Waraku Education

XO-3 OLPC Tablet

2012-01-09T08:30:00.001+10:30

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223242/OLPC_s_XO_3_tablet_to_debut_at_CES

News of a cheap robust tablet peaks my curiosity. Recently I was talking to Bill Kerr which rekindled my interest in trialing the use of the OLPC in the APY Lands.

My recent observation visit to Ernabella, on the Lands, indicated that a number of families had tried computer purchases but they did not last due to the harsh conditions. This map indicates that some neighbouring settlements to Ernabella may be having a go with the OLPC.

There are a couple of things that are of special interest with this tablet.

Charging and power saving options
The literacy trials that are part of its release and the fact that MIT Media Lab (behind the development of Scratch) are part of that trial
The testing of ways to promote self learning and critical thinking

I think that I will settle into Ernabella at the start of the year, keep an eye out for the release of the tablets and purchase one to check out as soon as I can.

I wonder if the work I am doing with the development of a Pitjantjatjara spell check dictionary for Libre and Open Office can mesh with the tablet in some way?

Match sound with word

2011-12-20T12:49:00.003+10:30

I've created a prototype game that can be used to reinforce the association of a sound with the appropriate written word. This is a game that could be hacked and used for the teaching of literacy in any language but my interest is for the teaching of minority languages like Pitjantjatjara.

The sounds could be someone saying the words in the list.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/watiwara/2228356

Outback Aborigines in no rush to log on

2011-07-22T09:59:00.004+09:30

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/outback-aborigines-in-no-rush-to-log-on/story-fn59niix-1226098609732

"Only about one-third of the 48 people involved in the research had been online -- despite the potential for the internet to help people live on remote traditional lands while still having access to information and services."

From 2012 I will be teaching in Ernabella and one of my roles is ICT. Seems that there might be some work to be done but first I have some questions.

Are there cultural issues or other issues with older people learning from younger people?
What sort of bandwidth and access is there currently in the APY Lands?
How is this current capacity being utilised?
What is the potential for growth (eg. dual ISP)?
What are other agencies currently doing (eg TAFE)?
How much and what sort of collaboration exists between DECS and TAFE?
What is the driver for people accessing the internet? To what extent is curiosity the driver for indigenous people currently accessing the internet in these remote areas?
Would some sort of variation of my recycle scheme work or be helpful?

Course Design for Indigenous Students

2011-03-30T09:41:00.003+10:30

The paper "Design for a Culturally Affirming Indigenous Computer Literacy Course" provides some good advice for the design of courses for Indigenous students.

The key points

The hidden curriculum is alive and well. Indigenous students feel it and react to the assimilationist nature of our courses, even though we do not plan it to be that way.

The use of ICT in all courses can be a great asset because it can be used to facilitate

greater use of visual-spatial learning assets
tactile
patient (activities can be repeated without anyone needing to feel frustrated) and with lots of positive reinforcement
can have lots of multimedia
allows teacher to become coach on the side and removes the temptation to be judgmental and so students getting more 1 on 1 attention that delivering to the group style of teaching
learning materials can be more easily customised to suit.
learning can be more easily negotiated.
opens the door to my project based learning
can be used to facilitate collaborative activities
facilitates lots of options for creative expression
feedback without shame - basically a computer delivering a quiz result is better than a teacher doing it.

Strong case for eLearning I reckon.

SA TfEL and Anangu schools

2011-03-07T07:21:00.009+10:30

South Australian schools have recently received a lovely new glossy "South Australian Teaching for Effective Learning Framework Guide". More information about this is here

The actual framework is here.

Our glossy is 88 pages.

The first part (domain) of the framework deals with "Learning for effective teaching" and it was element 1.3 that caught my attention. Element 1.3 states "Participate in professional learning communities and networks" and of all the 6 elements in this domain I see this one as the one that facilitates the others.

I've been participating in online education communities since the early 2000's and have been teaching since the late 70's. I've had a go at establishing some niche communities over that time. What I have learned since my involvement in these online state, national and international communities make all of my professional learning prior to that look pale.

