Learn Online

Don't forget to update your feed: http://learnonline.wordpress.com

2006-12-23T20:53:00.000+13:00

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Time to update your subscription to this feed

2006-12-18T14:28:00.000+13:00

Sorry about this, but I'm moving off Blogger and onto Wordpress. New location is http://learnonline.wordpress.com and the feed URL is http://learnonline.wordpress.com/feed

Hope you'll stay with me :)

Second Life is starting to grab me

2006-12-11T15:48:00.000+13:00

I've kinda sat on the fence with Second Life. But really, there's no arguement about it. SL is an intensly engaging and inspiring space to be working in. Ever since the Future of Learning in a Networked World and talking more with Jo Kay and Sean FitzGerald I can see it more clearly.

With surprisingly little effort, IT here opened the communication port to allow access into SecondLife. Gotta hand it to the IT crew here at Otago Poly, for all my moaning about the profession generally (mostly legacy attitude from a gestapo like IT department in NSW DET), they have mostly been very responsive in taking off filters, allowing me to install software and try out things like Second Life.

Anyway, today I pulled a group of Occupational Therapy lecturers and others, to meet and watch as I met Jo in Second Life. In an intense hour of moving around, riding a balloon, visiting Harvard Law's SL school, and a Medical Library, not to mention bringing up a heap of Youtube videos, related websites, wikis and blogs, I think the group began to see how all this stuff can tie in together. (Links follow)

But, the usual overwhelmed feeling still pervades - that I fear will paralise anyone from moving into trialing out new practices with this teachnology. I'm ready, give me a project, I'd like to get iinto this I think...

Great links:
Jo Kay's BlogHud - where she is intergrating Blogging in with SecondLife
Jo Kay's Flickr photos - a bunch of screengrabs from Jo's SL experiences
SAE in Second Life - an excellent wiki page by Sean and Jo to support their presentations about edu use of SL
NMC Campus: Seriously Engaging - Youtube vid
Second Life Medical Library - an amazing range of information in a virtual library!
A Masters in Digital Media course blog - that also has a campus in Second Life
Cyber One - Harvard Law course that has a blog, wiki and Second Life campus

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Moment of truth - when the free stuff lets you down

2006-12-11T12:51:00.000+13:00

As many no doubt already know, Blogger is upgrading (catching up) with better web2 like features. But somewhere along the way they have stuffed up. I have just now tried to help 2 lecturers get started with blogging - now I'm certain that they will never blog again!

The problem is that we can't successfully get Blogger to hold a new username. We go in, we set up, we create new posts, all is looking good - so we sign out and then can't get in again. Google is in there claiming ownership over the username and asking us to sign in there instead - which just confuses the hell out of those poor newbies. BTW, I'm also experiencing trouble with Bloglines too - just to rub salt into the wound. Bloglines isn't adding new feeds to new accounts :( I suspect it is the computers here... but I can still get in to my old accounts, but not the new accounts! Blogger's help is no help, and they certainly aren't being up front about it in their blog either... could it be something in the way we are set up here?... either way, blogger beta is not rolling out smoothly, reminds me of a recent Blackboard upgrade just 10 yards from my key board a couple of months ago... So the moment of truth has arrived. After 2 years of using bloglines and blogger without a single issue - here it is.

About now is when all the IT people jump in and say, "see! I told you so! Its better to have control" and about now I would be closer than any other time to say, "yep! I agree with you Roger!" But no! the moment of truth is here, and it is now that I must drop back to first gear and employ that network flexibility I've been talking about.

To my mind, the free, web based and externally maintained services like blogger and bloglines are still better than what might cost you between US$200 and US$35 000 per year if you start including part of the salary you pay someone to maintain your internal servers. So if I had something up my sleeve when the issues with Blogger become so noticable - we could have jumped out of Blogger and Bloglines all together and used one of the many other free blogging and feed reading services available. I could start using my Del.icio.us to blog with, or my Flickr, or Multiply...

But that doesn't solve the problem of total newbies trying to get started. In the past, Blogger and Bloglines offered a reliable and easy service. Now that ivory tower has come crashing down and we are back to where we began. Either Blogger will regain some composure in about 10 hours, or I'm outa there and onto a whole other platform. In the meantime, IT can have their 12 - 24 months response time and try and get an internal blogging system up at no charge.

What a shame though. Right there was the making of two fantastic educational bloggers. Now, I'm sure they'll never blog again. I couldn't fix it in the time we had! They gave up trying after about 1 hour - or when I could say that I was at a loss :(

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Cormac Lawler - Wikiversity

2006-12-04T13:07:00.000+13:00

I had a very interesting phone conversation with Cormac Lawler today. Cormac is an experienced user, researcher and collaborative coordinator of wikiversity. In it we talked about the history of wikiversity, the possible structure and uses for it, some issues and considerations, and future developments.

Audio is in ogg, goes for 1hour and is 7.9megs.
VLC media player plays ogg files.
Conversation was had and recorded using Gizmo Project.

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Students struggle with information literacy

2006-12-02T21:58:00.000+13:00

EdNA's Recent Items RSS pointed to an article in eSchool News that references a interesting results from a study of high school and college student's information literacy. Unfortunately I couldn't get a link to the actual published results as eSchool News wanted me to register before reading the rest of the article.. no wonder bloggers kick linkless journalists. I did manage to grab this though:

The report comes from an evaluation of the responses of 6,300 students from 63 institutions around the country to ETS's new ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Literacy Assessment. Students were given scenario-based items that were presented to them in 75-minute test environments. These information literacy tests included extracting information from a database, developing a spreadsheet, or composing eMail summaries of research findings.
The tests are meant to measure students' abilities to overcome three challenges they typically have:
"The ability to identify trustworthy and useful information;
"The ability to manage overabundant information; and
"The ability to communicate information effectively
The study found that 52 percent of those tested could correctly judge the objectivity of a web site, and 65 percent could correctly judge that web site's authoritativeness. But only 40 percent of students entered multiple search terms when researching a topic, and only 44 percent properly identified a statement that captured the demands of the assignment.

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Flogging the dead horse that died in the trough

2006-11-28T08:07:00.000+13:00

There are times when I feel like my feedreader is talking to me... "go on Leigh, did you read that, its says what you say, say it again, here you go, read this, and this, and don't forget this, say it again..." Its a strange sensation hearing these little voices - am I going schitz? No its a reminder of how small our little band of web2/elearning2/networked learning enthusiasts are...

Chris Sessums has posted an extension to Will Richardson's frustrations at not seeing real changes in the educational settings he witnesses. Chris is suggesting Action Research as a way to help solve the problem. I suggested the same last year - but now I'm not so sure. I tend to think that action research (while admirable and certainly a method I would prefer working with) does not appreciate the extremely political and unfortunately hierarchical bureaucracy of institutionalised education. Such conditions in my opinion render results yielded through action research impotent. See DOPA and various educational departments banning all things Web 2 for a start. Then see mass implementation of learning management systems, intranet communications and secured content repositories for a second.

As regular readers of Learn Online know, I've chimed in on quite a few occasions when the despair for lost web2 potential in schools sets in. When I post a rant like the one about to follow, I always get the, "..but Leigh, you must be more patient", or "you're not seeing where the changes are happening.." not to mention the anonymous troll comments. Just quickly, I'd like to knock those first two off before I flog the dead horse laying in the trough again.

Patience is waiting to die
The internet has been around for over 10 years now, and by and large all I can see for it - in a tertiary ed sense - is vast quantities of money spent, I mean VAST quantities!! in content creation and "PD training", resulting in a clear majority of teachers who still don't know how to use a web browser effectively, who can't resize an image before they attach it to email, who struggle to see the potential of the read write web, and fail to see the use of wikipedia (if they've even heard of it) at first glance.. etc

And now whole education Departments are recoiling in fear - banning mobile devices, censoring the Internet, debating open source benefits but never trying it, then attending conferences on digital game based learning - simply for the political photoshoot with a celebrity.

Rather than me offering hyperlinked references to those sweeping statements above, how about you copy each of them and drop them into google and see what turns up. BTW, if you're blushing with the feeling that I might be looking at you when I write this - right clicking your mouse when you click those search results will give you the option to open the link in a new window - yes, you can have more than one website open at a time - but please, just do yourself a favour, get firefox. Tabbed browsing is just so much easier!

So, no - I don't have much patience left. I am seeing yet another communicative medium with immense potential, being lost to mediocre and mostly bureaucratic mud wallowing. I still have all the patience in the world for someone who wants me to show them how to set up a blog and edit a wiki, I have endless patience for people willing to give it a go. But I snap at people who have never honestly experienced themselves in the read write web - yet have all the cliche lines against it... "how can we verify it?", "how can I rely on this service", "how do you know its the truth?", "but we use Blackboard", "what about my privacy and intellectual property?", "why would I want the world to see me?" Amazing to think academic minds can be so unimaginative.

I see the positives
For a fella who reads an excruciating quantity of information coming online about education, and much of it filtered through the communiques of other people who passionately read through even more excruciating quantities of information - I'd say the chances of me catching the encouraging stories are farley high. When I see'm I post about them. So before you close this browser tab, or hit your IE back button (if you're teacher still struggling to learn how to browse) - please go back through my blog and try and find numerous pointers to exciting developments in small pockets of the world. I do see exciting stuff at times, but rarely is it ever from within the walls of a school, college or university.

I am someone who works in or for an institution tasked with helping to develop educational practices to be more in line with current and future trends not to mention potential. I get employed to help maintain the institution's relevance through change in practices (at least I think I do). And I do still believe that that this objective is important, despite my sound offs. I have they privilege of working first hand with a wide cross section of teachers from all types of subject areas. I have worked in this role at many different institutions for 5 years now.

Action not research
As much as I would love action research to be a means to which we might work to solve the serious shortfalls in teacher staff's digital and network literacy, I tend to agree with Stephen Parker when he focuses more on the hierarchy, trying to get management bye-in and modelling desired communicative behavior... before those managers go and cut off the tails of the few long tail teachers that are already read write web savvey.

Last Friday I had the pleasure to meet Jacob and Dawn McNulty from orbitalRPM. OrbitalRPM offers consultancy services to business and corporations on how to improve their staff training, general communications strategies and leverage informal learning. Jacob has apparently been lurking in my blog for some time now. He and Dawn recently married and chose New Zealand for their honeymoon. Good choice I reckon. Jacob, being a typical Web2 obsessive dragged poor Dawn to Dunedin so we could meet. Needless to say, it was a pleasure, we talked Web2 to each other based on our respective lines of work.

I was excited by Jacob's simple but perceptively effective idea of how to improve communication in an organisation and at the same time leverage informal learning via the networked learning model. He claims high millage for his thinking with client work he does, and I was certainly impressed enough to want to get him back here to talk to my own senior managers.

Like Stephen, Jacob reckons we must have managers and leaders modelling the desired behaviour, then offer incentives to subordinate staff to do the same. That is to communicate openly and frankly about their thinking, their job progress and their concerns. In other words to blog. There, now I (a subordinate) have no reason to say I have no idea what management are thinking, the minutes from their meetings will become more readable, hopefully to a point of interest and engagement that I might even WANT to read them, the public can see what we are up to and the newspaper can more easily gather their press releases.

Then the managers need to create incentives. Jacob and I talked a little about what this may look like and where it might come from - we thought the following was realistic:

$200 per month bonus to every staff member who regularly maintains a blog for their work. In it should at least contain notes and reflections on training sessions and other learning, issues and concerns, ideas and solutions, links to resources etc.
The money for this come from a fraction of the formal training budget. Call it small money for big informal learning.
Coupled to this incentive are efforts to forge communicative networks between these blogs. Support agents who monitor the blogging and make introductions to emergent synergies.

The long and the short of this post is that action research will not achieve a speedy enough result, and while there is a disconnect between the workers and the bosses, change is made impotent. I think the modelled behaviour from leadership with incentives will set up the infrastructure and potential for an action research culture to develop.

I hope Jacob offers a more detailed idea to this post when he's back from honeymooning with Dawn.

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Shaggy Rules!

2006-11-22T16:59:00.000+13:00

I just got off the phone with Peter Shanks, creator of the Training Packages Unpacked tool. It is a system that reaches into the MSAccess data base of the Australian National Training Information Service NTIS (a place that manages expressions of Australian competency standards or training units for qualification), and pulls it out of the PDFs and RTFS and redisplays the information that teachers and learners need on a web page for us web people to more easily reuse. Then he goes the full 9 yards and makes the newly formatted data available for those of us using wikis, Moodle, html, XML and an assessment spreadsheet. Now its just a simple process of finding the competency unit you are using for learning, teaching or assessment and copy pasting your prefered format into your prefered system.

Here's me extracting out an overly verbose unit statement from the Training and Assessment package - Design and Develop Learning Resources. Now, it is still a big wad of text, but now it is in Wikiversity where I and many others can chop down and make it more realistic. Peter and I agree that this statement alone should be enough for people to structure their learning around. Students could work together building up this wikiversity entry with resources and the like.

Here's the audio of Peter and I talking about all this today (3.5meg - 30 minutes - ogg file). I couldn't get an MP3 through to Podomatic or Odeo, security settings here prevented my uploading it. But a through way to Wikimedia commons who rightly only accept open standard media formats like Ogg was A OK.

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Excellent video about web2 and web3

2006-11-21T12:27:00.000+13:00

Graham Stanely has published an excellent video that overviews educational uses and ideas of Web2.0 and Web3D. Quite useful if you are still introducing people to the concepts, or trying to motivate people to stay on it.

Many thanks Barbara Dieu for sending this through.

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Good bye computer

2006-11-19T14:48:00.000+13:00

At last! an alternative to this back breaking, arse flattening, nerdy looking laptop interface!

Nokia's N770, Internet tablet.

It's the versatile Wi-Fi web browser with possibilities to spare. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is built on a Linux-based open source platform, which means you've got the power to transform your device into virtually anything. Now your options are as wide open as your imagination.

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet includes pre-installed Google Talk, Google's free instant messaging service that lets you chat and make calls using Voice Over IP technology. The upgraded software platform also supports SIP-based VoIP solutions, perfect for broadband business use.

Whatever your instant messenger of choice, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet will keep you connected to your buddy list when you're on the go. With Gaim, a multi-platform instant messenger service, you've got instant access to friends and co-workers while you're out and about.

The Gaim port for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet supports the following clients:

AOL Instant Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger
MSN Messenger
Gadu-Gadu
ICQ (via OSCAR)
Internet Relay Chat
Jabber (XMPP)

Lotus Sametime
Novell GroupWise
OpenNAP
Zephyr
SILC
Google Talk, IM only (using the Jabber protocol)
QQ, 3rdparty plugin

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet's desktop comes equipped with an intuitive RSS reader, designed to render feed items with ease. The device supports scheduled retrieval and gives you a convenient way to check headlines at a glance. And by downloading the latest version of FBreader, you can turn your Nokia 770 Internet Tablet into a handy e-book reader — choose up to 18,000 free texts to peruse on the go.

Enjoy your favorite video clips stored on your device, memory card, or streaming from the web. The large format, high-resolution screen and on-board speakers (with headset jack) deliver a movie-going experience on the go. There's even a built-in USB 2.0 for easy uploading and downloading.

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet supports the following file formats:

Image: BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, SVG-tiny
Video: 3GP, AVI, H.263, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RV (Real Video)

It's the ultimate mobile music player. Listen to music tracks and other audio files stored on your device, memory card, or streaming via the web. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet's audio player supports many popular sound formats and enables you to create and manage all your playlists. Just plug your favorite set of headphones into the 3.5mm headset jack and you're ready to rock. And if you're looking for a bigger sound, you can hook up your device to your compatible home stereo system. You can also enjoy a wide variety of Internet radio channels streaming anytime, day or night.

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet supports the following file formats:

Audio: AAC, AMR, MP2, MP3, RA (Real Audio), WAV, WMA
Internet Radio Playlists: M3U, PLS

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet offers a number of options for text input. On-screen, users can choose from a full-screen fingerboard, a half-screen stylus-tap keypad, or handwriting recognition. Bluetooth HID support also gives users the option of an external Bluetooth keyboard, purchased separately.

The full-screen fingerboard enables users to write longer text, like emails and documents, in a convenient and natural way. The QWERTY interface mimics that of a regular PC or laptop keyboard, making text input simple.

