Archive for the 'Resources' Category

A Better Way

Published on September 16, 2010 in Information Literacy, Internet and Resources. 12 Comments

I was in a Year 1/2 classroom this morning working with a teacher new to our school. The kids had netbooks out and the teacher wrote up some website addresses on the whiteboard with interactive content about the Water Cycle that she wanted the students to visit and use. Being seven and eight year olds, there was a strong possibility that entering these sites successfully into the browser would be a tricky task. My quickfire solution was to open a Word document, paste in the two sites, press enter to make them links and then save that file in an easy to access folder on the network. I then informed the class where to go to find the file – hopefully creating an easier pathway.

However, I don’t think that this is a very good solution and so now I’m appealing to the collective wisdom of this blog’s readers. How would you create a way for young students to get easily onto teacher curated collections of websites? I’m thinking that even a delicious tag might be too confusing for this age group – but maybe a class blog that they become familiar with that puts these websites into a blogroll or page. But, you guys are smarter than me. What do you think?

Share On Sunday

Published on March 14, 2010 in Internet and Resources. 0 Comments

Just thought I’d point to a few things that I’ve found and enjoyed of late.

Went onto last.fm the other night to find out that what I thought was a free service is actually a limited trial. Saw a new station on there for the band Angels And Airwaves and had a quick listen before realising that this band was former Blink 182 front man Tom De Longe‘s current main musical project. I can sort of relate to the way that DeLonge started off making his mark in, well, the making of some pretty immature music content and concept wise (I still enjoyed it) and now as he’s heading into his mid thirties is more interested in “creating positive music that he hoped would inspire kids to make a difference.” Sounds like a late maturer – and I can definitely relate to that.

Anyway, following the lead of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, the new Angels And Airwaves album “LOVE” is now available as a free download. If the music is to your taste, then it’s nice to see another quality band trying to shake up the traditional music distribution model.

This album is free for you. If you like it and want to put some money towards it, we would be grateful for your support. In fact, as our way of saying thanks, we’ll give you an exclusive song remixed by Mark Hoppus of blink-182!
If you don’t want – or aren’t able – to contribute, then please accept the album free of any charge.
You don’t even have to give us your email address.

In class, we are looking to sharpen up our apostrophe usage and I’m loathe to critique the students’ own errors in a public way to learn the differences between omission and possession. Thankfully, there are a few very useful web based resources that any teacher can use with their students – starting with the Grocer’s Apostrophe Flickr Pool. Back this up with some savvy blogs (apostrophism, Apostrophe Catastrophes and my personal favourite Apostrophe Abuse) jam packed with real life boo-boos and laced with snappy, sarcastic one liners and apostrophes can be a lot of fun to tangle with.

http://www.apostrophecatastrophes.com/2010/03/not-britains-leading-experts-on.html

http://www.apostrophecatastrophes.com/2010/03/not-britains-leading-experts-on.html

So, in the absence of any insightful blog posts, I humbly share these offerings. And I hope that I haven’t allowed any errant apostrophes into the place.

New Life For Old Laptops Running Ubuntu

Published on January 14, 2010 in Future Directions and Resources. 15 Comments

We have these old Leader laptops at my school that were part of our original batch of teacher laptops and they have not really been used since those teachers upgraded to more powerful machines in 2006. We put them out in classrooms for a while as bonus computers but they’ve struggled with our network image. So they’ve been sitting in the technician’s office (aka the server room) for over a year and I had this idea about using them as a side project for tech savvy kids in my classroom. One day when I was contemplating on Twitter what to do with our old Pentium 4 desktop that was being strangled by viruses, Chris Harvey recommended Ubuntu as an excellent operating system that would breathe new life into older machines. I know a few other members of my network are Linux advocates so I figured that it would very appealing for these tech savvy students to tinker and set up these machines in my classroom. So, I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu and burnt it to DVD and grabbed one of the old laptops for the summer holidays.

So, you’re thinking – big deal. I know that many of my network are avid Linux users (of which Ubuntu is but one option) and that installing and playing with open source products is just part of what they do. But I am no computer whiz. I have never installed any operating system on any computer before and never really used a Linux based operating system. I’m not really that technical minded as I discovered when I went looking for details on how to get rid of the original XP operating system. I got lost for several hours, looking through forums, downloading a couple of utilities only to discover that I needed to know how to get into BIOS, or how to partition a disk or any number of things that kept telling me I’m out of my depth. So, if anyone knows of an idiot proof way for me to ditch Windows and keep the Ubuntu install (or failing that how to wipe the laptop completely and re-install Ubuntu only) I would be most appreciative. These old babies only have 40G hard drives and I don’t need any MS memory hogging stuff eating into that precious space. The batteries are nearly shot and they have makeshift power adaptors, but they do offer a chance to boost what we can do in our 2010 classroom.

My vision is that these laptops become an extra resource for students to complete work on, access the web, edit photos, create graphics and so on. The tech savvy kids will be able to install and uninstall open source programs (although Ubuntu comes with an excellent array of software as part of the package) and teach themselves and others a bit more in an environment that is geared towards education and help them to move beyond the Windows only world view of computing.

Here’s where I’m open to suggestions. Your ideas on how I could use these five laptops would be greatly appreciated. Maybe I should get the kids to run a different flavour of Linux on each one. They could become the publishing and graphic design workhorses leaving the faster laptops we have for working on the wireless network. What technical challenges could I set my small band of junior geeks? I am sure that they will quickly master the particular pathways of the Ubuntu environment and show me a thing or two. What would you do?

ubuntuPosted from an old 2005 Leader Celeron laptop running Ubuntu 9.10. A bit less pretentious than posting from my iPhone.

Simple But Powerful

Published on October 18, 2009 in Digital Convergence and Resources. 3 Comments

I was chatting with a colleague the other day about the most effective way to create a list of online Mathematics resources for our school. We were both thinking of delicious as we have a significant number of teachers with accounts. The idea was to use a group of teachers as the “curators” of these resources and tie them all together in some way. Initially, my colleague figured starting a new delicious account perhaps under the name lnpsmaths might be the best approach. But the problem was sharing the logon and password with the others participating in the initiative – and delicious works best when you are constantly logged on, see the resource in the course of the working day, then hit TAG without too much thought required.

So, using the power of tagging, we decided the best and easiest option is to use a unique tag to tie all of the saved resources together regardless of who was doing the tagging and saving. This way, even the teachers who are not using delicious (even though we are getting closer to total staff participation) can just have a shortcut to http://delicious.com/tag/lnpsmaths on their EdPort homepage to benefit from the Mathematics focus group’s hard work.The only glitch we’ve discovered is that the same site can be saved by multiple users and it will show up each time as a separate entry on the list. Our stopgap solution is say the first person to find the site uses the unique tag, and others can save but avoid the lnpsmaths tag.

Now none of this is ground breaking or unique, but it showcases the simplicity of the way delicious works (I think it is quite a bit simpler than diigo and most staff are not power users of social bookmarking at this stage) in a very powerful way. Now, we have a hotlist of sites that is constantly growing, anyone can contribute and it gives using digital resources in the teaching of Mathematics a real vitamin hit.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/double-h90/3014614501/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/double-h90/3014614501/

Vimeo Is Better Than YouTube

Published on January 29, 2009 in Digital Convergence, Resources and Web 2.0. 2 Comments

Whilst flicking from one task to another I’ve been checking out some of the “Videos We Like” on Vimeo. I didn’t know much about Vimeo until Dan Meyer did his dy/av series and hosted his awesome summer series (during our wintertime) there in mid 2008. He’s pointed to a few since then and I find it’s more of an arty hangout for filmmakers of varying types and small ad agencies. So, I’m poaching an idea directly from Dan and asking a simple question:

What could you do with this in a classroom?

Suddenly from Magnus Engsfors on Vimeo.

Or this?


lost in a moment from dennis wheatley on Vimeo.

The quality is way better than YouTube and there seems to be less wading through the junk to get to the interesting stuff. But maybe that’s just me. These will look great on the interactive whiteboard – but in what context?

Tuesday Night Gripe

Published on December 9, 2008 in Future Directions and Resources. 4 Comments

Perhaps it’s because my sinuses are playing up and my sleep patterns have not been the best. But I’m finding that I have less and less patience with teachers who’ve been given opportunities with school supplied laptops, IWBs, data projectors, PD sessions, hand holding, screenshot handouts – and all they can do is tell me about what they are going to do next year with technology in their classroom.

I’m sick of hearing promises of change. Tell me how all that stuff is impacting your practice now and how that investment of scarce school funds is invaluable to your students’ learning. And don’t give me that spiel about equity – because giving every classroom equal access to certain technology tools does not guarantee that the teacher will use them in equal ways. 

I want people telling me about how indispensible that laptop/projector/IWB/whatever is already to their teaching and their students’ learning before I’m faced with the choice of deciding where that piece of tech will make the most difference. 

