Learning Curve

I was looking for resources for a class on leadership and came across this lovely inspirational video.  I hope you enjoy the three minutes of inspiration!  Great quotes from great leaders.

Image created in Wordle.

I was wondering where to start in setting up a class blog for a group of distance education (primary) students. Despite having my own blog, there were issues I was unsure about. Knowing that there was a wealth of wisdom and experience out there, I decided to tap into my network, oz-teachers listserv. The advice I received is reprinted below  for the benefit of other educators who may be feeling a little hesitant about how to start or where to start. Many thanks to my friend Anne and to John, Rob and Frances, who replied to my plea for help.

Anne’s response:

Q1. I am wondering whether it would be better to have one blog that the
students can contribute to rather than a blog each.

Response:- Initially I would have one blog that students contribute to. This would mean they save their files on a drive and allow you as teacher to grab them either by email attachments and upload them onto the blog post. More work for you, but when confidence with the system grows, revert to individual blogs if all goes well. Or, they could all be added as users rather than administrators. What is role of tutor parents? I would encourage parents to comment back on posts as much as possible.

Q2. Wondering whether to start off with a ‘closed’ network so that students
can freely post images of themselves, family etc?

Response:- Except in exceptional circumstances, I would never advise closed blogs as this destroys the very nature and potential powerful learning outcomes that can arise. One reason our student blogs are so successful, is that they are ‘out there’, students love them online, comments come in from global students and teachers and this encourages them to continue writing more effectively. The connectedness with other global citizens is something that needs to be experienced to understand the amazing increased learning outcomes. Sharing, connectedness and social networking is what kids love and thrive on. If parental permission is provided, wallow photos of students, groups etc as long as they do not name who is in the photo. You can use software like www.befunky.com to disguise quite well the actual individual photos. After 10 months there have been no cyber safety issues at all.

Q3. What subject strand to follow?

Response:- I would start with just general topics and themes, for everyone to get comfortable, confident etc eg Set five goals for the remainder of the year. Describe why the area you live in is unique. Prompts are great and students may be responsible for providing some of the prompts each week. A general literacy or English area would be the easiest or civics and citizenship. Geography might be a good one due to the nature of the blog.

Q4. Cyber safety issues:

Response:- A page linked added to the home blog with some valuable links. I like some of those linked on the global teacher page.

Q5. Understanding copyright issues.

Response:- This is a big issue. Students and even some staff feel that anything on the internet is free for all and it needs to be constantly ‘drummed in’. There are some great little videos on youtube and teachertube. Be prepared to keep commenting back when issues arise. It is another learning activity.

Q6. Anyone who is running a class blog envisage what I may need to prepare/have missed?

Start simple, then add to it as it evolves. Students themselves will drive the direction and indicate other things that can be added. An about me page is essential. Links to other global class blogs will encourage students to read other’s work, and see the potential of blogging. Encourage them to add comments on other student work. Other keen global students will then return to the blog, comment and the connections start. I have started getting students from other areas and countries coming to my blog and commenting on post prompts, so my class is increasing in size all the time and this makes it so exciting for teachers. Add the clustr map as that is a great motivator. If students have individual blogs, get them to add a photo a week with a brief description (one they have taken of course) Encourage the addition of multimedia to cope with multiliteracies. A voicethread for students to introduce themselves would be great on one page (avoiding any personal details.) Photo manipulation and resizing needs to be taught as well.

Footnote: Initially, the biggest issue will be teaching them how to use and drive their blog. This will take some coordination and tutuorial type activities. Being distance education students, I assume that they are savvy with emails and other technological equipment, which means they are comfortable and confident with technology.

John’s response:

Given that you are working with junior distance ed students, like Anne said my experience is that when introducing blogging to students it is easiest for a number of reasons to set up a class or group based blog. Class blogs take the pressure off of all students to write all of the time yet have the blog continue to grow. It also means that you, the students and parents have only one webspace to have to focus on initially and that things are easier for you from an administration point of view.

Especially in your situation with Distance Ed it would be relatively tricky I would have thought to set up a closed blog. That apart, at the schools I have worked in, and that is in excess of 300 blogs, we have always had the blogs completely live to the web. Part of the process of working with blogs is educating the students about the fabulous opportunities as well as the many pitfalls that can occur from using the internet. This can only be done by working live to the web. Students draw so much encouragement when they embed maps such as Clustrmaps which show where their readers live.

As far as personal images go, as Anne says there are a number of ways in which these can be altered. It can also be useful for students to discover ways of showing images that don’t include facial features. Again this is part of educating the students about being aware of the pitfalls of using the internet, Most parents also, once they realise what the images are to be used for are only too ready to allow appropriate pictures to be inserted into the blogs.

