Cyberbullying forum

This weeks forum on cyberbullying was a day well spent out of the office. New (and young) faces from across Aus gave a welcome mix of opinion- the highlight was the two keynotes- Donna Cross (Edith Cowan) and Marylin Campbell (QUT). But also the student voices-some of which contradicted the conventional wisdom. One thing was clear legislative and technical preventative measures are not the solution. We need a whole of community approach, to behavioural change. This includes resilience training. For too long I think we (as a Dept) have sheltered behind techhical protection- kidding ourselves its a ’solution’ which has detracted from more educational/behavioural based approaches. Also we need to remind everyone (esp parents) that access to the www and social  networking technologies are of high educational value.  The tools we are introducing will ensure that students have the opptunity to use these constructively- modelling good practise and pedagogical benefit.

 

BlogEd

The DET blog (BlogEd) is nearing full release – dates to be confirmed for Term 4. Below I’ve summarised key features which differentiate it from any ‘open’ blog. I’ll post a slide show after the hols.

 

What does C21 learning look like?

Yesterdays seminar What does C21 learning  look like? – interesting day with Mark Pesce doing a great job of hosting what could be argued to be an event dominated by vendor interests. This was the formal agenda but thanks to an undercurrent in the twitter back channel, a parallel commentary was running.  Mark & Gary Putland tried to bring the channel into the mainstream conference. This is becoming an emerging  aspect to the conference format– with the informal chat running ‘underneath’ – both with conference attendees and those outside.  But maybe at the end of the day  its the more potent discourse. Provided some tweets below which captured the undercurrent. Must get an IPhone…

 

C21 Learning

A good discussion running on David Warwicks  blog on what is 21s Century learning. Dipping his toe into a muddy puddle, he has offered some succinct points, being careful not discount 20th century practise of- listening, watching, remembering, his following points grow out of these dimensions: questioning your learning experience, engaging your information environment, proving (and disproving) what you find, Constructing (inventing) new learning and knowledge teaching others what you have learned being respected for the power of your learning, and being responsible for your learning and its outcomes.

 

Agile methodologies

With the development of the Learning tools for NSW DET there has been building interest about development methodologies. The traditional waterfall method is well in favour by software developers, but change is happening. Rapid application development underpins most Web 2 technologies and of these methodologies Agile development seems to be getting particular attention. Agile is about easily adapting to changing requirements throughout the process. Agile development is pragmatic in understanding the fact that requirements in a business environment changes constantly. They all incorporate iteration and the continuous feedback that it provides to successively refine and deliver a software system. They all involve continuous planning, continuous testing, continuous integration, and other forms of continuous evolution of both the project and the software.

 

CoPs as subversive agents?

With the world of Web 2.0 comes the need for new strategies for implementing ICT within the organisation. I’m convinced we no longer need to throw buckets of money at f2f training and comms campaigns. Rather pepper the various communities with leaders & messages and use viral techniques to grow the awareness, desire and knowledge for sustained engagement in the technologies. Grow from the grassroots. SMS/Twitter, blogs etc  are quickly becoming the ’feral’ channels for communicating and developing the knowledge base. While these channels might have an important ‘gossip’ factor, they are increasingly critical in  setting the tone surrounding any new stechnologies and ensuring ownership. Firstly among the ‘pioneers’ then early adopters and mid adopters- we need to work smart ensuring these channels are ‘constructively subversive’.

 

NewTube

YouTube is finally available to DET NSW teachers- after years of frustration beating on doors. Access will of course allow teachers to plan, research, display and embed YT videos in their resources, within their working context . One giant step…for liberal access and OER . Now state teachers can enjoy the same access entitled to many private school colleagues. The interesting aspect will be to see what impacts it has on:

• DET produced resources

• Teaching practice in respect to utilising video clips as a valid resource and involving group participation esp. with IWBs

• Use of video as a legitimate presentation form and for student self expression

• Student engagement.

For many students (my kids included) the preferred source of information is through YT and not text based sources, or even Google. They are also furiously loading up clips to YT for personal use and school assignments. Look at the collections building up under any school banner- its becoming a contest between schools and a personal badge of honour for students in building their own portfolios.

 

Sustaining narratives for the news age

The planets seemed to align lately with a few converging themes in relation to boredom thresholds and the atomisation of information. Harry Lewis voice at Googalization of Everything- ‘The factoids are not just instant; they are atomic. We keep e-mails short because people have to process so many of them. Instant messages and “tweets” are rarely more than a few words. They arrive without provenance, historical context or the other side of the story. When we pass them on to our friends, they explode into a cloud of information particles, as identical as hydrogen atoms and as pervasive as nuclear fallout’. And Google is deeply researching and cutting direction to accommodate for this trend. Lisa Pryor’s article also gives an interesting insight as to why the climate change debate is a hard message to sell (in an age where every message needs an instant hook). ‘It is a test god has sent to remind us we’re idiots- because its a problem of modern society which is uniquely unsuited to fixing : the worst consequences are a long way off and we don’t care about a long way off, and the solutions are dull and we don’t care about dull.’

