John Pearce- an inspirational teacher

I attended the VITTA conference last week and if I say so myself I managed to choose some pretty amazing and inspirational teachers to listen to. One session that I really enjoyed was presented by John Pearce, a primary teacher in a Victorian school. Earlier in the day John had been presented with the VITTA Primary Teacher of the year. You know the deal, they start to read out the things that the winner has done and I must admit as soon as I heard things like this person has created some wonderful science resources, keeps a number of blogs, has his students create blogs and wikis for sound educational purposes that are recognised all over the world...well you know the drill. I reckon by the first sentence I knew it was John who was the winner. and it's well deserved. So I was very happy to go along and listen and watch him show lots of inspirational examples of how he has used these web 2.0 tools to engage and inspire his students. John very generously provided us all with a CD with many of his resources and ideas. I haven't yet had time to check it out, but it's on my list of things to do. There were a couple of little gems from John that I'd like to share. In explaining RSS feeds John used the analogy of a postman. In 'the olden days' we used to have to go down to the post office to get our mail. (without RSS feeds we have to go to the website, blog or wiki to get any updates.) And then they employed postmen. Now people didn't have to go to the post office. Their mail was delivered to them by the postman. (RSS feeds are the online equivalent to the postman) A cool analogy that is simple and easy to explain to teachers and kids alike.
Another great little gem was when John was talking about online etiquette and safety. He talked about the fact that he always posts the code of practice on the student blogs before they begin their online activities. He said that he used the "grandma rule" which is the idea that students should only post things that they would be happy to have their grandma read. How cute but cleverly in it's simplicity and clarity.
Finally the last gem I'll add here is that John uses RSS feeds for all his students so that he can be informed when students make changes to their blogs. This inspired me to do this with our students wikis. There were lots more fantastic ideas from John...thanks for sharing. Perhaps when I get to the CD I'll be able to add more.

Stephen Heppell and Future Trends

For the past three days I have been attending the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association annual conference in Melbourne. This is, I think, the third year in a row that I have attended and the third year that I have presented as well. This year my presentation was called Wonderful ways with Wedderburn wikis and in a future blog I might reflect a little on the session. This post though is about Professor Stephen Heppell who presented the keynote on Day One. Prof Heppell is a world reknowned thinker and futurist in the area of technology and learning. What I gained from the keynote was a sense of the way teaching and learning is changing at an exponential rate. Obviously this isn't something that we all haven't been aware of. He presented us with lots of examples that illustrated the world that our students are growing up in. It was not unlike the Did You Know video created by Karl Fisch with lots of 'facts and statistics' that indicates the rapid rate that our world is changing. In fact one quote that I think he said was that there are something like a new school being opened in the UK every 4 days, that China has 1,173000 schools. There was lots of discussion and again lots of examples of the ways that educational bodies and in particular schools are addressing these issues through recognising and embracing new technologies rather than banning them and pretending that they don't exist inside the school gate. There was also some amazing teaching and learning spaces that are being created all over the world. He also asked us to consider the trends from the 20thC to the 21stC that he and other colleagues have identified. and then challenged us to think about where we currently are , where we would like to be and how we will we know when we get there. I can clearly see these trends reflected in web2.0 and it's influence on millions around the world. What does it mean for us now? Does it really change anything at the coalface? At this stage, I would say no...it is not enough to simply recognise that the world is exponentially changing for our students but to recognise that if we accept these observable trends then what is this going to mean for us as educators, facilitators and colearners? I wonder. There's lots more to explore.. in another post.

Arthus-the new generation of 14 Year Old?

