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!

I had committed myself to the Horizon Project 2008 but concluded I was unable to meet with a group of students for an hour a week outside the normal timetable. I had to withdraw and that irked me to no end. I will need to run with a collaboration project with a class in the future.

My Year 9 IST class has been enrolled in Course Compass. It is like Moodle but based on Blackboard. The real time communication modules had promise but more often than not, falls over and is not effective. Sending emails to the class in one hit is efficient. It turns out, the animations on Course Compass are far too few. I guess I am not structured enough to run with Course Compass. I know where I want to be at the end of a week but interruptions causes me to adjust to a lesson by lesson basis, especially if a number of students are missing.

I have spent many hours preparing and dealing with Computing Studies Teacher’s Association administration. Many hours went into preparation for the 2008 Annual General Meeting. Overall, the sessions went off well and the actual Annual General Meeting went off without a hitch. Thankfully, I prepared an itemised agenda to go through. I almost forgot to do it. The committee members were terrific in carrying out their specific tasks be it purchasing supplies for the weekend and filling in various gaps. Unfortunately, the parking at the venue was too expensive and we won’t be returning there in 2009. The evaluations gave the venue the thumbs down. Due to circumstances, the Secretary ended up doing the job of three people since two were not available due to family circumstances. He deserves a commendation medal.

The new CSTA committee has met for the first time and the character of the committee will change. The committee is now up to 20 from 15 which is a vast improvement. Again, I have spent many hours preparing the Inservice forms for the May meeting as well as communing with the 10 presenters. I place documents on Google Docs for collaboration and to allow those committee members interested to see where things are headed.

It appears I will need to spend quite a bit of time reviewing, learning new programming languages. It looks like I have to move away from VB 6 and move onto VB 2008 Express, RealBasic and Scratch.

My first dip of my toe into the waters of Web2.0 involved the purchase of my current RSS Reader, Feed Demon. I chose it because it was rated very well amongst reviewers. I didn’t know what a RSS feeder was at the time but I suspected I would find uses for it. (Indeed I did). Shortly after I purchased Feed Demon, it was purchased by Newsgator which allowed me to view my feeds from a web page anywhere in the world. I used this as I was in North America Christmas 2006.

The school sent me to Melbourne for a 3 day eLearning conference that was excellent. Basically, one chose a particular workshop which lasted for an hour and the presenters went to each others sessions as well. Most were very worthwhile. In addition there were physical breakout rooms where themes were discussed as well as an auditorium session every 3 or 4 hours. Again, they were excellent as well. I wrote up a lengthy summary for the school and presented it to them in January 2007. No specific concepts were taken up, but a general sense of direction seemed to be undertaken.

For the past 10 years I have been using http://groups.yahoo.com with my Year 12 students to assist them. I was also one of the founding people of csteachers which links some 400 teachers nation wide. Using electronic information systems has not been a new concept to me. I also used the same organisation for use with the Honours Program as described in a previous post.

As I was snow bound in North America during January 2006 and my daughter was in Sweden (who had setup a My Space account), I undertook creating a My Space account for myself and attempted to match my daughter’s quality. I learned a few new concepts, but since I have not kept it updated during 2007, it has not been of much use to me.

Later in 2007 I created an account with Face Book assuming some of my students made use of it. Face Book seems to have more value and I have been contacted by a couple of students from former schools as well as a teacher from Danebank. My social network could expand using this. My daughters seem to be into it ‘big time.’

Chris Betcher set up a podcasting site entitled the Virtual Staffroom which is a repository of his podcasts that have to do with education and technology. The first couple of episodes dealt with the basics of Web2.0 and a huge amount of conceptual and valuable information was crammed into the podcasts. In addition, I followed Chris’ blog site which modelled what could be done within a blog site. He seems to be at the forefront of any advance that seems to be made in the blogging world. I used Chris’ site as a jumping board to other blog sites which started my way into networking with other educationalists. I subscribed to the blog sites that were of interest to me. Hence, social networking had its hook into me.

