True at the time I said it

The Importance of Being Awesome

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:02:00 +0000

Faris Yakob is the Chief Innovation Officer for some crowd ... likely a media and advertising company. What attracted me to this 18 minute video was not, however, his name nor the fact I had never heard of him. It was the comment on my Mashable feed that he was a founding partner of Spies and Assassins. What a great title - and on their page they are "Thinkers of Things. Makers of stuff." I love that! That and the title of his presentation which is basically that the future belongs to the most awesome.

Now, at first look, don't be put off by his style of presentation,or the fact that this is just a video of it and some of the detail on his slides doesn't show all that well. There are some very important messages here. For individuals, business and education (at lest, I think there are). Listen for the commentary around information flow and time for effect. Make the connections between rate of development being almost infinite and the cost of technology basically zero. Think of the opportunities that are being created daily as a result. The link between content, the media, the medium, and awesomeness.

The danger I think is that we ignore this type of thought provocation at our peril. I think Faris touches on critically important issues. It's up to us how we react and respond. Enjoy.

AudioBoo - audio recording direct to the web!

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:04:00 +0000

I'll admit it - I'm a late developer as far as AudioBoo is concerned. I've known about it for a while but it wasn't until yesterday when two of my Year 9 students used it as part of their presentation to the class about Web 2.0 tools that the penny dropped for me.

What a cool tool! So - before I forget, thanks to Farrah and Isabel for showing me the usefulness of AudioBoo!
Basically AudioBoo lets you record (free) 3 minutes of audio - plenty for a brief message. BUT - you can record it directly to the web via their browser capture (and it works happily behind our firewall at school) OR their is both an Android and iOS app that lets you record via that means too! It works well.

And - once recorded, you can embed your Boo onto your site. Like this ...

Using for ed (mp3)

So, I'm going to be a fan of AudioBoo - seems to make the process of recording nice and simple. Give it a try - or better still, get your students to give it a try. I'm sure they'll find some interesting things to do with it.

TAGGED

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 02:02:00 +0000

"When a group of high-school friends posts an online rumour about a rival, it sparks a chain reaction that leaves no one untouched. Cyberbullying, sexting, filmed fights and police action ensue—will these friends be Tagged forever?

Developed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Cybersmart program, Tagged is a short film for teenagers that encourage students to discuss the core ethical obligations of going online. It explores issues like the widespread impact of cyberbullying, how internet users can manage their digital reputation and how online interactions may have real-life consequences."

That's the intro to the YouTube video "Tagged". It's a great resource for teachers and parents - in fact anyone who needs to work with young people (around 10 - 15 years of age) about the power of using your head and to "think before you click".

Here is the video - its worth the 16 or so minutes to watch.

One of the nice things about the ACMA site is that they have resources for schools, parents and teens at the appropriate page of their site. If you are a school head to this link , if you are a parent head to here, and if a teen head to here.

And while on the "think before you click" idea, don't forget the great resources that NetSafe offer here in New Zealand.

An Open Education Maths Course for Secondary Schools

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 03:05:00 +0000

Open Education Resources (OERs) have been in the press a lot of late - for very good reason in my opinion. After all, if we really do believe in the notion of an accessible education for everyone, it is reasonable to expect that there will be a quantum of resource available that students and teachers can call on for little or no cost.

So why do schools invest large amounts of $ on text books when there are many resources already there? There are of course lots of answers to this ... but from a simple perspective ... Is it viable to use OER for a traditional secondary course? Is there enough out there for a teacher to find and use without too much stress?

Well, being a maths teacher in a past life, I set myself the goal of finding an open source text book to start with that would serve the purpose of my text book for a secondary course

A simple Google search turns up plenty of options - but the one I settled for was CK-12's flex book - they have a number of mathematics and science titles that are appropriate for secondary level. One of the nice things is that CK-12 offer both PDF and web versions of their texts. Of course, the PDF doesn't have any of the video tutorials that the web version does - but you can simply provide both versions for your students ... The best of both worlds.

The videos in the web version ... Turned out they are from Khan Academy - and that reminded me of the potential power of the Khan Academy online tutorials and related system ... And here they are matched with a text book! Brilliant!!

So - in my mind a great line up to supplement any Maths course ... You have a text book, large numbers of video examples and you as the teacher. All you need to do is change to a free textbook ... Maths content doesn't appear to change much year on year (that's the subject of another debate!) - so this should work.