OK, let’s hope the Nasonex works better tonight…

The Software Pyramid Gets A Makeover

Published on August 12, 2008 in Digital Convergence, Future Directions and Resources. 0 Comments

Back in 2000 I attended a three day Discovery School program that was a key part of my journey into educational ICT. One of the tools referred to was the Software Pyramid, created by Victorian teacher Graeme Oswin which was a guide for schools to ensure that their software dollars were spent critically.

Well, a few months back this pyramid concept came up again in a conversation with Ann, my principal, as we talked through the relative merits of teacher software preferences. But the educational technology has moved a long way since this concept was first drawn up and we both wondered if there might not be a more modern equivalent out on the web that might inform in a similar manner.

It didn’t take long for this diagram to surface via Google, and thanks to the Metiri Group, we now have a new blueprint with which to guide our staff. Certainly, those edubloggers with misgivings about the absolute plethora of Web 2.0 applications spawning in cyberspace, can see how the latest and greatest tools measure up as learning implements.

Gavin

Published on May 29, 2008 in Conferences & PD and Resources. 0 Comments

In my experience, teachers love free stuff.

Tonight after school, my co-planning partner (Maria, the teacher next door) and I scored well on the free stuff factor. We had signed up for a free workshop for primary school teachers on Coastal Biodiversity held as part of the Geography Teacher’s Association Conference. We thought that we’d get some relevant information and teaching ideas to tie in with our inquiry unit “Can We Really Make A Difference?” that is using the Port River dolphins as a way to cover parts of our Science and SOSE (Studies Of Society & Environment) curriculum. In fact, we were almost considering not turning up as we’ve been pretty busy and have a whole day double class excursion on the go for tomorrow.

But we went.

What did we get?

  • A conference goodie bag for no cost that included a couple of sports drink bottles (great for the boys), a coffee mug (teachers can never have enough of these), nice pens, extra stationery, dolphin stickers etc.
  • A presentation from Shanelle Palmer, Environmental Education Officer for the Department of Environment and Heritage.
  • An excellent draft curriculum pack dealing with the South Australian marine environment that links in beautifully with the way my school delivers learning – tuning in activities, web resources etc.
  • Other freebies like environmental posters, eco-icon postcards, a jigsaw puzzle and ….
  • … we got to meet Gavin.

Who’s Gavin?

Gavin is a leafy sea dragon, a unique species of sea creature only found here in South Australia. The leafy sea dragon is our official marine emblem. Gavin is the star of an animated film that teaches students (and others) about the marine diversity of this state in an entertaining but informative way. Gavin travels from his home under the jetty at Rapid Bay and travels through the eight identified marine coastal regions, meeting the identified eco-icons along the way. We got to see the film and take our own copy of the DVD with us.

Image screengrab for fair use review purposes.

Real leafy sea dragon image courtesy of SouthOz – http://www.flickr.com/photos/southoz/237624479/

I think Gavin could be very useful in my classroom.

The Old ICT Folder

Published on January 16, 2008 in Resources. 5 Comments

ictfolder.jpgHolidays are a good time to potter around and do some cleaning and tidying up. When I left my previous school I put all of my paper teaching resources into a series of white three ring folders. I had one for English, one for Maths, one for Health and so on. Some have been used occasionally and others have barely been opened. One that I thought I would use constantly in my current role was my ICT folder, which is a real repository of all of the factors that led me down this current pathway. But not surprisingly, I have barely used it and it would be well over three years since it saw the light of day.

I found it this afternoon in the garage, covered in a thin layer of dust. So I opened it up, interested to see if any of the contents had any relevance whatsoever to me.

The first thing I found was a course booklet for Basic Flash 5 Animation. I remember sitting in that course feeling totally lost – I had a real taste of the frustration felt by my students over the year when I’ve introduced a complex topic or concept. So much technical know-how required just to make a simple animation – what use would this be in a primary classroom? No wonder I haven’t looked at it since.

There were a number of print outs of flow charts and mind maps – relics from interviews and strategic planning. I have digital copies somewhere. I found a workshop paper (not by me) titled “Developing Electronic and Digital Texts using PowerPoint or SlideShow Presentations” circa 1998. Sadly, many teachers still think that this is where technology in the classroom starts and ends. Why am I still hanging onto this paper nearly ten years later?

There’s a 2001 newsletter about the Microsoft Agreement that anchors our whole education system to the MS Office suite – I have heard from a senior person that Open Office is a real possibility if the department goes down the ultraportable laptop route. But, at the moment the MS Agreement deathgrip still holds sway and only innovative educators like Peter Ruwoldt and Jason Plunkett have developed viable FOSS solutions for their students. But I digress.