An edit menu gives you quick access to copy, cut, and paste functions, while the handy special character mode lets you enter in symbols and foreign language characters. An optional predictive text system makes typing fast and easy. Both keyboard functions also support typing in multiple languages at the same time, and a numeric keypad allows for the quick entry of numbers.

In handwriting recognition mode, the movement of the pen is recorded and compared to a library of characters. When a match is found, the character is input to the text field. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet recognizes several different handwriting styles, but you can also train the device to recognize your personal style with a built-in training program.

So, what I wanna know is: can I plug in a monitor and hardrive for when I need to do a big type up? and does it take a microphone?

Please please please be so!

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SMH - Youtube in Melbourne School - Stephen Hutcheon counters Catherine Munro

2006-11-09T12:34:00.000+13:00

Stephan Ridgeway alerted me to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday that is definately worth looking at - Youtube is a class act - a refreshing look at the positive adaptation of undeniably popular communication into some Australian school curriculum. Certainly a more informative counter to an earlier SMH article that should shame not only the paper and its 'journalist', but a doctor, the NSW Department of Education and some schools.

Stephen Hutchinson, a technology and society journalist worth following up on has told of a Melbourne School students,

...dissecting the fare on the world's most popular video-sharing website, they're creating their own mini movies and uploading them onto the site.

In fact they are doing interesting market research by the sounds of it

His class is about halfway through an eight-week project in which students - with parental consent - compile and upload videos to YouTube.
Then they wait and watch to see which ones take off and which sink without a trace - as is the lot of most of the 65,000 videos that are uploaded to the site daily.

They examine how, for instance, one of their videos with the title Hot Chix rates compared with another one called Funniest Cats You'll EVER See!!.

And its Funniest Cats' that is in the lead!!

Make sure you follow the link to the blog entry that supports the article for some interesting questions to Stephen from the students (on youtube video of course) which Stephen answers by text of course :)

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Will says DO IT! but they turn the other cheek

2006-11-05T11:52:00.000+13:00

Will posts a much needed rev up in owning the teaching... and the learning.

We go back and forth in this community about whether teachers who use blogs should blog, or podcast or read RSS feeds. I’ve always hesitated to come down on one side or the other in that debate for a variety of reasons. But it’s become clear to me that the answer has to be yes. If you are an educator, I think you have little choice but to choose option 3 in the Marco Torres mantra: “You can complain, quit or innovate.” I know in many ways it stinks to have to be an educator at a moment in history when things are changing on a glacial scale. But what you signed up for is preparing kids for their futures. You have little choice but to deal.

I'd like to second Will and say that I am also concerned that we are not seeing true and honest attempts to change systems and practices in a way that is better suited to the new world we are heading towards. I share his sense of urgency about it. But more and more, I think I'm realising that the changes we hope for will not come. The changes are happening outside the classroom walls (as always) and so the schools are becoming even more irrelevant to real life. Perhaps we are mistaken in the first place in our thinking that the formal education systems have any significant bearing on our socialisation... perhaps we are contribution to the blockage by attributing more significance than is warranted to the teachers, and thus failing to see what experiences are really important to a person's learning. Perhaps we might do better refocusing our efforts away from schools and teachers, and more towards community groups, parents, home-schoolers, scouts and sporting clubs etc.

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DimDim, free web-based webconference tool is available in alpha

2006-11-03T12:27:00.000+13:00

DimDim - open source web conference tool, is available as an alpha download.

Dimdim is an open source web conferencing product with features like Application, Desktop and Presentation sharing with A/V streaming and chat. No installation is needed on the Attendee side and all features are available through a web browser.

North Sydney Institute - Web2Debate, Guidelines for using Blogs and Wikis

2006-11-02T10:22:00.000+13:00

An interesting project unfolding at North Sydney Institute. A draft set of guidelines for the use of blogs in wikis in formal educational settings. Acknowledges things llike duty of care to minors, and public and private communications etc... (I was surprised to see my blog linked in there - so this is not a self promo).

I know they're not the only ones developing up such things - though they are using wikispaces - its a sure sign that we're in 2nd wave though. This is the 2nd wave adoption stage where the hi hopes, ideals and dreams of the 1st wave get compromised.

A skim read of their guidelines looks hopeful. Something in me recoils from the idea of setting guidelines though - which inevitably inform policy - but at least this one works to balance the facistically inforced IT policies of the Department over arching them. Good luck to them.

Thanks Peter Enderby for the pointer.

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I've been learning from robots

2006-10-31T13:31:00.000+13:00

William Lucas, a language teacher here at Otago Polytechnic has been experimenting with chatbots for language tuition. I popped around yesterday and spun me out with JabberWacky and sat back with a grin watching me talk to a robot.

Amazingly, William's class has already taught a robot what the capital of New Zealand is, it even asks back the same question in a variety of ways.

I'm impressed with William's adoption of the tool - normally thought of a spammer device - now as a language tuition device. Highly recommend watching the ABC video on it.

Related to this is what Peter Enderby points out in the Tourism Hospitality network. A 3D rendered animation that speaks the news aggregated from leading news sources, then pops out to other characters to read out blog posts like in the filed journalists! Again, well worth watching the video yo fully comprehend this. this technology could just as easily replace a teacher on many levels!!

News At Seven is a system that automatically generates a virtual news show. Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to an artificial anchor for presentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented.

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Artichoke introduces Living End and Ricardo Semler

2006-10-29T19:29:00.001+13:00

Another inspiring post from Artichoke, giving me yet another great reason to go to Brazil next year - to meet Ricardo Semler. A man enacting a concept that is only just now unfolding for me. Democratic schools and industry. Semler has founded a democratic school called Escola Lumiar in Sao Paulo.

Lumiar International School is testing the new concepts building a space of socially mixed classes, freedom and democracy as the grounds for the formation of the balanced citizen, the individual able to learn how to learn, to take responsibility for his/her own choices and to determine the course and scope of his/her education. As equal members of a democratic community, the students are actively involved in the events of daily life.

I think I could find more ideas for the Stepping out from under the umbrellas idea for training sector reform.

And this video depicts a new school in the US.

Thanks Sean FitzGerald for finding it in our long lost email exchanges...

and this from the Australian Catholic System:

Click To Play

Talks about 24hr school
related video http://heyjude.blip.tv/file/92772

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Vote for the Wikivesity Logo

2006-10-24T21:21:00.000+13:00

Wikiversity is taking votes for their logo. This is the only one I would wear on a t-shirt. The others look like some polluted snow flake or something. Make sure you cast a vote - a. to show your support for wikiversity, b. to make sure the better logo wins :)

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Affirmative action in language - delete teacher

2006-10-24T20:34:00.000+13:00

Stanley makes a good summary of his thoughts out of Global Summit, and is hopefully going to articulate something of an ecological perspective towards learning sometime soon.

He points out the common interpretation people are taking away from the teaching is dead idea, the feeling that perhaps I meant to say teaching is dead, long live teaching. Unfortunately that is quite the opposite to what I should have said, but I accept that by using correlations with "painting is dead, long live painting" I have perhaps mislead people in my thinking about teaching.

Imagine a paragraph about teaching and learning, but without the word and concept of teacher/ing. I think by calling it "teaching is dead, long live learning" I mean to point out that learning occurs without teaching. Basically reinforce Illich and many others who say that most if not all of our learning does or can occur outside the power of Teaching. Many people talk about the need for teachers to become learners again, in an effort to fit them in with this new age. To that I would respond and say, the day teachers stop being learners is the day they can no longer be teachers.

So what good is the concept of teaching? Is it not enough to simply work with the idea of learning? Where some learners are in a temporary position to assist other learners. Or more importantly, what do we loose by ceasing to use the word teacher? Does the meaning or interpretation of my blog change if I were to call it simply Learning Online? Can't the teaching bit just be implicit?

What I am trying to say I think is that by ditinguishing the concept of teaching as a practice that is different to learning, we straight away break the the process of learning. By identifying someone as a teacher and another as a learner - there, it is broken. The practice of teaching still exists of course, but it is no longer the full time, entitled practice we give it today. The teacher is gone, replaced by a learner.

This would work well in a research organisation, where the practice of research (learning) is directly connected with the practice of showing others what is being learned. What we end up with then, is a progression of learning where teaching is absorbed as a small event used for learning. Basic knowledge and skills are demonstrated and mentored by those working intermediately, and intermediate learners learn from advanced learners.

teaching is simply a part of learning. Such a small part, or such an everywhere occurrence that it is barely worth mentioning.

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Realpolitik/power politics

2006-10-19T12:13:00.000+13:00

The word realpolitik makes me picture this man.

John Connell used 'realpolitik' to criticise my talk and perspective, teaching is dead - long live learning. I appreciate the criticism actually, John recommends further reading for me, and makes me perhaps realise that I didn't speak enough about the 'real' work I do within an institution.

John writes:

...but loathing is not in itself enough to make a difference to the inertia that resides in the structures and processes that make up most state education systems around the world. He is right, absolutely, that IllichÂs notion of the Learning Web was created more than a generation before the maturation of the technology that now makes his vision achievable, but he shares Illich's inability, ultimately, to engage with the real political and institutional issues that would make a difference.

So to say I am not engaged with institutional issues is ignoring what I am outside the talk. I wish I had of pointed to it more. It is true that back at Otago Polytechnic my points are tempered somewhat, but the principles and ideals remain the same. I am searching for ways to deschool inside my organisation, so what is this realpolitik John is refering to? Is it simply power politics?

If I hold onto the principles and ideals that John has philosophicalal and emotional sympathy for, AND I stick to coming up with ideas for it in my work inside an institution, what is missing? I'd point to my ideas evolving in the posts Out from under the umbrellas and what would it be like to be the rain. They are ideas that I am reasonably comfortable with philosophically, and they are ideas I am really working on at Otago Politechnic. I hope John will make comment on those ideas.

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Audio recordings from Global Summit

2006-10-18T20:13:00.000+13:00

I'm quite relieved to have finished my talk. Seemed to go well, great that Education.au are audio recording and publishing as we go too. Unfortunately the main access to the files is through EdNA groups - which requires a user name and password :( but a little birdy showed me where the media is being stored wide open. Here's a feed coming out of the bloggers of the conference.

Here's some recordings I can see in the open media list so far:
My talk
Doug Brown
George Siemens
Robert Cailliau
Robert Cappie Wood

So that's day one over. I've meet some pretty cool and inspiring people.
I switched on fella from education au by the name of Mike Seyfang
. And another edu blogging teacher from South Australia who I've forgotten the name and link but will track down and put here later. And Greg Whitby of the 24hr open school fame - as discussed in TALO recently. Here's a link to a video I recorded of Greg talking about his work with Catholic Schools in NSW.

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Cappie Wood

2006-10-18T12:46:00.000+13:00

Andrew Cappie Wood, Director General of the NSW Department of unEducation is up on stage to start us off.
I'm as bored as I could possibly be, holding back the urge to shout out at every corner of talk about centralised provision, managed learning, oh boy... but if I drop my eyes down from Cappie, about 5 yards in front of me is Greg Whitby, executive director of schools in the Parramatta diocese. You know - that 24 hour school:

The traditional classroom concept will disappear, replaced by "learning spaces". The school will be referred to as a "learning community" and teachers will be known as "learning advisers", Mr Whitby said. "The walls of a classroom become redundant because students are able to access real-time, any-time learning."

I was going to try and get ou to the school and see if I could grab a quick interview. But Greg is here and I'll be very interested to hear his views of NSW D(u)ET.

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Global Summit - Teaching is dead tweaked a little

2006-10-18T09:02:00.000+13:00

So! here we are, at the very fancy Shangri-La Hotel under the coat hanger in Sydney, for Education.au's Global Summit. Sunshine went to dinner and sat next to George Siemens and Charles Jennings. We had a long awaited discussion about ye old LMS, and I got to flex my work in progress, out from under the umbrellas/what would it be like to be the rain.

I must say I'm quite intimidated by this Summit. The list of people coming is mostly big wigs and policy makers, in a 5 star setting, with high caliber speakers. What am I doing here!

I put teaching is dead up quite some time ago - hoping for more suggestions and feedback. Its been so long that it feels like old hat by the time I get up, and I've been so distracted by other events in the lead up to this that I haven't had much time to think about it more fully. But, to hell with it! I'll just have to get up and blurt it out in the usual scorched earth, Leigh Blackall fashion.

Here's the teaching is dead slides into a video on Blip.tv, and YouTube, slides on flickr and bubbleshare.

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Welcome back to the redneck wonderland

2006-10-16T14:58:00.000+13:00

So I'm back in Australia, sitting in a friends house in the Blue Mountains, looking out his window over the National Park, watching the mist roll on by, contemplating an image I might use for a talk at the Global Summit. 'bloip' goes skype as a Stephan messages me a link to that only-good-for-fire-starting rag, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Vandalism and Violence on You Tube - by Catherine Munro

PARENTS are being warned to monitor their children's viewing of YouTube, the hugely popular video site that is carrying scenes of teenage violence and vandalism...

...Fighting in Australian schools also features, along with demonstrations of how to spray graffiti on the outside of moving trains.

The site was impossible to access at public schools, an Education Department spokesman said...

...Adolescence psychologist (sic) Michael Carr-Gregg said the craze threatened to encourage copycat behaviour and urged all schools to ban the use of camera phones...

..."It's nasty stuff," Dr Carr-Gregg told The Sun-Herald. "I have seen some stuff which involved girls kicking each other on the ground, which made me want to vomit. In the background you can hear the person shouting 'I've got it' as they film."...

...The massive price Google paid for YouTube reflects how keen IT players are to shore up access to the millions of people who access the site every day...

...But the so-called "new media" is proving difficult to regulate...
..."No reform package can stop the migration of consumers from traditional media into more exciting and more flexible formats," Mr Berg wrote.

Not a scrap of concern as to the evidence of violence in schools, not a mention. Just a dull attack at the "so called new media" from a mysterious Cat Munroe - a few seconds of searching didn't turn her up, she probably doesn't even exist - just a name to pin press releases from the NSW Department of Uneducation to. I feel sorry for Michael Carr-Gregg though, in the absence of Cat, he's the next in line - and an easy target at that. Knowing how anonymous rag news works, they probably quoted Carr-Greg out of context... surely a doctor wouldn't be so narrow minded!

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Reading - The Wealth of Networks

2006-10-12T23:19:00.000+13:00

So, 3 months later and my library has finally delivered my order of Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks - How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.

Sure enough, after reading through the introductory chapter, it is an impressive read.

So far it has had me thinking about:

the shift from mass mediated information to networked - p10
an counter point to the common objection of information overload - p13. "..Individuals become less passive, thus more engaged. Attention in the networked environment is dependent on being interesting to an engaged group, than it is in mass media - where moderate interests to large numbers of weakly engaged people is preferable.."
the increased capabilities of individuals as the core driving social force behind the networked information society - p15
a response to individualism further fragmenting communities and continuing the trend of industrialisation: Internet is impacting on television and we are using the Internet to communicate with family and friends. But at the same time, our social ties are shifting due to the increasing range of diversity in our newly established connections...

I'm observing Benkler is at fault in my view, of wording in the global sense but almost only ever using US examples. This starts me wondering how much of what Benkler identifies as important (legislation, democracy, freedom, individualism, access and many other things) as being very dependent on your (US) view of the world...? This is already most apparent to me in his section in the introductory chapter starting p13, Justice and Human Development, where he does little to acknowlege digital divides, and the success of pirate software over free software.

But where is really started to get interesting was towards the end of the introduction, where he articulates the 4 methodologies he is approaching things with:

technology not as deterministic or entirely malleable
economic sociology
liberal political theory with economics and markets as a basis
individualism and anarchism

Finally, to finish the intro and motivate me to read on:

".. we must recognise... what is fundamentally a social and political choice - a choice about how to be free, equal, productive human beings under a new set of technological and economic conditions. As economic policy, allowing yesterday's winners to dictate the terms of tomorrow's economic competition would be disastrous. As social policy, missing an opportunity to enrich democracy, freedom and justice in our society while maintaining or even enhancing our productivity would be unforgivable..." p 27 and 28.

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Stanley Frielick and the future of learning institutions

2006-10-12T15:02:00.000+13:00

It has been great to witness Stanley Frielicks thoughts emerge as he processes his experiences with the Future of Learning in a Networked World. He, more than anyone has sparked important debate in that tour. He has suffered tirades and rants from many, flames from some, and institutional dogma from others, but maintained a willingness to engage and expose himself more. What emerges from this is a presence, a node, an extension in the connected knowledge, a person with whom I feel I can communicate with and relate to.