This involvement has facilitated

1.1 - Understand how self and others learn
1.2 - Develop deep pedagogical and content knowledge
1.5 - Discuss educational purpose and policy
1.6 - Design, plan and organise for learning and teaching.

Having taught in a very isolated school at the start of my teaching career (Fregon Anangu School) I wondered how this might translate for them.

When I was there we had a single radio telephone for the entire community. The school got one after a while. The mail plane flies in each Tuesday and Thursday. Alice Spings was the nearest centre and was a seven hour drive. That's it.

It was this experience that inspired the title for my blog - 'Waraku Education' which in translation means the education belonging to the tall man.

These days the communities have broadband and phones, and some even have mobile phone coverage. However, teachers in the area perform in a way that is different to the main stream and so I wondered where the opportunities to immerse themselves in professional communities might exist.

The OZTEACHERS list is where I began.

I made the following post

Hi
Can anyone point me to some functioning online ESL teacher communities please?
Thanks
Peter

Within 5 days I had 7 responses. Some to the list and some private. The following is a collation of the ideas that I got.

--------------

Australian education and training professionals with an online networking and profile space...
http://me.edu.au/c/ESL

About Me.edu.au...
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/me

ESL Community Australia ... Google Search...
http://www.google.com.au/#q=esl+community&hl=en&biw=1579&bih=704&prmd=ivns&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryAU&cr=countryAU&sa=X&ei=x-xtTfCSCoSecK-O7O8M&ved=0CAcQpwUoAQ&fp=2a63e5032ee47a81

ESL Worldwide... Google Search...
http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&source=hp&biw=1596&bih=704&q=esl&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&fp=5305acaac95b6150

--------------

Here is a good one
http://me.edu.au/c/ESL

and another one (not sure how active this is)
http://www.edulists.com.au/mailman/listinfo/esl

--------------

this may well be a good place to start
http://evasimkesyan.edublogs.org/2011/03/05/songs-to-teach-grammar/
along
with the #tefl community on twitter.

--------------

Here's a list of Edu-Qld emailing lists. One is simply called, 'ESL' and currently has 246 subscribers so i guess it's a fairly vibrant community.

http://discussions.eq.edu.au/cgi-bin/wa?INDEX

Many of these email-communities look interesting and maybe of assistance.

They're free for everyone, anywhere and have a great professional spirit.

--------------

Links of Interest to Students & Teachers of English as a Second Language
http://iteslj.org/links/

--------------

Even in geographically isolated places, teachers need not feel professionally isolated anymore.

I wonder if an APY teacher community is worth thinking about as well?

Adding a language/locale for Pitjantjatjara Dictionary

2011-02-28T20:05:00.004+10:30

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Adding_a_new_language_or_locale

This link itemises what I need to add a language/locale

The numeric Microsoft® locale identifier (LCID), here informally usually referred as MS-LangID, for attribution used by the core code and also needed for import and export of MS-Office document file formats.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0h88fahh(v=vs.85).aspx

There does not appear to be one.

The ISO 639 language code

Here it is - http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=pjt

PJT

The ISO 3166 country code

Here it is - http://www.iso.org/iso/english_country_names_and_code_elements

A mapping between those two.

No idea what this means

A language list box entry.

This is also Greek to me

Whether the language uses complex text layout (CTL).

NO - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_Text_Layout

Whether the language is written from right to left (RTL).

Pitjantjatjara spell checker

2011-02-28T19:12:00.004+10:30

I've started work on making a Pitjantjatjara dictionary for LibreOffice/Open Office. On Friday I met with a linguist by the name of Paul Eckert. He has been working on a bible translation for the past 25 years and gave me a list of words that appear in that translation project. This provides an excellent starting point.

Some of the letters have an underline and so we need to use Unicode fonts that support these characters.

I have joined the languages mailing list for LibreOffice and asked for advice about what to do next.

