Graham Wegner – Open Educator

One of the biggest challenge of my position as leader in the use of ICT in the classroom is reaching back and offering a helping hand to those who are not as confident and sure in the use of tools like laptops and IWBs in their classroom. It is easier to share with those in the near vicinity, the ones who are prepared to join the staff Ning or plan on a wiki, leaving others to languish. Even though Mark Treadwell’s message of not leaving kids to wander through the internet wilderness and teachers actively searching and bundling the relevant resources for their students to use is accepted as school practice, we have students who are left to Google for themselves because their teacher trusts in their digital native skills. So, this week on the advice of my principal, I crafted this tactful email out to staff in an effort to get everyone back on the same page.

Hi folks,
I don’t know about you but I am amazed at the power of Google as a tool for searching the internet. It takes very little effort to get a result BUT does take some skills in search terms and background knowledge to get meaningful results. So, when we set our students a web based task, we have to take on board the research that Mark Treadwell cited for us earlier in the year. We need to be guiding our students to appropriate content and resources. I’ve attached a small poster that might help guide your thinking.

If you think of a metaphor that your class is a tour bus heading into the unexplored world of cyberspace, who should be at the wheel? Who should be determining the destination and the relevant sights (sites!!) along the way? Should the kids really be at the wheel?

So, consider the use of Expert hotlists – here’s one from a Teacher-Librarian <http://teachers.ash.org.au/suel/default.htm> and another <http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jmresources/>. See Rosie (our teacher-librarian) as well, or search the edna teacher resource database <http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/resources> .

Don’t forget delicious.com both for finding resources, and bundling your sites for student use together with tags.

Use your own Google skills to locate sites and resources for the class – use Advanced Search, become familiar with a site like <http://www.googleguide.com/> so that you become more efficient in your own Google use.

If you absolutely must have students doing their own searching, consider one designed for students. I have four that I have personally used tagged here – <http://delicious.com/wegner/studentsearching> – KidsClick, Ask Kids, Quintura and for upper primary kids, Boolify.

We must also consider copyright issues so grabbing images from a Google image search is a no-no, because students invariably save the low grade thumbnail image (looks terrible when enlarged) or grab the first thing they see. With our new filtering system, teachers can access the Flickr Creative Commons section and save images that are of a superior quality, with less restrictive licensing than copyright images on the web.<http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/>

Kids don’t develop effective information literacy skills on their own – it is up to us to ensure that we follow good practice in this area.

Sorry, this was such a long email – it has taken on a life of its own.

Cheers,
Graham.

Sometimes, the best way to reach folks is by using old fashioned tools like email.

I might need one of these before the term is out.

Thanks to Pearls Before Swine for allowing embeds.

It’s my birthday today. I’m 43.

You’d think that I could make up my own mind about things by now but I’m as easily influenced as I ever was. Except now my influences seep in through digital connection as much as face to face.

I went down and upgraded my mobile phone today at the Allphones store at our local shopping centre. I went with a new iPhone on my old plan which turned out to be a good deal as it includes a monthly data allowance of 1G which my old plan didn’t have. My choice was heavily influenced by the numerous educators that I have read praising the iPhone as a device. I read in detail on this forum too about some of the issues that I might face with my carrier (3) after a warning tweet from Dean Groom. His past experiences led me to a greater understanding of roaming networks and whether my new upgrade would be a decent deal.

Consider my network as a pretty big influence in that decision. It’s also the reason I plan to purchase and salary sacrifice a Mac laptop later in the term. I no longer have to rely on the salesman’s pitch – I can gather intelligence from users already using the products I am interested in. I even tweeted a request out to ascertain the need for the Apple Protection Plan and got useful advice from Rachel Boyd, Isaak Kwok and Paul Luke.

Then tonight I watched the first episode of a DVD set that was my birthday gift, purchased way back in March. (A$13.99 a Season, good value.) The series is “The Wire” which I’ve never seen on Australian television but came higly recommended from another node in my network. Thanks, Dan.

Maybe somewhere my own bits of digital content help to influence and shape other people’s choices in a positive way. Wisdom of the crowd, indeed.

dy/av : 006 : carver’s classroom management from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

My interest was captured by this reference from Stephen Downes to a Christoper Sessums’ post where Christopher related a fascinating tale about an intriguing twitter exchange with Don Tapscott. I’m not so much interested in the controversy of this 140 character word swap as the simple statement Don gave to Chris in one of his tweets - “… Google me. Don Tapscott…”

I’m still not sure who or where I first heard the idea of offering a Google search of one’s name as a form of presence and credibility – it was either Leigh Blackall or Alexander Hayes who suggested that their perfect business card would simply have their online blended lowercase name (google:leighblackall OR google:alexanderhayes) on it. The free ranger vs the DIY domain guru – where does Christopher’s nemesis fit?

Or is just a good example of Will Richardson’s clickability?

After spending Saturday with a group predominantly made up of teacher-librarians, I found this wonderfully ironic graphic searching through Will Lion’s Digital Bites collection.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/2647997230/

Although I didn’t make the effort to blog about this last year, going to an all day event with Mark Treadwell (sponsored by ACEL) was an excellent learning opportunity. Mark describes himself as a travelling scholar and his session focussed on explaining much of the research and concepts of his book “Whatever!” retitled to “School v2.0” for the Australian market. My principal, Ann and I went along knowing not much than his book title expecting that it might have been about Web 2.0 tools in education but we were pleasantly wrong. Instead Mark gave us a big picture of what he refers to as the replacement for the 400 year old Book Based Paradigm, the Internet Based Paradigm. He used his experiences in the New Zealand education sector to talk through the challenges faced by schools today and how NZ has sought to meet these challenges. Of course, the government has changed hands since his 2008 visit and now, so the established direction and priorities of the MOE might have changed course somewhat.