Want to give it a try? Just think - if it worked ... And with a Maths text costing say $40 per copy ... And 30 kids per class, and (in our case) maybe 6 classes per year level ... That means we could save $7200 per level on texts, plus any annual replacements.

And let's be really honest ... If you can be bothered looking ... you will find plenty of free resources from texts to video to ... you name it. Today's teachers and students have the world at their fingertips. It's really time to start harnessing some of this great power.

A Day in the Country ... or "Where the bloody hell are you?"

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 03:22:00 +0000

I had the pleasure of visiting a couple of schools about an hour north of home today. Both schools were primary schools and had small rolls compared to our school. I had gone with a few other teachers from our junior school to get an idea of why these two "rural" primary schools had chosen to invest in iPads and iPod Touches for their classrooms, rather than the traditional desktop or laptop, and how the students were going with them.

It was an interesting day with the two schools adopting quite different ideas, though their choice of technology was pretty much the same. The first encouraged their students to work independently, as being a small school, they have classes with students at Year 3 - Year 8 in the same room. So it makes sense that students are working on different projects at varying levels. What I hadn't expected to see was the level of engagement and independence that these students showed. They were highly engaged in organizing their own learning - they took pride in showing what they were doing ... From their favourite apps for various "subjects" through to their blogs. They impressed as highly articulate students (the ones I spoke to were year 5 and 7) and they arranged their day via a shared Google calendar with their teachers. It was very clear that these kids loved their iPads - and they loved their learning.

It was equally clear that the principal was the owner of the vision for how they were planning their work and their use of the technology to make the vision achievable. Reminds me of how important it is to have complete buy in from leadership.

The second school we visited had what I would classify as a more formal teaching approach. Here the students were still pretty engaged in their learning, but they tended to be all on the same task at the same time. A subtle difference in the classroom dynamic still saw students congregate around a desktop while there were still iPods and iPads available for use.

My lasting impression for the day was the students who took obvious pride in their work and were working on their own timetable to achieve what they had obviously negotiated with the teacher. This was exactly the type of classroom I want my kids to learn in - and exactly the type of classroom I want our high school to develop. I presume that the "personal" aspect to the iPads and iPods was a contributing factor to the success, but without the leadership and shared responsibility for learning ... the story would be different.

So I am again left with what I so often see when I look around - the technology is clearly "there"; the software is clearly "there"; the students are obviously capable of high degrees of ownership of learning. The teachers I saw were pretty much the "guide on the side". I'm left thinking the words of that horrible Australian tourism ad - "where the bloody hell are you?" when I wonder where our secondary teachers by and large are at across the country.

Google Apps - some resources for teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 03:45:00 +0000

Google Apps is an example of "cloud based" computing - more specifically it is an example of what is called "software as a service" (or SaaS). In reality - it is your "online" version of an "Office" like suite of software - it has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool and email - but in addition it has a website creation tool, graphics and a really cool "forms" tool. Plus - there are a host of other Google applications that you can tie to it (eg Blogger, Picassa, Google+ ...)

We have been trialling Google Apps with some classes for 18 months now and in general it works pretty well. For those unfamiliar with Google Apps - well, that's what this post is about.

Firstly - why use an "online" suite of apps?

There are a number of reasons - here are a few ...

no software to install and maintain on your laptop - everything runs within a web browser. (This means that everyone has the same version etc)
all files created are on Google's data servers somewhere - theoretically this might absolve you from backing up your own work - any computer can access your data - just need an ineternet connection.
compatible with most other applications - you can upload/download into MS Office, Open Office and a bunch of other formats. This means you can upload your existing Word documents
really cool sharing of files for collaboration - I use this a lot as a milestone/checkpoint for students working on longer projects - the big plus is only having 1 copy of any document ... no more trying to keep track of the "current version of the document".

This video by CommonCraft explains how this "collaboration" works ...

Are there some drawbacks?
Yep - you bet.

need an internet connection to work (earlier versions of Google Apps used Gears to rpovide offline access to some functions - but this has been absent for the past year - its back on the development schedule but have yet to see it)
worried that Google will not treat your data as yours? Then maybe you don't want to head here.
slow internet connection - to be useful in a school/classroom - need lots of bandwidth.