The best things in life are free - Software Freedom Day

2010-09-23T06:56:00.004+09:30

Sometimes people say in response to free software, you get what you pay for. They are thinking about free beer and not freedom. The best things in life are free and often free in both senses of the word, free as in beer and free as in freedom.

We had a nice article in todays Borderwatch. In fact we have had quite good media coverage about Software Freedom Day along with the visit to Mount Gambier by Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation founder. Each year interest grows in the event and the idea of free software. The numbers we have come to our event increase each year. We know that 500 visitors this year is ultra conservative as a library person indicated that the figure could be as high as 1000.

It concerns me the number of people that talk to us that are not aware that there are these free (as in freedom but also as in free beer) options. They are keen to hear about them and keen to give them a go. We heard about vulnerable older people going to computer shops to find out why they could not access attachments from their grandchildren to be sold expensive proprietary software when their needs could be met with free software. They were not aware of their options and the thing is that school is all about giving people options.

I was proud to overhear people on the day talking very positively about the free software that we give out at Grant High and saying that it made good sense and was a good idea.

This SFD event is a timely reminder for us to think about using the free software in our classes and encouraging its use. Richard Stallman advocates that schools should only use free software. While he has a very good point, the softened stance of 'Learning with the free software first' means that students can continue with their learning beyond school unencumbered and the door is open for other software to be introduced later if needs be. For many people, the free software serves their needs well.

The language that we use is also important. We use a wordprocessor not word, a spreadsheet not excel, a graphics package not adobe, etc.

Please consider

How to completely kill sharing

2010-08-26T17:19:00.001+09:30

The old SSABSA email lists worked but were becoming slow with limited conversations. There was not much happening but there was a glimmer of action. A little mouth to mouth could bring it back to life. At the start of 2010 we got the new SACE website and to support sharing they have a clear link to 'Connect'. Good, they were seeing the importance of this sharing and it was right there on the front page. The system however changed from an email list to a forum based service. With this new service we can get email updates if we know how to make that happen in the forum settings. I suspect that teachers by and large do not know how to do this. This means that these teachers would have to actually go to the website, login, go to the forum to see if there had been any action. We can no longer post via email but instead must log into the SACE website and go to the forum to do this. It has become too hard and too complicated and what conversations there were are now silent. It is dead. It is no more. Deceased. Gone to see its maker. Es ist kaputt. Fix it dear Henry.

--
Free and Open education for all

Why is it important to share?

2010-08-26T10:10:00.001+09:30

I'm watching the Ewan McIntosh Masterclass "Professional Learning and Productivity". I couldn't attend and so it is good to be able to download the session. He is currently creating a blog post using email via Posterous in his presentation. I've had a posterous account for some time and not really utilised it. [putting that on the to do list and intending to post this via posterous]. My blogging has dropped off of late because 'I've lacked time' (and he has made an issue of this that has stirred my pot) and he has made the point that this professional sharing is really important in finding ways to improve our practice. This improvement in practice is the single biggest factor that impacts on student learning.

So, why is it important to share? Is it the sharing as such or is it the consequent conversations. I could lurk around teachers that are sharing and learn a lot, so why share myself? Isn't that sharing risky for me? I wonder what motivates the other educational professional sharers? Sharing is the way that we learn best.

How to share? I'm back to thinking about blogging more regularly. Must also think about class blogs. I'm really interested in ways to bring parents back into the school, like it was 30 odd years ago, this time virtually. One of the key things here is that leaders need to be doing this and showing by example so Principal blogs are very important.

Making it easy. I must more use of posterous to make this task easier or just use email to send my blog posts maybe.

Getting others involved. I'm currently making a presentation for Reidy Park Primary school about online collaboration. I wanted to say that everyone should have a professional blog. Ewan has reminded me that I need offer invitations. [makes modification to presentation]

--
Free and Open education for all

Virtual Staffroom - the future of professional organisations questioned

2010-08-20T07:23:00.008+09:30

It was rather impromptu but last night I was once again part of a discussion that today is published on the Virtual Staffroom. It was interesting the way that this happened. About a half hour before the recording Chris Skyped me to indicate that it was happening and come along. I was, at the time, in a training planning meeting for a school where the focus was on web2 and collaboration. My planning partners reckoned, in jest, that I set this up but felt that it was a great example of what we had just been talking about.