Term 1, 2006 saw me attending a number of inservices that included the use of audacity, podcasting and blogging. I was not able to attend an inservice on Wikis due to time conflicts. I spent considerable time exploring my blogging options with students. In fact, I had set up two different sites but realised that I needed to be able to edit each student’s blog if there was a need. Our IT person, Andrew, suggested a different site but eventually I settled on Wordpress multi-user since I knew it. I was NOT willing to learn the idiosyncracies of other blogging software. Eventually, TIGS created its own Wordpress multi-user site which I used with my Year 8 Technology class and the Honours Program Participants. Surprisingly, the students didn’t jump at the chance to use a blog as a whole. I am still mulling that over. I suspect it is a time crunch thing. The use of blogs with students had mixed success.

The same can be said for podcasting. I went to an inservice on it, used an idea that Chris Betcher had used previously and implemented it in my Year 8 Technology class. We used Audacity (yes, I attended an inservice on that). The students worked in groups and were quite receptive to the concepts. The end products were of wide ranging quality. Unfortunately, we were unable to upload the end products to their blog site due to the site being down during school hours. I hope to minimise this with our own independent site.

I have not been a strong advocate of the wiki but I think that is because of my involvement with other electronic information systems over the past decade. However, I did allow a couple of my Year 11 IPT students create a wiki for one of their assessment tasks. They did quite well in terms of content and their efforts nudged open my mind a bit more. My involvement as an observer in the Flat Classroom Project Wiki as well as the TIGS wiki site has further opened my mind in the use of it. Having said that, using a Ning seems to be an alternative.

Some of the Web2.0 services tied in with the Computing Studies Teachers Association during 2007. The CSTA created and used the Delicious bookmarking site for the Simerr project as described in a previous post. I attended a National Computing Summit in Adelaide that focused on Web2.0 services. And lastly, I have made extensive use of docs.google.com to share agendas and workshop inservice assignments for each meeting. This has encouraged collaboration between the committee members.

In late 2007, I was introduced to Twitter where one sends a message in 140 characters or less. I thought it was the most inane piece of software I had ever come across. However, I have changed my mind. It is real time. It allows for social linking, not social thinking as carried out in a blog. My social network expanded by looking at the Followers list in other twitters. Because of twitter I became aware of some significant events in the cybersphere such as EdTechTalk and K12 Online.

Future:

• I would hope that in the near future I will be able to consolidate podcasting and blogging in a couple of my classes.
• I anticipate to be further trained in Elluminate (video conferencing software).
• I hope to get one of my classes involved in a collaborative project with another group of students in a different time zone.
• TIGS will be involved with the Value Added Exchange program run in conjunction with other schools. I assume I will want to monitor it because it is a new concept. It is not widely advertised since it is in its pilot phase.
• I will NOT be exploring the different aspects of Second Life due to time constraints and my fear of becoming too impressed with it.

This may be the only time that I write about a new product that is only 5 or 6 days old. I can see that the product’s use and review is zapping around the blog world at a rapid pace.

Unfortunately for me, I was NOT a user of Google titles but that could be changing. Google Reader is a nifty RSS feed reader that is free.  Too bad it didn’t exist before I purchased my first RSS feed reader, Feed Demon, which is now syncronised with Newsgator. However, it took little or no effort to export from Feed Demon my RSS feeds and import them into Google Reader.

Next I downloaded Google Talk.  Registering was a bit of a problem because I insisted on using my main email account, not Gmail and I have no intention of using it excepting in emergencies.  It took a little bit of preserverance to get Google Talk operational.

John Pederson (via Twitter) added me to his Friends List within Google Talk.  John also Shared a number of his specific blog posts through Google Reader which in turn allows any of his Friends to read the specific Blogs as well. Neat.  (Google Reader and Google Talk now interact with each other).

This seems to have a lot of potential and ties a lot of loose ends together into a possible central place.  I am confident it will be one of those concepts that will evolve as the months progress.

Certainly, as a result, my social networking contacts are expanding at a good rate globally and the contacts are high calibre.  I am learning so many new things from them!

2007 saw myself elected as the President of the Computing Studies Teachers Association as the past President, Glenda, desired to step aside since she had been President for a number of years.

