plenty of detail in the shadowed areas. That's what HDR does really well.
So, enjoy the photos on my Posterous site, and don't forget the check out the blogroll as it links to a whole lot of other 365ers taking some great daily shots. And if you're a 365er yourself, let me know so I can add you to the blogroll!
Popularity: 8% [?]
Redesigning Learning Tasks: Part 3
My role at school is all about trying to helping teachers leverage technology to come up with more interesting and engaging ways to help their students learn. Some of our older students are in laptop programs which gives them fulltime 1:1 access to their own computer but many still do not, especially in the junior years. Which is a bit of a shame since there is, I think, so much scope in the younger grades to use technology in interesting ways that support the curriculum. Unfortunately, with the way things are structured at the moment, our primary kids get scheduled into a single one hour lesson in the computer lab each week. That's not really my preferred option, as it's hard to get technology integration working in an ongoing, embedded way when it involves trotting off to the computer room once a week.
Ironically, all our primary classrooms do actually have a small pod of four desktop machines in them, but unfortunately I don't really see them getting used in any consistent, meaningful way. Technology integration is still, by and large, reliant on that one hour a week of "computer time" in the lab. However, whether I like it or not, it is what it is, and until the system changes it's a limitation I have to work with.
Our Year 4 students are doing a unit of work on Australia at the moment, so I started the term by having a planning session with the Year 4 teachers to look at how we might weave ICT into the unit. A couple of years ago, the ICT component was - you guessed it - making a PowerPoint about Australia, but thankfully we've tried a some new approaches over the last few years. For the past two years we've been using blogs to get the kids writing about Australia, in fact I think we've come up with some good ideas for structuring the writing process when blogging. We started off using Edublogs, but after having a particularly frustrating series of outages, the school decided to set up our own WordPress MU server and gave every student their own blog on that system. It took a bit of fiddling to get the feeds on the front page working the way we wanted, but that internal WPMU site worked quite well for us. Because we run Moodle, we recently installed Mahara as well, which also provides blogs for students and so I guess we're a bit spoiled for choice at the moment when in comes to school blogging.
Although the blogs had worked quite well for us in the past, for the unit of work on Australia the Year 4 teachers felt that they wanted to try something a bit different, so we brainstormed some ideas and came up with an idea that I think has worked very well.
For me, ICT integration becomes far more interesting when it involves lots of little skills used in a lot of different ways that student have to piece together into a finished product. I like it that way because it give them a broader understanding of the way that technology tools fit together, and I think helps their understanding of how technology can assist them cross over into many areas. I also like the idea of providing a structure, a scaffold, so that even our struggling students have a clear framework to work within. However, surrounding that scaffold should be flexibility, options, choices, and a way for more able students to scale their work up and allow for that important differentiation.
What we came up with was a project called 25 Moods of Australia. We brainstormed a collection of words (it started as 25 words, but grew to 50) that described various moods - haunting, hostile, creepy, effervescent, etc. Using a free wiki (where every student and teacher was given their own login) we published a list of all the words. Working in pairs, the students then adopted a word from that list. There are 50 students in the two Year 4 classes, so working in pairs required 25 words. The reason we came up with 50 was to give them a choice of what word they wanted to select, and to provide some extra words in case any students wanted to do a second one.
Armed with their chosen words, each student pair started by creating a new blank page on the wiki for that word. Then they had to find a clear, concise definition for the word (so that they understood it) and they then added that definition to the wiki page. They used both regular paper dictionaries as well as online dictionaries. It was useful to compare the two.
The next job was to use Flickr to find a photograph taken somewhere in Australia that they felt captured the meaning of that word. This was quite tricky... the Flickr search engine is not as sophisticated as Google's and so to find a photo that both described their word and was taken in Australia required some thinking. It involved looking carefully at the images, at the tags, at the captions, and using a bit of detective thinking to find photographs that met all the criteria. To make it even trickier, we had a talk about copyright and the use of other people's photographs without permission, which led to an interesting discussion about Creative Commons. The students picked up on this idea very easily, and now know how to use the Advanced Search feature in Flickr to find photographs that are free of traditional copyright restrictions. (I was feeling very encouraged to hear from their teachers that they are also now being much more mindful of copyright in other areas of their school work, and they've been observed looking for Creative Commons images for other projects as well! I consider that a major win!)
Once they found an image they like, they then used the All Sizes selector in Flickr to find the 500 pixel, medium-sized version of the photo and they copy it to their desktop. They also copy the URL of where they got the image so it can by pasted into the photo caption as an attribution, required by all CC licenses. Once the photo is copied to their computer, they then upload it into the wiki (we used Wikispaces) and insert it into their page.