The podcast discussion was all about the use of free software in education. I had to leave the discussion early as I had another online meeting to attend to discuss arrangements for Richard Stallman visiting my city in Sept 17th. He is one of the founders of this free software thinking. His statement about "Why schools should exclusively use free software" is a worthy and very quick read.

It felt like dominoes falling, the celestial bodies were aligning.

The dominoes keep on falling.

This has got me to thinking about the place that professional organisations have in the education food chain.

One of the things I've been struggling with for some time is the value of professional organisations now that we have access to the 'big thinkers' and 'movers and shakers' in our fields via Twitter, blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, .....................

For people that are connected in this way, when was the last time you learnt something new via a professional organisation? and if you did, was the cost of membership and attendance at the event worth it?

My guess is that the professional organisations are struggling more than ever with membership and conference attendance. Perhaps one of the key benefits of these events is the chance of meeting F2F some of the characters you have been mixing with online, but I notice that people are doing this via Twitter now as well with broadcasts like - I'll be in [location name] tomorrow, catch up for coffee at [venue name] at 2:00pm.

So, professional organisations, what is their future? Are they really dieing? Should we persist or let them die?

Scratch - The Ducks Guts

2010-05-05T07:17:00.001+09:30

I have posted previously that I think that Scratch is fantastic. It’s now the Ducks Guts. I downloaded the latest version in preparation for Scratch Day (http://limestonecoast-scratchers.wikispaces.com/Scratch+Day+2010)

It now has string manipulation commands, command to gain input for variables via the keyboard and commands to control lego.

You can create and manipulate lists (arrays)

Linux version now also available along with PC and Mac.

Release notes - http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Release_Notes

I believe that there is now no better tool to teach programming available.. Impossible to make syntax errors, only logical errors and programming is about thinking and creativity so it’s the Ducks Guts.

I would love to work with someone who is an authority on the new SACE curriculum statement to determine if we can use Scratch for SACE2.

I would not be surprised if more tertiary/unis pick up Scratch as a way of introducing the thinking around programming via Scratch.

Pupils 'must manage online risks'

2010-02-17T21:03:00.003+10:30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8505914.stm

Pupils given a greater degree of freedom to surf the internet at school are less vulnerable to online dangers in the long-term, inspectors say.

This is not rocket science.

"Managed" online systems were more successful than "locked" ones at safeguarding pupils' safety, they said.

I would like to find out more about what a 'managed' school looks like.

Into 'Flow' but not going with the flow

2009-10-31T07:44:00.004+10:30

We recently had a visit by Stewart Von Itzstein, Computer Science lecturer from Uni SA. He talked to the students regarding some myths around the IT industry and options for courses and careers. He then launched into a mini lecture so that students could get a feel of what the learning might be like, the subject, game design.

Very enjoyable but the concept of 'Flow' has stuck in my mind. Game designers want gamers to get into a state of flow. I want students to get into a state of flow. I easily get into a state of flow and find it hard to emerge from it.

Basically flow is where you are totally absorbed in an activity, to a point that outside stimuli is often ignored. It's a fantastic place to be and I'm going to research this a little more and use it as another of my coaching tools along with 'The Shark and the Sponge Story' and 'The Learning Curve Story'.

PAGES liked FOSS

2008-10-28T19:06:00.006+10:30

Today I spoke with the PAGES group which is a group of Employment Service organisations in our community.

The seed for this came from Penny Richardson of 'Employment Access' here in Mount Gambier. She attended our regional Software Freedom Day event in Penola. Penny felt that FOSS might be of interest to clients of the various Employment Services.