Anyway, we were sufficiently impressed by Mark’s work and both Ann and I agreed that his message was one that all of our teachers needed to hear. The phrase 21st Century Learning gets bandied around a lot in education circles but Mark Treadwell’s overall synthesis in both his presentation and book is the most complete and defined that I’ve come across. So, Ann asked him at the end of his session when he was next due through our neck of the woods and secured his services for a staff PD day. That happens next Monday in conjunction with three other schools. I’ve been reading a few of the chapters from his book in preparation and phrased up a number of focus questions for our staff to consider and respond to during the day.

• What are signs in our work life that the Internet Paradigm is having an effect ?
• What are some practices in our schools that are decreasing in value because of the internet?
• What challenges does all of this present to our school?
• What personal challenges does all of this present to you?

Mark Treadwell has a number of comprehensive websites with a lot of supporting materials for his book. I know he’s not the only visionary promoting and pushing for meaningful change to the education system (although he did mention that he despairs at the prospect of change at the university level where practices are even more entrenched than in primary and secondary schools) but if we are looking for relevant possible courses for action here in South Australia, then the New Zealand experience is far closer to us in school culture and values than other national change initiatives. If we are to believe those nation education ranking systems that regularly place Finland in the number one spot, then us Aussies in fifth spot are better to take our lead from the nearest competitor in fourth spot, the near neighbours in NZ rather than take advice from someone like Joel Klein from another country back in about twelfth spot.

Well, we’ve started back at school this week and I have to admit, everything feels like a continuation from last year and across the state, the basic way school gets done will be pretty much the same way it’s been done for quite a while now. The changes at our school are subtle and not all that obvious to the casual observer but there are tell tale signs on the new teachers’ faces as they suffer information overload about inquiry learning, interactive whiteboards, co-planning and You Can Do It. I must admit that I enjoy the fact that we are a school pushing forward to improve what we offer our students but it can be a bit of a culture shock for the newcomers from less frantic settings.

And if, as some prominent edubloggers propose, we need a learning revolution it will come as a complete surprise for many of those schools and educators. When most Aussie teachers hear the word “revolution” associated with education, they think of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Digital Education Revolution. With the unfortunate acronym of DER and plenty of scepticism about the actual vision and subsequent implementation, the whole idea of “revolution” has lost most of its punch down under. Then when our Federal Education Minister starts looking back over her shoulder for ways to improve the Australian education system by inviting controversial New Yorker Joel Klein to provide advice on how to move our schools forward, then the “revolution” terminology starts to look somewhat farcical.

The internet hasn’t transformed Australian education – yet. In general, it hasn’t transformed Australian educators either but that’s not to say it isn’t possible. But change is slowly happening with the few of us pushing the web as a participatory learning platform tending to be steady small scale influencers rather than being Che Guervera-like figures.  After all, no-one wants to get fired. It’s much more evolutionary than anything else.

So, I find phrases like “I’m Here For The Learning Evolution” to be mildly irritating. Much of the conversation surrounding this tends to focus on the deficiencies of one country’s education system (which ironically us Aussies consider for improvements to our system!) and when I look at how few K-12 educators are even using the web for their own learning, how can they even get their unknowing colleagues on board for a people’s revolution they don’t even know exists?

In 2009, I’ll just keep evolving my practice and do my best to help my disconnected colleagues to plug into the potential. Sorry, Wes. Count me out.

… if Web 1.0 was about translating the pre-digital world into digital while maintaining familiar structures and formats…

…and Web 2.0 is about flattening the playing field, allowing anyone with a connection to become author, critic, friend, artist, entrepeneur, journalist, inventor or creator …

…then it seems that Web 3.0 might be when the powers that be get the vaccum cleaner out and try and suck the genie back into the bottle…

My youngest son loves this commercial at the moment.

So, I hunted it up on YouTube a few weeks back to show him using the keywords “cadbury gorilla” and besides finding out that it was a British ad that was over a year old, more than several enterprising individuals had remixed the drumming gorilla in innovative and entertaining ways. One version involving a Bonnie Tyler classic even then became an official alternative!

Here’s one I really liked – great for anyone who has fond memories of the eighties.

And this one was also excellent.

Any other Cadbury Gorilla fans out there?

“Googling isn’t learning.”

I saw this quote in an article in an educational glossy lying in the staffroom and it caught my eye enough to use (ironically enough) Google to find the source. It comes from The Australian newspaper in an article written by Justine Ferrari titled interestingly enough “Low marks for computers in schools” – an interesting read in itself. If you read the full article, you will notice that I have lifted those three consecutive words totally out of context – it’s not entirely what the quoted professor was intending to say – but it’s more the fact that this quote sums up a lot of educators’ mindsets is what intrigues me.

Using Google or any other search engine is definitely learning in my book but the degree of effectiveness can vary according to purpose. Even the most shallow of cut’n'paste efforts learns something, even if it’s to become better lifters of text for shallowly defined assignments. But with an effective teacher at the helm, Google can be a very powerful tool to improve student information literacy. I get what the quote hints at to some degree – too often students are just left to use Google without any scaffolding or guidance on how to interpret or manipulate the results.

Again, Google’s potential benefit is totally determined by the pedagogy employed in its use. Sometimes, a person offering an opinion that “Googling isn’t learning” is revealing something about how they view the process of learning.

Image: ‘Google logo render – mark knol‘
www.flickr.com/photos/25064547@N06/2568436053