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Horizon Project 2008, a Beginning of a Chapter February 8, 2008

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horizonproj08_1.pngFebruary 7, 2008 saw me getting up early and participating in the initial online conference that had to do with the Horizon Project 2008. Interested people were from such places as Austria, Spain, Melbourne, Qatar and of course North America. The effort that Julie Lindsay and Vickie Davis have put in and will be putting in is amazing.

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:

Specific websites that relate to the Horizon Project 2008 include:

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.”

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Elluminate Training January 5, 2008

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elluminate Elluminate TrainingI did attend some live online training with Elluminate during January that required me to be up at 3am! Some interesting points on Moderating were:

Part One:

Part Two consisted of:

Sharing tools:

Web Tour:

Part Three consisted of:

Breakout rooms

Notes:

File transfer:

Record session:

Year 9 Information and Software Technology Test Generator January 1, 2008

Posted by Steve in Elearning, Information, Web2.0.
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I will be teaching the Year 9 Information & Software Technology course for the first time in 2008 and I am looking forward to it. I hope to use some strategies that have been written in Web2.0 discussions. The first topic that I will do will be Digital Media but the focus will be on printed media. We will leave multi-media for a later time.

During my initial preparation and research, I discovered my textbook by David Grover was included in Course Compass and that an online presence is a definite possibility. Unfortunately, students need access codes to gain access to the course which will cost $7.60 each. I can afford that to come out of my budget.

testgen_login Year 9 Information and Software Technology Test GeneratorAmong several facilities, is an application entitled “TestGen” for test generator and the version is 7.4.1. The idea is to create a test on your computer and upload it to the IST course in Course Compass. I did some initial experimentation starting off with 5 multiple choice questions and uploaded them to the site. It worked quite well. I came unstuck trying to create True / False questions. I have not been able to indicate which alternative is the correct response. After several hours of trying different things and combinations, I gave up and sent a question to the Support Team. I did have to wait longer than 24 hours for a reply since it was the weekend. A correct solution was offered but it was NOT straight forward NOR were there a special set of instructions for the True / False type. It was not intuitive.

Technical glitches such as this hurts the online, elearning concept. It has to work if teachers are going to take it up across the curriculum. Course Compass is based on Blackboard but I did not find this out immediately. I assumed a commercial product should be operational and intuitive. Perhaps I will be proven incorrect and should have gone the Moodle route for a learning management system?

Conceptually, I am excited by the possibilities and can see some innovative experimentation happening. Technical glitches, please stay away! Sigh.

Postscript:

Web2.0 Journey, 2007 December 29, 2007

Posted by Steve in CSTA, Elearning, Musing, Web2.0.
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quilt Web2.0 Journey, 2007The Web2.0 journey in 2007 has been quite a learning experience and has resulted in quite a shift in thinking as well as having impact upon my comfort zone in terms of privacy.

My first dip of my toe into the waters of Web2.0 involved the purchase of my current RSSfeeddemon Web2.0 Journey, 2007 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.

yahoogroup Web2.0 Journey, 2007For 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 Swedenmyspace Web2.0 Journey, 2007 (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.

facebook Web2.0 Journey, 2007Later 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 crammedvirtualstaff Web2.0 Journey, 2007 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 wordpress Web2.0 Journey, 2007set 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 Betcherpodcast Web2.0 Journey, 2007 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.

wiki Web2.0 Journey, 2007I 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 duringcstalogogray50_50transparent Web2.0 Journey, 2007 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.

twitter Web2.0 Journey, 2007In 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:

Google Talk / Reader: ZAPPO December 20, 2007

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googletalk2 Google Talk / Reader: ZAPPOgoogletalk2 Google Talk / Reader: ZAPPOThis 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!

Flat Classroom Project Student Awards December 20, 2007

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flatlogo Flat Classroom Project Student AwardsI have been attempting to get involved in the 2007 Flat Classroom Project but I was not able to keep up with the pace of progress by the organisers.  They have not one site, but two sites: one a wiki and the other a ning, with the ning being the newer concept.

It was very dense reading and a significant amount of material to assimulate. About the time I thought I had internalised a concept, a new event or activity took place and I was again left in the wake.  I had tentative thoughts about involving our school students but I was just a bit too far behind.  Regardless, I knew our students were very capable of producing reasonable quality videos.

While I didn’t get actively involved, I did join the Ning as an observer and watched the series of events unfold.  The task of the students were to produce a video on a given theme but they had to work with students in other timezones and the vision had to come from two or more different schools. 

The students were asked to post a ‘Reflection’ onto the Ning site. As a reflection was posted, I watched their video and left a comment which seemed to be appreciated. The students knew they had an audience.