Overall though - the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

So - how do you get on for some Google Apps training?

There are plenty of options. Here are some to get you started ...

1. 32 Ways to use Google Apps in the Classroom

2. Google Apps for Education Demo (from Google themselves)

3. Using Google Docs

This link to Google's training is worth a look

Then make sure you work through the rest of the links on this site.

and then this one

There are is no shortage of help and ideas on YouTube or any general search of the web will also show a large range of help and support options.

Atomic Learning remains a favourite for training in all sorts of apps - and they have a comprehensive set of video tutorials for Google Docs.

So - give Google Apps a try if you haven't yet

Making Science Cool

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Get your students to spend some time looking at the work that these guys do ... make science cool. Thanks to the Smithsonian.

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/scientist/

Japan Tsunami Wreaks Havoc in Antarctica

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:09:00 +0000

Sometimes I am in awe of the power of nature - and the way in which technology allows us to understand some of what goes on under the hood of nature is equally compelling.

I follow the NASA Earth Observatory on a semi regular basis - they way in which they capture changes to the planet over time I find pretty cool. But today I was blown away with just how cool some of their stuff - and their people - really are.

We all saw those horrific pictures from Japan back in March. In fact, our school is currently hosting a number of students from Japan who have been badly affected by that event and what followed.

But who would have thought that the tsunami generated would be capable of ripping huge chunks of ice off the Sulzberger ice shelf in Antarctica hours later.

Sometimes I wish was a geography teacher. This is one of them!

Did You Know? - version ..... another one

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:42:00 +0000

Most reading this blog and others like it will know of the original Karl Fisch "Shift Happens" or "Did You Know" video ... wildy popular on YouTube. With Scott McLeod an xPlane they remixed it, and now for Iowa schools in particular, Scott and xplane have remixed it once more.

Here it is ... worth the watch ....

And if you haven't seen the others - they are here ... worth a look if you are considering introducing the Mix and Mash competition for remixing material for your students this year.

Authentic Learning - Does this have a hope of working?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:29:00 +0000

Over at Practical Theory the other day I read Chris's entry about "A School I'd love to see". You should read his full entry, but the gist of it is in this quote ...
"Imagine this high school:

Every morning, the first thing everyone did was read the New York Times for an hour. Now, imagine that they are using some kind of Kindle-style software so that they can annotate with ideas, questions, etc... such that at the end of the hour, the school community could see who had similar questions from the day’s paper.

And now, imagine what it would look like if the kids spent the better part of the day researching those questions and seeing where that took them, with the end of every day being a "share out" where kids shared what they learned across a variety of media..."

OK - so, having thought about this and identified with Chris all of the reasons NOT to do something ... late that night I broke open my iPad NZ Herald App and had a 3 minute look on the articles granny Herald deemed worthy of their iPad version for the day wondering if there was story content that might appease the scientists, the mathematicians, the english/literacy teachers ...

Here are some of the stories that took not much time at all to find ... I'll start with one of the lead stories ...

This is a little ripper to start with ... as a primary producer, NZ has much to be thankful for on the world stage - we produce a lot of dairy and is our biggest export earner by far. And we have a monopoly company in charge. So, with this one story alone I can see history, geography, economics, accounting, mathematics, statistics ... from the standard curriculum ... and then what a dream to use some of the content coming out of the research being presented digitally via some form of infographic.

So - after no more than a few seconds I have one story that I can swing a whole series of "lessons" out of.

But lets not forget the Arts - they had better fit too ... well, off to the entertainment section ... didn't actually read any of the articles - but I see there is something covering the tragedy of Amy Winehouse, there are stories of dance groups and other musos, there is a tattoo story (why do so many people have tats these days?) - so I reckon I can find something here without too much trouble.

Next maybe there is a story around the JK Rowling headline? As someone who has never looked at a Harry Potter book (and don't intend to) ... I suspect that most of my students have and so they could probably lead this one for me ... I'll just act as the guide where I can.

I'm sure that I can find plenty on the sports pages to spark discussions and activities around health and physical education - probably on the health pages too.

Poor Christchurch's bad run continued over the holidays with snow adding to their earthquake woes. Again, scientists, mathematicians and geographers can delight in the data and the stories around this.

And to finish for today - what about an ethical discussion about the perceived rights and wrongs of copyright and privacy laws in the information age. Maybe we might even learn a little about politics and leadership too ...

And my current thoughts ... I have spent 3 minutes reading Chris's original post - and another 3 minutes browsing for possible content on the Herald iPad version for the day. I have spend probably another 10 - 15 minutes thinking about what it might mean and 15 minutes putting these thoughts down.

Sure - there needs to be some more thought given to making something like this work ... that is IF there any value in this as a notion ... or should I just shelve it and return to the safety of my classroom and close the door again?

I think is was Einstein who said we'll never fix the ills of the day with the thinking and tools that caused them - something like that anyway ... when are we really going to address authentic learning.

What do you think?

TED Talks: The mathematics of cities ... our future?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:24:00 +0000

Have just watched Geoffrey West give a talk on the "simple" mathematics that governs the growth of rats, people, cities and companies. Well worth 17 minutes of anyone's time.

What happens when you let 13 year old students take control of their own learning?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:28:00 +0000

Been thinking of how to write this post for a while ... and have decided to just let the student work speak for itself.
What follows are some examples of student work from a group of 13 year old girls who have were challenged to do something that they would be proud of ... something that they could show their parents and teachers that what they had done was of value to both them and to others as well.
First up is a website that a couple of girls put together for our Social Sciences faculty in an attempt to revamp their resources for teaching a unit to Year 8 students on biosecurity. These girls actually placed 3rd in the TVNZ Netguide Web Challenge last year.

Another student created a website on the holocaust, inspired by her religious studies teacher.

This student has a sporting outlook on life - so she set herself a goal of developing a website that looks at sports for the 2012 London olympics.

If you have a good look at all of these sites, you'll see the quality of the work these girls have put in. Add to this the fact that they had to research the various tools (eg Weebly, Google sites, Wix, Yola etc) to find the one that gave them the result that they were looking for. In most cases that meant that first choices of web building tool was not the one that made the cut ... often girls found that the site they had chosen didn't give them the outcome they wanted and they had to go back and rethink their choices. Add to this that they had to find the tools themselves ... little or no direction came from me ... the "guide" said "you know what the task is ... you find the tool to suit".

Another project these students were asked to do was to tell a digital story using Scratch software ... so there was some restriction here ... they had to use Scratch (it was a programming module after all), but the students had free range of the story they wanted to tell - the only requirement again was that they needed to be proud of their work. To be honest, many of the students produced outstanding work, but I chose this one to show here ... the sound is poor (haven't worked out why), but the student who created this had never used Scratch before and her story was a well known Maori legend ... enjoy it

Ultimately, the girls all reported that they had learned a lot and enjoyed the freedom of choice of project. The quality of work speaks volumes for the spirit in which the girls approached these projects. I hope you enjoy them.

What price 14000 resources for teaching and learning ... try free!

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:44:00 +0000

The PBS (public broadcasting service) has a track record of providing some pretty useful resources for teachers. I've used several resources (like the "Growing up online" resources) many times. Now PBS have made over 14000 resources available free of charge for teachers here.

As you can see from the image above the search options are pretty standard, and once your search is done you can see the type of resource (see below)

According to the PBS site ...

"This next-generation digital media service empowers PreK–16 educators to re-imagine classroom learning, transform teaching, and creatively engage students. It brings together the best of public media, produced specifically for educators, from PBS, WGBH, and 55+ public media partners. This flexible service includes high-quality content tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards. The service is freely available to educators as a basic service that can be enhanced with premium solutions for schools and districts-designed for seamless media integration and customization. The basic service offers:

Unique access to best-in-class resources from PBS producers and partners and technology resources tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards
A robust content library of thousands of digital core curriculum resources, designed with today's student in mind
Carefully created, purpose-built media: videos, interactives, audios, lesson plans, multimedia, professional development, and more
Ability for educators to search, save, share, and review content
Cross-platform flexibility to display on classroom presentation tools to mobile devices."

and more ...

"There are five types of media resources in the service: Audios, Documents, Images, Interactives, and Videos. Many resources include supplemental materials such as lesson plans, discussion questions, and background essays.
To view a media resource, first click on the media resource title or thumbnail image of a resource from your search results. This will open the resource page identifying additional information about the resource. Click on the large image to play an audio, video, or interactive, or, to enlarge a document or image resource. Videos can be enlarged to full screen by clicking on the four arrow icon to the right of the volume control below the media image.
The service includes individual resources and groups of resources designed to be used with one another. Group resources include a "Group Index" on the right side of the page. To view an individual resource within the group, click the resource within the index. It will appear on the left side of the page."

