this year…

In a weird kind of way, a piece of work that I didn’t necessary want to do, actually turned out to be one of the pieces of work I’ve done during this degree of which I am the most proud of. Constructionism at it’s finest. Let me explain.

I am talking about my digital story.

I’d had about 1800 hundred pieces of work due over the last fortnight and working on my own movie for a class wasn’t at the top of the list of priorities. These things need time to do well. So I was umming and ahhing and then decided I would just do it.

So one afternoon, I played around the music editing program and found all these awesome sound effects. This wasn’t really to create a piece of work, but more to feel more comfortable with the tools. Then over the course of some hours / days, I created a number of outlines of what I was wanting to say. I wanted it to be special and unique. What I created, changed as I kept doing it, playing with ideas and increasing in confidence.

And what I ended up with was quite special and unique. I’ve actually rewatched it quite a few times myself and overall, I’m pretty happy with it.

A few things to note about it’s success (for all your budding teachers out there):

• I was involved. I was given a broad guideline, but within that, I created it, therefore I connected to it more. There is a lot of research on participation, you should go and read some of it.
• Because it was a new area to me (digital storytelling), I had to go and learn how to use the tools. After previous class overviews and trials, I got to work on it myself in my own way and time.
• It was personal. I was able to express things that I probably wouldn’t have done, where I given such a tight structure. It has multiple layers, many of which need further decoding.
• It wasn’t just writing. At uni, assignment after assignment is essay or some variation of writing. It was nice to have a different ways of expressing something, eg. I did want to do Honours.

I am sure there are other reasons, but the gist is (and a key aspect of working with technology), allow individual work within a broader framework. You’ll get passionate work every time.

Here it is…

I have hundreds of educational websites bookmarked and one of the best is Edutopia. It’s a cool name and an even “cooler” website.

With themed sections of project learning, technology integration, teacher development, social and emotional learning and assessment, it doesn’t attempt to cover everything and what it covers, it does so exceptionally well.

Featuring video stories, commentaries, research, a magazine and other features, the site is rich with issues and themes to think about and use in classrooms and more importantly across schools. For example, I was lucky enough to “Creatively Speaking: Sir Ken Robinson on the Power of the Imaginative Mind” what I will loosely call a sequel to the most important education video you may ever see. Once again, much to think about and the call to challenge much of what we take for granted as schooling.

I have found dozens of interesting things to read at Edutopia over the last few years and I hope you will too.

The nearly seamless integration of sound, image and word in Maddie Buras’s digital story highlights the effectiveness both storytelling and digital storytelling as a compelling tool for teaching and learning.

The simplicity, yet depth of the story was a powerful statement, allowing us into the hurricane, flood and racially aware place that is New Orleans. The fact that students can now add music and speech to their previously only written stories opens the possibilities wide for communication at school.

I am currently trying to piece together some concepts for my own digital story, but like me, I want it to be something more reflective of who I am now, cause my ‘why I became a teacher” has so many layers, that as a first digital story, I am not sure I can do justice to. I am playing with some concepts, which I will then create a broad outline from and then piece together the necessary words, images and sounds.

More next week…

Continuing on with the constructionism words of late, I had the chance to use Scratch recently. It’s external simplicity hides a rich set of concepts.

The basic deal is that you piece together puzzle like pieces. Each piece is a movement or form of action, all of which join together into some end product. Learning with Scratch (pdf) helps solidify these ideas. It looks at the concepts of design, mathematics, but most importantly that the learning is learner done, creative, adaptable tied in with meaning and motivation.

I got to make a little scene of movement and some noise and it was a lot of fun, learning by doing. I vaguely recall doing something similar with LOGO when I was in primary school and it’s a pretty similar concept. Just prettier.

After listening to Erica’s overview of constructionism, I thought I would offer some words on the matter too.

In her article, Idit Harel calls for learners to be involved and active in their learning, rather than simply passive answers of technology platforms; that is constructing by doing. The commentary uses a wonderful example of learners exploring fractions and coming to many of their own conclusions, simply by doing. I’m just finishing a maths teaching subject on fractions and it’s refreshing to hear a different perspective.

I’m a big fan of spending time exploring and learning simply by being in it and it’s something I hope to be able to enact through much of my teaching. I would also see this as a valid thing for all learning, not just online.

ps. On an only semi-related note, you also might want check out A New Time For Learning - a project that Mia and I have just completed; it has lots of elearning goodness. You can construct your own learning timetable. The execution is partly inspired by Salmon’s Model of Online Learning, which is a pretty solid structure of online learning, I believe.

We’re back. Well, me, really.

Prac is done for another semester. It went well, thanks for asking. Enough about that though, I just wanted to post a little bit about my recent technology experiences.

The exposure of my class to computers and technology while I was at school - two hours in the computer room. The lesson I was at, the students were shown the use of a mindmap and then typed out answers to some questions in a word doc. I am thinking the other one was probably similar. There probably isn’t much to say on the subject, apart from the fact that I am unsure how many computer skills or how much computer awareness the students gained. That’ll do.

Something interesting though, was the year 4 class down the corridor are trialling Intel’s Classmate PC. They were having some level of teething issues with the installation of the entire classroom of computers and the teacher was saying that your eyes hurt if you looked at it too long. I looked at the screen and it was kinda strange seeing such Windows XP on such a small screen. A kid was playing solitaire at one point and it basically filled up the screen. Will need to explore this more.

Also recently, I went to a talk about the One Laptop Per Child from the newly established OLPC Australia and I got to see and touch one of the laptops. Regular readers will know that I am a somewhat fan of this project, primarily because it has an educational focus, rather than simply shrinking a laptop.

The system is based much more around the person and the activities they are doing, rather than simply the use of software productivity applications. It allows for collaboration with anyone in the area and I see this as being possibly a very powerful sharing tool.

My main thought was that it’s very un-Windows. It was a bit weird making my way around a new interface, but I caught on enough after a little while. It’s not as developed as Windows, but I would imagine a child would find it simple and easy to pick up.

That’s it for now.

ps. very super hot off the press - your first look at the second generation of the laptop from the OLPC.

Thanks to Sophie for alerting me to these views on interactive whiteboards. I think the video sums the issues of interactive whiteboards up very well and I think both camps have good points.

I do believe that a truly wonderful teacher (which sadly there are not enough of) could make almost any lesson interesting and relevant in an empty tin shack and a stick (work with me here, I mean with minimal resources).

There is also a strong case to argue that whiteboards increase access to information and knowledge and can possibly assist in further gaining student attention. It is also probably realistic to say that they aren’t being used to their full potential. Perhaps the further understanding of various facilitation techniques and greater use of them for various activities where the technology shines, can assist.

In the traditional way that we know it. Ok, maybe not out of, but it will be changing (or should be, if the education system as a whole can ever get out of it’s own way). Will you be first on the bandwagon or the last to leave it?

Today I went to a workshop - ‘The Children and Youth Statistical Portal - what it is and the opportunities it offers’ (which is part of the National Data Network that is coming into existence).

I walk into the room (actually here at UTS in a room on the City Campus) and there is a whole wall of real time video conferencing streaming in multiple windows. I sit down in shock. Across like 10 sites around the country, people are connected via a full audio and video link, with accompanying presentation software.

It’s the Access Grid - “…for remote visualisation or interactive applications, or a research for utilising the high-bandwidth environment for virtual meetings and events” - and it’s one of the most astonishing technological things I have ever seen.

It’s potential for uses in education are almost endless. Real time collaboration with students in any (where the technology is set up) part of the world. Teachers teaching a maths class from one location and 8 or 12 or 15 or 20 groups of students following along. Working on distance collaborative art projects.

One day expert teachers will be able to offer their services individually and students will learn where they can get a high speed internet access. It’s not going to be soon, but it will be during our teaching careers. From memory, I think Hedley Beare’s Creating the Future School goes into this discussion further.

So many issues here, but fascinating to think about.

ps. This post was almost almost going to be called “Video Conferencing on Drugs, Steroids and Anything Else You Want To Throw At It”, but the premise that you may be out of, or your job being radically reshaped was more catchy.

What an astonishing piece of artwork, communication and using blogs. The blurb can describe itself, better than I can…

“The Dumpster is an interactive online visualization that attempts to depict a slice through the romantic lives of American teenagers. Using real postings extracted from millions of online blogs, visitors to the project can surf through tens of thousands of specific romantic relationships in which one person has “dumped” another. The project’s graphical tools reveal the astonishing similarities, unique differences, and underlying patterns of these failed relationships, providing both peculiarly analytic and sympathetically intimate perspectives onto the diversity of global romantic pain.”

So, go get dumped!

I wonder what an elearning map would look like…

that kids actually do homework online? Well according to emarketer, some do!

While playing games and visiting websites did come in first and second respectively, homework and online research was the third most undertaken activity online by 6 - 11 year olds in the survey period.

Of perhaps even more interest, where the figures of media missed by kids, if it was gone. Overall the internet came 3rd (and higher missing as kids got older). This seems a little low, given all the hype of the online world, but I would imagine these figures will creep up as the years go on.

Having said all that, newspapers and magazines, should be desperately worried…