My presentation took all of 15 minutes and I gave each of the attendees a copy of the OpenDisc. Some people wondered what the catch was. My approach was to talk about removing the blocks to learning and to talk about access and equity. We have been doing this at Grant High School for the past 6 or more years where each enrolment gets a copy of FOSS software and we also ensure that this software is installed on all computers in the school. General consensus seemed to be that FOSS was of use to the Employment Services clients.

I posed the question of whether we should approach the City Library to perhaps have copies of the OpenDisc available for loan. Helen Strickland indicated that she would take the disc to the council with the view of them distributing it to citizens for free. She felt that it would be consistent with the council vision of building a 'learning community'.

On the new libary page of the City Council website is this quote - "The Council’s Strategic Plan 2007 – 2012 incorporates a ‘Lifelong Community Learning’ strategy"

Software Freedom Day report

2008-09-21T19:01:00.002+09:30

Last year we held Software Freedom Day at my school, Grant High School. This year we held it at Penola High School - another FOSS oriented school in our region about 50km away.

I think that many of the SFD events across the globe happen in capital cities. Ours is regional and in a country where we have some large distances.

WE had about 50 visitors with a good percentage of those travelling 30km or more. Of those there were a number that travelled 100 km or more. I think that maybe the biggest might have been from Kingston which is about 130km.

This provides evidence to the success of the emails that Jason from Penola (Event team leader for 2008) sent out to schools and also to the work that Robert did in drumming up interest in the radio and paper news media. Nice work.

Schools can be regarded as societies agent for conformity. They are also societies change agent where we want people to conform to new directions or values. Making schools aware of the choices that they have regarding FOSS is really important in that context.

A feature of the event was the number of school teachers who came and travelled some distances for. When I talk to teachers about FOSS I invariably get HUGE agreement on the philosophical reasons why we want students to have access to this stuff. They are BIG on access and equity and invariably ask why so much money is paid for other software when there is this stuff available that they can just give to the kids. People from the broader community ask the same question but often in the context of why so much public money is spent on software that may not be necessary, as they look around the computer lab classroom that then event is run in.

I think that there will be a number of new schools who will be giving away the OpenEducation Disc to students soon as a consequence of our work on the day.

I did notice that none of the ICT coaches in the region showed up and so perhaps we need to target these sorts of people who carry some regional influence next time with special invitations.

The people who came, often also asked "Why haven't I heard about this before?". They sounded almost like they had been cheated out of something. This was a question asked by teachers as much as other visitors. In response I generally asked them the question "how do you find out about what you can put on a computer?" Many came to the conclusion that it was through sales people and so they were able to draw conclusions from their answer fairly easily.

From some I got the question 'So what is in it for you?'. Being a teacher I could rant about the access and equity thing for students and how I wanted to create an environment where students could continue with their learning outside of school unencumbered. They invariably saw the sense in that and felt comfortable with the explanation.

The other thing that I heard a lot was thankyou. I felt that these words were very geniune and sincere. Thanks for putting on this event and thanks for showing me this stuff. Thanks for giving me these options.

Last year, being the event organiser, I did not get to feel and observe these things as I was too wrapped up with making the event happen. My sincere thanks to Jason for being the event organiser this year.

Software Freedom Day - 08

2008-05-26T08:20:00.001+09:30

I am on the SFI board that organises “Software Freedom Day”, a global event that supports local communities to celebrate and educate how Free Open Source Software can benefit people in their area. This year it is on September 20^th.

FOSS fits well with the ideal 'Free and Open Education' by being able to give the learning tools to students so that they can use, share and build upon them. Collaboration and sharing fits well with this ideal and FOSS.

One of our objectives for 2008 is to better support schools to host Software Freedom Day events. For schools already making use of FOSS, it is a great way to help their community understand what and why they are doing this and to involve their FOSS communities in the process.