I spent considerable time going through the past minutes and other documents to get a feel as to what needed to be carried out specifically. The core business of the CSTA is an easy one: inservice computing teachers once a term on a Monday evening at a school in the Sydney urban area.

The members voted with their feet and the number of participants at our inservices continued to be between 110 and 140 people at each inservice.  The quality of the workshops are the key to the continued, impressive numbers.

A different strategy evolved when it came to assigning sessions to presenters. From research, I emailed several willing presenters that had not been used in the past and they all gave the ‘thumbs up’.  However, instead of organising just one inservice, I found I was co-ordinating the three other inservices as well since presenters were not always available on the desired date. Most of the presenters came outside the committee in 2007 and that took some pressure off the committee.

I also took up the option to make use of docs.google.com where I uploaded the proposed agendas for each meeting as well as the proposed session assignments. This allowed for transparency in the decision making processes and it allowed the committee to see what I was on about.  This software truly allows for proper collaboration where committee members can have input at their convenience.

The CSTA has been involved with the changes of the current IPT syllabus for a number of years.  Thanks to Bill Biddle who provided the continuity for the lengthy process. The end result is a changed syllabus that encourages teachers to focus on practical projects that integrates several concepts.  Of course, we hope that the changes will attract more students to our course.

A sub-committee successfully printed out the Certificates for inservice participation over the past three years. Hopefully, the printing will be carried out once or twice a year.

A sub-commitee has been investigating the revamping of the CSTA website which is ordinary at best.  Joomla has been chosen as the content management system and the new site should come online at the end of 2007 or early 2008.  It was vital that it interacted with the current scripting that takes place in the background.

The new website development had a rippling impact in that the CSTA logo was deemed to ancient and needed to be updated, hence, a new logo was created.

The CSTA was involved in the SIMERR project where we collated a huge number of bookmarks with Delicious. Several people worked on this over a weekend at Bowral. We received some funds from a grant to carry out this task. The funds went to reducing the cost of accommodation and hiring of a conference room over the weekend. A second group focused on the proposed changes to the IPT syllabus.

I attended my first Professional Teachers’ Council where we as an association received a certificate acknowledging the efforts we have given to education over the past year.  In addition our nominee, Ellen Sheerin, received an Exceptional Service Award. It was a satisfying evening.

The committee members are the best group of people I have ever worked with and it is very fulfilling to work with people that are on the same page as oneself. It is a good opportunity for me to network with other computing teachers since there are now so few in schools.

2008 sees the CSTA Annual General Meeting moved to Macquarie University where we hope to make use of facilities that may not be found in high schools.  It is hoped that we can increase the membership of the committee in the near future.

csta web20 ipt

It has been many months since my last entry.  It is indicative of the busy life that is led by everyone.  I have carried out a lot of experimentation with my classes with mixed success and I have been doing a lot of research on how the 21C student is being short changed by the education system.

The busy life has rotated around family, school, the Computing Studies Teachers Association and the selling of our current house.  I anticipate that the next few entries will be some reflection on:

• Computing Studies Teachers Association (CSTA)
• SIMERR Project
• Honours Program
• Students’ blog site
• Skype
• Audacity, Podcasting
• Elluminate
• Photo Story 3
• Jing
• Ning
• Twitter
• Delicious

I finally finished a significant book entitled: The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.  It appears to me to be the most significant book since Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’.

The videos that have been referred to on this site actually make use of the concepts that have been explored in the text.  Basically, the text has stated that due to recent events, technology has made the world flat and it will have impact upon our society.  Some of the main points that come to mind:

• Our education system prepares students for assembly line type work which is no longer applicable because the likes of S. Korea, Taiwan, India and China are carrying out the actual manufacturing.
• Our education system needs to SHIFT its focus.  We need to make use of technology to aid in the shift of focus.
• The ability to synthesise material from different areas and be able to explain the concepts in a simple manner is a needed skill in the future.
  • those students who take up music, drama or take up a hobby in-depth, tend to develop these type of people
  • hence, the Arts are necessary to aid in the development of the holistic student
  • in the Pacific Northwest of America, schools have shut down their arts programmes due to financial considerations.
• The ability to collaborate with others will be essential where distance is no longer a factor.
• People will need to be able to interact with the public readily.
• India has the ability to do everyone’s taxes since they are an educated population.  Australian accountants beware! the Indians can do it overnight!
• Within accounting, those people who create new concepts will be the ones that will be retained.
• The flattening of the earth will create more job opportunities but small businesses will evolve that hire 5 – 10 people as compared a company hiring 50.
• Business structures will become more horizontal as compared to vertical.
• Web 2.0 services on the web (workflow software) will allow businesses to work smarter not harder. They will be able to let the software do the administrative work on the web which in turn allows the owners to concentrate on their core business.  [Triple Convergence 1]
  • eg. the advent of e-tickets for airline reservations.  The consumer is doing the work of clerical staff.
• Different businesses will need to connect to each other and collaborate with each other rather than the old ‘command and control’.  (Supply chains for the likes of Woolworths, Aldi). Emphasises ‘just in time’ strategy.  [Triple Convergence 2]
• 3 billion more people have joined the market place with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the USSR and the entry of countries like India and China.  [Triple Convergence 3]
  • this will increase the size of the market as Indians and Chinese develop their middle class as consumers
  • communication technology allows the Indians and Chinese to carry out tasks that used to be reserved for respective countries.  eg. call centres, and production of Interactive White Boards in Canada (which most probably will move to China).
• The education system will need to shift to encourage students to be able to design, develop and create.  Technology such as video editing is a natural mechanism to encourage these skills. The likes of podcasting, blogging, NoteIT, wikis and other Web 2.0 services also are other mechanisms that can help encourage ‘the swinging voters’ (swinging students) to become engaged in their schooling.
• The development of high order thinking skills is still the top skill to develop but technology should be able to compliment those subjects that develop high order thinking skills in their own way.
• Currently there have been strong statements that ‘homework’ should be abandoned and not so much demands placed on students outside of school hours.
  • if we adopt this attitude, Australia will become less competitive with its brainpower
  • the next generation may have to work harder to maintain its quality of life

These are just a few of the points that come to mind.  It is apparent to me that the education system needs to re-think its focus.  No one will change their ways too much if the New South Wales Higher School Certificate Exams remains in its current state: that is a 3 hour written exam for each subject.

Technorati: Web2.0

The IT assistant at school, Andrew Greenlees, has worked tirelessly over the Easter break to figure out how to use WordPress Multi-user at the school’s additional domain website: tigs.com.au    I haven’t quite figured out how we are a commercial entity as compared to an organisation or an educational entity.  It looks like Andrew has successfully met all the criteria that I set.  In the long run, it means a much cheaper alternative as compared to using EduBlogs Premium for the school.  We will start the Honours students off first.  Semester Two will see a rotation of Technology classes and we will add the new classes at that time.

Of course, the site is available to any subject who wishes to make use of a blog.

The videos on this site have at least a message to get across to mainly teachers.  It appears that there is great resistance to the use of Technology in the classroom.  I tend to dispute that, especially at my current place of employment.  If the Web2.0 services cannot be used to promote the high order of thinking, then it isn’t being used to its potential.  Developing a quiz program (drill and grill) is not high order thinking in my opinion. Technology should compliment what already exists.  It is not meant to replace current strategies.

For me, the most difficult skill to develop in students is the ability to show relationships between concepts in writing. Why writing? because the Year 12 Three Hour Exam is a written one and that is what we teachers are building up to.

It is more important for students to be involved in the creative process using technology.  They need to create the Podcast, they need to create the Blog and they need to create the short 3 – 5 minute video.  This ‘Project Work’ integrates all the facets of learning.  After they create the end products, they will be more critical of the mass of digital data that is bombarding them.  We hope that the multi-media tasks also helps develop that ability to show relationships between concepts.

Yes, the students are digital students.  They make use of the iPod, mobile phone, digital camera but that does not make them critical users.  Activities need to be developed to nudge the development of analysis and critical thinking.

The use of Web2.0 services are another bunch of activities that we can place in our teachers’ “bag of tricks”.

Technorati: elearning, Web2.0