The next job is to go to Google Maps and find the location of where that photograph was taken on the map. This is also tricky, since not every photo makes this clear. Some photos are geotagged with the exact location of where they were taken, but many are not. We talked about geolocation. We learnt to look at the tags, the keywords, the captions, the other photos in the Flickrstream, and to look for clues that might give us an idea about where the photo was taken. And sometimes, when their were no clues, we had to make educated guesses about where the photo could have been taken. Once we decided on a location - either a definite location based on real clues, or an imagined location based on common sense, the students found that place in Australia on the map.
Using the Link option, they then generated the embed code for the map, copied it, went back to the wiki and created a widget. They pasted the embed code into the widget and saved the page to reveal the embedded Google Map of their best estimate for the location of the photograph.
The last step is for the students to then write a couple of paragraphs talking about their photograph and why they think it represents their focus word. This can be quite a challenge, as they have to think very carefully about how exactly they will justify their selection, describing the photo and linking it back to the key ideas in the definition of their word. They also need to write about the map location and explain how they knew (or guessed) that the photo was taken in that place.
As you can see, it's a task that contains a LOT of small pieces. It contains lot of ICT skills and techniques and understandings in a number of areas. It is a task of small pieces loosely joined. It's also not a task that can be plagiarised. It's not a task where there is a "right answer", as any answer could be right if it was justified well enough.
Remind yourself, these kids are 9 and 10 years old. And they have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of moving information around, remixing, repurposing and restructuring it in fairly sophisticated ways. They quickly pick up the ideas of bringing all the pieces together to make something new. I think they are using some reasonably advanced information skills, as they learn to search, evaluate, synthesize and create with the information they find, and then add value to that information by interpreting and summarising and justifying it. In short, I've been really impressed with what they can do. And even more impressed with what they can't do, but can learn to do.
You can visit the wiki at http://ausmoods.wikispaces.com, although at the time of writing it is still a work in progress. The final stage, when everything is complete, will be for them to use the discussion tabs on the individual pages to leave comments and feedback for each other.
I think it's been a really good task, with plenty of really worthwhile ICT skills built in, as well as an integrated use of literacy, writing, geography, thinking and reasoning, collaboration, and so on.
If only we had more than an hour a week to do this stuff...
Popularity: 7% [?]
Just Not My Type
I've been a but sporadic here on the blog lately. I've got all this stuff in my head that I want to write about but to be honest, I guess I just haven't felt much like the physical act of typing lately. I'm actually a pretty lousy typist, despite the fact that I've tried, seriously tried, to develop a good typing technique over the years. I've had typing lessons, I've used computer typing tutor software, and I've tried to force myself to use the right touch typing technique. But all of that, and I still can't really type all that well.
When I was at school as a student, I actually did a proper typing course. In fact, I'll digress for a moment and mention that my school offered something that I've not really seen in too many other schools since... every Thursday afternoon we did "activities". We all got to choose from a wide range of activities to do for a few hours every Thursday. Some students went off to play sport, running around the basketball field or ripping each others' heads off playing football. That was never really my scene. I was one of those other more nerdy and anti-social children, who pretty much avoided sport wherever I could.
There aren't all that many things I actually remember about school, but a couple of things stand out. I remember going off to the AGL gas company in Hurstville where we did cooking lessons on Thursday afternoon. I thought it was neat, being a 14 year old kid, jumping on a train to go the two stations up the line, finding the big AGL building, and having some other adult besides my regular teacher showing me how to cook a different meal each week. At the time, learning to cook didn't quite have the same prestige as being on the football team, but over the long haul I know which one has been most useful!
Back to the typing story... the other memorable Thursday activity (call me weird) was doing a typing class. I remember being taught by our library assistant, Mrs Sobb. She was a older lady and boy could she type! I remember going through all the usual finger training activities - asd, asdf, asd;lk, dad, sad, fad, gad - and so on. I particularly remember that she had a set of large white mens hankerchiefs with long thin ribbons attached to each corner. She'd tie two ribbons together behind our neck and the other two ribbons were tied to the typewriter (yes, you heard it, typewriter!) The hankie would then be suspended like a square hammock between the typewriter and our bodies so we couldn't see the keyboard. We just had to place our hands on the home row, by feel, and bang out our lines of sad dads.
Anyway, enough wandering down memory lane. Suffice to say, sometimes as much as you try to learn the "right" way to do something it doesn't always stick. But even as a "bad" typist, I've still written a book of 60,000 words, and a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that since I started this blog I've probably typed well over 300,000 words here as well. Add in the other blogs, wikis, emails, discussion forums and various things I've written (typed) over the last few years and it's interesting to consider that someone can be fairly average at something but still produce something relatively worthwhile.
I guess the lesson is that sometimes it's more important to actually just DO something, rather than worry about doing it perfectly.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
If there's one thing I hate it's when people assume I'm an idiot and try to rip me off.