I met Stanley on the Northland leg of the tour, but before that he was simply a name in my email and little more. I tried once to find out more about him, but he was not easily located. A paper there, a photo here. As a result I could not be sure of who he was or what he stood for - that is until we met face to face.

We met at night at the airport and like any face to face meeting, a flood of information flows in as you instinctively look the person up and down and basically sum the person up as quick as you can so you can interact to some degree. A handshake because he is an anglo bloke, a smile because thanks to his dress and body language I have summed up that he's a good bloke and we'll get along... something like that anyway.

Now, Stanley is blogging. While he is at the other end of this little country I am given access to his thoughts and ideas, and can remain in touch. It is a different type of interaction - blogging and subscribing to someone's blog (networked), compared to say - email, forums and telephone. With networked communications I see Stanley writing largely to himself and in the context of his 'self' (blog). I can choose to remain at a distance, or comment in to let him know I'm there. Compared to the demands of one to one email, phone, or even group email communications, it is a safe distance, less demanding, but intimate enough over time.

This networked communication is different to what many of us are used to, and different to what the majority of us experience. But it is significant. It is this form of communication - with all its promise of equality, democracy, and other egalitarian principles - that inspired the open space ideals of the FLNW. The connectivity emerging between myself and Stanley is an example of how that happens and how it can be maintained.

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Presentation - digital network literacy

2006-10-10T16:04:00.000+13:00

Well, I'm going to attempt to talk through my paper on digital network literacy for the Knowledge Bank in Australia this Thursday arvo 1pm Melbourne time.

I realise as I write this that apart from the group talk with Knowledge Tree (when the paper was first published) that I haven't actually presented this to anyone.

I am finding it quite difficult to pin down, mainly because I always spread my arguments (too) wide and thin. As you'll see by the slides, it starts out solid enough, but soon jumps around making it hard to follow.

I think this jumping around must almost be expected of me by now. I do somehow manage to stitch it all together in the end, but you wouldn't know by just looking at it - I won't know until I've talked it through!

Anyway, you can join the fun on Thursday by going to Knowledge Bank's website. Registering :( and clicking the program in the top left. I'm going to get through these slides in 30 minutes (or under) and then hope for a rather informative discussion for the last half.

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What would it be like to be the rain

2006-10-07T09:00:00.000+13:00

A few days ago I posted an idea called out from under the umbrellas, of why and how educational institutions should decentralise

Tonight is an idea of how formal teaching and learning, assessment and accreditation might occur in that decentralised educational context.

I was reading Artichoke's latest post, Nobody owns it, everybody can use it and anybody can improve it that motivated me to stop reading and start typing. However typical of the feeling after reading any Artichoke posts I'm left astounded at how much Arti can fit into a single sentence, let alone a post chock full of quotes, references and links! and bewildered on what I might say when it seems as though it has all been said.

But it is that sentence that Arti uses as the over all theme to her post that rang bells for me most. It reminded me of the Linux ads IBM is running on Youtube - but more importantly how amazingly possible, if not already true the statement is.

I dunno why really, but it makes me want to imagine what would it be like to be the rain...

If you've read my post about decentralised education, out from under the umbrellas, then the title of this post may soon make more sense.

So, we have teachers with strong Internet presence. They point to, discuss, demonstrate, collate prolific amounts of information about their subject/s. They model the best practice possible, and lead by example. They share all that they know, and actively seek out what they don't, they are endorsed, supported and promoted by the institution/s they use as a base... in doing all this their Internet presence is strong, as it needs to be for this:

We have people all around the world, using the worlds biggest and most successful training provider (Google + wikipedia + youtube, etc) to access information and wherever possible communication, around what it is they are wanting and needing to learn. With a strong and established Internet presence our brave new teachers get found.

It is here I start to think about ways to try and match institutional learning pathways to this informal and self paced learning method through Google et al.

Let's start by reminding ourselves how Ask Ninja explains podcasting:

I hope you managed to watch that movie. Basically Ninja describes the world of the person seeking ideas, entertainment, information and the like online. That person wanders the landscape of search results, random links and posts, surfing... they happen across a single piece of content that grabs their attention (be it because of the entertainment value like Ninja, or because of its perceived value in answering a question or problem, or both..)

The challenge for teachers I think, is how to develop a web presence in such a way that this person will want to come back, subscribe, or otherwise tune in to what you are doing.

For example, if I was exploring an interest in lets say...architecture, and happened across something you (a teacher of it) had pegged - a quick video demonstrating how I might go about measuring my house and using Google sketch up to draw my dream renovation... I could be made interested by this. Now that I'm interested, things that would draw my interest further would be if at the end, or attached to the video somewhere was some advise on what my next steps could be and how what I just learned relates to what I could learn more of.

Those suggested next steps would draw me into more of your work - micropedagogical dumps as Brent says, bite sized chunks of things that would make me want to stay or come back. Things that would maintain my interest would be more of those seemingly random content feeds relating to architecture, and ending in next steps and suggested relationships to various life contexts... more video demos, short audio recorded interviews with practitioners (5 - 10 minutes) from NZ, India, South Africa, Brazil, China... a nicely designed text for print that inspires me to think differently about architecture and its importance in web design... recordings of your 10 - 15 minute lectures (goodbye 1 - 2 hour lectures)...

Along the way I have come to realise that you are a lecturer in architecture. My eyebrows lift at this realisation and I instinctively compare you to my past experiences with teachers.. "man! this person is onto it!" I'd think. I'd start to become more impressed by your passion for the subject as I see that you post a new thing every second day or so. I become even more impressed when I come to learn that some of what you post refers to your students work! I follow the links into your students, and see how they blog about their work with you. I am allowed to see the conversations and authentic learning that you are facilitating with these people and I start to relate myself into the experience. No enrollment fee, password and login profile to block me there... I start to see that becoming a qualified architect may be a possibility for me, achievable in my spare time after work.

So I make contact with you. A few days later you reply. Not with an enrolment form and an 0800 number, but with get-to-know-ME questions. Genuine, personal. I reply with questions about your work, you reply with answers and pointers to other work. You ask me if I'd like to join a web conference with your class! I bork and get shy, you say, "no worries - just listen in if you like" and give me the time and link. I do listen in, and see that the group you are communicating with are people just like me, and once again I think how possible it might be for me to study to become an architect. I go away for a while and see what else I can find, but inevitably I keep falling back to your blog, looking for more of that initial experience.

Weeks later you send me an email with an assignment attached. You explain that you thought I'd be interested in having a go at it, and if I wanted to I could send it in when I finished it. No mention of a fee. I'm surprised by this, even a little suspicious, but on reading the assignment I am curious.

I few weeks later I build up the courage to send you my attempt at the assignment. A few days go by and you respond with an impressive amount of feedback, written not with a teacher voice,but with progressive discourse as Konrad calls it. As an equal - respectful, sensitive, and personal. You then point me to your own attempt at the same assignment and I find it amidst many others who have attempted the assignment in the past, some only days before me. I even comment in on some of them, and get responses asking to see mine. You ask me if you can put my assignment up with the others...

This goes on for sometime. The teacher has to manage quite a bit of online social activity around their subject area, but avoids forming groups or classes, always treats people as individuals, respectful of each individuals capacity and time frames. The teacher is basically nurturing people into a relationship with them and their work as teachers in the field. Teachers as equals, as participants in their own courses, participants in a network.

Let's review that. Individual teachers have strong, networked, Internet presence. Their presence is built on the basis of micro content. The potential student is looking at this world of information networked communication. They draw focus on a particular element of content and find that it is networked into a chain of content. At any point, opportunities to communicate around that information is available. When the communication starts, so does the relationship, and the prolonged learning. I think this is starting to look like Stephen's picture of an alternative state education system posted October 6th.

but who pays?

Well, it's for free!! But some may choose to pay. Eventually many people will come to a point in their learning this way where they either need to be accredited or want to be. Some want recognition for their work, others legally require it to do further work. When they are at that point is when they (their employer, government or scholarship) pay. When the time for accreditation is agreed on (in other words when the teacher and the student agree that both are ready) the student enrolls and pays a fee, and the teacher introduces a team of independent assessors and everyone goes through the work that has been done. All the assignments, communications if need be, readings that were read and considered, portfolio, work experience, interviews, all of it is looked at to make an assessment for qualification.

It is at this point where payment is made, the learning was free. Education costs, learning is for free.

So there it is, what I think it might be like to BE the rain.

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Out from under the umbrellas

2006-10-03T19:49:00.002+13:00

"...When the processes of formal training and assessment separate, institutionalised learning will be in crisis..."

Stephen Downes in a conversation with TANZ CEOs in Christchurch, September 21.

A scenario to help explain:

In the interests of quality assurance, builders in New Zealand are soon to be required to hold a certificate, however there is a shortage of builders in many areas of NZ.
To fast track certification and to ensure numbers of builders continue to be available, training organisations and builders associations will set up Recognition of Prior Learning and some training opportunities where needed.
If done well, the RPL process will become a fast track, cheaper option for certification. It is likely that smaller organisations will set up and sustain themselves solely on the provision of assessment for RPL, while others will focus on specific, just in time training.
This will create more options for people requiring certification and or training.
Industry will welcome shorter and/or more flexible training and certification opportunities, preferring work place training and assessment that is customised to their needs.
Secondary schools will start to align curriculum with these smaller providers and student income subsidies may begin to recognise these arrangements and extend their support to include study with these agencies.
Training and education institutions, heavy with a wide variety of both viable and non viable courses, and no longer enjoying exclusive recognition from student income subsidies, start to struggle under their inefficient size and processes.
Here is were the crisis begins...

I'm not too sure how sound or desirable such a scenario is, but there is plenty of evidence to say this is well under way already. It is basically a huge decentralisation of training and education.

The best response in my view is for the institutions themselves to decentralise in some way, and what follows is how I think that can best occur.

It just so happens that the long held and increasingly popular apprenticeship model is quite complimentary to this need to decentralise. Complimentary to the apprenticeship model is networked learning. On the one hand is an efficient, demonstrate and practice, mentor learning structure, while on the other is the enablement of an independent, informed and networked learner. Let me paint a picture:

Imagine if your institution allowed for more individualism. Your answer might be something like, "...Otago Polytechnic works for me..." rather than ".. I work for Otago Polytechnic.." A place where the brand, the infrastructure, the management and hiearchy, and the assets were in some way answerable or subsumed to the individuals who work from the organisation as a base.

The individual teacher would be out from under the umbrella of the organisation as a whole, and made more responsible for their own actions - or lack there of - while the organisation and its hiearchy is set up to support the development of that individualism in its teachers. Teachers would be expected (but not required) to establish and maintain a presence, a portfolio so to speak, always up to date - up to the second, with the work they are doing, their research, their ideas and thinking, their experiments, their teaching, and their communications with professional networks. A blog could be one way, but I didn't say that... individuals from around the world can attached to the organisation by way of endorsement from the organisation for their work. They would have the opportunity to benefit from its support in negotiable terms. While the organisation benefits from a more flexible, individually responsible, diverse work force.

The important point is that the organisation becomes far less centralised and less identifiable en-mass or as a whole. It is more clearly identified by the individuals that grow from its base. It is made up of many individuals with explicit directions, expertise, interests etc, while the organisation is geared to support those individuals with professional development, admin, promotions, development funding and the like.

One more scenario:

Roy is a lecturer in cooking within a training institution called Tekotago.
Much needed mature and focused cooking students are taking advantage of alternative training and assessment options, leaving only the less mature and less focused students in his classes who need the others
This trend is undermining the quality of the Roy's training and affecting his motivation.
Roy, along with around 30% of the institution's lecturers has decided to develop a public profile as a cooking expert and teacher and help the Institution to decentralise.
He is given ownership of his intellectual property, independence from the organisational hiearchy, support in terms of admin, pay, infrastructure, development budget and the like, but is now more responsible for the quality of his over all work.
Roy is less restricted by the organisation, and is able to work independently, proactively and responsively to the training needs and trends of his potential students.
He is identified as Roy the Cooking teacher endorsed by Tekotago rather than simply a teacher at Tekotago
He remains with the organisation for the support in admin, more secure income, professional development opportunities, and access to development funds, but he is free to become totally independent should he choose.

Of course the questions flap in the wind... what is to become of the teacher who prefers the shelter of the organisation... they way I see it, both can exist - for now.

UPDATE: Part 2 of this post, What would it be like to be the rain?

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Groups and/or networks... the future of learning in a networked world

2006-09-30T17:26:00.000+12:00

Home from the FLNW tour and man! am I tired.

The picture on the left represents one of the most significant realisations for me.

A realisation to do with ideas of groups, class, networks, individualism, and connectedness.

Right from the start, Stephen Downes objected to being expected to participate in the group. It wasn't the participation that was the issue, it was the expectation. That there is an important thing to point out, it is the seed of something significant in what a future for learning could be, if we manage to understand the notion of network.

Of course, it was easy to take offense at Stephen's resistance to participate, it seemed out right rude not to join the group, but that's because I wasn't seeing what he was trying to say. By objecting to the expectation, I felt as though he was objecting to participate. That wasn't so. Stephen was resisting the formation of a group, arguing that it is the group that prevents individual connectedness. Are you confused? I sure was, and so were many others. But I've come to realise that this is a very important point Stephen was trying to make. I think it is well illustrated by the photo. Because of the obligation to the group, individual connections can too easily be over looked.

The day after that photo was taken, we went to Auckland to meet people at the University of Technology. It was there, where I spread myself thinly across an even larger group, that Stephen moved to the side and drew this diagram. It was the first time that he had taken the time to represent his thoughts and actions on the issue, and the first time I took the time to properly consider it.

I helped Stephen to video record his explanation of this diagram. In it he attempts to clarify his objections by defining what he sees as the make up of a group, and how that differs importantly from a network. A group demands unity, where a network requires diversity. A group requires coordination, where a network is autonomous. A group is by its nature closed, where a network is open. The information in a group is distributed, where in a network it is in the connections...

It is a radical and troubling proposition, but one that rings true to me. Indeed, it was the same argument I attempted to make last year when I criticised EdNA groups. Troubling it is, that I have so easily contradicted myself, and even found it so hard to understand one year on. I did begin to smell something wrong with the set up of the conference when I posted Where we may be going wrong to the conference blog. But where I could only sense it, others were willing to debate it with Stephen in an at times emotional email exchange. By the end of the tour, and perhaps thanks to the group, Stephen had formulated a compelling and personally moving work, Groups vs networks - the class struggle continues.

But what do I get out of this?

I get a realisation that it is very difficult to properly understand networks, let alone achieve a true network in face to face settings. Even though an open space meeting brings us close, there are still so many aspects of the face to face meeting can too easily lead us into forming groups, at the expense of the individual connectedness we can experience online.

So it makes it even clearer now, how political the Internet is, and how challenging it can be to established power. I go back to my place of paid work now, a place with almost ancient power rules and very defined groups, with a clearer picture of what needs to occur. My next post will be the vision I have for my organisation, to make way for future learning AND a networked world.

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The Future of Learning in a Networked World

2006-09-12T19:14:00.000+12:00

Good Grief!! Its on for young and old here in New Zealand next week!!

Stephen Downes
Konrad Glogowski
Teemu Leinonen
Stewart Cheifet
Barbara Dieu
Michael Coghlan
Steven Parker
Me
Rose G
Jo Kay
Sean FitzGerald
Alex Hayes
John Eyles
Bronwyn Hegarty

and others, coming together in Dunedin on September 18 and travelling through Christchurch, Northland, Waiheke Island, Auckland and Wellington for 10 days... together!! Its going to be one hell of a discusion about the future of learning in a networked world.

Hope you'll join us!

Detailed info on the wiki

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Free and Open Source Web Conferencing is on the way

2006-08-29T10:18:00.000+12:00

Through a comment from Anne to the Everything You Need to Teach and Learn Online post - A hosted and open source web conferencing service will be in beta September 1.

Let's hope its free, easy and web based... pleeeeze be so.

Dimdim is the Open Source web conferencing company. With Dimdim you can show Presentations, Applications and Desktops to any other person over the internet. You can chat, show your webcam and talk with others in the meeting. More..

Blip.TV rocks!!

2006-08-21T15:38:00.000+12:00

I dunno why it has taken me so long to realise. GNUChris pointed me to it a while back, they must have added a bunch of features since - or was I just a fool rushing through and didn't see the greatness of the free online video service Blip.tv!! Check my account out. Subscribe - I'm officially a Blip man now.

