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.

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.

I was able to get quite a discussion going in my Year 9 Information Software and Technology class. A question came up that was something like, “Why should it be a big thing that we download music and the such for free?” The resulting discussion was very impressive and we went quite in depth. One of the better questions was, “Why is it that so many law abiding, ordinary citizens have used software to download so many television shows from Europe and North America?” I’ll let your imagination run with that one.

Those students that have been involved in the Values Exchange program were pleased that they were able to add their comments and were somewhat surprised that topics from another subject area may be relevant to other subject areas. Ah, they are beginning to see outside their eye blinkers.

I was able to contribute a wee little bit to the Horizon Project 2008. There was a request from the Horizon organisers for a teacher to facilitate a wiki page where the focus was on safe use of the nings and wikis that were being used for the project. I volunteered to carry out the request. On the wiki page I even created an animated gif which I had to learn how to do in Photoshop CS3. The teachers seemed to be impressed with the tone of the page. Strangely, no student as actually contributed to the wiki page indicating specifically what should be written or not in regards to safe use of a ning or wiki eg. user first name with surname initial only NOT first name and surname fully. Having said that, I noticed the students had amended many of their entries.

I was unable to participate in the Horizon Project 2008 weekly Elluminate meeting but I did watch the recording which was very informative. There was a request to proofread their initial 5 templates that will eventually expand to 65. I did find a couple of “typo” errors. It was easier to fix the same type three times as compared to 65 times! Again, I was able to contribute just a little bit.

I noticed that the Judges link became active and I have been the first to jump in and list my name as a Judge for the Collective Intelligence section. I chose that because it was one of the two case studies that I submitted to the Values Exchange pilot program. I next book marked a few web pages that may have a bearing on collective intelligence which in turn will be listed through a RSS feed on the Horizion Project 2008 wiki pages.

Standardised tagging strategies are being used in the Horizon Project. If one enters: http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+collectiveintelligence, a listing of book marks world wide which have been tagged with hzo8 and collectiveintelligence are listed. This is a very powerful mechanism.

During the course of events with the Horizon Project 2008, it was announced that the keynote speaker would be Dan Tapscott, author of Wikinomics. So off to Sydney I went on Saturday to purchase the text and I also ordered via Amazon, “Look Both Ways, Help Protect Your Family on the Internet” by Linda Criddle. This was a result of the safety issues raised and the text was mentioned by Vickie Davis.

Over the weekend, I investigated Diigo. It was taking the world by storm in terms of acceptance and people joining it. Seemingly, I was one of the first to gain membership. The site seems to streamline and bring a lot of activities that are carried out by other applications to just one place. I like that! While I am a convert to it and will abandon Delicious, I would not necessarily make use of it in the classroom because Diigo is a social networking entity and that is very sensitive to many parents. Some of things it does includes:

• book marking but with annotations if one chooses, great for research on the Web
• writing an entry to your blog site
• writing a Twitter entry
• sending one’s bookmark to Delicious automatically
• sending snippets to one’s Facebook page
• sharing one’s bookmarks to one’s Friends or Groups eg. Horizon Project 2008
• installing small applications that interacts with FireFox’s tool bar
• can use one’s profile from other services such as FaceBook or Twitter
• one can standardise the Tags that are used
• dead easy to import bookmarks from Delicious

These are a few of its abilities and my sub-conscious will be processing all the experimentation that I have carried.

Phew, what a week!

Plan B was to just involve my Year 9 Information and Software Technology class. Unfortunately, a significant number are committed to the “Values Exchange” online project that is described in a previous post. That teacher is having the same difficulty: trying to nominate a time where all students can meet. Since we were committed to the Values Exchange project first, I thought it only fair that it be given priority.

We had hoped that the students involved in the “Values Exchange” program would complete that and rotate to the Horizon Project which would be also counted toward fulfilling requirements to achieve the school’s Scholarship Medallion. Perhaps we can do this with the next Flatclassroom Project if it continues.

There is a possibility that a smaller and younger group of students consisting mostly of Year Eights may still want to go through the motions of participating.

I have contacted the organisers and explained my situation. I have volunteered to take on whatever other duties that may be required for the Horizon Project 2008 to succeed.

Sigh.

We used the video conferencing software Elluminate that seemed to easily cope with the 20 odd participants. The audio was very clear from all participants (which indicated they had the proper headsets with microphones). Julie and Vickie easily co-presented the initial session and Alan Levine, a contributor to the Horizon Project 2008 document gave an impromptu speech. It was quite seamless. I have severe doubts that I could handle moderating an Elluminate session and read the back channel at the same time. These people are obviously very experienced in participating in audio events.

An approximate timeline:

• March: research component, pre-project survey to be given, front loading anticipated
  
• April: teams allocated, wiki introduced, perhaps videos to watch, keynote speech given
• May: complete video, resourcing, summits, post-survey, post-project reflections

Specific websites that relate to the Horizon Project 2008 include:

• http://horizonproject2008.ning.com/
• http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com/
• groups.google.com site which will be used privately just for involved educationalists.

I have bitten the bullet and have volunteered a mixture of Year 8 – 11 students to participate. I expect 10 – 15 students to be involved. We will have our first meeting during Week 3 of our new school year. The school certainly has the video editing facilities. We need to tap into the expertise of one or two staff members in regards to planning storyboards and video angle shots. I am fine with the technical aspects but not so good with the creative side of things.

I am looking forward to all the challenges and the learning experiences that will take place with both my students and myself.

I can see that if the momentum is established and a number of guest speakers are used, “mass collaborations will change everything.”

The following is a tagging standard — you can add examples of your own using delicious.
2008 tagged items http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08

• Grassroots Video http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+video
• Collaboration Webs http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+virtualcollab
• Mobile Broadband http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+mobile
• Data Mashups http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+mashups
• Collective Intelligence http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+collectiveintelligence
• Social Operating Systems http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+socialos