To me, this looks like it should be part of every school's repertoire of online resources.

The Entitlement to Change

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:49:00 +0000

Last week saw the NetHui conference in Auckland - a meeting of some of the best minds in NZ to discuss the future of the internet and what our parts were in it. Now, apart from the obvious question "What was I doing there?" - there were a number of takeaways from the conference - but the biggest came from Larry Lessig. Many of you will know that Larry is a Harvard law professor, and is co-founder of the Creative Commons. He was the keynote speaker on Friday morning - and the 40 minute presentation he gave has left me in a somewhat mixed state ... a state of both unease and excitement.

Unease, because in a time of intense change, change by its very nature creates unease. Excitement because we are in those times where the network is allowing anyone to claim their "entitlement" and to recreate culture. He talks of "entitlement" and "entitlement yielding change" often in his early part to his talk. I'd encourage anyone to watch this - it is challenging. It's 42 minutes.

If you are interested in how the web, this network, is "yielding change", then these 42 minutes will fly past.

How will students exercising their "entitlement" affect what we do in our schools? This is the big question for me. Anyone got some thoughts?

DESMOS - new tool for the Maths student

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 18:35:00 +0000

There are lots of pretty cool maths tools out there these days. Another has arrived, and works in a browser. It's pretty cool. Have a look at the video intro below

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;DE</p>
Desmos is easy to use, very easy to use. Students will love it. Head to here to use it.
Here's an example of the output.

Livebinders - another cool sharing tool for the classroom

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:28:00 +0000

I have been meaning to give Livebinders a serious work out for some time, and took the opportunity last night to rearrange a pile of stuff I've been wanting to share with staff at our school for some time, but hadn't found the tool to quite do it.

Here's my problem ... like most of us, I read a lot, usually reading my RSS feeds via Feedler Pro on my iPad. When there is something I want to keep or share with someone else I made the decision I didn't just want to email the link to others - I wanted a way to share with others the rich 'original experience' of the original item. So, I started looking for a tool that could collect all of the items I wanted to keep. I'd been an EverNote user for a while, so decided to try this - and it works well for collecting all of the articles.
The next problem was what to do with all of the articles ... by default they all end up in the same EverNote notebook - so last night I rearranged, merged, tagged items and also created a series of notebooks for the major topics I'm interested in. Then by dragging and dropping the "notes" into the right notebook I have a series of notebooks that can be shared with anyone.

The last piece of the puzzle is to use LiveBinders to present the entire set of notebooks to my audience. The process is simple - head to LiveBinders, create a free account and start creating a digital ring binder with as many tabs as you like - you can put all sorts of content into a tab.
Here's a short video from the Livebinder web site.

For my first its as simple as adding the shared URLof my Evernote notebooks.

So, give Livebinders a try ... they are easy to set up, and very easy to add content to. I can see these being very efficient ways of creating digital textbooks for students, and for students to create digital artifacts.

Teacher Challenge - a great site for PD

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 17 May 2011 00:33:00 +0000

Over the past week or so I have been reading some of the entries in this "30 tools in 30 days" column from the Teacher Challenge blog. What a cool way to introduce 30 cool web 2.0 tools for teachers to learn about! This site is introducing a new web 2.0 tool each day in a simple and concise way that may help a lot of teachers get to feel more confident in their knowledge of some of the tools that are available to them at no cost.

What I like about the format of the 25 entries so far is that they have a simple format for each entry which shows you what the tool is, how to use it and has both the link to the site to register for your account and some suggestions for further use.

What tools are there so far?

plus #24 "Wikipedia" and today's #25 "Jog the Web".

While there aren't many that I haven't used or known about (a couple of these are new to me) - it is great to see ideas of how other people are using some of my favourite tools. Livebinders has been on my list to use for some time now since I created my first one ages ago and haven't been back since!

Jog the Web and Wetoku are both new to me. And I am wondering if Little Bird Tales might be something I can use with my own 4 and 5 yr olds at home for a bit of father/kids time?

If you have yet to try some of these tools, then you will find this site a source of great fun - both for you and your students. There is a lot here - easily 30 weeks of PD for those who have yet to experience any of these fantastic tools.