Like Anne suggested, I would definitely start out with just a general blog probably with the aim of telling about what is happening. In the class situation, this is relatively easy, and probably in the distance ed situation where students maybe doing lots of diverse things, there will also be lots of things to talk about.

One thing you might like to take account of the is the fact that blogs, especially into blogs allow you to set up categories. This is a powerful way of allowing individuals to access just their work. In the case of Middle P Prattlings, http://mrpbps.learnerblogs.org/ ,you can see down the left-hand side the list of all the students in grade, listed as categories. You can also see in the posts, the name of the post-author and the category in which the post belongs.

As far as safety goes, there are lots of resources out there that may help. On all of our later blogs, we have included a set of rules that you can access and copy at http://mrpbps.globalstudent.org.au/the-rules-rule/ . The Commonwealth government cyberquoll site http://www.cyberquoll.com.au/hub.htm is also worth a look at. As far as Copyright goes the smartcopy site http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/allright/index.htm is well worth a look at especially to yourself and you might also like to consider the copyright for kids linked on my test blog http://mrpbps.globalstudent.org.au/ .

To get some idea of the other tools, and which it is in things it you can use to spice up your blog, you might like to have a look at http://saltysolutions.pbwiki.com/ and http://projectingpassionately.pbwiki.com/FrontPage which both have short discussions and examples of a range of other add-ins some of which Anne has mentioned in her post.

Are there are a number of blogging portals out there, the one that I like use edublogs http://edublogs.org/ . To help get you started with edublogs, you can find a tutorial handout http://www.box.net/shared/mhta5gtc0c , that you can download at my blog http://johnp.wordpress.com/ at under the tutorials tab. On my blog, you’ll also find a link to a new book that I and a colleague have written as an introduction to blogging and lots more elements of Web 2.0.

As Anne suggested once you start blogging there are lots of other skills, and things to learn about, which will no doubt be challenging but also very exciting.

Rob (Victoria):

One option would be to start with the teacher posting the main articles
(blog posts) and allow students to comment … so they can still express
themselves straight away …but with some control.

You could set it up so only your students could comment to start with if
you wanted, even if it was publicly visible - and/or could set up
moderation so there was a little delay between writing comments and
seeing them (ie you approve each comment) … could also do that on an
open blog where all can comment  … would allow you to catch anything
that needs editing or deleting, from your students of outsiders, before
its visible.

Wordpress (eg edublogger) allows this sort of flexibility, and pretty
sure blogger does too.

Then could move to individual blogs - I know wordpress (and therefore
edublogger) has a ‘multiuser’ option designed for ‘class sets’ of blogs
(edublogger calls it ‘campus’ I think), but I’ve never used it   -

But standard edublogger blogs are ok as well … then kids can choose
their own design style, and publish both posts and comments ….

Frances:

We have grade blogs which are used for various purposes. These, and
last
years blogs are listed on my staff PD site:
http://hfsconversations.blogspot.com

We actually use the blogs to help us teach cyber safety & copyright
awareness. Have a look at the Year 5 & 6 blogs for examples.

Just how important it is to continually remind students to check the credibility of web sites (particularly those they use for assignments) is encapsulated in this 15 minute video, Web Literacy. Students are directed to three sites (none of which are genuine - unbeknown to them). Watch the transformation that takes place when they are shown how to check the authenticity and credibility of sites and not be swayed by the seemingly professional appearance.

There is no doubt about the usefulness of Flickr for image sharing. A couple of tools that can assist the user (and may not be as commonly known as Flickr itself) are flickr-storm and flickrCC.  I was going to write a post about each of these but since they have already been done, I’ll conveniently provide the links here.

ICT Guy has done all the hard work for me (thanks!) with images of how the site works so visit his post at A perfect flickr storm.

What I particularly like about flickr-storm is the fact that you can search for images within the licencing category you are after. Just under the ‘keyword search box’ there is an advanced button. When you click on this  a drop-down box will appear just to the right of the search box, and you can then select what type of licensed images you want.

A Joyful Jubiliant Learning has posted a helpful post about the meaning of the different creative commons licencing terms and it is here that I came across flickrCC.

FlickrCC is a site published by Peter Shanks (an Information Technology Teacher at Bathurst TAFE, Sydney, Australia) to help search for free, Creative Commons licensed Flickr images.  Thanks Peter!