Arthus is an amazing 14 year old student from who blogs. I came across a post about Arthus on a blog called the Infinite Thinking machine, an educational blog that is contributed to by some very emminent educational commentators.
In this post titled "A 14 year old talked Educational Technology- Steve Hargadon reflects on the type of 14 year old Arthus is and how he uses and moves in the online world. His suggestion is that Arthus is not your typical 14 year old and I probably agree with that. I'm not suggesting that other 14 year olds are not as articulate and maybe as prolific as Arthus as I can think of a few that I teach at my school but none of them, as far as I know keep a blog or contribute to the online educational debate. I stress though " as far as I know". To be perfectly honest I would have no idea what type of online presence our 14 years olds have at our school. I do know that a few of them have bebo, facebook or myspace pages but I don't know what their online monikers are and I don't have any online dialogue with them. But I digress.
What really fascinated me about this post was that in the Notes section Steve wrote about where Arthus started his online journey and even more interesting was the habits and behaviours of Arthus as he interacts on the web. Much of what is listed here is a very mature response to some of the challenges and fears that educators and educational institutions face. But what is even more interesting are the 40 odd comments that have arisen out of this post. You must check it out as Arthus participates and again represents himself very powerfully in a new and exciting world of equality- he gives as much as he gets. An example I think, of the (educational) world continuing to flatten- I'm not sure that this conversation would happen in the classroom where often unfortunately the teacher has all the power .

Blogged with Flock

Flock is great

After getting hooked on Flock, a couple of weeks ago it became corrupted and no matter what I did I couldn't download it again without the corruption message returning. And boy did I miss it. After some problem solving I finally found a little file that was causing all the problems, got rid of it and downloaded Flock again.
Flock is a great browser for anyone who is into online social networking community as it has so many cool little tools and widgets that you can add. For example, instead of having to go to my blog and log in to post something new, I can simply click on the Blog Editor within Flock and begin to write. I can also check out all my images in Flickr with the Media Minibar. I can upload new photos within Flock using the Photo Uploader and get all my RSS feed with Feed Reader. I'm sure there are lots more things that I will discover as I continue to use it.

Blogged with Flock

Learning more and more

As I have been researching and building this information wiki for a couple of presentations that are coming up, I have been learning more and more about the amazing things that are available to educators in the web. In the past couple of days a couple of blogs have really helped my project. One is from CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis who recently blogged about the Web 2.o applications that she loves. What is even better the comments that have resulted from her post have added even more to the idea of thinking about what you find essential in the world of the Web2.0.
Chris Betcher also blogged about this in this post a few days ago where he describes the online tools that he couldn't live without. I don't think I can add to either of these lists and I guess in a way that makes me feel good because it means that I'm probably on the right track in my learning journey of web2.0 and its application in education. But what makes me even more excited is that the kids that I teach also seem to be getting excited about the possibilities. For example the Year 8's have to create a Service announcement about the environmental issue that they have been studying. And today two of the girls who have been working really well and who are great thinkers and enthusiasts asked whether there was something they could use to get some video from the web for their project. 15 minutes later they had learnt about KeepVid and VideoPiggy and were well on their way to finding something on TeacherTube to enhance their project.

Creating a Learning Wiki

I love wikis. Mainly because they provide an opportunity for anyone or everyone to create an online presence to share, to provoke, to describe, to collaborate. Wikis as we know simply enable anyone and everyone to create content online using easily understandable tools. Many of our P-12 schools are taking advantage of the opportunities for "collaborative construction" that wikis provide. But I love the fact that we can also use them for whatever we need to create online. At the moment I am working on my presentation wiki , Teaching-with-Technology, in preparation for a couple of conferences I am presenting at over the next couple of weeks. My aim is to have all the information that I need and much more on the wiki so that people who attend my workshop will have a type of one stop shop where they can get all of the information that they need. It will contain links for both teachers and students to sites that help them to be organised, collaborate with each other, learn from others, see examples of Web 2.0 being used in the classroom and much more.
Over the next couple of weeks I will continue to build on it and I would love some feedback or suggestions.

When is out of date, out of date?

A couple of days ago I was exploring a link to a wiki created by a class in New Zealand. It was posted to a mailing list to illustrate a good example of educational use of a wiki. And it was an excellent, genuine example. However as I was reading it, I noticed that the last entry was posted in about June 2007. My immediate reaction and consequent action was to stop reading and to move onto something else. Why?
When I thought about this, I realised that the more I read information and ideas on the web, the more I expect the posts, or entries to be 'fresh'. Why, I wonder. I would have no qualms about reading a non-fiction textbook that might have been published 10 0r even 20 years ago. What is different about the web?
Speed is also a need. I find that often I'll read something and if it doesn't 'grab' me, I'll either move on or at the very most, tag it and then move on.
I wonder what it says about me as a consumer? I wonder what this need for immediacy or action might say about our students as consumers?