I would like to start some conversations about this so that we can better understand how to help schools participate and to share stories, resources and experience. If you want, you could put these ideas straight onto the SFD wiki

http://softwarefreedomday.org/Resources_to_support_schools

Schools give communities options

2008-05-09T07:45:00.001+09:30

Reflecting on the parent teacher night last night I am filled with satisfaction. Having predominantly taught at year 11 and 12 levels, I was given a year 9 class this year. I was filled with fear at this and that fact that it was all boys. It is now the class that I would fight to keep. Their enthusiasm and curiosity fills me with joy.

Last night I explained to parents that the course is structured around various activities that last about a fortnight. The entire content is on my Moodle site (www.watiwara.org) and so there is flexibility for students to spend more time on topics of interest to them and dig deeper and to also work through topics of less interest quickly. I explained that I have chosen, in all cases, to use software that is free for students to take home and continue with their learning there.

Parents were thrilled with this and each had a story of something that their son had taken home and was almost obsessed with. In one case the student had hooked his mother into the activity and she spent time talking about how much she loved it.

One parent asked 'How does one find out about these things?' and then proceeded to answer her question with “I suppose that's why we go to school”. Schools have a responsibility to show students and our community options.

LinkBlip ur Yakkle - chat, VoIP, file and screen sharing

2008-02-28T20:08:00.005+10:30

The following Yakkle link makes use of LinkBlip. It sends me an email when someone clicks on it. If that is a problem for you then use the full URL link at the bottom. I am thinking that LinkBlip might be a method that I could use to test the effectiveness of the communication of the resources I share with staff at my school.

Yakkle is a tool that allows you to chat, make VoIP calls, send files and receive, and has a built in screen sharing facility. Its free. I wonder how many people we can simultaneously communicate with or is it 1:1. The FAQ states that it integrates with Google Chat and Jabber. This seems to be worth a look.

http://www.yakkle.com/whatsyakkle.html

Google Apps for schools demo

2008-02-23T22:36:00.013+10:30

A search for videos using the criteria 'google apps in schools' produced some interesting results. One was the Google@school - Google Apps Technical Q&A but the more engaging and informative for me was Chris Iremonger speaks at Google@school - Google Apps Demo

Chris Iremonger is a very skilled presenter and comes across as confidently representing Google Inc. I felt that he could be trusted. I was encouraged by the many and consistent references to the importance of open standards. It was more than clear that Google wants to make open the possibility for people to integrate their solutions with them and so open standards are central.

This particular video was posted 2 years ago and has had only 673 views. This video needs to be viewed by every education technology strategist/coordinator/CEO/? within education sectors. There are surely more than 673 of them. As we are thinking about the future and options for our schools, this would have to be one of the options we explore.

There are lots of questions and considerations for us to consider but some of the questions that could be asked include

Is it technically feasible to offer this to the staff and students in our schools?
What would the transition look like?
What are the pros and cons?
Could offering the basic apps in this way allow us to make use of lower spec machines for longer?
Are there security or privacy issues that need to be considered?
Would administering this be easier than edumail, ms office, ..........?

I appreciated the fact that the Google Apps solution provided options and choice and it was clear that the developers had a grip on the needs of educational institutions and the protection of their students.

I was hit with the notion - what if they decided that education had to pay sometime down the track? Provide the service for free for now to produce 'lockin'. Hmm. The whole time that education had made use of the free service they were also eliminating the alternatives from growing. Students should not be presented with hurdles (legal and/or financial) to continuing with their learning outside of the school and we need to approach this with vision so that we can achieve this in the short and long term. I guess that the use of open standards throughout the Google Apps means that 'lockin' is less likely to be an issue.

I like the way that collaboration is built into all aspects of the suite of Google apps. This was very evident in the video and begged the question, why would a school pay for Groove?

The video runs for about 60 minutes and at the 51 minute mark Chris talks about the upgrade process. He states that when they update software it allows the user to continue with their operations. When they log out and then log back on they then take advantage of the upgrade. Seamless, nice.

Scratch with Year 9 boys

2008-02-22T12:50:00.002+10:30

I have a class of year 9 boys doing IT. We decided to have a play with Scratch and are well into it. I asked them to write down three words that best describes their experience with Scratch to date.

The following words were used more than once
Boring 3
Cool 4
Exciting 2
Fun 11
Good way 2
Interesting 7
Learn 3

36 of the words used were positive and 6 were negative.

The psychology of apology

2008-02-15T21:26:00.004+10:30

The recent sorry day has created some curiosity in me about how apology works and the psychology of apology. The video of the sorry speech can be viewed on the ABC website.

Using the simple search term 'psychology of apology' some interesting links were uncovered that are useful in fleshing this subject out. There is a brief statement titled "Group-based Guilt and Apology in Australia" in the School of Psychology ANU website.

collective or group-based guilt is a real phenomena which seems to produce real consequences. Despite the views of some prominent political leaders Australians can and do feel sorry for things for which they are not personally responsible for even though their group is. The research also shows that group-based guilt predicts support for apology. These findings is consistent with the social identity approach, an approach which has many leading exponents in the School of Psychology at ANU.

A conference promotion scheduled for Feb 2002 titled "Apologies: Mourning the Past and Ameliorating the Future" is great for the questions that are posed. For people who want to really flesh out this topic, these questions are great conversation starters. Some of these follow

In what ways is apology related to acknowledgement and forgiveness?
To what extent is apology an admission of guilt and responsibility?
What is the difference between apology and atonement?
Apology and repentance?
Forgiveness and redemption?
What roles do victims, perpetrators, and larger moral communities play in the negotiation of apology and forgiveness?
In what ways is apology a perpetrators act?
In what ways is it a victims act?
What psychological models help us to understand the transactions that lie at the core of apology?
How do apologies affect victims and perpetrators?
What are the psychological costs of apology?
What have empirical studies taught us about apology as a strategy for conflict resolution?
What place have religion and theology given to apology?
How well do recent acts of inter-group apology fit with religious understandings of restorative justice?

Pick the brain blog has two posts of interest

5 Steps to an Effective Apology which is basically dealing with what makes a good apology.
How to Learn from Mistakes post basically states that learning involves making mistakes and sometimes those mistakes come at a cost to others. Good learners may therefore need to be good at making apologies.

If you’ve made mistakes that harm other people, it is important to offer a dignified apology. Be clear that it was an unfortunate incident that will not be repeated. A good apology can go along way to restoring trust.

Electronic forms and surveys

2008-02-11T20:08:00.000+10:30

Collecting and analysing data is a critical step in the improvement cycle. Doing this electronically has the potential of shortening this stage so that we can more rapidly move into the action stages where the actual improvement happens.

There are a range of tools available for this including

I like the idea of Google Docs because it is free and integrated into their overall application service. Google Docs provides an online wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, and free storage. JotForm also creates forms in this way but these are not integrated integrated into other applications.

Google Docs
Using Google Docs, online survey forms can be created that allow for a variety of questions types including

text
paragraph text
multiple choice
checkboxes
choose from list

You will need a Google login to start creating a form but the people that you want to fill out your form or survey will not.

Once the survey is prepared you enter the recipient email addresses and wait for the results to flow back in.

The results are automatically added to a spreadsheet ready for further analysis.

Video showing how to create a survey form

Written instructions

Some written and easy to follow instructions can be found here and also here
For those that are fairly literate then these very simple and brief instructions from Google are great.

Upping the anti

2008-01-28T13:53:00.000+10:30

The Linux.conf.au started today in Melbourne. The Education Mini.conf had two presenters that were to deliver via Second Life. Leigh Blackall from Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand and myself from Grant High School in Mount Gambier, South Australia. There were three different Second Life Venues to be used and the presenters at the live venue in Melbourne were going to present at the venue simultaneously with Second Life. DNS issues in Melbourne meant that the Second Life participants and the Melbourne venue could not come together.

Image 1 - My avatar is in the foreground of the image as I waited to hear news of what was happening in Melbourne.

Bugger. The good side is that I met a bunch of people, got a lot of experience in playing within second life and Leigh got to present to the group that dropped in via this virtual medium. The people at the venue in Melbourne would not have got this, bugger for them.