Not only is it fast to upload!! Boy its fast!
But it gives you back an mov to save back down to your computer
It cross posts your video to your Internet Archive account!
It cross posts the video link to your del.icio.us account based on the tags you use for the video
It cross posts a frame image thumbnail across to your flickr account through your flickr account's email address!

There's more - I just couldn't wait to do the shout out for them!

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Copyright constipates

2006-08-21T15:21:00.000+12:00

William McGeveran from the University of Minnesota, and William Fisher from Harvard University have published 4 key points about copyright that are sure to constipate an entire school population!

Unclear or inadequate copyright law relating to crucial provisions such as fair use and educational use;
Extensive adoption of digital rights management technology to lock up content;
Practical difficulties obtaining rights to use content when licenses are necessary;
Undue caution by gatekeepers such as publishers or educational administrators.

There's more if you are in need of regaining a flow: The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age

Free international mobile and landline calls with Gizmo

2006-08-21T09:47:00.000+12:00

Quite a while ago I was trying out and comparing the Internet phone services Skype, Gtalk and Gizmo. They all have their pros and cons - so I install and run all three.

While I would still recomend running all three, Gizmo has made a pretty incredible offer that we should all try out:

If you download, install, and use GizmoProject - you will be able to make calls to another user's computer, mobile or landline for free!! I have installed it and have followed the instructions. Now I await others to do the same.

Note the fine print:

Callers are encouraged to make free PC-to-PC calls whenever possible. The All Calls Free calling plan applies when both call participants are active Gizmo Project users making a few phone calls per week with Gizmo Project. Free calls may originate from anywhere in the world, but must be to a qualifying number in one of the 60 countries for which the plan is offered. Calls must be made from the caller's contact list to either the "home phone" or "mobile phone" number the call recipient included in his or her profile, and both parties must have shared each others profiles with one another. If a call does not quality as free under the All Calls Free plan, it will be subject to our regular low calling rates. As with all of our services, the All Calls Free plan is subject to the Gizmo Project terms and conditions and end-user license agreement. More information, including the qualifying country list, may be found in the All Calls Free FAQ.

Something worth remembering about Gizmo is that it also offers free conference calling and audio recording, as well as a fun intergration with Google Maps.

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testing flickrshow

2006-08-20T21:07:00.000+12:00

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Konrad goes back to progressive discourse

2006-08-20T20:52:00.000+12:00

Its always nice to read Konrad's reflections on blogging in his classrooms. This time he has 3 tips for teachers trying to create a learning community, the first being:

Teacher as Learner

Learning to transform my classroom practice was very difficult and I certainly don’t want to sound like someone who believes he has mastered this difficult new role of a teacher in a networked environment. I think I did well but I still have a lot to learn about what it means to be “dethroned” by a community of bloggers. It was a very difficult process and had a profound impact on my understanding of professional development. I had to learn how to learn with my students, how to become a learner and, yes, how to stop teaching. When I say stop teaching, I, of course, refer to the transmission mode of teaching. I was still teaching as a learner/participant but it was very different.

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Criteria for assessing learning resources

2006-08-07T14:38:00.000+12:00

Recently I was asked to provide criteria for assessing learning resources on offer from another organisation. In my time I have come across many such things for assessing other people's learning resources - always very complicated and hard to understand and impliment.

Below are 3 general criteria I use. They are a condensation of criteria I have worked under in past projects. Those who know will probably see that behind them are some quite complicated processes - but to start with I think this simplification is enough. It should help people come to terms with what they are looking for, without losing sight of why they are looking for it.

1. Accessibility and usability - Can these resources be easily used?
Have the resources undergone testing with students and facilitators, including those with a range of abilities, and those with a range of computer and connection settings? Are there clear and concise supporting documents such as study plans, facilitation guides, assessment guides?

2. Reusability - how customisable are the information resources?
Is the file structure simple to comprehend? Do the individual resources copy easily, including into other formats? If they are complex and interrelated resources, can they move as a whole into new systems? What are the copyright restrictions, if any?
3. Communications - What communications and feedback methods are possible? Are the inbuilt communication options (if any) accessible and usable? Is it easy to communicate into the information resources, eg. can specific points be hyperlinked to, or otherwise identified in communications? Is there, or can there be a range of communication options used to support the information?

Please, if you think I have missed something in this initial 3 step - add it as a comment below and help me improve it. Any references to similar attempts to simplify learning resource assessment criteria would be much appreciated.

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Keeping kids online safe

2006-08-05T16:33:00.000+12:00

Seb Chan points to a nice and easy 10 principles for the digital family by Liz Losh.

My fav:

10) Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve

No matter how you became a parent, you chose to have children because you love them. Older teens may be embarrassed by such signs of affection, but showing your kids that you love them benefits them for a lifetime. Digital media allow for opportunities to remind your kids that you think about them every day. The occasional e-mail with a funny link or Photoshopped image, goopy instant message, out-of-the-blue care package from an online vendor, or custom designed t-shirt can create moments of celebration to supplement more traditional expressions of interest like hugs and chats with the denizens of the backseat. It shouldn't take the place of kicking around the soccer ball or making homemade chocolate chip cookies, but contemporary life can create certain kinds of distance that technology can bridge.

Living up to their name

2006-08-03T19:37:00.000+12:00

Blackboard is certainly living up to their new nick name of the Blackweb.

Harold Jarche says it for me:

The Blackboard patent may become a defining moment for learning technologies. LetÂs use this as an opportunity to cast off the classroom and course metaphors..

It hurts though that no one wants to refer to my long (perhaps) broken record of saying the same thing. So if this patent awarded to Blackboard is the last straw, perhaps you'd like to look elsewhere for everything you need to teach and learn online.

Stephen gives us a round up.

I heard it first from Darcy through his Gnomes comic.

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I hate PodOmatic

2006-08-01T20:02:00.000+12:00

Sorry to everyone in my inbox who just received an email announcing a new podOmatic podcast site called leighblackall. I was setting up an account so I could access and listen to a recording that a colleague had sent me. I was annoyed that I had to set up an account just to listen to the recording and wasn't concentrating. One of the final screens had everyone in my inbox loaded below the visible screen area ready to send email to when I finished the account set up!! I realised this halfway through the next page loading and clicked stop. I doubled back and had a look at that page with emails listed and saw WAY down the bottom a button called "deselect all emails". Jeez, what a annoying thing that is, what a sneaky 2 bit service PodOmatic is for having this as a default. Now I'm dealing with hundreds, and I mean hundreds of bounced emails and people asking what's it all about.

PeopleAggregator

2006-07-31T22:31:00.000+12:00

Another good heads up from Derek Wenmoth towards PeopleAggregator. Could this be the beginning of the truly nomadically/mobile, socially networked Internet?

From the TechCrunch article:

Here’s how it works. PeopleAggregator.net will be a fully functioning online social network in and of itself, but it will share information with other services through common identity standards for our profiles and through APIs (application programming interfaces) for our writing, multimedia and contacts.

Perhaps most important, PeopleAggregator will also provide new social networks with hosted software and later next month will offer downloads of the software for organizations who prefer to host it themselves. Licenses will be free for nonprofits and will cost commercial ventures a one-time sum after they successfully monetize the system.

What this means is that it will be easy to come and go from new social networks, instead of being locked in to one just because you’ve put the time and energy into using your account there. Instead of being at the mercy of one centralized database and service, if Canter’s vision succeeds then countless social networks will proliferate with unique styles and function but with interoperability.

They only thing that tells me this (one in particular) won't work is the name. And, as sad and shallow as that may be, I think its fair to say that the name makes or breaks the success of a social software... I hope I'm wrong though, and its name may still be easy to change..

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Teaching is dead - yikes! did I say that?

2006-07-31T22:15:00.000+12:00

Derek Wenmoth has posted a round of interesting stuff to his blog recently, one of which is right up my alley at the moment:

In a globalised world, mediocre teaching is doomed

By 2036, the forms of teacher preparation that currently prevail in Western nations will have sunk into oblivion. We will have discarded schools of education, the pedagogies they teach, and the certification apparatus that they serve. Such schools, pedagogies, and certifications have clung to life stubbornly for the better part of a century despite ample evidence of their unsuitability. Why predict that in the next 30 years they will finally follow the giant ground sloth into the La Brea tar pit of history?

air on the back of your neck stand on end :)

Artichoke puts me right

2006-07-31T20:53:00.000+12:00

Art rightly had a go at my positive impressions last week, towards superficial readings of data looking at ICT use in NZ schools. The survey results were linked in by a comment from anonymous - someone who has been dropping unhelpful remarks in here ever since I moved to Dunedin. Of course Art is right to point out the inadequacies of these surveys and reports, and to criticise my lack of vigilance... what I was really trying to do though was encourage that Anonymous to come out. No more of that. That's enough worrying about negative remarks from Anonymous comments here. Let's hope this Dunedin weather (or whatever it is) doesn't keep clouding my vision or freeze over my brain.

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6 Ideas for dealing with DOPA

2006-07-31T19:53:00.000+12:00

The US wants to delete predators. DOPA. How embaressing for them.

My suggestions for our networked colleagues in the USA:

Leave the USA, seek refuge.
Homeschooling
Daily excursions to the local Internet cafe
Start a community wireless project
Assign censorship and hacking as in class activity, and traditional curriculum for homework
See my posts realating to filtering and security in Australia

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Change

2006-07-31T11:12:00.000+12:00

I don't mean to help those Yahoos with their advertising, but there is something else in this video that reminds me about how hard or impossible it is to change education.

A wack of open courses from Japan!

2006-07-24T19:52:00.000+12:00

From the EdNA news feed comes a confirmation of a wack of (bi lingual) open course material coming out of Japan.

Now, if you decide to go a bit this way, you really must come up with something to keep the momentum of open source going. I suggest multi lingual, multi media wikis.

Nagoya University OpenCourseWare (NU OCW)

The site provides free access to teaching materials used in selected courses. Teaching materials from twenty-five courses available, each set of courseware consists of a Course Overview, a Syllabus, a Calendar, Lecture Notes, Assignments, Grading and Evaluation Criteria, Related Resources, and Classroom Insights.

Waseda University OpenCourseWare

Waseda OpenCourseWare is linked to the university's electronic lecture information search system. Included are course materials for: Numerical Computation, Information Technologies, World Englishes and Miscommunications, Reading Simplified Japanese Characters, Circuit Theory, Numerical Computation with Guaranteed Accuracy, Coexistence in Asia.

University of Tokyo OpenCourseWare

A free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. Global Focus on Knowledge (Science of Matter); Medicine (Instruction to Pathology, Clinical Bioinformatics); Engineering (Applied Acoustics; Fundamental Physics for Electronics; Machine Design Technology; Statistics mathematical principle; Quantum Mechanics); Humanities and Sociology (Sociology of Care); Science (Molecular Computing); Economics (Business Administration); Arts and Sciences (Historical development of Spanish language; Geographical variation of Spanish language; World Model; International Politics); Education (Educational Administration and Finance); Frontier Sciences (Nonlinear Finite-element-method; Physics of Transition Metal Oxides); Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies (Information Semiotics; Communication system; Evolutional Ecology Informatics).

Tokyo Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare

The site provides free access to course materials aiming at releasing the Tokyo Tech's high-level educational resources on science and technology as the world's public property. Included are course descriptions and lecture notes from the: Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Graduate School of Innovation Management, and Common Course of Graduate School.

Osaka University Open Courseware

The site offers a collections of Osaka University's educational materials. Included are course materials from the Schools of: Dentistry, Economics, Engineering, Engineering Science, Frontier Biosciences Human Sciences, Information Science and Technology, International Public Policy, Law, Law School, Language and Culture, Letters, Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and

Kyoto University OpenCourseWare

Free access to course materials from Kyoto University. Included are materials from the: Faculty of Integrated Human Studies; Faculty of Letters; Faculty of Education; Faculty of Law; Faculty of Economics; Faculty of Science; Faculty of Medicine; Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Faculty of Engineering; Faculty of Agriculture; Graduate School of Letters; Graduate School of Education; Graduate School of Law; Graduate School of Economics; Graduate School of Science; Graduate School of Medicine; Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Graduate School of Engineering; Graduate School of Agriculture; Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies; Graduate School of Energy Science; Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies; Graduate School of Informatics; Graduate School of Biostudies; Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies; Kyoto University Law School; College of Medical Technology.

Richard Stallman Video

2006-07-23T21:26:00.000+12:00

Chris Harvey left a comment link to this impressive video of Richard Stallman talking about freedom and software.

Quite an inspirational video, with a setting that kinda reminded me of a 1960's avant guard film - like Wavelength by Michael Snow (my personal favourite). Its hard to tell but the curious composition of this Stallman film makes it look as though he is in prison, secretly sending out this message from behind his bunk. Come to think of it - this must have been deliberate.

Amazing film. Thanks Chris.

This video is formated to the open standard Ogg. I use VLC media player which supports this and many other formats.

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Anon comes good.

2006-07-23T20:03:00.000+12:00

For a while now, I've had a little Anonymous lurker leaving generally unfriendly comments - but today she's come good and left a link to back up one such remark and point out some more information regarding the state of play for ICTs in New Zealand schools.

I was joining Artichoke in a bit of a rant as to why the investments in ICTs didn't seem to be turning into significant changes into real changes in teaching and learning. Anon pointed to a list of reports from the Ministry that seems to say otherwise. I'm still reading through them, but at first glance it seems at the very least the reports point to some very good results infrastructure wise. Now looking for the stuff that's harder to see though - is that infrastructure producing digital and network literate staff and students? While I look a little, check this summary out:

Major findings of the 2005 survey
Outlined below are several major findings of the 2005 ICT in Schools survey. Further detail are provided in the main findings of this report, which can be accessed via

ICT in Schools Report 2005

All Schools now have access to the Internet. Overall, schools more commonly reported 80% or more of their computers were connected to the Internet.
Furthermore, most schools use a high-speed (broadband) Internet connection (93% secondary and 78% primary).
Nearly all schools also have an Internet safety policy or strategy (91% primary and 96% secondary), although only three quarters of all schools reported specific Internet safety measures.
The ratio of computers to students is now one computer for every four secondary students, and one computer per five primary school students. In Māori Medium schools, the ratio of computers is one computer per four students.
More than one-in-five schools mostly run computers three years old or older. For these schools the old computers account for three-quarters to 100% of all their computers. There is also evidence that Māori schools are less likely to have new machines.
The TELA laptops for teachers programme has had a major impact on accessibility of laptops for schools, and has become the primary source of schools' laptops.
There has been no change in the proportion of networked schools using cable, as a total of 66% (cf. 66% in 2003) of schools can be described as `networked' (80% or more classrooms are linked by cable). This year's results also revealed that about one-in-ten of all schools are networked wirelessly.
A large number of schools (71%-82%) reported that principals and teachers now have remote access (e.g. from their homes) to the school network: however much fewer permit remote access by students (19% primary, 26% secondary) or parents (15% primary, 7% secondary).
Teachers generally have good access to data projectors for lesson delivery (62% primary, 89% secondary and 60% Māori Medium schools). However relatively few classrooms have these permanently mounted (1% of classrooms in primary, 8% classrooms in secondary and 4% of classrooms in Maori Medium schools).
Nearly all principals were aware of the Ministry of Education's resource LeadSpace. At least 70% of principals actually used the web site, with at least 15% accessing the site `at least weekly'.
Principals' use of the World Wide Web has increased considerably compared to 2003 with 78% of primary principals and 83% of secondary principals indicating that they now use the web daily (cf. 67% and 70% respectively in 2003).
Principals are continuing to give priority to ICT professional development (ICT PD). Approximately two thirds of principals indicated that they had attended an ICT professional development programme during the last 12 months and a similar proportion intend to participate in further professional development during ht next 12 months.
Teachers professional development is receiving a similar high priority with approximately three quarters of all schools indicating the 50% or more of their teachers would be participating in ICT PD during the next 12 months.
While there has been no change in the proportion of secondary schools with web sites, the proportion of primary schools has increased noticeably (50% cf.. 35% in 2003).
However, in approximately one third of all schools with web sites, responsibility for updating the web site is still in the hands of the ICT support technician.
Schools are demonstrating a strong interest in e-learning, with the technology infrastructure largely already in place. Moreover, around three quarters of all schools are indicating plans for implementing at least one e-learning activity during the next 12 months. In some specific areas such as linking with other schools by video or audio conferencing for virtual events, Māori Medium schools are demonstrating leadership.
The proportion of schools' ICT spending from their Operations Grants varies widely; however the average spend is 12.6% among primary schools and 15.2% among secondary schools.
Continuing the trend from earlier years, an increasing proportion of principals report efficiency and quality improvements in curriculum delivery through the use of ICT (66% primary and 72% secondary report efficiency gains and 71% primary and 76% secondary report quality improvements).
Primary school teachers continue to lead the field in terms of the adoption of ICT. 16% of primary teachers are now ranked at the highest level of adoption ("creative application to new contexts"), representing a 7% increase from 2003, while 6% of secondary teachers are ranked at this level, an increase of 1% from 2003.

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Web Design Wikibook, FlashCards and Google Spread Sheet

2006-07-20T20:49:00.000+12:00

Michael Nelson is still the most progressive teacher I have met. Recently he posted an update to his work in developing his web design course offered at the Blue Mountains Campus of TAFE NSW in Australia.

Michael was one of the first to jump on the wikiversity initiative and develop a resource for learning web design. Now Michael and his students each year maintain that resource - this year they are working on a levels design for the learning.

Michael has also recently developed a few flash cards for learning things about basic html and css. Personally I think this is an excellent way to get and keep acquainted with the basics. Last year Michael and a student were toying with networked first person shooter games to learn this stuff. Would be great to see a coming together of these two approaches.

And through Mike I've discovered so many handy tools, like Google Spread Sheet. Well worth keeping track of Michael and his student's work.

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Bill Kerr: Technological Change and Systemic Change

2006-07-15T18:03:00.000+12:00

Many thanks Bill - your notes are fair and clear, and I agree with almost all of it. I agree with your criticism:

My criticism Leigh, is not that your position is wrong (I believe it is right) but that you have over simplified something that is quite complex. Your argument sounds like a technocentric magic bullet.

You're right, I can sound as though I'm talking up a technocentric magic bullet, though I think it depends who's listening and how. So I'd like to reinforce the original intent of the TALO post you are critiquing, especially where I say, "..we're not asking too much really.."

As you acknowledge, I was concentrating on a comparison between networked learning and previous attempts by schools into elearning. By schools, I mostly mean tertiary. By "not asking too much really" I meant compared to in the past where teachers were encouraged and funded to learn html, java, action script, css, cms, meta data tagging and scorm at the worst, and to produce digital content in quite a complicated ways using broadcast quality videos and fully intergrated "learning objects". compared to all that - creating a blog, participating in a wiki, and using a camera phone to record and distribute video is so much easier and more clearly more sustainable - therefore, compared to content centric, managed learning system, we are not asking too much.

But you did acknowledge that intent in my post, so it must be the extension to my opinion that you are critiquing most of all, in which I say:

By doing so [networked learning] we believe teachers will rediscover the relevance in their topics that their students need and crave. By doing so we believe teacher's live's, attitudes and moral will improve. By doing so we believe teachers will discover ways of integrating those "distractions" such as mobile phones, MP3 Xbox, PSP and television players and laptops, into their classroom activities. By doing so we believe teachers will learn how to communicate better in our digitally networked world.

I don't think we are asking too much really.

And I whole heartedly agree with your criticism Bill, that I am over simplifying.. Getting relevance into School curriculum is complex (impossible?) it is here that we are clearly asking a huge if not impossible amount. So the extension and my final sentence at this point is actually a cynical and sarcastic close.

We all know what teachers do and say are entirely separate things.. "do as I say, not as I do" is how it generally goes right? I winged about this a bit last year as well. Getting teachers to acknowledge it and take responsibility back for the curriculum, away from the Boards of Study and curriculum centres, and develop something more immediate and locally relevant with which is a hard (impossible?) task for everyone involved. And seeing as you link to that work in progress called teaching is dead - long live learning (which I'm now confident is a very good name), you can see that I have a somewhat cynical and sarcastic view of teaching as we commonly know and experience it. I don't believe school is where we go to get an education anymore, remembering that I speak mostly of a tertiary and sometimes secondary school.

So Bill, if we agree that there is a need for a radical change in our education system, I guess it's a matter of whether we agree who and what is ultimately responsible. No matter what the complexity and detail, I think it is a system made up of teachers that is the problem... ((talk about biting the hand that feeds. I can feel myself about to be taken round the back of the shed to be shot..))

You made the interesting opening in your post, explaining why you think change cannot happen systemically, and why some form of "revolution" is inevitable. In many ways I share that view, but I also feel that your critique of my efforts could be tool with which "Schools know very well how to nip this subversion in the bud" as you say. Kind of like white wash, absorb the foreign body by digesting it into our complex system... classical

By simplifying, I feel it is easier to mobilise or at least motivate people who are interested in seeing our education system change, (not just teachers) and creating a larger foreign body. At the very least it helps people quickly see that there is some sort of problem, and that schools are not the hallowed ground we think they might be, and a place in which they might have a stake to claim. Sure, there are some who don't appreciate the simplifications and strive to describe the detail, sometimes by first discrediting the other revolutionaries, but I'm not overly concerned because I'm satisfied that this revolution is driving itself now. I'm not overly concerned at the prospect of alienating some teachers and managers, because it is not only teachers or managers that should hear this.

What I want to do is meet or convince others of the need for whole change, and who feel that something like the information communications technologies we are using today will enable that change. I have met all sorts of teachers who harbor these feelings in some way. Old deschoolers, anarchists, outreach workers, lefties and has been unionists - always in places I least expect. Perhaps simplification of the issues is often what is needed to enliven those people and inspire them to see the possibilities and take action of some sort - start a blog perhaps, support blogging in the organisation.

Apart from over simplification, you also quite fairly criticise my opinion as being technocentric. Is it really technocentric though, my arguments? I guess to someone who is not used to producing and accessing digital formats of information, and communicating with and through it online it would seem very much so. But I don't think the work of education has ever been free of information and communications technology, whether it be blackboards and a screenprinter, or networked communications through a computer (for lack of a better medium for the mean time). So I think its just a matter of familiarity with technologies and their usefulness that determines if someone else is technocentric. But it is you who is accusing me of being technocentric, someone who is very familiar with digital and networked communications, so I need to sit up and take notice.. but suppose the reverse is true in your critique at this point. Suppose that the view of my talk for networked learning being technocentric is guilty in itself of over simplifying a proposal that is actually more complex than just technology? Because I don't think I've ever been guilty of talking about technology without also talking of some form of social or political application for it. Actually, I think I tend to focus more on the social and political and then the technology that enables it.

This response to your critique has been a toughy Bill. I hope I make some sense and am not just digging myself a hole here. In the end I think what you say about the way in which I express my opinion is to some extent true. But I don't think I'm all that concerned by being seen to over simplify. What I am concerned about is the possibility that you are looking at the finger more than what it is pointing at. To what end is that? You want me to point at more and different things? I'm pointing at what I can see, tell me more about what you can see out there.

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Over NZ$34 million spent on ICT PD in education each year in NZ

2006-07-12T23:31:00.000+12:00

Amazing isn't it! That over NZ$34 million is spent trying to get ICTs into teaching in New Zealand each year, and yet it is a struggle to find a school that can claim that ICTs is a significant feature in its practice. That's a lot of money for not much pudding! And the detail of Artichoke's post is even more concerning. To me it says at least 4 things.

The managers of the funding don't have a clue where or why its all going
The teachers aren't interested in ICTs
There are a relatively small number of businesses and consultants out there eating it all up
That the NZ communications infrastructure is in part causing money like this to be largely wasted.

The last idea is of interest to me, as I think it may be the most important. Broadband in this country is a right embarrassment. I recently upgraded my account to 512x186 (186 being the fastest upload available?) with a 5 gig limit. That costs me NZ$40 per month :( Before that I was on 256x186 with a 1 gig limit at NZ$30 per month. Their are cheaper plans, but I want life to be simpler.

Most teachers I know are actually still on dial up!! I haven't met any who know anything about WiFi yet! Let alone considered how effective Broadband WiFi everywhere might be for reducing mobile phone bills.. but on the flip side to that, NZ mobile comms companies are marketing 3 and 4 G mobile networks!!?

I have met some who say that they can't get broadband at home, and some who have looked into satellite broadband but decided it was too expensive. Admittedly I live in the South of NZ where it is almost accepted that there be a 5 year lag down here, but when it comes to ICTs and learning - I can't see how that's acceptable. In a country that can clearly afford to have broadband everywhere, no teacher or student home should be without it.

I don't think any real progress can be made in getting teachers to appreciate ICTs in learning until unlimited broadband (and WiFi at that) can be made common to all teachers and students across the country. I don't think the managers of the money will be able to see where and why the money goes until they get a bigger number of teachers using ICTs to look at. Admittedly for most, all it will mean is faster webmail, netbanking and trademe - but that's a start. If those 3 things are faster than on the pain of dial up, then that could mean more time to discover other things like, "I wonder what that wikipedia thing they talk about at work is all about?", or "what's on Google video tonight that I might be able to use tomorrow?", or "hey, I could probably talk to my aunt for free now with this Skype"...

NZ$34 million each year could go a long way towards getting unlimited broadband into a lot of houses. But would it fix the problem? Why is uptake of ICTs in education so expensive and yet so slow? Is it the shape of computers, is it key boards and screens, is it too much text? is this wisdom of the masses?

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Us Mob

2006-07-09T17:03:00.000+12:00

I've had a look around this site and subscribed to the regular movies. If you're interested in what kids in Central Australia get up to in their day, or if you're interested in unique ways of publishing to the Internet - you should check out UsMob.

With Us Mob, you can follow central Australian Aboriginal teenagers Charlie, Della, Harry and Jacquita as they head off on journeys full of fun, excitement and crisis.

Progressive Discourse - Konrad Glogowski

2006-07-04T19:39:00.000+12:00

Konrad Glogowski re-enters the world with an encouraging account of what he is discovering in his grade 8 students and their blogging.

Then, for a while, they kept composing individual responses. While certainly aware of the community around them, they continued to write as solitary writers. Then, one day at the end of April, it all changed. They started linking to each other’s work because they found other entries meaningful and relevant. No, I do not mean that they linked to entries that explored the same topics. No. They started linking to entries that helped them expand their own understanding of issues that they were struggling with. I began to see semantic relations.

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Free ranging and bill postering

2006-06-25T20:59:00.000+12:00

A week or so ago I was having a late night txt chat Alex Hayes about online free ranging - the idea of not paying for server space or software, basically building an online presence only through the free and maybe even temporary publishing services like this here blog. In the end we found that to be truly free you have to let go of the importance of your work, let go of the need for it to persist.

Quite some time ago I took down the leighblackall.com and turned away from the idea of having my own wordpress and moodle install, instead settling for a leighblackall.wikispaces.com, OurMedia account, this blog, etc...

Of course most would ask, but how can you be sure of those services? What is their quality of service like? how long will they be around for? what might they do with your content?

At first I thought these to be legitimate concerns, and potentially a real problem. But now I see it differently. Now I'm not at all precious about the persistency of the URLs for my various online markings. And just like the feeling I had when I at last decided to stop maintaining my own .com I feel free and unfazed.

Posting this thought to this blog, loading that picture to flickr, spreading that movie across all the current video servers available at the moment is just like bill postering slogans and images at 2am down the main street of your local town. I make an image and now I go about sticking it up around town for it to get noticed. I paste a few copies down Flickr St, as well as a few on BubbleShare while I'm at it. I tag my posters so they appear in other streets around the block, I scribble a few words in chalk on the pavement knowing that they'll wash off in the next rain. I cut and spray stencils to provoke thoughts in an otherwise sterile urban landscape, and accept that tomorrow the council or local do-gooder will have painted over these marks and others like it.

So you see, I think it quite a different and liberating thing to think about in terms of web publishing - comparing web publishing to graffiti and pavement chalk poetics. Once we're prepared to accept that time will wash even things digital, then we'll realise that for our presence to persist, for our markings to remain, we must remain active in remixing, reformatting, recreating, and republishing our works so that they reappear and reappear again - copied and redistributed by others across the Net.

I think its quite liberating to let go of the obvious - that digital means recorded, and think of it as a more fluid and transitory medium. The fact that a record or archive can be dug up if you really tried is just an added benefit, but its the here and now and what we say about before that catches me.

Pass the glue, this one's going here.

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Jo Kay's real and second life

2006-06-18T19:31:00.000+12:00

Jo Kay has posted some very interesting reflections of her day's learning through web conferencing as well as a virtual world.

It has been really interesting watching Jo's photo journal of her SecondLife, and her latest post gets me thinking. Do we perhaps now have 3 new learning styles subbing under digital networked learning?

There are the web conferencers who seem to preference powerpoint looking lectures with synchronous instant messaging and voice.

There are the virtual worlders who like the dimensions, fantastic space, colour and character... again with synchronous comms.

And there are the networkers who exist through blogs and webfeeds,, communicating asynchronously.

Of course you can be all of these, as Jo certainly is. But Jo's asking which do you prefer?

Well I certainly don't like web conferencing. I have tried virtual worlding, but not at the level Jo is delving into it. And I really dig the idea of using your print-screen key like a camera in these worlds. But I guess over all I prefer the recorded, published, distributed and asynchronous communications. But that's not to say I wouldn't get right into virtual worlding... watching Jo go there is inspiring to say the least.

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Thanks Kathy Sierra

2006-06-11T18:08:00.000+12:00

Derek Morrison on PLE

2006-06-10T20:10:00.000+12:00

A comprehensive article by Derek Morrison on his blog Aurical, about the Personal Learning Environment. Listening to the accompanying audio interview - it seems those UK guys are persisting in their endeavors to develop software and systems around the PLE idea. Derek is playing half way man in his article - helping them to consider that we already have PLEs playing the small pieces loosely joined harp. Derek takes the time where I don't have the patience to articulate arguments against PLE, LMS and VLE.

Listening to the audio recording of an interview on PLE development was interesting. I wonder if my shout outs are being considered over there. Probably not, but its nice to hear that my perfect LMS may be around the corner.

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Wara on reports and open source

2006-06-10T19:35:00.000+12:00

Wara makes some important comments on Forecasting productivity growth 2004-2024 - a report put out by the Australian Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Wara highlights the report's suggestion that Australian Education may be helping to worsen Australia's massive IT related trade deficit by developing the community's ICT skills almost exclusively in proprietary software.

Wara says:

I think that our government bodies must promote the open source stuff. Government bodies are settling for prepackaged, expensive solutions where the money is pouring out of the country. The skill set for implementing these solutions is relatively low. If they choose an Open Source solution they need advanced skills to adapt it and to make it work. These skills are not in abundance and cost. At least the cost is being invested in Australian people in this Open Source option.

Right on Wara! I think you just better articulated what I was trying to get at with that paper I wrote, Digital literacy and how it affects teaching and learning - A critique for the Knowledge Tree.

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Your chance to own a $100 laptop for just $300...

2006-06-05T19:48:00.000+12:00

A while ago now, I jumped up and down with excitement about the release of the $100 laptop project out at MIT. I wished for the opportunity to buy one myself even if it meant I had to spend more.

Well now that opportunity has arrived, as well as a new video of the first working prototype of the laptop. You can pledge to buy a $100 laptop for $300. I did. I just have to get my paws on one of these things.

The suggestion has been made that he also offer it for sale for ~$300 to the rest of us so that we do have an interesting machine and can help to support the cost computers for the developing world. If he does offer it, then I will buy one at three times the cost and thus contribute to supplying two to the proposed users.

I suggest that you might want to also pledge so that he would consider this "We Purchase, They Benefit" option.

Thanks Chris for the pointer.

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Help set the Australian National forcus on 21st Century Literacy

2006-06-02T18:09:00.000+12:00

From the EdNA news:

Have Your Say On Adult Literacy and Numeracy Research Priorities for 2006 The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) is currently in the process of identifying national priorities for adult language, literacy and numeracy research to be funded in 2006. Visit the web site to provide input on which contemporary issues require research or further research.

Sadly NCVER have made it far from easy to give feedback, requiring you to open and print a PDF, fill it out with ink and send it in. I suspect this reflects a lack of awareness in NCVER of the need to develop digitally networked information and communication skills in the Australia Society, so I'll help it along a bit:

To have your say
email: joanne.hargreaves@ncver.edu.au
and tell her:
Is there a specific research project which you would like to see undertaken in 2006–2007?
Why?
Can you offer specific questions that the research should address?
Please list the three key issues you see as warranting the highest priority in future research.
Your contact details

Networked collaboration

2006-06-02T17:33:00.000+12:00

From the May edition of old faithful - First Monday: Open Source Disaster Recovery, case studies in networked collaboration:

Volunteers eager to help disaster victims have begun to draw on open source models of organization to mobilize and coordinate vast resources from around the world. This paper investigates two such groundbreaking efforts, involving responses to Hurricane Katrina and to the South East Asian tsunami. The study sheds light on how these organizations evolve so rapidly, how leaders emerge and confront challenges, and how interactions with traditional, more hierarchical disaster recovery efforts unfold. Lessons from these early efforts show how they can be improved, and also point to the need for more research on networked non–state actors that are playing increasingly prominent roles.

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mLearning or walled learning

2006-06-02T13:07:00.001+12:00

Quite an interesting post from Graham Wegner again reflecting on the value of Interactive White Boards and/or WiFi mobile devices in schools. Graham goes through some of his thinking and refers to the extended discussion he and Alex have been having over the weeks.. The post and its hypertext is well worth the read, but the comic just about sums it up in my view.

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The only thing worth teaching is how to learn

2006-05-31T04:10:00.000+12:00

4am.. yep its another one of those sleepless mornings when counting sheep just won't settle the mind. Its like waiting for santa on christmas eve, or going through your paces before a big game... this time its what I'm going to say in the 10 minutes I've got today to sum up everything I represent in this game of teaching and learning.

I have 10 minutes to give a presentation in the first of 4 workshops as part of a course called Designing for Flexible Learning Practice. The course is part of a new certificate called "Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching" being run in my place of work. It is a certificate that all teaching academic staff will likely be expected to have in our organisation, a trend of certification I am quite familiar with in Australia.

So anyway, I've decided to talk about the only thing worth teaching. My presentation is the last of 3. The others are talking to case studies in flexible learning design. One is talking about the development of an online learning resource, the other (I think) is talking about the development of an online learning community for a particular occupation area. The thing that has been worrying me (and the reason I'm awake at this hour) is that with a distributed and networked learning design (that's kinda what I want to talk about), it is difficult to find something that shows how it works at a glance.

That's why I love Jay Cross' graphic on informal learning. I intend to use this graphic to talk about what our organisation calls "graduate profile". A graduate profile is what a student will be like when they finish their time with us. It has statements in it about being a life long learner, a self directed learner, and stuff like that. I want to use that profile and combine it with Jay's illustration of informal learning, and set them up side by side and use them as the target learning outcome when designing for flexible learning.

So it might go something like this:

When a student comes to us, it is probably for one of 2 reasons. They are a novice learner and need support in starting out their learning in a particular area (a bus ride as Jay puts it); or they are an already expert learner (a bicycle rider as Jay puts it) and have to be here because some other piece of paper says they need this piece of paper. Not much I can do about the paper bit, and it certainly can be a demotivating distraction for some groups, but at least I can try to make the bus ride learning (designed for novice learners) interesting for bicycle riding self directed learners.

So, we have a group of novice learners in their first year. They are expert bicycle riders in other subject areas, but in ours they are confessing novice status and want to come on a bus ride (the lesson, or course plan). What we want to do as bus drivers is teach these people how to appreciate riding bicycles in our subject area. Make sense? Well it is 4:30am...

In short, we want these learners to be functional self directed learners in the field before they graduate. Our graduate profile is a bicycle rider.

What does this mean in real terms? It might go something like this:

In their first year (assuming we as teachers have the luxury of talking in years with our course plans) we join people to classrooms. These may be real 9 to 5 type classrooms or these may be virtual online classrooms. We start them off with presentations, lectures, our own learning materials, and otherwise passive/delivered information. But sooner than later we are asking them to start reproducing what they are learning and interacting with the subject.

In the second year (or phase) we introduce them to existing learning communities where they can witness a more informal learning process. It is here we start teaching how to learn this way. We wean them out of the classroom learning, building confidence around themselves and their understanding of the subject. We help them manage communications technology and the skills needed to work it to THEIR favour, and give incentives to use that technology in whatever informal learning they may already be involved in.

Finally in the third year or phase we add further incentives to now focus their informal learning processes on the subject. Taking their place in existing subject oriented learning communities, developing a voice within it and/or breaking away and starting a new learning community. The main point is to develop a person to be an expert self directed learner in the field before they walk out that "door" with a funny hat and a rolled up peice of paper.

Now with that seemingly obvious objective out of the way, what are some of the impediments to that happening? Well, the classroom for one. If by the end of the 3rd year or phase, your classroom or learning management system is still full, then the objective is still a long way off. You need to get as many as you can out of your classroom (bus) an on their own journey (bicycle) as you can in the short amount of tiime you have. In more than a few cases some people may take a lot longer to develop confidence in learning the field informally than others, a few of these may come to realise that your field is not what interests them. Other obstacles are in measuring learning or assessment, but these bureaucratic challenges are where the fun begins for a creative and energetic teacher.

So, its 5 am and I think I'll sleep on it for an hour or so now. But at least I have it out now. Its rough, and may not make any sense to anyone but me - I bet there are a bunch of people who are thinking that I have just contradicted myself in all this, but I have that in mind and I don't think I have. When I come to re-reading this, all puffy eyed and at work - we'll see.

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Teaching is dead, long live learning

2006-05-30T21:17:00.000+12:00

It was for the AusTAFE 2005 conference I first uttered those words, along with a list of other provocative statements from the co presenters. Now, over a year later, I have the chance to say them again and back'm up with a bit more content specific to the statement. I plan to say them at Education Au's Global Summit:

Teaching is Dead, long live learning. Your comments, warnings, heads up and suggestions would be very much appreciated in the page's discussion forum of course.

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Informal learning

2006-05-27T08:17:00.001+12:00

Scott Wilson points to Jay Cross' big graphic on informal learning.

TALO Chat - I was there

2006-05-25T21:42:00.000+12:00

I was there, be it 34 minutes late. According to the TALO wiki we were up for another online meet up through TeamSpeak... what's happening, we were going so well with that too..?

Next one is May 31st - 7pm Sydney time, that's 9pm my time.

Free, easy, web based, flow chart.

2006-05-25T10:01:00.000+12:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Joseph Hart!

Could you have a use for a free, incredibly easy to use, web based and therefore potentially collaborative flow chart/concept mapping tool? Who doesn't have a need for such a thing. I love this tool. Gliffy.com I love you!!

Yet another reason to use Open Office

2006-05-23T09:17:00.000+12:00

A colleague at work sent me this link today, as we increase our hopes of getting Open Office at least available on all school computers:

A new, yet-to-be-fixed security hole in Microsoft Word exposes computer users to cyberattack, Symantec warned Friday.

Would-be intruders already have attempted to compromise PCs at a Japanese government entity by exploiting the flaw, Vincent Weafer, the senior director at Symantec Security Response, said in an interview. In response, Symantec has raised its ThreatCon to Level 2, which means an outbreak is expected.

So that now means if you use Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Word, you are putting your work at risk. So use Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office... they're better applications anyway!

Are the lackademics starting to get it

2006-05-22T15:59:00.000+12:00

Right when I was poised to unsubscribe from that at times annoying EdNA feed, I was reminded of how valuable it has been for me. Today it pointed me to:

Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing. An Internet Discussion about Scientific and Scholarly Journals and Their Future

The publication discusses the future of scholarship and science, back in 1995.

We have heard many sanguine predictions about the demise of paper publishing, but life is short and the inevitable day still seems a long way off. This is a subversive proposal that could radically hasten that day. It is applicable only to ESOTERIC (non-trade, no-market) scientific and scholarly publication (but that is the lion's share of the academic corpus anyway), namely, that body of work for which the author does not and never has expected to SELL the words. The scholarly author wants only to PUBLISH them, that is, to reach the eyes and minds of peers, fellow esoteric scientists and scholars the world over, so that they can build on one another's contributions in that cumulative. collaborative enterprise called learned inquiry. For centuries, it was only out of reluctant necessity that authors of esoteric publications entered into the Faustian bargain of allowing a price-tag to be erected as a barrier between their work and its (tiny) intended readership, for that was the only way they could make their work public at all during the age when paper publication (and its substantial real expenses) was their only option.

Given that this was aparently published way back in 1995 and was last updated in 2002, that must mean academics would be starting to read this one...

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Bill Kerr sticking it out for the good fight

2006-05-19T12:43:00.000+12:00

Poor old Bill Kerr, high school teacher in South Australia is having to work under extreme conditions of Internet censorship in SA Schools. NSW schools have gone the same way, and I'm discovering some censorship here in New Zealand.

Bill posts a though provoking post on the issue, Censorware and fascist connections. As well as a too close to the bone bit of humour.

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There's truth in anti academia

2006-05-19T10:02:00.000+12:00

Painting by the great Mark Tansey - Innocent Eye Test.

Was scrolling through the EdNA feed this morning when the headline Teacher Training Resource Bank caught my eye. But then I read the subtext lifted from the TTRB home page and I reach for my revolver...

provides access to the research & evidence base underpinning teacher education, and a range of other relevant materials. All materials are quality assured through a rigorous process of academic scrutiny and monitoring undertaken by a team of expert teacher educators from the United Kingdom.

My anti academia kicks in and I click the link to pull this shite to pieces..

No feed
Terms and conditions:

By registering on and using this web site you are accepting and will be bound by the terms and conditions set out below and by the Privacy Statement...
All rights, including copyright, in the content of these web pages, including but not limited to graphical images are owned or controlled for these purposes by RM.

A picture like this in the banner:

Ah! I know, here goes Leigh - poo pooing other's work again, but I just can't help it. Stuff like this - setting itself up to be something better, somehow worth more, dismissing the success of democratic authoring, maintaining the church... I just can't stand it. I have to face lackademics who think like this every day and I just say, "cock the hammer.."

Sorry, I will try to be more useful in the future. I'm aware that my rants are over riding my raves in this blog lately. I need to focus on the things I love, will try more and unsubscribe from feeds that keep bringing this into my field of reference.. perhaps I'm wrong about the TTRB, maybe there is good stuff in there, and maybe it is reaching the dark net.. who knows?

Anyway, if you want more useful stuff from me, check out my work blog, check out my screen recordings, check out my latest wikipedia contributions...

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Wish

2006-05-15T10:48:00.000+12:00

Its posts like this that I wish I was a primary school teacher again...

What's in a name? Why some succeed and others fail

2006-05-14T08:50:00.000+12:00

Look at these names:

Black Board, WebCT, Moodle, Drupal, Mambo, Janison

Pretend you're the average educational manager who knows nothing about computers, software and the Internet, let alone teaching and learning. Pretend you believed in LMS and had to decide what system you were going to force everyone to use. All you have to go by is your Microsoft trained, strangely anti social IT unit's advice, and because you know nothing about the Internet, you really wouldn't know where to start in getting a wide range of information... Any luck a few activists and subversives in your organisation have managed to confuse you with a list. What do you do? which one sounds as though it has anything to do with education?... Yep! I know what a Black Board is. I used it and chalk so much its what made me who I am today...

That's clearly how most managers and directors decide to spend hundreds of thousands if not million of dollars on LMS software. There can be no other explanation for it. To hell with proper research, perpetual consultation, needs analysis and investigation.. we don't have the time or motivation for that. The name says it all.

Look at these names:

ePortfolio, web journal, blog, wiki

Its pathetic isn't it, but I truly believe that the reason free and open source software and free and open ways of working have not been duly recognised sufficiently in education is simply because of the names. Moodle rhymes with doodle; blog sounds like poo; drupal sounds like a late night let down; wiki sounds like... well I dunno really, but GIMP! that says it all! Even though there are plenty of research papers, opinion, numbers and success stories getting published in clear favour of FOSS and its economic model, the people who just can't resist spending money just don't get read... and like sheep, those managers and directors "do what they've always done, so we get what we always got."

Even these days, in the so called FOSS heyday, when someone in education says free and open source LMS, people hear Moodle! Tell me, who said Moodle? FOSS is what was said? Sheep I say. The education sector (of which I am a part) should be ashamed of itself. We are an autocratic structure full of conservative bureaucratic thinkers. If we were half of what we demand our students to be, (life long learners, critical thinkers, risk takers, readers, good communicators, democratic) we'd be a lot better off, well.. come to think of it there'd be no such thing as teachers, managers and directors.

We'd be fare and equitable, we'd be supportive of freedom and openness, we'd be current and well read, we'd be 21st Century literate, we'd save a shit load of public money, we'd be making less teachers redundant, and we'd be attracting better people into our workforce.

On the rare occasion that I actually do meet someone even remotely informed on free and open source software in an educational role, about the only discussion I think is worth having is on performance of the software. Crap like support, industry standard, "real" cost, and other white wash makes me wanna puke fire.

It is true that Open Office is slower to start up than MS Office, but with all the better features, formats including MS, and the fact that it runs on ALL operating systems, its understandable really. I agree that GIMP can be a wildly difficult program to use and not as featuresome as Photoshop, but when I can't afford to buy Photoshop and all I have to edit images with is Windows Paint! You bet I'm going to download GIMP! And I can download, copy and distribute these to anyone I know without a single worry that some pale faced, black shirt is gunna come and sue me. Its just a real scandal that so few people in education are supportive, let alone aware of such opportunities.

I've been pushing for the equal use of free and open source software and educational materials for 2 years, a blip in time compared to the committed work of so many others. I can't be sure of seeing any progress though, and I think its because we are playing their game. What I have seen is a stronger union of those who do get it, but at the expense of being sidelined, labeled a subversive, and having to get angry and vent with posts like this. Enough pandering to the autocratic system! Those reports and proposals are just mechanisms to sponge away our energy and actual reach.

Ignorance and stupidity prevails, reject it!

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Peter Mellows - StudyTXT

2006-05-11T22:21:00.000+12:00

Met Peter Mellows for dinner tonight. He is talking tomorrow about his StudyTXT project. Basically its a simple service in which students txt a course or subject code and get txt back a 100 or so character message with facts and figures. Here's a video of Peter demonstrating the service.

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Networked Learning workshops

2006-05-11T16:25:00.000+12:00

I guess some people might be noticing the old Teach and Learn Online blog slowing down. Well I've noticed anyway. Its that fulltime job you see... its not that I'm not blogging! I'm still blogging as furious as ever, but more to do with my job. Below is a recent post that may be a little interesting to some readers of TALO. You can see what else I've been doing at my work journal.

Since the podcast about podcasting session, there's been an increase in the number of people at Otago Polytechnic interested in audio recording and publishing. We had a few people at the Digital Video Recording and Editing workshop yesteray. Merrolee wanted to find out how to make her mobile phone recordings available online. Julia is interested in how she can AV record her presentations and make them available online. Rachel is interested in current trends in video for use in her photography classes. Phil turned up to get ideas. Bronwyn was there as well. Ken couldn't make it because of a meeting, but her is interested in audio recording and podcasting lectures.

Seeing as this was the first workshop on digital video, I kinda held the floor for the hour going over all the different things involved, and explaining what it doesn't involve - for me.

I started off explaining how this workshop fits in the series of workshops in networked learning, and how there is an eMail list for the participants to continue discussion before and after workshops. I showed how everyone is a manager in that eMail list and urged everyone to invite and add others. I also demonstrated how to RSVP a time for workshops from the workshop calendar.

Then I moved into what the session is about. I pulled out my little pocket camera and explained my perspective on these camera's video recording capabilities. For the most part these cameras do a good enough job in terms of quality for use on today's internet. The fact that they can only record short lengths of video is a blessing in my view. Like the expense of film, storage issues for digital cameras means we are more careful and thoughtful in how we shoot video. This naturally leads us into a practice of in camera editing, which in the long run is a very good practice to get in to.

From that I showed YouTube. One of many free DIY video publishing web sites that offers free streaming for your videos. I showed some of my uses of YouTube and demonstrated the extra benefits of using socially networked services like YouTube - especially how when you upload a video of your own, it automatically relates your video with other videos like it, based on how you describe yours. This can be a valuable feature that will save we teachers from "reinventing wheels", and networking us with other video creators with similar interests.

I showed how I am largely using YouTube for screencasting. I use the free and open source screen recorder CamStudio to record demonstrations of using particular websites and software. I then upload the demos to YouTube and copy the code offered by YouTube and past it in this blog to display the video in context, as such:

If you are reading this post in your email, then it is likely that you cannot see the video. The email has been forwarded from the original blog post. Click the "educational development" link at the bottom of the email to see this post in its original context.

I then talked about the limitations of YouTube only really being usable to people who have access to broad band Internet. Unfortunately, YouTube does not yet offer a feature of being able to download the video to play offline. What we need is a service that will at least allow people to set their computers to download a video file so that they can walk away and come back next morning and have a video file to play.

So I showed OurMedia. OurMedia offers unlimited file storage, non commercially. It is the contemporary media capture arm of the Internet Archive, an impressive project working towards the goal of offering universal access to all human knowledge.

But before uploading video to OurMedia, it is a good idea to process our orginal video into a size and format that is optimized for the Internet. I use the free video converter Videora. Videora processes videos into the MPEG4 format which is playable in the Quicktime player, as well as the iPod video player. It is generally accepted to be the most widely used and playable format.

Once original video has been processed into MPEG4, it can be uploaded to OurMedia, and then the Universal Resource Locator (URL or Link) is offered by OurMedia for you to copy and use in your online communications. That is the link that people on slower connection can use to save the video to their computer for viewing later.

We talked about a whole bunch of other issues and potentials in the workshop, but hopefully these notes cover the core elements.

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My brother Marlow

2006-04-30T09:32:00.000+12:00

My brother Marlow just showed me his MySpace. Was cool to get to know him a bit more through it! He was born when I was 9 and has lived pretty much all his life in the UK. I met him once when he visited Australia, and hope he'll come and visit Sunshine and I in NZ this year.

I was blown away by his Space. Listened to all his music, watched an excellent video he had things to do with, and checked out his friends... Dunno how much he'll put into his Space from here, but I hope he does more... I'd like to see more into his life, and get shown through MySpaces a bit more through him.

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The edu poet in our midst - E is not for Eccie: Alex read aloud at TALO Swap Meet's Pub Poetry night

2006-04-24T15:28:00.000+12:00

I just had to copy paste a comment made by Alex Hayes in a thread he generated on ePortfolios, following Graham's exploration of the issues. Apart from the hypertext conversation we are having as being an intense example of how edublogging in Australia is really coming of age, I just want people to see how poetic Alex can be with his edublogging.

I see us all in a darkly lit pub, on cool September night for the TALO Swap Meet in Dunedin this year, smiling over drinks as a local big guy belts out Alex's words MC style just for old time's sake. It will feel great to raise a toast to Alex and Graham afterwards as we enjoy the warm after-glow of the profound performance. So read on, and picture our half pissed, burly bloke performing Alex's words, in jaggered stops and starts or spitting rage - for a large audience of raucous edubloggers... Ok, if modern day punk rock is not your cup of ... tea... then we could balance it with a lovely acoustic version as well I'm sure ;)

alexanderhayes said...

Hi Graham.

Getting good stuff online is for some ( Marc and co.) the synthesis of what they do best as educators, futurists and philosophers offline.

I'm aware that much of the online repository repetoire is as permanent as a suppository. Click - gone.

I respect their position, their enthusiasm, their professionalism and ground-breaking anecdotes but I must admit I often read through current papers and think, " what have they actioned in the edu-political persuasion arena that's making and taking educator and management newbies into the next learning ecosphere ?"

I often follow gospels for the entertainment value and more often than not I am asked to leave the congregation.

I reflect on a few years of working with students of all ages ( including adults )enabling them to get good stuff online only to discover that their attitude to such modality - content shape shifting ( of which I pushed as gospel ) befitted that of of the arcadian pursuit they first sought to flee !

Evidence, outcomes, quality assurance, professional standards, interoperability and other key facettes of their e-portfolios fell flat when they could find no way to port their wares seamlessly across the curriculum as it failed to provide the means to do so.

I was no more than the person that manifested itelf regularly for the students to vent their frustrations with / on. I was awarded a coffee cup for my birthday once that said, " dont ask me...I'm just the teacher".

How true.

Nothing has me prepared for organising the desired flash mob, ditching encyclopedias for flash sticks, pummeling overheads into paper planes but I have got a fair idea now that the 'portfolio of evidence' I sought and still seek to enhance students prospects with must not juxtapose their need to communicate. The checklists are long since buried but I sure as hell can hear their voices in the street and see them raising their kids with some snippet of my confluence jammed in their still supple cerebelums.

As Prof. David Hargreaves once coined " for all the countless millions we have spent on ICT's in the last decade it is amazing that we failed most at realising one element of the acronym - communication. "

It's a vital ingredient and I spare many a salient thought for those have trouble doing so...whether but position, fault, lack of integrity, nonchalance or plain ignorance they plunder the paypacket purse and show shit for their endeavours.

In my opinion Graham, e-portfolios dont look like anything.

I'm happy for you to call what I'm doing whatever it befits for a positive purpose and for you to ditch a few stones against Leigh and my blogging window panes.

I'm sure the resultant cacophony of sound will assist those seeking a human face to our otherwise convoluted ed. geek speak.

I liken the formative and academic pursuit of collating, uploading and aggregating my blog posts, interactive writing and mobile blog data as none other than fornicating with naive catalytic elements in a reactive soup of electronica.

E-portfolio for me is the conversation we are already having.

I have designed a hundred 'pack-n-e-go's' and none do more to action change than my zillion online spaces/places and an ever present and accountable offline one.

I've got a 180 GB e-portfolio and it aint worth jack...well.....maybe....I'll show you one day.

I call Sydney home however the tendrils and threads and hyperlinks and trackbacks place me everywhere at once and nowhere at any given time. Gets kind of confusing but thats what educators are renowned for.

How do we prepare students and educators for the shapeshifting of the emergent mobile network ? How do e-portfolios ensure a learners security when the very institutions that govern their creations make independent thinking difficult or nigh on impossible ?

Dreams of the perfect e-portfolio are, as you say a responsibility of the educator, to raise in the conciousness of the student, to foster / nurture a reasonable take on documenting teaching and learning et al. but in my opinion the implementation of such a model means we must now be ready to discard more than we dispense.

I often cite Chrishnamurti (Snr.)who asks of anyone who knows of any education setting anywhere who's core is anything but indifferent, resistant to provide for the real needs of learners, protecting self interest and upon change implementing policy and procedure to prevent it's own demise.

" Does this make any sense? " Too bloody right Graham !

When do you begin mobile blogging ?

12:04 AM

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Really not asking too much!

2006-04-24T09:29:00.000+12:00

I was up last night thinking more about the difficulties we all have trying to convince others of the benefits blogs, wikis... web2 ... a networked learning is and could still have for learning in general - in particular I was thinking about the 2 most common arguments I hear from those offering resistance:

1. Our teachers don't have time to learn a new thing, especially not buz words and hype
2. Show me evidence that this will help my students learn

I see red when these 2 statements are uttered. Especially when uttered by teachers who are already practicing some form of online teaching - usually through an LMS or other sort of small fry content and communications management system.

I think it needs to be stated loud and clear that with networked learning we are not asking all that much really. We are not asking teachers to learn HTML, CSS, Flash, Dreamweaver, or any other highly complex content production skills. We are not asking teachers to understand SCORM let alone ideas of sharable learning objects. We are not asking teachers to use freaked out, unusable, cobbled together LMS, DRM - CMS, SMS, or what ever content and communication system we say goes. We're not even asking teachers to Bobby Check everything they produce! All we are asking is that teachers come out into the open, or "step into the light" to quote Stephen, and learn how to use the Internet the same way as everyone else is using it now.

By doing so we believe teachers will rediscover the relevance in their topics that their students need and crave. By doing so we believe teacher's live's, attitudes and moral will improve. By doing so we believe teachers will discover ways of integrating those "distractions" such as mobile phones, MP3 Xbox, PSP and television players and laptops, into their classroom activities. By doing so we believe teachers will learn how to communicate better in our digitally networked world.

I don't think we are asking too much really.

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Steven Parker witnesses the revolution while we sit on our hands

2006-04-21T15:34:00.000+12:00

A nice post by Steven Parker testifying that the socially networked software revolution is indeed gripping parts of Australia's young folk:

As soon as The Veronica's came on stage, on and up went around 100 mobile phones... Lisa (one of the Veronica's) posed questions to the audience..... Who has a mobile phone!?', followed by 'Who's on MYSPACE?. The crowd overwhelmingly screamed back "Yaahhh!!" with 100's of mobile phones aloft!!

Steven then went on to rightly say:

One could see that as more people (at a younger age) move to embrace this new way of experimenting with technology to 'make a connection', and with the rapid development of these Web2.0 technologies the need for mainstream teachers (primary through to tertiary) to be aware and get involved to understand it's application to utilise in pedagogy is NOW.

Comments from the Van Guard of Australian educationalists working with socially networked software models expose some things that educational departments in Australia should be ashamed of.

Too bad that in DET NSW if you want to check out The veronicas myspace

http://groups.myspace.com/OfficialVeronicasGroup you have attempted to access has been classified as Custom Deny_NSWTAFE. ACCESS DENIED!!

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Is anybody out there? there? there? PLE-ase

2006-04-19T20:35:00.000+12:00

Derek Wenmoth points to a new Podcast being put out by Graham Attwell with an episode on the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) thinking about whether they are even needed. Basically Graham is restating what has already been said to death here on many occasions.

I was beginning to think no one was out there on this one. I mean I have really shouted out before about LMS, ePortfolios and PLEs, and how I think they are a great waste of time! Google search on my name and you'll see its what I stand for, like it or not. - but I don't get the feedback, or any sign that any one's listening... apart from a Google search result... but enough of that winging guff, perhaps I should be happy that this podcast is enough, perhaps I should reflect on the way I say things and that being a possible reason I don't get come backs. Perhaps the fact that Derek has taken notice of it is enough of an indication that the word is spreading.

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Nicely put Teemu

2006-04-16T19:39:00.000+12:00

I am really enjoying the contributions Teemu Leinonen is making to the edu speak, he's a lone voice in my bloglines, feeding in from non English speaking Europe... wish I had more, wish I could read other languages..

Not only has Teemu's MobilEd project rocked me, but his philosophical statements ring bells for me too. Being Finish, English is not his first language, but I doubt that that's what makes Teemu's insights unique - its his principles of free and open exchanges, free and open learning, and the bold way he articulates those principles... its just so.. nothing like what I commonly hear from my piers. And now this response to the concerns some teachers have about sources like Wikipedia not being reliable:

As a conclusion, Wikipedia is not really there for educators, news papers or fact seekers to refer as a truth. Wikipedia is not really about teaching facts. ItÂs about conversations. A wiki page is inviting for a change. ItÂs never ready, itÂs never a truth. It has a discussion section for seeking a common ground. Wikipedia is our greatest gift to education, because it makes us understand that facts are constantly shifting based on open conversations.

I really hope I can find the money to fly Teemu and others to Dunedin for the TALO Swap Meet and tour to EFest.. Just having these people in the same physical place for a small amount of time is sure to spark some change down here in the South. Aparently it worked in Washington (para 11).

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God Darned Yahoos!

2006-04-13T14:30:00.000+12:00

Anyone else noticing who bloody slow Flickr and Del.icio.us is these days? Wouldn't be anything to do with those yahoos and their servers would it? Isn't this all our local IT guys need to say, "see, we told you so! You can't rely on Google and Yahoo, you should rely on me, Sam and our Microsoft servers instead!"

Luckily I don't put all my eggs in the one basket, but I need to do better. Mike Coghlan is using BubbleShare for his pictures in a nice way, creating an audio visual slide show, then copying the code and displaying it in his blog.

Now that those Yahoos are ruining my joy once again, (and they're not the only ones either - Bugger has let me down twice in the last 2 weeks, at crucial moments of needing to prove to others its worth :) I need to diversify more, break my lock ins and use more variety.

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CamStudio screencasting web feeds

2006-04-11T19:42:00.000+12:00

A quick look at how to use web feeds, specifically looking at using Bloglines to subscribe to a Blog feed and a Del.icio.us tag feed, nothing new to most of us, but what's new to me is this free and open source screen recording software CamStudio! (how strange that the screencast on how to install CamStudio was down with Camtasia...?) Anyway, I'm pretty happy with CamStudio. Thanks Dennis, another valuable contribution in the TALO eGroup.

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A snapshot of networked learning

2006-04-06T14:53:00.000+12:00

What is networked learning? Is it just another round of techno hype? Is it just another name for an older idea? Is it even useful considering the current condition of our schools and colleges?

I dunno really. Now that I'm working on the "inside" the view is different and these questions seem more important. From the outside they seemed pointless - networked learning is inevitable when you're on the outside. From the collective inside its a remote idea, let alone possibility, smelling of yet another round of hype, and yet another thing to "do".

But, taking a break from that work today, I tapped into my learning network and found a post to the TALO eGroup by gnuChris pointing to Bill Kerr's post calling for a graphic representation of the Internet, and considering the mind shift that being internationally networked can cause...

Apart from Bill's yet-another-excellent post, and exciting link to a book coming out, the device that gnuChris points to for generating a picture of your network is a lot of fun and a bit of an eye opener. Pictured is my network of learning. From this network I have learned more than I could possibly describe in any certificate or qualification... there in lies a problem really... how can we assess learning done in a networked environment? do we? should we? can we? probably not. So networked learning may just be yet another "learning style"?

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More on virtual world learning

2006-04-01T12:14:00.000+12:00

GNUChris, a relatively new member to the TALO eGroup has jumped into the discussion on virtual worlds learning, and offered up some fascinating links.

OpenCroquet

I'm still getting my head around it, and the verbose and macro explanations to it aren't much help either, but hammering away at those descriptions reveals some amazing potential for furthering the concept of online learning.

Now its only thanks to Sean FitzGerald taking TALO members on a tour of Active Worlds and GNUChris pushing the links to Croquet afterwards, that the concept of virtual worlds and multi user networked environments in learning have taken any real shape and meaning for me. In the past I have been skeptical of such things and the general attempt to replicate real worlds, but since experiencing it with others who are learning about it, I see that it is not a replica at all, no comparison actually.

So, from what I can gather at this stage, Croquet is a 3D rendered, networked and multi user virtual world, that can be used as an interface to applications your own, and other's computers - or a shared operating system in a 3D interface. Being open source, Croquet can be made to do just about anything...

There's my attempt to make sense of the impenetrable explanations on the Croquet website and the Wikipedia entry. As usual, the pictures say a million words better to me, and I totally get it from them alone. Now for the doing... I'm currently downloading the client... it's massive! If from the pictures, like me you recognise a certain Sun MicroSystem concept, be sure to read the Wikipedia entry about this.

So, I'm hoping to get to try this Croquet out with others from the TALO eGroup. Can't wait for it actually. I hope you'll join us. I hope it works...

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Online Information Literacy

2006-03-31T20:50:00.000+12:00

Bronwyn Hegarty of Otago Polytechnic has announced the early stages of a significant development over here in New Zealand - The Online Information Literacy resource development. I have seen it demonstrated and must say I'm so far impressed with what it can do, including in situ editing by users to export later... Everything is being done by the book, including intensive user testing and feedback, and even though it is geared towards an LMS delivery mode, they are still managing to producing an interesting and open resource. I witnessed the SCORM package neatly import into Moodle, and initial feedback I have seen gives it a thumbs up. All it now needs is a Creative Commons statement on it and we're away!

So far the team has developed 1 of 9 modules, and needless to say I hope to influence at least 1 module at some stage with a bit of work on digital networked literacy... ;)

Good work Bronwyn and the team :)

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The holy grail of synchronous communication

2006-03-31T18:22:00.000+12:00

synchronous communication tools have been the flavour of the month in the TALO eGroup lately. Sean FitzGerald has been getting us organised to meet every second Wednesday night. So far we have met once in Skype and then Active Worlds.

Personally I've never been a big fan of synchronous communications online, much preferring the more considered and flexible asynchronous, but after experiencing the communications with the healthy TALO community I'm just about converted.

Last night we followed Sean into Active Worlds and it totally blew my mind! I took loads of pictures with my print-screen button, and have loaded them to Flickr. About 6 of us went into many different worlds, using the instant messaging tool to communicate. Active Worlds has quite a few virtual worlds to go into, offers standard avatars and instant messaging for free, and targets educational users. Straight away I can see great potential for it. Imagine if you could go in to an Active World, walk around before hand as a teacher, click signs and objects and get prompted to upload your own images and slides around the place! It would be easy to do from the Active World developer perspective, but probably not something they're going to offer for free :( Any game developers out there wanna build this for us?

But the search for a free, voice over the internet tool that can support conference calls and run on low bandwidths continues.

Shaggy may have found the grail with TeamSpeak. Its freeware for non commercial use and apparently is proven popular in the online gaming communities. Unfortunately it does require a server to host the conference, and for users to download and install the Team Speak client (5 Mb) but if it can handle a group conversation then we have it!

We'll be able to go into Active Worlds, use Team Speak to communicate vocally, and skype as our emergency backup. TeamSpeak even has a record feature, so we'll be able to record our group's conversations too. Here's hoping it will work for more than 5 users... join the TALO eGroup to get announcements of the next meeting, download the TeamSpeak and ActiveWorld clients and get ready...

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Derek's charts are very helpful

2006-03-31T14:47:00.000+12:00

Derek Wenmoth has posted another useful chart depicting the changing nature of education, and I find this one particularly useful for my work at Tekotago. With this chart I can clearly lay out the changes that are proposed by socially networked software and hopefully help teachers understand the significance more clearly. One thing I have suggested to Derek, is to add in Constructionist Learning theory between Connectivism and Social Constructivism.

Open Networked Learning presentation to KnowTips 2006

2006-03-31T12:46:00.001+12:00

I gave a 1 hour talk through Elluminate to the KnowTips Conference on Open Networked Learning today. I think it went pretty well, although we did experience a small problem with everyone not realising they they were meant to control the slides their end. To be honest, I thought I had control too. But eventually that was clarified and everyone was on the same visual page with regards to the presentation slides.

I was able to get through the presentation in 30 minutes and open the mic up for questions and discussion for the remaining 30 minutes which was good, we had some very good questions and discussion - thanks Bronwyn for being there and for the questions and comments, having you there calmed my nerves a bit.

So, you can listen and watch the recorded Elluminate session if you like. If you have trouble with getting Elluminate recording, download the MP3 audio recording (7mb) and follow along with the presentation slides.

Networked Learning

View more presentations from Leigh Blackall.

The supporting Moodle space is also avaliable where you can find the introductory text for the talk, preliminary reading, and discussion forums currently running.

Hope you have the time to have a look and listen.

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Education, reactionaries, determinism and singularity

2006-03-25T18:34:00.000+12:00

Uncanny coincidences in thought have happened online so often for me now that I am ready to accept that singularity is here! (I'm still waiting for my birthday wish list to come in with a copy of Singularity is Near), so while I wait for that, let me ponder singularity's arrival already...

This morning I was laying awake wondering what I might talk about at the Global Summit. Needless to say, when you see the line up there,I feel a little out of my depth... I stand out like a sore thumb - but I like it :) Anyway, I was thinking about a conversation I had the day before with some colleagues at work and a guest from up North. While talking about standards, guidelines, the post LMS age, failures of sharable learning object theories and SCORM technologies, I made the claim that educational organisations have been far too proactive with technology and not reactive enough. They have invested too heavily in their own technological developments and lost site of what is happening outside their schools, in the real world, in the hands of the average citizen.

I'll expand on that in a tick, but first I want to finish my story of amazing coincidence in thought.

I fired up the laptop in bed this morning, intending to post something on my proactive/reactive idea, and while I was distracting myself from resolving the concept in any way, I happened on another beautiful post from Doug in Alaska called Diffusion. In it he has posted his thoughts on a similar concept, but instead of using proactive and reactive he has used instrumentalist and determinist.

Instrumentalists say that Education Reform is made possible by new technology, while determinists see Change as a process that is driven by new technologies.

Doug points to a screen by VH Carr Jr (can't find his/her full name), called Technology and Diffusion that makes me wanna go arh! In it are gems like,

None of these technologies, however, has been generally available for individual or private use due to cost, scope or application. This deterred a "grass roots" technology adoption cycle as it was nearly impossible to generate movement from the bottom up by influencing faculty peers and administrators with demonstrations of successful applications.

Did you get it? Could you see me in back waving a sign "proactive or reactive"? OK, maybe not... let's see what else this Carr Jr has to say while I look for some more back-up to the proactive reactive idea...

Unlike most earlier technologies which were thrust upon the education community, Internet technology is individually available to faculty and students who can use their own systems to serve their own purposes. The impetus for the innovation frequently grows from individual users of the technology, and as their communication and influence moves laterally through their contacts, a body of support can grow and exert "pressure" on the institutional administration to commit to adoption of the technology. There is, therefore, a high potential for a "bottom-up" or "grass roots" adoption process to succeed.

Come on! Surely you can see me and my sign there now? While I think Carr Jr is spot on in identifying the communications renaissance we are going through now, I think he's too general in saying Internet technologies. You can take the principle though and apply it within the idea of "Internet technologies" and it starts to work even better. Take free blogging v's pay a web designer and buy a server with software approach. Take mobile phones v's laptop computers that need electricity and Internet connectivity, take wikipedia v's the National library's closed reference section... take a Learning Management System v's small pieces of free web based applications loosely joined...

That's what's going on now. In the early days of Internet enhanced teaching and learning we had experts creating SCORM compliant content, for Learning Management Systems sitting on expensive servers maintained by expensive server administrators. We still have it, its rediculously entrenched. But now days we have a trend emerging not from the management and their systems, but from the grass roots of part time teachers and all sorts of students. Based on an opening up of content and a largely free and accessible Internet of communication tools, a grass roots revolution is being fueled that will surely draw those managers and systems into question.

But at this point we should return to Doug's important observation,

The subject of internet technology and education reform (ie. blogs, wikis, podcasting, videoblogs, games, Wikipedia, Google,) is frequently coupled with the observation that many teachers don't seem to recognize the wave of Change that is rushing toward us, traditional classrooms are becoming obsolete, new forms of communication are requiring new definitions of literacy, etc and the question: How are we going to get them to see it? Because, according to the edublog evangelists, seeing it is a mark of progressive visionary practice that will prepare kids for the future.

He's right, there has to be an awakening in the school culture before the grass can grow. Education needs to attract a different type of person, evangelists like me will have to become more patient, and managers will need to step back and be less prescriptive with technology implimentation and policy.

So, I'm still unresloved with my proactive/reactive idea. Perhaps I'm toying with the wrong words, maybe even the wrong ideas. What I'm trying to find is a simple way to explain the need for grass roots development instead of standardised managed systems, and cynical staff development programmes.

Perhaps another night's sleep and another occassion of singularity will emerge the idea for me a bit more. So I'll finish with Doug's final dark word on it, which I have experienced myself more time than I care to remember:

I made a presentation about blogs to a group of teachers last summer. After I talked for probably too long, a woman raised her hand and asked, “Why would anyone want to do this?” I didn’t know what else to say. You either see it, or you don’t. We lack consensus - not only for technology - but for our vision of schooling.

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The Classrooms will prevail, deschooling for another age

2006-03-22T07:23:00.000+12:00

... deleted ...

...That's what sux about working for an organisation. Your colleagues don't take the time to look you up out find out more about who you are, what you've done, and as a result can all too easily dis what you say. To them, your just some face you has just introduced themselves in one of those almost pointless round table introductions before the meeting, and that's it. When I said things like "social networking software" you could literally see minds shutting down around you. when I talked about using available services on the Internet, and not rebuilding the Internet the way we want it - people fold their arms, sit back, and ask who is this punk?

Having an online community and a voice within it always lures me into a false sense of security. I look at it as My preferred classroom. But its one in which I have chosen my classmates (more or less). When online, that security isn't false at all. We swap links, encourage each others work, nurture each others ideas. But in the day job, in an organisation that thinks face to face meetings are productive, where everyone has been schooled and socialised, there is no online - only you, what you look like, and what you sound like. And I've come to realise that what I look and sound like can really work against me in these situations.

Given the floor, I can do alright. I have some time to dispel the prejudgements on my age, gender, clothing choice, race. I have some time to establish what I'm on about, I have some time to make a point. In a meeting, where respect is back to zero, and where it is common to cut people off and interrupt them, where organisational politics plays a part - the luxury of having the floor, backed up with hyperlinks and like minded comments just isn't there.

This is in my mind, where the school and the classroom - where you can't choose your learning community, where bullying is an element as common as the weather, were politics prevails, and where power is the currency - is totally at odds with networked learning.

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A future online learning environment from New Zealand

2006-03-21T19:16:00.000+12:00

Derek Wenmoth has posted his take on the future online learning environment. Derek says he is working with the Ministry of Education on this one, so its a relief to see someone who seems to "get it" informing a Ministry in this way. I see the LMS still features in this future, but I'm pleased to see not only is that LMS not central to online learning, but that it might be an open source one.

Perhaps I'll go a bit further into the future and stake claim in New Zealand to the idea that the LMS will dissolve from its role as a learning manager into more of a Student Management System (enrollments, assignments etc), while the learning moves more towards the original small pieces loosely joined idea, social networking software, and other communications technology such as the mobile.

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Comic Book to teach Creative Commons

2006-03-18T20:44:00.000+13:00

From the Creative Commons blog:

Duke Law School's Center for Study of the Public Domain has released an amazing 76 page copyright education in the shape of a documentary filmmaker and form of a comic book: BOUND BY LAW?
A collaboration between cartoonist Keith Aoki, law professor (and CC board member) James Boyle and CSPD director Jennifer Jenkins, the work is available for viewing online, download, or hardcopy purchase and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

What is literacy, and when it's never enough

2006-03-18T16:43:00.000+13:00

Bill Kerr has posted an important question, considering that by taking on board a diversified understanding of literacy we risk diluting the development of deeper understanding of text. Bill seems to be undecided on the question, or seeking a debate, so I thought I'd have a go at answering:

I tend to think its time to expand our expectations of what it means to be literate, beyond text. Not to dilute the importance of text, but to promote the importance of other communicative mediums, that in many ways serve to enhance text.

Being able to read and write text is one thing. Being able to read and write txt digitally is the same thing but in another dimension. Being able to read and write digital images, sound, semiotic compositions, music, video etc, is the same thing again, but at another dimension again.

Its all about the intention of communication and having the skills and awareness to employ the appropriate communicative dimension. So yes, text is important. Knowing how to read and write hand written text is important. Knowing how to read and write text with a keyboard and thumbpad is important. Being able to read and write images is important, and so on and so forth.

While talking about fluency is relatable I don't think it is same thing. Literacy is firstly an awareness of need, an understanding of importance, then an ability to perform, and here is where fluency, competency and expertise comes in. Being literate is before being fluent and competent.

So literacy in golf is the same as literacy in cars. Its the ability to engage in a communicative process about them. The more mediums, the more diversified your literacy. The more diversified your literacy, the more chance you have of finding the best communication channels. The subject of what is being communicated has little to do with it other than helping to determine what medium/s are used to communicate it with.

In short, don't stop teaching forms of communication at text.

I agree that reading and writing text is important, so we teach that for the first 3 years. I don't agree that hand written text is so important that it should need another 3 years of practice at the expense of learning how to keyboard and thumbpad. I don't agree that text is so important that for yet another 6 years we focus on writing essays for the sake of learning how to take photos, record audio, and edit video. And I don't agree that text is so important that we should dogmatically continue with fine arts of it for another 6 years again, practicing PHDs into incomprehensible peer review dialects. At some stage in all this we should be given the opportunity to diversify our literacies, and the respect to be able to bring what ever communicative process we like to a subject.

In saying all that though... did we lose God when we began painting pictures of The Words?

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MobilED, much better than MIT $100 laptops

2006-03-18T10:11:00.000+13:00

A few months ago, MIT's $100 laptops project impressed me, not so much for what it has to offer those in the "developing nations" that MIT are trying to reach, but for the inspiration and political influence such an ambition gives people in the "developed nations".

But the MobilED project looks set to totally surpass MITs efforts and impact.

Its obvious really! Delivering on the constant chatter and promises of mobile learning, MobilED has cracked it I reckon. A simple concept, made possible by free and open source software - mobilED is the use of a phone to txt message a search on a wiki and receive a call back with a robotic voice reading the results.

But MobilED is much more than that, as its very stylish videos demonstrate.

MobilED is doing everything right with this project. I am totally inspired and politically charged!

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FLOSSE Posse just rocked my world!

2006-03-14T22:08:00.000+13:00

Teemu from FLOSSE Posse blog just rocked my world with a post introducing the MobilED project.

In short, it's a service where you can send a txt message as a search and get a call back from a screen reader who reads you the Wikipedia entry for your results! I could really, and I mean REALLY use that! And if that wasn't enough! If the entry doesn't exist, then it will take your dictation and start the article for you!

You just absolutely have to download and watch the video to comprehend how very cool this idea is!

By the look of the video and surrounding articles, this initiative is targeting areas where the electro infrastructure is not in place to support widespread computer and Internet use. As Teemu puts it:

According to the International Telecommunication Union in 2004 the Internet penetration on the planet was 13%. The mobile phone penetration in the very same planet was 32%. Internet penetration is growing slowly. The growth in the number of mobile subscribers does not show any signs of slowing down. (ITU report: What’s the state of ICT access around the world?)

This is such a great idea! I mean, I get really inspired by this. Just like MIT's $100 laptops, I look at projects like this and think wow! If they can do that there, we should be able to do that here. We have heaps of people in our so called wealthier nations who can't afford a computer and Internet, but many who make the choice to carry a mobile phone instead... not to mention people in occupations were having a computer on the job to access information just isn't feasable. Trades people and other manual, outdoors types...

Learner generated content, or the best way to learn is to teach

2006-03-13T14:44:00.000+13:00

Will Richardson captures the meaning of learner generated content perfectly with his post Teaching students to teach.

Ironically, this is especially true, I think, with the more multimedia technologies that we talk about. Podcasts, vidcasts, screencasts all give students the opportunity to take what they have learned and turn it into teachable content. That's what I hear when I listen to Bob Sprankle's or Tony Vincent's kids. That's what I sense with the Wheaton Academy vidcasts. And that's why I am so intrigued with screencasting as a new medium for students to use to teach.

This is a big deal, and something I'm trying to promote in my work. There are 2 key things I think are an important for teaching and learning today:

1. To learn through the production of content = constructionism
2. To learn through engagement with real and existing communities of practice = social constructivism

So a teacher today, or should I say facilitator is someone who focuses on building and maintaining a strong learning network around their topic, and assigning learners to create content based on what their learning, to feed back into that network.

A cyclic, sustainable learning that involves wider community (global) participation...

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Flickr Leech

2006-03-12T11:05:00.000+13:00

How cool would Flickr Leech be if it sucked up photos licensed Creative Commons... on that note, why doesn't Flickr offer feeds for its Creative Common search pages?

ePortfolios! Who needs them?

2006-03-12T10:42:00.000+13:00

From D'Arcy Norman:

Helen Chen posted a notice about an upcoming webcast by Jude Higdon for ADCE about the nature of ePortfolios in an environment where people are already using blogs and social software. The session will be a quasi-interactive Elluminate production.

Who needs an ePortfolio? All my coursework is on my blog…

EPortfolios have been defined in various ways by vendors, professional organizations, and institutions of higher education.
With emerging technologies such as social software that include the ability to freetag and syndicate across multiple resources and environments, the need for standalone ePortfolio “software” is perhaps called into question. This discussion will raise issues regarding the NetGen student, and how she is already using technology that has natural affordances that allow her to collect, aggregate, and syndicate content into portfolio views that can be useful to herself, other students, faculty, departments, colleges and universities, accreditation agencies, funding bodies, and potential employers.

It’s on Friday, March 17th at 11am EST - That's Saturday March 18, 05.00 NZ time, and 03.00 Sydney time. Be there or be square!

2. TO ACCESS THE SESSION ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT
simply click on the link provided below and enter your name and affiliation (such as “Helen-Stanford”) on the sign in page.
https://www.elluminate.com/mtg.jnlp?password=1873127165

By the way, I've at long last found a pretty good time zone convertor. It lists EST, GMT etc, and converts to and from most cities.

Educational IT support are becoming affirmatively ambivalent towards Free and Open Source Software

2006-03-11T13:22:00.000+13:00

From the Academic Commons comes this pointer to a very useful report:

Inside Higher Education gives a good digest of "The State of Open Source Software," a report recently published by Rob Abel for the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness (A-HEC). Abel's report draws on a survey of more than 200 higher education officials responsible for software selection at a range of institutions. According to the report, two-thirds said they have Âconsidered or are actively consideringÂ using open source products; only about a quarter of institutions are implementing higher education-specific open source software. Inside Higher Education quotes Kenneth Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, as calling the mindset toward open source "affirmative ambivalence."

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