Enjoy the site!

Experiments in Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:07:00 +0000

If you read Tom Friedman's "World is Flat", then you will recall the story about the airline that outsourced some of it's holiday planning and advice to retired people that may just be answering your phone call while they were sitting in their hot tub ... or something like that anyway.

I've just watched Sugata Mitra on a short 7 minute clip about "Gateshead Granny Cloud" - a project where elderly in the UK are donating an hour a week of their time to connect with students in India to help learning. Interesting. The video is below. But what may be more interesting is the bit after the "grannies" have had there turn. The two sections on letting young kids loose on the internet armed with nothing more than what i guess is a pretty damn big question. In the example "Where does language come from?" -

I've seen enough in this clip to make me go and join the 103,000 others who have watched the TED talk from Mitra of a few years ago - I've known of it since it appeared on the TED site - just not bothered to watch.

And as I watch I have numerous thoughts running through my head ...some of them are

how do we capture the enthusiasm of our students in the same way?
how do we encourage staff to take the chance and try something like this?
why don't we encourage these types of behaviours - especially at year levels where we should be experimenting?
what might our students have to contribute to students in other parts of the world in a similar way? [I think I am going to have a shot at something like this with one of my classes this year. In fact - it may just become the target for next term's work for some of my team.

I've been inspired by Alan November's "meaningful work" and it's time to test what I hear from so many sources - that today's youth want to make a contribution.

So, I will watch Mitra's TED talk over the next few days. Here it is - all 17 minutes of it.

So much for the new resource!

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:46:00 +0000

I heard on the radio coming into school today that TVNZ7 will have funding cut from June next year. The Herald has the article here. Guess I now understand why the DVDs have been so long in coming - shame that the resource that announced itself yesterday looks like suffering an early demise.

New Resource for NZ Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 01:52:00 +0000

It's been some time now since TVNZ7 first announced they were making a DVD available to schools - and nothing arrived. Until today - when an email arrived announcing that the DVD would soon be here along with the announcement that the TVNZ7 Learning Hub was to go live today.

Here's what the website has to say ...

The TVNZ 7 Learning Hub explained
Welcome to TVNZ 7's Learning Hub, a destination for teachers, parents and students offering quality education resources based on popular TVNZ 7 programmes.

Through partnerships with other organisations we have compiled education resources to suit the New Zealand curriculum. All of the resources link through to our TVNZ OnDemand page where you can view the accompanying episode.

So, what's available? Well, not a lot at the moment - there are a dozen or so episodes of the Ever Wondered TV series - I had a look at one on astronomy (just because I'm interested - sad eh?) and was pleasantly surprised to find a pile of links through to resources and student activities on ScienceLearn .

One thing I did find was that it was easy to get lost in the standard TVNZ7 website and from there to TVNZOnDemand - and end up watching missed episodes of Coronation Street and others.

But - all in all - a welcome addition to local content - let's see how it develops over the coming months.

Learning with a Real Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:07:00 +0000

Two years ago I had a class that studied the 2008 Horizon Report and published a wiki as the end product of their work. What I have found interesting is that while they finished their work 2 years ago, their wiki site still attracts around 50 unique visitors per day from countries like the US, UK, Russia, Canada, Ireland and Australia - oh, and a few from NZ.
This reinforced to me the importance of having a real purpose for learning. In the past if students had created a research report on the Horizon Report it would likely be be shared with at most two people - the student and the teacher. Here - the students have created a resource which is being shared with upwards of 1000 people per month.
Alan November talks of learning with a real purpose in his TEDxNYED. This neat little 15 minute talk of several student stories has one really cool one - the one about the 13 year old girl using Fan Fiction. "When I wake up I have to decide - do I write for my teacher or do I write for the world?"
Enjoy Alan's talk - he's a great thinker and practitioner.

iPad, Feedler Pro & EverNote - great combo for sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:45:00 +0000

For some time now I have been looking for an easy way to share those entries from the various blogs I read with some of my colleagues at school. What I wanted was a way to take those posts from my RSS aggregator (Google Reader) which I access via Feedler Pro from my iPad, and collect several different posts into the one message, keeping all the graphics and formatting.

Feeddler Pro has just added the option of sending a blog entry to EverNote. I have had an EverNote account for over a year now, just never really used it much. That's about to change.

