Responses to Don Tapscott’s Keynote April 16, 2008
Posted by Steve in Sample, hz08.comments closed
- “Unprecedented Force for Change”-Dan Tapscott’s Keynote - Horizon Project 2008
Student #1
-
These are my thoughts exactly! I for one am not willing to sit around and watch the world go by. I am a part of the generation that is an “unprecedented force for change,” and we are actively inducing and creating change that will be beneficial and relevant to the world today and tomorrow.
-
Teachers are no longer “transmitters of data,” but active participants in the student’s learning process. The point of education is not to teach to perform well on tests, but rather to teach an individual to think, process information, and communicate, to create a knowledgeable individual that can be successful in the real world.
Student #2
-
If school became an interactive place where both students and teachers put their two cents in: teachers teaching students, students teaching students, teachers sharing ideas and students executing these ideas-school would be great.
Student #3
-
I am aware that in all other areas of impact technology has taken its course and replaced the traditional hierarchies, which we would now consider to be the “teacher oriented” educational plan, but the real issue is, in so many places education is rigid and all about regurgitation of information. How do we look past that?
This is a test. Several comments were highlighted in Diigo and sent to my blog. This consisted of the original blog entry and replies.
-
dimdim April 13, 2008
Posted by Steve in Elearning, Stimulation, Web2.0.Tags: hz08 virtualcollab hzmeta connectingpeople dimdim
add a comment
Dimdim is web collaboration software that is free and is open source. It has become available to everyone in the middle of April 2008. I believe it has been in a lengthy testing period where participants volunteered to try out the software and provide feedback. Seemingly it was developed under a reasonably controlled environment as compared to allowing all comers to test the software. The sheer volume would have brought it unstuck.
The layout of the screen seems like most other web collaboration software. It has a list of participants and the icons next to each participant indicates the privileges they have eg. the ability to use audio or chat privately with a participant.
Dimdim has the ability to share a whiteboard, to share a presentation by uploading a PDF or a PowerPoint file and to share one’s Desktop. All seemed to work well in my testing.
The chat feature for back channel communications seem to be easy to use and emoticons can be incorporated. An improvement of the chat feature would be the ability for a participant to choose a font colour. Having stated that, the system assigned two different colours to the broadcaster and to the participant.
The whiteboard seems to come with the usual tools for collaborating. Some of the tools include: text entry box, a rubber stamp capable of producing many geometrical designs, a pencil for the likes of cursive writing, straight line tool, rectangle, circular and triangular frame tools that have several options. There is a clear button to erase all the objects on the whiteboard.
The whiteboard is missing a pointer tool to point out specific items when giving a presentation on the whiteboard. I really missed the pointer tool and it needs to be added in a future version in my opinion. I also like a highlighter when using a whiteboard but it does not seem to be available in dimdim.
Dimdim makes use of Adobe Flash Player 9 which uses video and audio like that found in other Adobe products. The broadcasting video is reasonably sharp but the quality is certainly lost in transmission to the participants most probably since it is enlarged a bit. I was unable to test for the use of video with other participants. It will be interesting to see what that looks like on the screen or even if it can cope.
The limit of participants seems to be twenty. More than one participant’s microphone can be allowed to operate at one time.
I was not able to test the audio / video with several participants. It will be fascinating to see how it copes with the volume.
This is a product worth considering since it makes use of a whiteboard or one can give a presentation. It is free and open source. It certainly has potential and I would think commercial web collaboration entities will be looking over their shoulders. It is a product worth observing as it matures.
Horizon 2008 Project Keynote Presentation April 12, 2008
Posted by Steve in hz08.Tags: hz08_keynote hz08
add a comment
Don Tapscott’s keynote presentation to the Horizon2008 Project will be well received by the participants of the project. A focus of his presentation was that Education is in need of a major change for 21st Century students. I cannot imagine any progressive student nor teacher not agreeing with that statement and giving it full endorsement.
He stated among other things, that today’s generation were not passive and not content to watch television 24 hours a day as are the ‘Baby Boomer’s’ (yee-gads, that’s me a baby boomer). Today’s generation are active producers of material in today’s digital age. This has rippling effects in schools, in that students do not wish to be passive students in a teacher centred classroom but want to be active students in a student centred classroom that has structure. The current educational model is not appropriate for this era that deals with knowledge.