 

Need for an LMS?

Darcy More’s post  on 10 things schools can do to facilitate  implementation of L4L, makes the comment that Moodle for schools is a key strategy. The DET  learning tools applications admittedly have been a little slow to emerge (blog only now in Beta), Wiki due trial for Term 3 and eBackpack to be announced shortly. However I’m confident they will provide the basis for a true eLearning platform-one that will challenge the need (for schools at least) in using LMS solutions.  Yes the use of Moodle has recieved significant interest in schools however the question we need to ask is how are they using Moodle?  I suspect that most NSW schools are using Moodle simjply as a web publishing tool- to publish and store & retrieve resources. Only the  DE/CAP  schools, I’d argue are in anyway significantly utilising Moodle as a LMS- ie tracking student learning experiences, monitoring assessment work, creating collaborative and  shared resources and integrating  all facets of  online learning. LAMS on the other hand- has the potential to offer something different- based on learning design principles. Again its uptake seems restricted to the DE schools in this State.

 

Week one…

Following our launch of the DET blog trial last week, time to take a moment to reflect on a number of break throughs which have occurred in achieving this.
For some it might be a ‘so what’ just another blogging tool but this one consists of three applications: the blog itself, a media library (for private and sharing across DET) and the group builder which facilitates the grouping of blog participants.
A couple of firsts for DET in implementing a new application:
Listening to the field- blog workshops were held last year resulting in a matrix of recommendations for the applications

 

NSW DET Netbooks

Lenovo is certainly getting its expected deal of press on the laptops for schools program. The S10e is an impressive device; for NSW DET- 8-9 hrs battery life, intelligent cycling, RFD/ RFI antitheft tagging-  certainly the company has risen to our spec challenge to produce 250 000 units in a very aggressive time frame. Lenevo is a new company in this space (taking over the IBM part of this market in 2005). So  its interesting to contemplate the commercial advantages of such a deal- triple bottom line- will they get brand loyalty, is it a community service & to what extent can they trade on being the supplier of arguably the single largest educational jurisdiction in the world.?

Watching Gruen transfer tonight –  these questions came to mind- as they showed  how the NY public system met the challenge of increasing attendance rates of its 1.1 million students. Its Million campaign is based the mobile phone. It began with a pilot program of 2800 students in seven schools. Students were each given a mobile phone, which switched between School’s In and School’s Out mode. When the kids were in school, the calling and text functions were deactivated. But that didn’t mean the phone was out of action. Educational software loaded onto the phone meant students could use it for research. It was also a platform for tests. Must check on how this is playing out – and how the students differentiate  between ‘school and personal’ use? Is it possible to achieve this in the one device? Or does that status symbol the mobile phone lose its edge once it is ‘institutionalised’? Maybe some pointers here as we go into the digital revolution.

 

 

Social Media Classroom

Colleague Garth Newton alerted me to this, started by Howard Rheingold late 2008- The Social Media Classroom is a free, open source online teaching tool that incorporates blogs, a wiki, forums, microblogging, social bookmarking, video-sharing, chat, RSS,  within a simple, shared interface.

Based on Drupal, I haven’t downloaded yet but its  the innevitable attempt to integrate these social technologies into a ’single dashboard’ concept. From a distance it seems a rather orthodox (but clumsy) way of doing this (referred to as a ’tool’)- the social media are glued together into one environment.  It is meant to ’supplement’ LMS systems. On the community pages and elsewhere there is little evidence of this having taken hold, and would be interested in any feedback. Brian Christiansens video adds a little more insight.

 

MySpace cadets sliding into addiction

Miranda Devine’s reminder of the perils of technology (SMH April 4) are  timely, given the announcement this week of the $150 million schools laptop rollout. Just as TV did to a generation of children (myself included), we need to ward off the addictive influences of the net. Perhaps too late, as a generation of digital natives are  already walking the earth; collaborating in both formal and informal spaces, jointly constructing new meanings and learning in powerful social networks. They are fast emerging with new literacies and skills, beyond the comprehension of most of us, and laying bare our previous methods of knowledge construction. As a movement in history it has no parallel and threatens our cherished institutions of schooling and domestic life. Beware the Jabberwock and shun the frumious Internet!

 

Blogs in the institution

On the eve of trialling blogs in NSW DET, I’m wondering after many years of using traditional communications tools (forums, emails, listservs) , what the uptake will be. The use of traditional CMCs has been largely confined to teachers administrative and PD activities. Use of the tools in teaching and learning in the school sector has been probably undertaken as an adjunct to the use of an LMS such as Moodle, and only of any significance in the Distance Ed arena.