What else can I find?

- a 2000 guide to using CoolEdit (who needs it when Audacity is around)

- the original Tangara Consortium R-9 Learning Technologies Continuum (we use the latest version at my school as a guide, but these things date faster than Moore’s law)

- a Creating Webquests (remember them?) certificate and the obligatory Tom March template

- a whole stack of Jamie McKenzie website printouts (he was my ultimate guru around the 2000/01 mark – what’s he doing these days besides giving Marc Prensky some stick?)

Ah, but there is some gold in the old folder. I find my handouts from two highly influential courses that I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with – “Discovery School” @ Grange Schools and a Quality Teacher Program titled “Designing and Applying Learning With New Technologies”. There’s stacks in both of these collections on Higher Order Thinking, question matrices, Bloom’s Taxonomy, what is powerful learning, structured controversies and a stack of other pedagogical tools and resources that if anything have even more value to me in today’s learning environment. What is now dated and valueless is the software how-to guides.

Maybe, I’ll chuck the crud into the recycling bin and put the good stuff into a new folder. Maybe I’ll title it “Learning” and put this idea that you can capture ICT/elearning/Learning Technologies/edtech/whatever on paper and keep it in a folder to bed.
Now to sort what to put on my new USB stick….

Broadening The Bookmarking

Published on November 9, 2007 in Internet, Resources and Web 2.0. 8 Comments

In my opinion, one of the easiest entry points for teachers into Web 2.0 is to start a social bookmarking account. Getting them to really grasp the power of this tool is more challenging. Most teachers like to collect useful websites even if they’re not web-savvy enthusiasts and the methods employed to keep track of them can range from emailing links back to themselves, creating hotlists in Word to relying on browser Bookmarks or Favorites. These lists usually aren’t very big because they have to be kept manageable.

There are management issues with these methods. How do you search piles of emails (unless it’s GMail!) for that elusive link? Do you start a new document each time for a new hotlist category? What happens when the computer you host your Favorites on crashes and you lose the lot? (And if it’s a Windows machine, it’s a matter of when, not if!) So when I talk about a better way, most teachers are all ears.

I like to recommend del.icio.us. It’s simple, very powerful when harnessed correctly and where the biggest community of users can be found. As I’ve blogged before, there isn’t a whole heap of help guides and resources with an educational bent – what I have found is usually of very high quality. So, getting teachers to sign up, installing the browser buttons and adding a few sites is not too hard. Getting them to understand tagging is harder – people want to try and follow set rules for this. They try to apply subject areas, age levels, strands and they want everyone else to be following the same rules as well. Then I explain how tagging enables you to control subsets of sites through a unique tag and they see how sites can be pre-tagged for easy retrieval for a unit of work, a particular lesson or PD session. For example when I co-presented with Yvonne Murtagh at CEGSA, we used the tag kooltools07 to group all of the sites we wanted to share. By inviting others to contribute, this list continues to grow. (Thanks, Jim Sprialis!) For the school’s Open Night, I used the tag opennight and amazed parents when I could so easily pull up web resources to match curriculum areas. So, it takes a bit before the strengths of folksonomy becomes apparent to the newer user.

Some are still uncomfortable about the open nature of del.icio.us.

“You mean anyone else can see what I’m bookmarking? I’m not sure I like that.”

Once I remind them that it’s only listing websites, not airing dirty laundry or trade secrets, they relax. When I tell them that the openness is vital to gaining some traction and saving some time, they are less apprehensive. I show them how to find other people’s bookmarks, how scanning their tags gives you a feel for their relevancy to what you’re interested in and then save items of interest back to their own account. Adding names to create their own network is a harder sell but having a constant flow of handpicked sites from trusted professionals worldwide is a smart, efficient way to operate. Sometimes, the only way is to demonstrate and even then you run the risk of moving too fast, too soon and being written off as a smart-aleck.

But I’ve seen a real willingness from my staff to get on board with social bookmarking. Some are using it a lot and others have the mindset of “I know I should but I keep forgetting” or “I still like using Favorites.” But there’s almost enough of a groundswell to support the wider sharing of sites and resources suitable for our Interactive Whiteboard program. So when all of our staff have each other listed on their del.icio.us network, whatever gem is discovered by one staff member is discovered for all.

Update: There’s always more than one side to the story and I recommend you check out the comments to this post to get more quality insight into the subversive and innovative use of del.icio.us.