Many of the concepts dealt within his book, Wikinomics, can be related to things that are happening within the Horizon 2008 Project. Some of the concepts include:
- the project itself is not teacher centred but student centred
- teachers take on the role of facilitators to direct students to relevant data or to provide enough data that the students can derive a correct conclusion
- activities have been developed to encourage collaboration between students in different time zones
- upon completion of the Horizon 2008 Project, it is hoped that the students will appreciate things in a more global perspective rather than perspectives determined by political boundaries
- students (and teachers) will further develop 21 Century research skills using specific technologies and practices such as the use of delicious
- students (and teachers) will use technologies to further collaboration (use of the Horizon wiki)
- students (and teachers) will use technologies to further networking (use of the Horizon Ning)
- peer to peer revision mechanisms are in place so that a team’s end product may be improved
- specific events will take place within the project that were not expected nor planned eg. the creation of groups within the Ning site
- students will work in an environment that is open
- students will be offered opportunities to share
- students will be offered the opportunity to interact with ‘experts’ in their team topic
- the project offers the opportunity where ideas and concepts may be explored in depth
- the project offers the opportunity to produce a unique end product after synthesising the information that has been made available
It is a pleasure to note that Don Tapscott accepted the invitation to be the keynote speaker for the Horizon 2008 Project because so much of what is in ‘Wikinomics’ is being implemented within the Horizon 2008 Project. It is ’spine tingling’ when one observes ‘theory’ being put into practice.
‘Wikinomics’ compliments very much the concepts introduced in the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Freidman.
Of course, much kudos goes to Julie Lindsay and Vickie Davis for bringing all of this together. Words fail me when trying to describe the brilliance of the Horizon 2008 Project.
Horizon2008 Project: itsie witzie contributions April 12, 2008
Posted by Steve in Musing, hz08.Tags: hz08
add a comment
The Horizion 2008 Project is gaining momentum and observing the activities is fascinating and highly motivating.
I’ve focused on the team that is dealing with Collective Intelligence. The first few entries from students that did not involve social introductions focused on the meaning of the group topic.
I found as a teacher I could not help myself. I felt compelled to add an entry that attempted to give some added material but did not give the game away, so to speak.
I followed the group discussion for awhile and I was fearful that the group was still not getting it. Again I tried to contribute something that would not interfere with the duties of the project leader. I created a short audio recording based on a section from “Wikinomics” since I knew the author was going to be the keynote speaker for 2008. I used Audacity to blend in some background music that was copyright free off of the Internet.
I have also been adding potential bookmarks to Diigo that may assist the Collective Intelligence group in their research or at least ideas for a multimedia artifact. At first I was only contributing bookmarks to the Collective Intelligence group but slowly realised I could contribute bookmarks to the other groups as well.
It is safe to say, that as a teacher, I am also growing not to mention those students involved in the project.
Elluminate and New South Wales (Oz State) April 12, 2008
Posted by Steve in CSTA, Elearning, Web2.0.Tags: elluminate, hz08, webcollaboration
add a comment
The Computing Studies Teachers Association (CSTA) is preparing to run their Inservice on May 19th. The inservice consists of several workshops that run concurrently and participants choose which workshop they will attend. One of the workshops will be on Elluminate, web collaboration software.
The inservice will be held at Riverside Girls High School, Sydney, and it is an Education Department school. This in turn means that filtering and security is tight, often too tight for progressive teachers. Because of this security, I initiated a series of steps to test out various things to make sure we indeed can run a successful Elluminate session at Riverside Girls High School.
Courtesy of coolcatteacher, I became aware that Elluminate was offering a free 12 month subscription for their lite version. Consequently, I subscribed on behalf of my school.
I created a virtual room and asked a couple of computing teachers to attempt to login and if successful we would interact about VET IT. One of the teachers was from rural New South Wales and was not able to login from her department school. The other teacher was able to login from an internet hotspot at one of the cafes near a meeting he was attending. The unsuccessful login was a learning objective in its own right.
My next step was to create a virtual room on April 8th that was open for 24 hours, advertise it on csteachers (the csta’s electronic forum), and monitor the successful logins or lack thereof. It was very interesting. Most teachers could not log in from their schools. Messages flew back and forth on csteachers that tried to resolve the settings that were needed. A very few number of department schools succeeded. Most teachers that tried from home outside of school hours were successful. (Phew!)
Prior to the April 8th experiment, Elluminate was little known. However, after the experiment, most computing teachers at least know the title of the software.
We did discover that Riverside Girls High School can indeed access an Elluminate room through the department infrastructure. We are not sure why other department schools are unable to gain access. This in turn means that we have a high percentage chance of success to run an Elluminate session at our May 19th meeting.
Failing that, the presenter will have his own laptop with mobile broadband capability to access the Elluminate virtual room and present in a physical classroom and in a virtual room for the teachers in rural New South Wales.
Here’s to a successful Elluminate session!
The end goal is to be able to offer some CSTA workshops through web collaboration software so that teachers in rural NSW will not be so professionally isolated.