The Computers Off Australia campaign was launched in Sydney today in an effort to educate people as to how they can make a contribution to the environment by switching off their computer when not in use, or using sleep mode.  Turning your PC off at night will save  enough energy to light a 60 watt light bulb for more than 17 hours!  Monetary savings are around $80 on your power bill and a reduction in your computer’s carbon emissions by up to 100kg over 12 months.

To maximise power savings, it is recommended that computers are set to enter system standby or hibernate after 15 to 30 minutes of inactivity.

Activate etc power management on Macs:
http://www.computersoffaustralia.org/display.asp?id=20

Activate etc power management with XP:
http://www.computersoffaustralia.org/display.asp?id=21

Activate etc power management with Vista:
http://www.computersoffaustralia.org/display.asp?id=22

Activate etc power management on Windows server:
http://www.computersoffaustralia.org/display.asp?id=23

Do kids ever get invited to conferences on the future of education? This is quite strange when you think about it, as Mark Prensky points out, all stakeholders are involved in corporate decisions, yet kids are rarely asked their viewpoints. In his article, Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First Digital Learner Mark points out:

Today’s kids hate being talked at. Students universally tell us they prefer dealing with questions rather than answers, sharing their opinions, participating in group projects, working with real-world issues and people, and having teachers who talk to them as equals rather than as inferiors.

Nearly two-thirds of secondary school students want to use laptops, cell phones, or other mobile devices at school.

A student in Albany, New York, pleaded the case for using technology in the classroom: “If it’s the way we want to learn, and the way we can learn, you should let us do it.”

One teacher queried, “Do computers cut you off from the world?” Not at all, said an excited student: “We share with others and get help. Technology helps — it strengthens interactions so we can always stay in touch and play with other people. I’ve never gone a day without talking to my friends online.”

One California high school served up a dose of common sense: “Kids grew up around computers. They love them. Their computers are their second teachers at home.” A student in West Virginia offered this nugget: “If I were using simulation in school, that would be the sweetest thing ever!”

Mark states that the best part of the student panels is always hearing the kids’ answers to his final question. “How do you like being able to talk to your teachers and supervisors about your learning?” Great responses:

I ask about their experience that day and whether their soapbox proved useful. “How do you like being able to talk to your teachers and supervisors about your learning?” I ask. I truly love their answers:
“I like the fact that we become equals. Students do not get the opportunity that often to share their ideas. If students and teachers could collaborate, a lot more would get done.” (Anaheim, California)

“A lot of students care — you just don’t realize it.” (Poway, California)

“Most of the time, the teachers are talking and I want to go to sleep. But now my brain is exploding.” (Poway, California)

“Don’t let this be a onetime thing.” (Poway, California)

“I think it’s important that you take time to see what we feel.” (West Virginia)

“Now you know what we think and how we feel. Hopefully, that will go to the heart.” (Texas)

“I waited twelve years for this.” (Texas)

“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it!” (Texas)

“As a general rule, you don’t hear from kids unless they’ve gotten into trouble.” (Anaheim, California)

“Both groups [teachers and students] can learn from each other.” (Anaheim, California)

“If you don’t talk to us, you have no idea what we’re thinking.” (Hawaii)

Clearly, the kids find it valuable to share with their educators their opinions on how they want to learn. Although skeptical, they hope those teachers and administrators who are trying to improve their education think so, too, and listen carefully to what the students have to say.

If you have Word 2007, there is a really neat tool that will enable you to automatically summarise a lengthy document.  I used it for my previous post: Are Underprivileged Students Better Off Without Computers?

You simply need to add the icon to your tool bar.  The How-To Geek will show you how to do this.  Then whenever you want to summarise a document, click on the summarise icon and you have a choice of options. For example, you can replace the article with a summary, place an executive summary before the article or highlight main points in the article.  Besides being a great time saver for writing summaries, I find it useful when I have to read lengthy reports. If they are web based, I select the article, right click and select ‘text only’  paste them into Word and summarise.

Thanks to Paul Hamilton and  Free Digital Tools for a UDL approach for leading me to this great find.

 We take it for granted that computers have tremendous potential to transform education. According to new research that focused on computer adoption among the poor in one Eastern European country, computers at home can actually help to lower the grade point averages of students, distract students from homework, and potentially contribute to behavioral issues.

 We find evidence indicating that children who won a voucher (to gain a computer) had lower school grades.

In the case of  the Romanian program, subsidies were provided for the purchase of home computers. The Ministry of Education did provide access to educational software. According to the researchers, few children installed educational software on their computers, and fewer still reported actually using that educational software.

The possibility that home computer use might displace more valuable developmental activities is a real concern. The researchers concluded that the role of the parent in “shaping the impact of home computer use on child and adolescent outcomes” is an important factor that needs to be addressed in programs aimed at bringing technology to underprivileged youth.

“Thus, our findings suggest caution regarding the broader impact of home computers on child outcomes. They also raise questions about the usefulness of recent large-scale efforts to increase computer access for disadvantaged children around the world without paying sufficient attention to how parental oversight affects a child’s computer use.”

Is this  something that needs to be considered in light of the one laptop per child  program?

I am sure that many educators would agree they would rather see children with computers than without.  Using the tools to gain in learning is the goal.  Liaison between school and parents, and using the tools effectively at school will assist in ensuring that they are not misused in the home environment.

Any comments?

The Larry King show recently discussed the issue of cell phone and brain cancer. The discussion was joined by Dr Sanjay Gupta and Dr Vini Khurana. Here are some important extracts from the discussion if you don’t have time to read it all.

If you look at some of the studies that have been performed — I mean one of the studies that is very concerning has been a story out of Europe that looked at a long-term exposure to the use of cell phones over a period of 10 years. And when patients or people were exposed to over 2,000 hours of cell phone use — which is about an hour a day for 10 years — that study reported about a 3.7-fold increase in the risk of developing brain cancer.

Teenagers and even younger — and they will be using cell phones for 20 or 30 years, we do not have enough data now to say that it is a safe device. Unfortunately, my suspicion is that it’s going to be five years or 10 years before we have a definitive answer. And unfortunately, as you showed at the beginning of the show, there’s a billion people, that will be using cell phones and they will be using cell phones for many years. We don’t know that that will necessarily be a safe practice.

I use a cell phone, but I always use an earpiece. It’s the antenna for the cell phone that is the source for the microwave energy. And as Dr. Gupta said, that energy is directly proportional, actually, to the square of how close you hold it to your brain. So, I think the safe practice is to use an earpiece so that you keep the microwave antenna away from your head.

Well, I think that we do not have conclusive studies, at this point, to make a scientific conclusion that there is a definite correlation. I do think that he raises a very important concern, I think particularly among young people using cell phones. And I think the concern among other types of neurological problems, other than brain cancer, because a microwave antenna is very similar to a microwave oven. It’s heating the brain. So we don’t know what long-term effects that will have on memory as our young adults age and other…

Dr. Keith Black, Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai.

So for safe cell use:

• Not many people read the instructions that come with their cell phone but it is recommended that there is a distance between the phone and the ear – it should be kept up to an inch from your ear.

• Make use of ear devices to maintain the distance - using a headset is really the right way to go, earpiece, speaker on phone.

• When carrying the device, not even when using it, just carrying it and the device is on, you should be using a specific pre-approved holster that has been tested for compliance. Don’t carry it in your pocket or on your body. not wearing one of these non- ionizing Bluetooth things all the time. Although Bluetooth phones give off less radiation than a cell phone, again don’t wear it on you.

• Use a landline rather than a cell phone - don’t use cell phone as your only communication device.

Further research is being conducted: Interphone Study is continuing to determine whether cell phones increase brain tumours due to the radiation they emit. Meanwhile,

Take this example from the Larry King discussion and deliver it to everyone you know who uses a cell phone:

Brad here has a wired ear piece in his left ear. It goes down to his phone. It’s carried in the approved holster. That is what they recommend.

 There are several  comic creators available and they are a great tool in the classroom for communication exercises, story writing, reporting factual information and so on.  For some students, this is definitely a more appealing option than writing an essay or story on paper.  My personal favourite is Toondoo as it is facilitiates one step further than a comic strip, that is, the making of a (toon) book.  When you create your comic strips, you need to save your pages in a ‘toonbag’.    Open an account (free), enter your username and password to begin creating.  The speed of loading pages can be a little slow depending on your connection, so be patient (it is worth the effort).  Go to ‘create’ on the startup page and you will see this screen:

Making a book is relatively easy process. When you create your comic strip, you need to save your pages in a ‘toonbag’.  At the ’start here’ option above,  save your work (click on the disk icon and make sure you check the box ’save to toonbag’. There are also options to keep your work private or public. Publish your work to save it.

When you have finished collecting pages for your book, go back to the starting page, click on ‘Books’ and dropdown menu will include  ’my toonbag’.

From your toonbag, you can rearrange your pages and tick the pages you want included in your book.  Click on ‘make a book’ and your book is ready.

Here’s an example of what can be done using Toondoo, a book created by Toondoo user, hainesk, a student, on cyber bullying.   A great classroom tool to bookmark. 

Anyone have any other favourite comic/cartoon resources?