So when I got home today I opened the mailbox (yes, the real one!) to find this letter from a company called the Domain Renewal Group. Their letter - which looked very much like an invoice - was addressed to me as the owner of the domain betchablog.com and kindly informed me that this domain was due for renewal soon and that I should pay this as soon as possible. The wording on the letter said that "the domain name registration is due to expire in the next few months"... and that... "Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity."
All of that is true. Betchablog.com IS coming up for renewal, and I DO need to renew it. The problem is that Domain Renewal Group are NOT my domain registrar, and they never have been. I happen to have all of my various domains registered with GoDaddy, and I've never even heard of this other mob.
A closer reading of the letter reveals that all of the statements in their letter are technically correct, but written in such as way as to be misleading and underhanded in their deceptiveness. The letter reads just like a regular renewal notice, but is in fact a transfer and renewal notice. By signing it and sending it back with payment it would authorise them not just to renew the domain, but to take the domain away from the current registrar and move it their overpriced services. How overpriced? Well, I just took a look at GoDaddy's site and it seems the going rate for a new .com domain is USD$10.69. Their price for a domain transfer with 12 months renewal is only USD$6.99. For the same thing, the Domain Renewal Group were about to charge unsuspecting or careless domain owners AUD$45 (about USD$41.50).
The thing is, there are many organisations where the bills are often paid by a different department to the ones that register the domains, that wouldn't even question such an invoice when it arrived. The wording is sneaky enough, and the format looks enough like an invoice, that many people would just pay it without even questioning it. I find this notion of trying to trick people into doing things they don't mean to do is an appalling business practice.
There happened to be a Toronto-based phone number on the form so I rang it using Skype. The guy who answered asked what he could help me with, so I told him that I was very unimpressed with this deceptive and misleading way of doing business. He sounded both surprised that someone would bother to call just to complain, but judging from his tone this was not the first time he'd had a complaint about it. His response was a careless, "Like, whatever", but he incorrectly assumed that there is nothing I can do about it other than complain.
He forgets that we live in an age where everyone is a publisher. He stupidly neglects to consider that the very customer base they are trying to mislead - those domain owners who own blogs and websites - are the exact same people who own their very own "personal printing presses" in the forms of blogs. If you're going to pull this scam-like crap on people, how stupid do you have to be to do it to people who can publicly tell the world about it?
My advice? NEVER do business with the Domain Renewal Group. Tell your friends never to do business with the Domain Renewal Group. And if I did have any domains registered with them I would be immediately transferring them elsewhere.
Popularity: 3% [?]
The ACEC Conversation Starts Here
In a bizarre and unexpected turn of events, I had a call from the good folk from ACEC a couple of days ago asking if I'd be interested in presenting something at the Friday keynote session. Apparently there was a spot available and someone suggested my name. That was great news for me, since I really wanted to go to ACEC... not only does it sound like it will be an awesome conference, but there are so many people from my online world who will be there that I want to meet up with in person. Naturally, I said yes.
The hard part is that I was told I can talk about whatever I like. That's dangerous enough, but further complicated by the fact that I've been busy lately presenting some stuff for several other conferences and I don't really want to just reuse the same stuff. I realise that I'd be talking to a totally different group of people so it's not the overlap that's the problem, but I'd just rather come up with something specifically for ACEC.
My problem is that I'm such a dilettante and I tend to dabble around in so many different educational ICT-related things, that I have no real idea about what I might focus on. And of course, Friday is the last day of what will doubtless be a pretty full-on conference schedule, so the chances of me saying anything intelligent about anything that hasn't already been talked about by people way smarter and more eloquent that me is pretty slim.
I asked Tony Brandenburg from ACEC what he thought might make a good topic, or what gaps might exist in the program that perhaps hadn't been covered. His view was that although the conference has plenty of great stuff from lots of great people, much of that was from overseas visitors so it would be good to have a bit more of the Australian perspective. "Just give us a brain dump of whatever is on your mind", he said.
So, feeling a little daunted by the idea of it all, but really keen to have the opportunity to add something worthwhile to the ACEC conversation, I'm asking for some suggestions. If you read this blog at all, you know that I rave on about all sorts of stuff here. If you were going to hear someone speak on the last day of the ACEC conference, what sort of things would grab your interest? If you could drop any thoughts you have into the comments below, that would be greatly appreciated. I like the idea of a presentation for ACEC growing out of a conversation that starts here on the blog several weeks prior. To engage in some conversation here, which can then evolve into a presentation there, which can then be followed up with more conversation afterwards, seems to be a much more interesting way to do it.
I'm keen to hear what you've got to say... don't be shy.
Popularity: 3% [?]
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Ah, Nostalgia!
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