 

Real voices for cybersafety

After skimming another task force report (Harvard Law school) on cybersafety - I’m reminded how fresh and insightful Tom Woods comments are on the issue. Tom caused a stir two years ago when he was all of 16, and ‘hacked’ into the Fed Govs porn filters. His Blog represents one of the best threads on cybersafety- take these gems:

“I’ve just realized way too much of cyber-safety’s attention has been on minimizing negativity – whilst not enough has been given to harnessing positivity”.

 

Debunking Digital natives

Christopher Scanlons piece in the Australian thows more cold water on the anthropological ‘natives’ theory (ref  earlier comments). Scanlon’s observations as a lecturer in journalism at Charles Sturt Uni give us more cause to dispute the assertion that the natives have any natural ability in the use of online technologies. Scanlon notes with his own students that few have blogs, use Flickr or create their own websites. Their use of search engines for research is also unsophisticated. 

 

New Years predictions

That time of year again when everyone is crystal balling- worth a quick flick around the pundits  and Learning Circuits.  The recurring theme amongst all is the impact of the global recession. This is predicted to increase the use of:

• flexible delivery
• social software
• more demand for courses
• Open Education Resources
• user developed resources

- and I’d add- greater accountablity.

Downes review of 2008 is also worth a look.

 From my POV in NSW DET this year the main areas of interest associated with our ‘revolution’ (learning tools, Interactive classrooms, notebook devices etc) will be:

• greater engagement with the middle adopters of online technologies in the classroom
• blurring of formal and informal learning
• more profiled filtering
• begining of ubiquitous computing
• greater focus on pedagogical use of ICT & policy areas
• implementing strategies for instilling cyber safety
• use of cloud computing
• systemic acceptance of user created resources
• emergence of more formal communities of practise
• better integration of search environments (both technically and semantically)

Finally I particularly like Brent Schlenker’s comment- ”My advice to the e-learning community this year is to pay very close attention to the culture in which you are implementing. Ignoring the impact on culture will be the Achilles’ heel of e-learning implementations in 2009“.

 

1:1 laptops- research dilemma

Sifting through some current research papers on the value of 1:1 laptops, took me back to Tom Reeves coments some years ago regarding the paucity of good educational research. And the difficulty of any ed research are the variables to account for- in the case of 1:1 these include: student age/ ability, type of device, use in and out of class, teachers capacity, subject area, length of study, IT infastructure and support, and access to learning tools and resources.

 

Loos or Laptops

The announcement from last weekends COAG meeting on the roll out of laptops for NSW public schools, has produced a frenzy of comments in the media. While most letters to the ditor raised the inevitable- ‘why can’t the money be spent on toilets’ & ‘ I could get a cheaper deal through Harvey Norman’ I particularly liked the banner- ‘Laptops in schools will be antisocial’- A zippy internet connection? sure. A social network no way? The article goes on to decry the fact that students won’t be a ble to access MySpace or Facebook. Apart from the obvious policy/duty of care headaches in allowing free access- I’d argue that with 1.4 million students in the system, this constitutes a significant social network.

 

Open wide come inside

The Open movement is undoubtedly one of the most significant-yet misrepresented philosophies to underpin C21 education. Promises abound in terms of the open revolution, but is it just another education experiment? The 2008 publication Open Content, and Open Knowledge (MIT press), is one of the few attempts I know of to bring together any coherent understanding on the topic. Edited by Toru Liyoshi, the publication represents a diverse collection of practitioners on apects of ‘Openness’, including Diana Laurrillard, David Wiley,Chris Mackie, James Dalziel and John Seeley Brown. In his introduction Liyoshi states that the “history of education is a narrative of an opening of education”- if so then we have been stalled since industrial times. Everyone has an interpretation of ‘openness’- but most would think only of technical openness associated with the open source movement.

 

Cyberbullying

After witnessing an incident with my daughter recently, and a mounting interest in this at work-the paper (thanks Jane) was timely.  ‘Confronting the Pedagogical Challenge of Cyber Safety’  highlights the paucity of empirical studies in educational contexts (‘pedagogical’ bit strong here). The increasing incidence of cyberbullying and what constitutes cyberbullying are covered, and Hanewall presents an interesting  taxonomy of Cyberbullying. All the more reason to encourage programs such as the kids Superclubs (UK) and being trialled in many Australian States. This initiative helps apprentice young children into good online habits when social.

 

Knowledge Naztis

In a weak moment almost found myself agreeing with Miranda Devine’s piece SMH. Her article starts off well enough talking about how we crowd our day with processing data streams, and how Barack  Obama and Paul Keating have implored us to have ‘ real thinking time’  during each day.-fine long been acknowledged (secular sebatical). But then she goes on to discuss ‘new brain theories’ (always a worry in the popular press).