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Setting Challenges

August 2, 2008 – 2:25 pm

Teachers, just like their students, need activities and challenges. They need the goal posts to shift just slightly so that they try something new.

That’s what I had in mind when, over on Blogging Corner in edna Groups, I set up the Blogging Corner Challenge 08 today. It will give participants in Blogging Corner a chance to participate in a weekly scheduled activity over the next 15 or so weeks. Each activity will be initiated by a registered member of the group. The activities will broaden participants’ experience, challenge them to write a blog posting for a purpose, motivate them to try something new, and allow them to showcase their own efforts.

This week’s challenge is Podcasting. The challenge title is deliberately “vague” to allow participants to tackle it from a number of angles.

Challenges are a feature of the blogging world, or at least in the part of it that I frequently inhabit, the book reading bloggers. There are all sorts of challenges: 50 books a year, historical novels, the Man Booker Challenge, the Orange Prize Challenge, the Pulitzer Prize challenge and so on. The Challenges tend to bring the participants closer together as they compare notes and reflect on their progress.

The only other challenges for educators that I have come across are the 31 Day Comment Challenge initiated by Sue Waters, and the 23 things challenge which you can find in various places. Both of these involve daily activities which I thought might be a bit burdensome, hence the idea of a weekly challenge.

Perhaps you can point me to other structured challenges for blogging educators?

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, community building, blogs, edna Groups, bloggingcorner08 | Comments (1)

The Olympics are coming

July 29, 2008 – 5:16 pm

The Beijing Olympics begin in less than two weeks.

Students can learn about the Olympics through an edna theme page. Through the theme page access a wealth of categorised and selected resources on the edna site, or a variety of other items through our search partners. The theme page includes RSS feeds from the International Olympic Committee and the Australian Olympic Committee. For the teachers there are lesson plans, ideas for school assemblies, and units of work.

The Beijing 2008 OzProject enables students to participate in a variety of online activities. Students can learn about the sports being contested, watch animations that explain the rules of each sport, learn about the history of the Marathon, make a visual story about the Olympic games, and contribute to a database or glossary.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, teaching and learning | Comments (0)

Screencasting for professional development purposes

July 28, 2008 – 12:20 pm

On weekend I was playing around with Screencast-o-matic, a screen casting creator which allows the user to create a tour of a website or a blog.

I have created a screencast about an edna Group called Blogging Corner at http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjitbUVGC
I have invited members of Blogging Corner to play around and create a Screen Cast of their own, and then come back in and tell us where theirs is.

On the weekend I created another one, nearly 10 minutes, at http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjiOcdVGw about my Mysteries in Paradise blog

A little bit disconcertingly, the bandwidth you are on may cause the screencast to pause (buffering) occasionally while it catches up with itself.
It also requires a fairly up-to-date version of Java.
I think the clue is to keep your screencast short, but I haven’t managed to do that yet.

You can go further and then create a .mov version of the screencast and that I think will always be fairly large. The one I created on the weekend was nearly 230 MB.
The graphics on it are grainier than on the screencast itself, but I have then been able to store it on a USB stick for doing some sort of show and tell in workshops/presentations where I don’t have an internet connection.

I can see this type of tool could be very useful for the classroom or for self-paced online content for creating short instructional “videos”, and for getting new ideas over quickly. I am sure there are other “public” tools that do similar, but this one is pretty easy to use.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau | Comments (0)

How Green is your DER?

July 25, 2008 – 4:50 pm

A very satisfied ICT Cordinator reported on a list that I belong to: “we purchased 210 computers, delivered on 3 July and during the July holiday break our Network manager, one technician and four Yr 12 ITVet students deployed them throughout the College. Wednesday was our first day back for the start of Term 3 and all is working well…”
Doubtless his sentiments are being echoed at schools throughout the country.

But then I began to wonder whether schools in this first roll out of the Digital Education Revolution computers are also looking at their “ecological footprint” and planning how they will manage to keep the power bills down, and make simple decisions about whether to turn computers off, or simply power them down when not in use.

Round One of applications saw 896 successful schools, with nearly 117,000 computers to be provided to these schools. The map provided on the DER site allows you to see the list of successful schools in each state.

I am not sure whether there are any guidelines for controlling power usage on computers. Perhaps you can comment if you know of a website where information can be found. This page: How much does electricity does my computer use? may be a starting point if you have never explored this idea.

This UK review points out what we all probably know: After lighting, computers and monitors have the highest energy consumption in office environments. Studies have shown that power management of computers and monitors can significantly reduce their energy consumption, saving hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on electricity costs.

Among their recommendations:

  • make sure computers are turned off at the end of the day
  • make sure computer goes into low power mode when idle during the day
  • turn off monitors when not required

I asked for advice from teachers and here is some of the feedback:

Useful sites

Tips

  • At my school we run an automatically scheduled network-wide shutdown script at 6:00PM each day.
  • All of the monitors have built-in energy saving features but we turn them off completely prior to holiday periods.
  • Some people argue that standby is better than shutting down but … turning them off is a much more economical and environmentally responsible choice.
  • The US Natural Resources Defence Council suggests setting a computer to hibernate after 30 minutes of inactivity.
  • Queensland Government’s Climate Smart Living says, among other things, that a laptop computer uses up to 75% less energy than a desktop one, and then follows that with some practical suggestions such as switching off the monitor if leaving your computer for more than 10 minutes.

I would like to make this a topic for further discussion so please do comment, with anecdotes or URLs for me to look at.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, digital education revolution | Comments (5)

Can an iPhone be an educational tool?

July 23, 2008 – 5:11 pm

As with all new technology, there are those who are hailing the new iPhone as a technological breakthrough that will have a huge impact on education.

Here are some articles to consider

For those who haven’t yet managed to play with one, it is probably hard to understand what the iPhone actually does.

The Apple iPhone site.

There are some Youtube videos that might be useful

Perhaps the most daunting aspect is the upfront cost of purchasing one.
This may mean that it is a long way from becoming the mobile technology of choice in educational institutions.

And then communities are beginning to talk about the “hidden” costs.

But, if you have an iPhone, is it the educational technology of the future? I’d love to hear what you think.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau | Comments (3)

Learning is a Conversation!

July 18, 2008 – 8:54 am

Yesterday Chris Betcher, he of http://betch.edublogs.org/, was a keynote speaker at the CEGSA conference. The conference theme is Learning is a Conversation, and Chris made some really interesting points that you might like to think about.

  • Learning in the 21st century is social.
    Learning happens through our conversations.
    The boundaries to where we have our conversations have come down. Our potential to connect has changed.
  • Conversations are often informal exchanges of knowledge
    We have serendipitous conversations that are spontaneous
    We didn’t know we didn’t know something until it comes up in the conversation, and then we realise there is a gap in our knowledge
  • We have these conversations in our Personal Learning Communities, Personal Learning Networks, Communities of Practice, Special Interest Groups.
  • There’s wisdom in crowds so long as you have
    - diversity
    - independence
    - decentralisation (dispersal)
    - aggregation
  • There is a danger of the “echo chamber” effect where everyone agrees with everyone else.
    Little learning takes place there
    The best learning takes place when there is an element of disagreement, argument or conflict

Chris argues for using a range of tools
“When your only tool is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail”

This led nicely into my session about blogging, and my concept that a blog can be the initial point in a conversation. Or if you take up an idea that someone else has expanded on in their blog, part of an ongoing conversation.

But of course that is only so if people take the time to respond. What do you think?

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, informal learning, professional learning, CEGSA | Comments (3)

Transforming education with technology

July 17, 2008 – 9:43 am

An article on eSCHOOL NEWS titled NECC highlights tech’s ‘transformative’ power reports on the 2008 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in San Antonio. Transformation and collaboration were the central ideas.

ISTE President Trina J. Davis opened the conference by challenging attendees to really transform education through the use of technology, not just layer technology onto traditional instructional practices.

Davis suggested these strategies

  1. Become powerful advocates for change
  2. Share your knowledge and your passion
  3. Showcase your work and that of your students in innovative ways
  4. Dream big
  5. Use all of the resources available to you

“Collectively, we can have a real impact around the globe and be effective change agents,” Davis concluded.

So, how do you see yourself measuring up? Are you an agent for change, or a lurker just layering technology onto what you’ve always done?

For me, one of the big measuring sticks is to think about what you are now doing differently, or, what have you ceased to do altogether? For surely you can’t do things differently if you are doing the things you always did. That involves some hard decisions, some re-organisation, some learning of new tricks, some re-prioritisation. And you are never too old to do any of this!

How do you show you are an agent for change? What are you doing to spread the word?
How do you measure your success?

Here at education.au we are trying to help educators to collaborate, to learn about new technologies and new ways of doing things, to join supportive communities of practice.

And I’m doing my bit out on the hustings in the next few days: delivering 3 sessions at the local CEGSA conference today and tomorrow, and then an edna workshop in Hobart on Monday.
They are not chores though - I enjoy my role as an agent of change, as you can see from this blog and others that I author.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, changes in education | Comments (0)

How does your Blog stand up?

July 16, 2008 – 2:59 pm

I am really interested in what makes a good blog and it has been in my thoughts off and on for most of this year.

More than that I am also interested in what functions a blog can have in a teacher’s professional development, in their professional portfolio, or their professional learning environment.

You will see some of these topics in Blogging Corner, an edna Group for bloggers, would-be bloggers, and blogging mentors.

Tomorrow afternoon I am giving a session at the CEGSA conference called What’s in a blog? I’m trying to pass some of my enthusiasm, about the cathartic/clarifying experience that blogging can be, on to others.

Some other links that have interested me recently:

Much of your blog’s layout is determined by the blog tool that you use, but it’s good to put some thoughts into how you can improve on what you’ve got.

Please comment with your suggestions or tips/sites you’ve come across.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, communication tools, personal learning environments, bloggingcorner08 | Comments (2)

Should July 9 be Australia Day?

July 11, 2008 – 10:16 am

I’m recalling all the controversial discussion we’ve had in the past about the appropriateness of January 26, the date of Cook’s landing at Botany Bay in 1788, and the consequent annexing of Australia to the British Empire by the simple planting of a flag that ignored the rights of the traditional owners, as a day we should celebrate.

I’m sorry to have missed reminding you that July 9 was Constitution Day, but that is probably an indication of the lack of status we currently give that date.

July 9 is the date of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900, the Act of the British Parliament that set the new nation up.
It was the result of a consultative process that had taken place over the previous decade, resulted in at least two drafts, and accompanied by secession threats from at least one state. There’s an image of the front cover here, and more information can be found on the Documenting a Democracy website.

Interestingly few Australians would know that the states named in first paragraph of Chapter 12 of the original constitution are New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia (which included what is now the Northern Territory), Queensland and Tasmania. Western Australia was still thinking of secession at this stage. Western Australia agreed to join on 31 July 1900.

Or should we actually called January 1 Australia Day?
In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was officially proclaimed at Centennial Park in Sydney and the Earl of Hopetoun was sworn in as Australia’s first Governor General.

An interesting debate, especially in the light of another discussion that is happening at the moment about what Australian history content should be in the National Curriculum. A recent article in the Australian headed Schools failing to teach on Holocaust, says An obsession with Australian history in curriculums has left students able to leave school without knowing that the Holocaust occurred. An interesting statement in that less than a decade ago we were complaining that our students did not know enough Australian history.
The National Curriculum Board, which first met on 23 April this year, is charged with delivering a single K-12 curriculum to be in operation from the beginning of the school year in 2011. The foundation areas are English, mathematics, the sciences and history, with a focus on literacy and numeracy. Be interesting to see what history makes it into the curriculum as the debate hots up. More about the National Curriculum Board here.

So which date do you think should be Australia Day?

  • January 1
  • January 26
  • July 9

Or other candidates?

  • 25 April (currently Anzac Day)
  • September 1 (currently Wattle Day)

A little known fact - India celebrates 26 January as Republic Day

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau, Australian education, national curriculum, Australian history, significant dates | Comments (1)

World Youth Day, 15 July

July 10, 2008 – 9:11 am

This is another one of those internationally significant days that you will find on edna’s Australian Schools Calendar.

World Youth Day is part of the Catholic Church’s week of events for youth and with youth. It gathers thousands of young people from around the world to celebrate and learn about the Catholic faith and to build bridges of friendship and hope between continents, peoples and cultures.

This year’s World Youth Day (WYD08) is the largest youth event in the world and will be held in Sydney from Tuesday 15 to Sunday 20 July 2008. WYD08 will be the largest event Australia has ever hosted. It will attract over 125,000 international visitors - more than the 2000 Olympics. WYD08 will mark the first visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia.

Events will occur from Tuesday 15 July until Sunday 20 July, with Pope Benedict arriving Thursday 17 July. There is a very full week of events, involving schools and host families right across Sydney. For many the highlight will be the Evening Vigil with the Pope and sleep out under the stars at Southern Cross Precinct (Randwick Racecourse and Centennial Park) on Saturday night.

More than 165 outside concerts will take place during the week, and people from Sydney and regional centres have been organised into supporting the event as “pilgrim guides”.
The pilgrims will come from all over Australia and overseas, and at least half a million pilgrims are expected. The statistics for catering and accommodation are amazing.

With only one week to go on July 7, the “Olympic Torch” of World Youth Day reached Parramatta on its way through Sydney to the WYD08 Opening Mass. A 3.8 metre Cross, accompanied by an Icon of Our Lady and an Indigenous Message Stick, has been travelling through greater Sydney since 1 July.

By Kerrie Smith | Posted in Educationau | Comments (2)