I've been thinking about Leigh's presentation which was about institutional change, largely from the top down. He talked about changing the way that the institution dealt with IP so that the rules facilitated openness and collaboration. He is encouraging teachers to have a strong online presence which was helpful for credibility, collaboration and improving the institutions Google ranking and public profile. He is looking for a mass of about 15% of the staff initially to be active and believes that when this is achieved that there will be significant changes to the organisation that follow. In the mean time there are communication issues within the institution. He stated that the changes where prohibitive to many teachers - too much of a shift.

My presentation ended up going ahead. Melbourne could hear me, I couldn't hear them. Janet did a great job of text chat which gave some feedback to me as I was speaking amongst all of the ums and r's. I imagine podcasting and radio broadcasting to create the same feelings. It is very difficult to speak when there is so little feedback.

My presentation was aimed at tackling this issue of creating more openness with the students and so bottom up. Providing collaborative infrastructure and support for students to use gives power to the students to learn despite the methods used by their teachers. I have seen on numerous occasions that where students are using tools or showing preference to work in certain ways then teachers want to take notice and optimise on it because they can see the opportunity for better learning. This is upping the anti and might even work better in conjunction with Leigh's plans.

Good on the organisers of the education.miniConf for giving this method of delivery a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and while everything did not work I personally gained a lot. I found that I need practise talking to an imaginary audience if I do more of this.

In the second image my avatar, Wati Voss is presenting to the audience in Melbourne via Hazelbyte Hax.

We're in for a hard time

2008-01-28T07:20:00.000+10:30

Economic oversteering is the latest Mark Shuttleworth post. He does a great job of explaining the current economic climate and it is clear that the next few years are going to be painful. This is a time of finding ways to improve productivity and reduce expenditure.

With the issues around Vista (instability and resource requirements) and Office 2007 (interoperability) there are many saying that the effort to roll out these products is not worth it. Pain without gain. In this article "Windows Vista, Office 2007 Expelled From British Schools" they report

The agency said U.K. schools can consider using Vista or Office 2007 software only when they are buying new batches of PCs. Even then, however, they're advised to take a long looked at alternatives based on Linux and other open source products, such as the OpenOffice.org desktop package.

Makes sense.

At the end of 2006 the following report was published, commissioned by the EU as I understand it. Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU

It is 287 pages long. The main recommendation relating to education is found on page 216.

9.5.5. Education: avoid lifetime vendor lock-in for students
The reason it seems desirable to promote the use of FLOSS in education (ICT education and more generally all educational activities that have a bearing on the cultural relationship with information technology) is threefold:

1. It is obviously likely to have a strong impact on the future usage of FLOSS products and the build-up of the related skills.

2. It builds up essential ICT skills rather than the knowledge of specific applications from specific vendors (leading to the current locked-in-for-life situation, where vendor lock-in applies not only to organisations but to individuals who have typically not chosen their software but been provided it for free by schools).

3. It is likely to install an attitude towards information technology that favours the ability to create and actively participate rather than just consume – i.e. the scenarios under which FLOSS is most likely to deliver a strong positive economic and societal impact, by encouraging collaborative prosumer usage and a reflexive attitude on usage and the technology that supports it.

There are some specific references to productivity gains here. "It is likely to install an attitude towards information technology that favours the ability to create and actively participate rather than just consume" is clearly one of those. The technology on its own will not do this IMHO but we are talking about a creative attitude, a thinking process of can do and how can we make this work. Is it my hobby horse of hacker thinking?

There are short term and long term economic advantages. The short term is that schools spend less on software. As the students use this software and leave school, the long term advantages are seen in businesses around the country.

So there we have it. Economic and productivity improvements possible for Australian Schools - doing our bit to reduce the hard time ahead.

All the best for Linux.conf.au starting today in Melbourne. I am sure that the Education Mini.conf happening today will be talking about openness in education not only in terms of software but more broadly in terms of content and collaboration.