Below are links to the winners of the Flat Classroom Project:

Winner 1.a.1 Theme: Connecting the World Online
Title: A Ring for Jimmy
Student Name: Amalia B. - LACHSA, USA

Winner 2.c.12 Theme: How the WWW has changed the World
Title: Impact on Life
Student Name: Carmyn S. - LACHSA, USA

Winner 3.b.17 Theme: How workflow software has enhanced productivity and communication
Title: Workflow Software and Students
Student Name: Fatma M. - QA, Qatar

Winner 4.a.20 Theme: The Changing Shape of Information
Title: Semantic Assistant
Student Name: Sarah H. - Westwood, USA

Winner 5.b.31 Theme: Why we should be promoting Web 2.0 tools for sharing information
Title: What is Web 2.0?
Student Name: Betsy B. - Westwood, USA

6.b.39  Theme: Globalisation and Outsourcing.
Title: Who is Affected by Outsourcing?
Student Name: Patty - SAS, China

Winner 7.c.48 Theme: Google Takes Over the World
Title: Google and the World
Student Name: Michael R - MICDS, USA

Winner 8.b.52 Theme: Personal learning environments and social networking
Title: Blog Heroes
Student Name: Zak S - LACHSA, USA

Winner 9.c.62 Theme: Mobile and Ubiquitous
Title: Fun and Convenient World
Student Name: Megan S - LACHSA, USA

Winner 10.a.64 Theme: Virtual Communication
Title: Virtual Communication: Design & Innovation
Student Name: Perola L. - QA, Qatar

Winner 11.b.77 Theme: Wireless Connectivity
Title: No Wireless=No Internet=No Life
Student Name: Amir N. - QA, Qatar

Lad Bypasses Gov’t Internet Filter December 19, 2007

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tomwoods2 Lad Bypasses Govt Internet FilterI was listening to an EdTechTalk interview that involved one Tom Woods.  Tom was the lad that allegedly hacked the Australian Federal Government’s Internet Filter software.  According to Tom, he didtomwoods Lad Bypasses Govt Internet Filter not actually hack into the system at code level.  He used different techniques to try to bypass the filter which he successfully accomplished.  The media blew the event out of proportion.  Tom and his peers developed different strategies for bypassing the internet filters used at their school.  Tom basically used the same strategies to humble an umpteem million dollar project.

He has become rather famous throughout Australia. During the interview, Tom came across as a level headed 16 year old teenager.  Others must have thought so as well.  He made mention that a huge amount of media has been clamouring for his input.  In addition, various government departments have invited him to join in evaluations / discussions of various aspects of the Internet.  Not bad for a 16 year old.

Can a person make a difference?  In this case, a 16 year old lad seems to be doing just that.

SIMERR December 16, 2007

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simerr2 SIMERRSIMERR  stands for: Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia.

This entity was responsible for distributing funds to different organisations whose task was to look at the problems / difficulties that are experienced by students and teachers in rural Australia.  A comprehensive list of activities took place during 2006 and 2007 but it has yet to be seen if these activities will actually have impact.

The computing area had specific activities to focus on. In 2005 the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) was successful in obtaining a grant. Each Computing Education Group (CEG) in each Australian state was given a task to carry out. The NSWCEG asked the CSTA to participate. 

The CSTA had a group of people meet over a weekend where they came up with a large list of Bookmarks that were placed at the Delicious site. It is envisaged that rural teachers and students will find some of the bookmarks useful. It is also acknowledged that those areas that have broadband will be able to make more use of the bookmarks.  It is my understanding that the different CEG activities will be collated onto a CD.  I would imagine it will be distributed to rural schools. 

A national portal will be set up in early 2008. The national portal will comprise of resources for computing studies teachers. It will contain information about resources of existing networks, resources from the rural and regional projects hosted by the CEGs and information about any related sites.

It is envisaged that a new server using Open Source applications, services and online tools will be established for professional learning and / or to explore new ideas with classes. This is particularly focused on schools that are not yet offering such services.

An online survey was undertaken late in 2006 to profile the state of the teaching of Computing Studies in secondary schools in rural and regional areas and consider the needs of Computing Studies teachers in these areas. The survey gathered data about the teacher’s school, the teaching of IT in their school, the profile of the teacher and their professional learning needs.. 

A total of 343 computing studies teachers from across Australia completed the survey. Results from the survey will inform any future actions that ACCE may undertake as a result of the National Summit and this Discussion Paper.

A National Summit took place in Adelaide October 5, 6 & 7th with the theme Open Learning Approaches to Computing Studies. 

The goals of the Summit were:

•      increased awareness and understanding of how to ensure equity of learning outcomes for students of computing studies regardless of school or location

•      the publication of a discussion paper and recommendations for the future in relation to the issues around the use of technologies and appropriate pedagogies to deliver quality computing studies program to all students, particularly in rural and regional Australia.

The goals were achieved by:

•   scoping the existing territory in relation to open/distance learning

•   sharing existing teacher exemplary practice

•   exploring relevant online delivery systems and appropriate pedagogies to support open/distance learning

•   showcasing possibilities for the future

•   identifying and sharing resources.

The Summit was attended by in excess of 45 computing studies teachers and other educators from every state and territory. In addition, 41 computing studies teachers registered to participate in the Summit online from around Australia via Centra - an internet based conferencing and meeting tool. Access to Centra was provided courtesy of the South Australian Department of Education and Children Services

Glenda (Past CSTA President) and I attended the National Summit and it was very good to see how the rest of the states had participated.  There were several guest speakers and the entire summit was broadcast via Centra and the South Australian Education Department. One facilitor presented from Queensland in real time to we, the audience, in South Australia.

It is hoped that there will be more practical activities undertaken to give assistance to those in rural Australia. It was a satisfying experience to be involved in the creation of the Delicious bookmarks and to attend the National Summit where the loose ends came together.

CSTA 2007 December 14, 2007

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cstalogogray50_50transparent CSTA 20072007 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.

Status 6 December 14, 2007

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ReflectIt 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: