the web of one, rose coloured glasses and filtering

"You couldn't get functioning democracy without free information." I really like the experiment he did with the take a screen shot and see the difference between each others searches. This would be an excellent activity for students to do for an assignment. You could define a search term then get each student to search and screen shot on their own PC and another PC in the house. The next day print off and gather all the images place them on the floor and work out what you can tell from the search results that were returned. This activity could be a spring board for discussion topics such as, ethical use of user information, surveillance, privacy and the rights and responsibilities of individuals and corporations. So there you go, online video leads to lesson idea, leads to increased awareness by students and real connected teaching based on data gathered by students... hmmm might rethink my senior IT unit on social and ethical issues and the Internet.

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The voice of life calls us to learn and the school of hard knocks

 This is what it should be but often it is rephrased to be " The voice of life calls us to earn". Education when debated in terms of cost/benefit analysis dehumanizes the whole idea of education. And this is the root of the problem. Education needs to be broadly seen as a project that enables humanity to hold up a mirror to itself rather than a diploma mill as the unexamined life is not worth living.

"Everyday our children spread their dreams beneath our feet"

But the great difficulty is making sure that children do not get a false sense of reality, not every child is going to become a star and telling someone that they will really is a lie. We can never predict the future with enough certainty to tell a wide eyed child that they will become "famous" nor should we. So yes dream because if we do not life can become a nightmare, and yes tread lightly on the dreams of others but false hope and folly can make us blind to real opportunities and our actual strengths. 

Though I cringe every time the term is used, resilience is generated by experiences where dreams are sometimes crushed but with support and empathy given by others we grow. Therefore, while noble TED-Ed is a collection of short online videos, it is just a start, but like genius education is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity

Ann S. Masten, Karin M. Best and Norman Garmezy (1990)

Development and Psychopathology, Volume 2, Issue 04, October 1990 pp 425-444

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Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

This is a very stirring speech and it is hard to disagree with him. If we live in the knowledge age then investment in education needs to take highest priority. Not only should education be high priority but the standing of teachers and educators must also be elevated in the eyes of the wider public. All to often we raise persons of fame and fortune to the lofty heights of public adulation only to find the feet of giants are made of clay. Another common view, touted in the IT industry is, "well he got in to College then dropped out and became a billionaire!". Why this maybe true for some very successful IT entrepreneurs it really only tells part of the story. Often forgotten are those who do work hard at University despite great financial and personal challenges and contribute to enriching the culture of a nation. Furthermore, in your local community or city thousands of doctors, engineers, nurses, teachers and countless other professionals create the delicate network of interactions that create the very societies we live in. However, I digress and Sir Ken is right that we need to think differently about education. If we can maintain the creativity and imagination that a young child has and enfold it with a disciplined academic mind that is tolerant of other cultural perspectives and has a well developed ethical compass great things will happen. Now the challenge for education is to create, foster and champion systems, that encourage, grow and empower their citizens to continue to be creative and constructive thinkers, life long learners and also positive nurturing human beings. If we do this not one or a handful of people will be remembered as the paragon of virtue and financial success, but an entire generation will be remembered as the driving force behind a learning revolution. A revolution that we need and have to have. 

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Why I just love the Internet, seek and ye shall find... mostly

I was reflecting upon how the Internet has help me with my teaching over the past 6 years. We certainly have witness a massive change over the past six years and my job would be a lot harder without it. The number of resources for my subject are huge and most of the time it takes very little time to track down a book or article that can address my interest, or my students questions. But here is the problem, to much stuff and not enough time. In order to help students get the best out of the resources on the Internet students MUST learn how to be critical. When looking at any information from the net the first thing I tell them to think about is "Does this serve a commercial interest?". Also looking and the web address is a good indicator to, "Look at the URL... what does this tell us?".

The currency of the information is also a major factor, the net has been around for a while now and there is a lot of information which was posted over 10 years ago. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that 10 years calendar time is a lot longer when you are thinking about currency of information on the net. Now this all may sound like old hat to teachers but just sit back for a while and watch your students use the net to find information. Many of you will be shocked at how even know after the net has been in our classrooms for sometime students still don't know how to move beyond the first few matches in google.

Creating a Moodle Quiz

A great tutorial on how to set up a Quiz in Moodle, quizzes are really good for checking understanding, revision of key concepts and giving immediate feedback to students. You are all most probably saying but when will I find the time to write these. I suggest get each teacher in your faculty to log into the course and write a couple of questions each then construct the quiz from these. Even better break your students up into groups, group one for questions, and group two for answers. Get the students to write the quizzes and answers and upload them as a txt file so you can copy and paste them with little trouble over to the question bank.

week one of laptop roll out

We rolled out around 70 laptops at our school last week and Monday was the first day for students and teachers to use them in class, seems to be running well so far.

Web 2.0 and learning

A good presentation from BECTA in the UK, I really like how all the students are learning together and using IT as a tool to create and reflect on their learning. An interesting point is made that space must be made to give credit for this type of learning. What is needed is at the teacher training stage to demonstrate to teachers what can be done to enrich and engage students in their subject areas using ICT.

Excuses for not using IT just got harder

Currently my wife is working with senior citizens in a retirement village. One of the residents is 101 years old and most of the other younger participants are early 80’s. What is interesting from an IT point of view is the 101 year old writes poetry and song lyrics and emails them to my wife as part of her study. My father and mother in-law both over 60 regularly use Skype to chat to their grandchildren and keep up to date with family events via Facebook. No one mentioned is in the IT industry or would consider themselves an IT expert. Therefore the excuses that are sometimes, though less so recently, from teachers that this IT Internet thing is all too hard and I am too old to change really lose their meaning.

IT training for teachers now needs to focus on how to collect, re-invent and present information gathered from the digital domain.

Instructional Practices

Not a bad site, worth a look. Again this sort of thing is all about thinking and actually applying theory. Too often we read the theory, write the essays but fall short when it comes to implicitly using our theoretical knowledge in the field. It would be much easier if teachers had a ready to go set of lessons that demonstrate a theoretical position. This would enable teachers to use an already formed approach, watch it in action and modify it to their needs.

"Rogoff, Matusov, and White (1996) argue that ‘coherent patterns of instructional practices are based on instructional models, and instructional models are based on theoretical perspectives on learning'. Recent research indicates that teachers usually hold implicit theories about teaching and learning that inform their planning and day-to-day decision making. Yet these theories are typically underarticulated, unrecognised, underspecified, and quite often inconsistent if not schizophrenic in their application. It is our contention that clearly stating and coming to understand one's theory (or theories) about teaching and learning can help us to develop a coherent instructional model and then to scrutinise, converse about, and adapt our teaching in ways that hold powerful benefits for teachers and students."

[ source http://www.myread.org/scaffolding.htm ]

theirFuture

I created this presentation for teachers at my school as a way of starting discussions about how we as teachers can use “The Network/Internet” as a learning space. What I find particularly exciting about the continually growing Internet is its ability to create opportunities for creating and sharing stuff . What this stuff is is up to us and as teachers it is incumbent upon us to guide students to create and participate constructively in the online environment.