I can now send the full articles from Feedler Pro directly to EverNote. Then by logging onto my MacBook Pro or Dell tablet I can use the full version of EverNote to merge the articles according to then tags I gave them on my iPad - and from there email the result to those who I think should get them.

Not perfect - but it works better than any other way I've found so far.

Here are a few screen shots showing the process.

Screen from Feedler Pro showing full options.

Once merged in EverNote you can email the set of articles (either from iPad or other computer).

Why do I email the merged article rather than just send links to the original? I want to make it as easy as I can for my colleagues to see the info - and I don't want to take the risk that they might not follow the link ...

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Is this the future of K-12 education?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:21:00 +0000

Bill Gates hints to the audience at the end of this TED talk by Salman Khan that "you have just seen a glimpse of the future of education". I wonder if you agree?

To start with, here's the talk - it's 20 minutes worth, but it is worth it imho, particularly if you are a teacher of maths, science or geography - and from memory the Khan Academy also has a growing library of accounting and economic resources too.

So, is it the future of education?
Alan November gave a recent interview on TV in the US where he quoted brain research stating that "if you make the mistake at home in your homework, chances are you'll make the same mistake in the test - even if the error is corrected the next day".

So, maybe Khan is right.
With digital video content -

you can watch it as long as you like
you can rewind it as often as you like
you don't need to be made feel uncomfortable by taking "an age" to get the point about something
you will always get a consistent approach from the video
you won't be told "I've already explained that twice"

Are you prepared to turn your classrooms around as Khan suggests?

What might some of the pros and cons of this approach be?

Is this a "Foundation for Excellence"?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 20:31:00 +0000

"Digital learning can customise and personalise education so that all students can learn in their own style and pace, which maximises their chances of success at school and beyond ...." So says the report "Digital learning Now" from the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

The report lists 10 elements of high quality digital learning. Those of you who follow the push for educational reform won't likely find much new here. But what you will find is a list of a few key policy directions that stand a chance of delivering on the promise that technology has for education. Let me give you an example or two ... then you can digest the report yourself ... luckily it is one of those reports that is only a few pages long and doesn't waste time on putting in irrelevant stuff ...

Point 2: All students have access to high quality digital content and online courses.
Policy directions:

do not restrict access to courses or content using class numbers, budget or enrolment caps or other such traditional measures ... just make them available
do not restrict access due to geography
do require school diplomas to have at least some online course completion requirement

Point 3: All students can personalise their own learning using digital content from approved providers
Policy directions:

allow students to take online courses full time, part time or by individual class
allow students to enroll in multiple courses from multiple providers
allow enrollment all year round
no limit to number of credits take

Each of the 10 elements has a similar "simple" look - a brief statement of the element and a few policy directions.

I wonder how this might play out in our environment? I have made several suggestions in the past in varying formats that I believe it is inevitable that the nature of learning in schools must change - and I liken it to Chris Anderson's view of Long Tail Economics - I just can't see education in its current form for some students being valid for too much longer. There will likely be a need for bricks and mortar for some - but for others, why? Why when there are better options?

Anyway, read the report, and keep the discussions going - and try and implement a little of the directions every day in your schools.

Four months with an iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 07:28:00 +0000

Little bit late this one. The reason is time. Just so much happening at the moment. Still, am happy to report that this little iToy is still a favourite tool of mine.

The awesome battery life is a huge plus. The ability to type a few notes is great - though I sometimes wonder just where the predictive text comes from - some the interpretations are bizarre. I have pretty much given up my Pulse Smartpen since becoming attached to this iPad. I record all notes from seminars or meetings directly into Pages and sync either via iTunes or DropBox with my other laptops.

I haven't looked to print anything - why would you when you've got the live document with you. I'm really please Google has finally brought a basic form of editing of Google Docs via iOS or Android. I can now create new documents on my iPad and iPhone without using Docs to Go - though Docs to Go still has more functionality.

I still think Feedler is good as an RSS reader for my Google Reader account.

The biggest draw back is the 3G network ... Last weekend we used the iPad when geocaching around the Miranda coast - the network performance was pretty poor even though the indicators showed full strength 3G.

So yes, the iPad is great. I've upgraded to iOS 4.2.1 and look forwardbto seeing if the multitasking is any good.

Stay tuned!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad