Planet TALO

Digital Education Revolution - things will be different

2008-05-15T02:48:54+00:00

A discussion here yesterday with colleagues at education.au got me thinking about how different things might be once you can assume that every Year 9-12 secondary student has access to a computer all the time while at school.

One of our group commented that everything that has happened so far in the last 20 years with using computers in education has been minor in comparison to the potential impact of DER. As a result of some of that activity we have some ideas of what will work, and what doesn’t; we have a glimmering of understanding of the possible problems we will face.

Among my predictions/thoughts (perhaps prediction is too sophisticated a term)

classroom activities are going to have to become more student centred, more collaborative, more enquiry based. Students will need to drive their own learning more.
teachers are going to need to learn to harness the expertise of individual students, particularly those who will spend hours on their computers at home developing skills well beyond those the teacher will have. This may be an uncomfortable process for some.
in many cases the curriculum currently being delivered locally will need adaptation, better linking and response to current issues, and even deletion of some “beloved-by-teachers” topics.
we need to get rid of the assumption that all computers need to be online all the time. The internet is not the answer to everything.
more than ever we need the establishment of a standard operating environment for an educator, in terms of recency of computer, software available, levels of internet access for students.
teachers will need to create or have access to online materials for students, even create their own mini learning objects such as 2 minute “how to” videos for a range of processes. They will involve their students in the creation of some of these.
there is an immense need for appropriate professional development provision both in resources and time for teachers.
We have seen that this week with our first scheduled edna online mini conference. Sessions for 18 June put on offer on Monday afternoon, giving a total of 100 places, had filled by Tuesday morning. Late yesterday afternoon we set up another online conference for 24 June. That hasn’t filled quite as fast. 73 of the 100 places have gone. It will be full by the end of the day.

It occurs to me too, in the light of a recent report from the US headed: Parents unsure about kids’ digital media use. Most parents accept the importance of digital media but wonder about the impact on students’ social skills, we have quite a lot of work to do on research, PR etc. to persuade parents of what we value in the DER.

Parental concerns outlined in the survey underpinning the article

• 67 percent of parents said they did not think the web helped teach their kids how to communicate.
• 87 percent of parents said they did not believe the web helped their kids learn how to work with others.
• Three out of four parents did not believe the web can teach kids to be responsible in their communities.

Another article to think about is this one:

Schools’ Web 2.0 ban contributes to social exclusion

Blocking students’ use of Web 2.0 sites - blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and chat - at school could exclude them from valuable educational opportunities as well as heighten social exclusion, particularly in remote and Indigenous communities.

As I said, things are going to need to be different. We have to manage change more rationally.

Ivan Kristic's challenges

2008-05-14T18:19:00+00:00

I also agree that Ivan Kristic's recent blog, sic-transit-gloria-laptopi, is a must read, warts and all, for its passion and the challenging way in which it airs some important questions, such as:

Can constructionism scale?

As far as I know, there is no real study anywhere that demonstrates constructionism works at scale. There is no documented moderate-scale constructionist learning pilot that has been convincingly successful; when Nicholas points to "decades of work by Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, and Jean Piaget", he's talking about theory.

Is there any evidence that "free software does any better than proprietary software when it comes to aiding learning?"

This insight:

There are three key problems in one-to-one computer programs: choosing a suitable device, getting it to children, and using it to create sustainable learning and teaching experiences. They're listed in order of exponentially increasing difficulty

This assertion:

A Windows-compatible Sugar would bring its rich learning vision to potentially tens or hundreds of millions of children all over the world whose parents already own a Windows computer, be it laptop or desktop. To suggest this is a bad course of action because it’s philosophically impure is downright evil.

This proposal:

I’m trying to convince Walter not to start a Sugar Foundation, but an Open Learning Foundation. For those who still care about learning in this whole clusterfuck of conflicting agendas, the charge should be to start that organization, since OLPC doesn’t want to be it. Having a company that is device-agnostic and focuses entirely on the learning ecosystem, from deployment to content to Sugar, is not only what I think is sorely needed to really take the one-to-one computer efforts to the next level, but also an approach that has a good chance of making the organization doing the work self-sustaining at some point

Bloggers Unite for Human Rights, May 15

2008-05-14T05:02:29+00:00

Bloggers Unite is an initiative designed to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By challenging bloggers to blog about a particular social cause on a single day, a single voice can be joined with thousands of others to help make a real positive difference; from raising awareness for cancer, to an effort to better education systems or support 3rd world countries.

It is an interesting perception of the power of blogging, and reminds me a bit of Howard Rheingold’s concept of Smart Mobs.

Bloggers Unite For Human Rights challenges bloggers everywhere to help elevate human rights by drawing attention to the challenges and successes of human rights issues on May 15. What those topics may include — the wrongful imprisonment of journalists covering assemblies, governments that ignore the plight of citizens, and censorship of the Internet. What is important is that on one day, thousands of bloggers unite and share their unified support of human rights everywhere.

Previous campaigns were

17 Dec 2007 - Acts of Kindness
7 Sept 2007 - Bloggers against Abuse
18 July 2007 - Organ Donor Awareness Campaign

The site contains information from Amnesty International about human rights.

Closer to home, people might look at information to be found on Australia’s Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). They have some excellent education pages, providing resources and information for teachers, students, media, legal services, and business groups. Their focus is what human rights are, where they come from and how they are protected in international and Australian law. Most importantly the resources encourage people to explore the relevance of human rights in their own communities.

National Simultaneous Storytime (Australia)

2008-05-14T01:39:05+00:00

National Simultaneous Storytime 2008 will take place on Wednesday 21 May at 11:00am throughout Australia. The children’s book, Arthur, written by Amanda Graham and illustrated by Donna Gynell, will be read simultaneously at participating organisations. There is an impressive list of intending participants.
An initiative of the Australian Library and Information Association, National Simultaneous Storytime is aimed at promoting the value of reading and literacy, highlighting the importance of Australia’s book industry and the role of libraries.

For more information visit http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/storytime/

If you would like to take part in follow up activities, then there will be some happening in OzProjects in the Middle Years Book Club. Participants will be able to describe what happened at their venue, submit a photo or two, and talk about what they enjoyed most on the day.

Wikis: networks, groups and the third way

2008-05-13T23:59:02+00:00

Last weekend I took part in the <a href="http://rcc2008.blueoxen.net/">RecentChangesCamp</a> - a three day open space conference for people interested in wikis and related topics. I met some new and old wiki-people, which some of them I may soon start to call my friends. I saw several interesting demos and had some quite nice discussions about wikis in education, wikis in informal, nonformal and formal learning. I am today more convinced than ever, that wikis are soon taking over in classrooms around the world. More and more teachers are starting to see the wiki-platform as the fastest and the most comprehensive web technology to support collaboration in and outside their classroom. When some teachers have made something successful with a classroom wiki, others will follow. At some point use of a wiki will becomes more a norm than an exception. I think, sooner than we think, a wiki in a classroom will be as common appliance as paper and pen: if there isn???t one everything else you try to do in the classroom becomes pretty useless. This is good news for the whole “e-learning field”. When these children will grow-up and enter to higher levels of education they simply will demand wikis in their classes. Only area that is left for the “learning management systems” (still remember the term?) will probably be distance (training) courses and corporate training. Wiki-way of doing things simply represents many values that are important in teaching and learning. For instance the issue of vandalism, and the ways to take care of it, is … well, you know … pretty educational. If you are a teachers you may simply go to the <a href="http://www.wikispaces.com/">wikispaces.com</a> and start a wiki for your class. It is worth of it. Why I am promoting Wikispaces and not some other wiki hosting service? Wikispaces-service is already working closely with educators. For K-12 education use it is completely free and free of advertising. Their wiki is easy to use with a simple interface and pretty good discussion tool. There are some things I would like to be different in the Wikispaces. At least, two things: (1) In the discussion tool there could be an option to use some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fle3">knowledge types</a>. (2) In education the matter of language of instruction is extremely important. To make Wikispaces more useful in the non-english speaking world the user interface elements should be translated. Teaches do not want to spend time to translate for their students the widgets like “Join this Space” or “Recent changes”. Time spend to this is out of the actual things one should do in a classroom. <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page">Wikihow</a> is not a new project, but for some reason I have been ignoring it for some time. Also it is not something that people would widely discuss or make references to when talking about “open educational resource” (OER). I think the reason why I have ignored it, is simply the issue that the self-help / how-to manual culture have been very strange for me. It is still strange for me, but when now reflecting the idea of having “a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual”, I see that it is actually close to something I consider to be the most valuable genre of open educational resources. I am even kind of ready to claim that the Wikihow is THE most valuable collection of Open Educational Resource we have today online. For instance, comparing Wikihow to something like MIT Open Courseware may sound silly, but if you are honest what kind of information is globally more valuable: manual explaining <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Category:Bicycles">how to fix your bicycle</a> or <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFall1999/CourseHome/index.htm"> Physics I: Classical Mechanics</a>? Both are great and important, but if you think about their value for us all - about 6 billion people - I am pretty sure fixing bikes will win the classical mechanics. So, if there is anyone interested in to translate and localize OERs to other languages and cultures, maybe you should have a look of the Wikihow, too. Writing new how-to manuals on topics relevant for people living in challenging conditions would be a great project. For instance <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-Job">how to get a job</a> probably works pretty well everywhere in the world, but why not encouraging or even paying for someone to write such articles as “how to use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio"> TransMilenio</a> in Bogot??” or “how to have a garden in urban slum”. Before you say: “why don???t you do it”, let me explain that I actually did, but it looks that the Wikihow does not support Unicode, and I failed when starting a title where there is ?? -character. I am not going to write an article with the title <a href=" http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Transmilenio-in-Bogot">Use Transmilenio in Bogot</a>, because I do not know a place called “Bogot”. Uhh??? Anyway, Wikihow is a great OER site. From the Wikihow comes also very interesting new Mediawiki extension. It???s called <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImportFreeImages">Import free images</a>. It “allows users to import properly licensed photos directly into their wiki from flickr”. With the extension you can have in your Mediawiki installation a search that will find you e.g. images that are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license and import those you???ll find useful in your own Mediawiki installation. This kind of things, that are making the free content to move from one service to another are really important to reach the world where free content is truly reusable. When talking with wiki-people they often say that they are editing wikis because they feel that they learn while doing it. Several studies have also reported learning to be the main motivation of open source developers to contribute and participate in open source projects. Editing wiki is always informal learning, but hardly random. Most of the people are also aware of the learning side while editing: You recognize that you are learning while editing, because you are spending you <a href=" http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010218.html">cognitive surplus</a> to do research, to think and formulate words, sentences, images or whatever media. Same time you are also engaged to community of other editors who are giving you feedback and comments. You may of course use your time for watching TV, which will also result as “learning”. The challenge of learning by watching TV is that in this case you are more often much more unsure what did you learn, if anything. Because of this you hardly ever found watching TV motivating, similar way as doing other thing where you are more aware of your learning. When editing wiki you are steering the activity. When watching TV ??? whatever how “educational” the program is ??? someone is trying to steer you. Often I hear wiki-people saying that just editing wiki is the only right way to learn with wikis. According to them one should not formulize learning in anyways. They claim that if there is form it is not anymore a self-organized wiki-way of doing this. I highly appreciate the “philosophy” of wiki-way. There is, however, now more and more interest to think how we could use wikis in a bit more formalized way. My solution is to move from the totally open and informal way of learning to the direction of “non-formal” learning - something that is between totally informal and formal learning. The difference between informal and non-formal learning is that when informal is something that happens all the time, non-formal is intentional and organized, but still informal in many ways. An open space conference is a great example of non-formal learning situation: everybody are free to come, to speak or just listen, wear shorts or a suit. It is informal but with some form - shared interest and objectives, time and space - and rules to make it useful. The move from informal to non-formal in wiki-learning is somehow reflecting the old discussion about networks vs. groups in learning</a>. I strongly believe that there is a third way, beyond the network and group learning. Any examples of this kind of activity in wikis? Yes. With a group of 22 people we actively worked together for ten weeks in a Wikiveristy course/class called <a href="http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Composing_free_and_open_online_educational_resources">Composing free and open online educational resources</a>. The form - including weekly program and assignments - was pretty much given by me. I made the first outline of the program, I selected most of the course reading, and designed the assignments. As it was in a wik a few other people also edited it - very few. More form to the process we have gave with Hans, my co-facilitator, by writing <a href="http://oercourse.wordpress.com/">facilitators’ course blog</a> and once in a while by commenting participants’ assignment posts in their blogs. It???s been a lot of fun, but also a lot of work for all the participants. The drop-out rate, from 70 to 20 in ten weeks, probably tells about it. So, how is this representing the “third way” beyond networks are groups? With these people we got together as a network of people, through various connections. From the network of people we formed an open group to get some things done. Our objective was simply to learn together about open educational resources. Soon we may again “disappear” to the network, be in touch if we want to, and maybe one day again form another non-formal group when there is something we want to do together. *) My “third way” concept does not have anything to do with the “Third Way” -political philosophy of Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair. <a href="http://flosse.dicole.org/?item=wikis-networks-groups-and-the-third-way#trackback">[Comments]</a>

Open source tools in Secondlife - Meta Presenter

2008-05-13T13:59:10+00:00

I’ve been thinking about useful tools for educators in secondlife. Meta Presenter is a simple, really easy to use tool for giving presentations. Its free and open source. Watch my Meta Presenter demo video on Youtube.

Sculpted prims in Opensim more advanced than SL

2008-05-13T13:50:24+00:00

Sculptie Physics on OpenSim from Dahlia Trimble on Vimeo.

Source

Teravus was teaching me about the internals of the meshing for physics on opensim when the topic came up about making a mesh out of a sculpted prim. I mentioned I would like to attempt to make one and try it out, and a few hours later he had it working! This video is Dahlia walking on a sculpted prim spaceship in OSGrid after updating to his new code.

More info

In secondlife sculpties only collide on bounding boxes, which make them really only suitable for visuals, not for part of complex builds. Due to some early work done by Teravus this week, that’s no longer true for OpenSim. We’re now creating a tri-mesh collision surface for sculpties and passing that into our physics engine.

Old Skool del.icio.us

2008-05-13T12:08:30+00:00

I know that many are raving that diigo trumps del.icio.us with its ultra-bookmarking and extra bags of tricks. But for many teachers I work with, del.icio.us is an ideal starting spot for them in the world of social software subverted for educational purposes. It’s simple but powerful. Too many bells and whistles just scare nervous teachers away.

We’ve been trying to build a collegial network of users and I’m pushing the line that sharing favourite sites and links is much easier this way in preference to the email out to all staff with the “Have you seen this?” tagline. We’ve started using unique tags to tie all of the web links for our inquiry units together but some teachers’ eyes still glaze over when we mention phrases like “common tags”, “adding fans to your network” and “bundling tags.”

Some are uneasy about the public nature of the service.

“It’s only websites,” supporters say.

But as my colleague and friend, Alex Hayes, has pointed out, a long term or active user of del.icio.us does lay out their entire digital learning history for the world to access.

But the interest is building. Our switched on teacher-librarian has been pushing the social bookmarking barrow enthusiastically and gradually more and more teachers who want to use the internet as a regular part of their learning program are realising that it is impossible to manage 300 + bookmarks in Favorites! But it is weird that a service like del.icio.us which has been around since 2003 is already viewed by many edubloggers as old skool when the vast bulk of teachers are only just becoming aware of the power of this simple but highly effective tool.

Authored by Graham. Hosted by Edublogs.

Locus Of Control

2008-05-12T13:06:58+00:00

I’m just reflecting on a day filled with three levels of administrivia and / or benign requests for intervention in other peoples issues in as equally diverse a location as the issues at hand in other words a bureaucratic jungle of permissions and finger pointing.

They have occured in three forms;

1. Pleas for responsibility - repeat attempts to shift responsibilities up or in many cases down

2. Blame setting - manouvering discussions to eventually settle on blame for actions taken

3. Behavioural Appropriation - use of tactics that pose behaviour as influenced and therefore admissably incoherent due to influence ie. did I really do that ?

Apart from that here I am at 11.04PM signing off.

Things are on the up and up

edna, me, & the digital world go online, June 18

2008-05-12T05:03:06+00:00

edna, me, and the digital world goes online with free online workshops
Workshops: Wed. 18 June 2008 - times are AEST

8-9 am - social networking with me.edu.au
10-11 am - Finding resources for embedding in Multimedia
1-2 pm - Digital Literacies
4-5 pm - Learning without Borders
7.30-8.30 pm - Education in Other Worlds

All sessions will use Wimba Live Classroom, the edna Sandpit Groups online conferencing tool.
There are descriptors of each session available online, and it is now possible to choose your sessions.
You must use your edna login to access the edna online group at http://sandpit.edna.edu.au/course/view.php?id=126
“Seats” will be limited in these online sessions, and as they fill sessions will be marked FULL.
It is anticipated that if this venture is successful, the sessions will be repeated at a later date, and possibly other sessions provided. We welcome your feedback at groups@edna.edu.au

Who am I - my digital identity

2008-05-12T00:57:30+00:00

Stephen Downes presented a very engaging talk at the recent Eifel ePortfolio conference in Montreal.
His presentation called My Digital Identity is well worth listening to.

Stephen describes it as a “scattered presentation that looks at authentication and identification, resource profiles, and e-portfolios. Mixed in with notions of the self, potentiality, historicity, and dimensionality. With a description of OpenID in
the middle.”
The audio for the presentation is at http://www.downes.ca/files/audio/montreal2008.mp3

It is obvious from the points that Stephen raises that there are some huge issues to be considered.
He talks at length about the metadata that makes up what we are about, and where it is stored.
How do we go about pulling all the metadata about us, personal metadata, resource metadata, and information metadata together? Stephen talks about creating various windows or profiles from our collected metadata. There cannot be a single ultimate storage.

Further to this idea of digital identity presentations by the keynote speakers from Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane are available online. The keynote presentations all relate, in very different ways, to the question of identity and digital footprint.

It is only a short leap from digital footprint/digital identity to e-portfolio.

On June 11 education.au is holding a national e-portfolio symposium in Adelaide
This national e-Portfolio symposium aims to bring together leading thinkers, policy and decision makers interested in e-Portfolio development to discuss key strategic issues and development.
education.au has invited stakeholders from the school and VET sectors and industry to attend the symposium to develop recommendations to assist in the future development and implementation of e-portfolios for students, practitioners and others. Attendance at the Symposium is by invitation and you can contact us if you would like to be placed on the list. Places are limited. Contact De Bullen for more details.
Join the pre-event discussion even if you can’t attend the symposium itself in an edna Group at http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/eportfolio

line rider in scratch (part two)

2008-05-11T07:50:00+00:00

In Scratch drawn lines are graphics and are not programmable (except for their colour) so I introduced arrow sprites which have properties such as direction, which can be accessed and transferred to the cat character

Make a global variable, named catDirection. Then when the cat touches a line a message is broadcast to the other sprites. Each arrow sprite has its own local direction property, which can be assigned to catDirection.

For more than one arrow you need to create a "touching?" (boolean) variable which detects if the character is touching any arrow. Then you need another if not touching ... and statement to set the direction to straight down when it slides off the end of the arrows

To have the cat speed up when falling down and slow down on an up arrow make another variable, "distance", which increases for down angles and decreases for up angles

Send me an email if you want the step by step instructions. Here are a couple more of the code segments:

leighblackall

2008-05-11T07:14:43+00:00

Konrad has put together a charming video of my drawing in Second Life. It really motivates me to want to finish it more. There are lots of little details that need to be added, not to mention interior design, info signage and life sized avatars to ‘wear’ before entering. (I really want to create an avatar for Ivan Illach and Jean Pain). But my SL building skills aren’t very efficient and we’ve run out of ‘prims’ to draw with.

The video captures the general concepts and I had a thought that perhaps the next resident might be willing to approach the interior design? Detail the actual learning spaces following the general stuff I’ve set down, such as it being primarily a family living space that can be used for group learning for all ages, and following permaculture design principles.

Take a look at the video, see if it inspires YOU.

line rider in scratch (part one)

2008-05-10T17:56:00+00:00

Rob Costello came up with the idea of incorporating the popular game line rider into the maths curriculum

When I mentioned this to my year 8s quite a few of them already had it on their memory sticks

I've developed a very simple version using Scratch. I discovered that Scratch comes with a ready made drawing pencil sprite (in the Things folder), with a drawing script. So I only had to write a script for the character to fall and then move along the pencil line.

I've written a worksheet. Send me an email if you want a copy.

I'm working on a part two, which introduces arrows for upwards motion and speed variations.

Links for 10-5-08

2008-05-10T12:14:33+00:00

Can we rescue OLPC from Windows?

Laptop Liberation

RobotCub, RobotCub Consortium

Ubuntu breathes new life into school’s abandoned hardware

MSN Music to shut down, leaving DRM customers in the lurch

Brazil migrates voting machines to GNU/Linux

Duty of Care In An Environment Of Innovation

2008-05-10T11:14:05+00:00

My theme for my ten minute audio at last Friday’s Learning In The 21st Century roundtable discussion was about protecting teacher innovation and how student learning can extend beyond the classroom. I managed to get myself to educationau headquarters on Fullarton Road shortly after 2 pm and got to be involved in the last two hours of discussion which was centered around the development of a starting framework of what Teaching And Learning Online means in an Australian context. I tried to catch up and plug in on what had transpired in the previous five hours while the other participants were tiring after an intense day. My impressions of our facilitator Joan Russell, an eminent South Australian in the field of Science, were first rate. She set the tone for working through the issues in a timely and open manner keeping all participants on track whilst respecting their various points of view. I wish that I could have been there for the whole day but Mike Seyfang recorded all of the relevant presentations and conversations in due course I will be able to listen to all of the audio and be well briefed.

It is great to see that Al Upton has restarted blogging with his class under a framework of guidelines developed in consultation with his principal. If you visit his blog, you will notice that the Notice For Closure page has been archived under a tab and you will know be able to re-directed to his new miniLegends blog. Al has kickstarted so much of this conversation that we had to have here in Australia and it is only through boundary pushing innovators like him can we discover what is truly best for those learners under our care.

That’s why innovation is something precious to be guarded within our schools. Without the innovative educators, we would be always camped at the safe no-risk end of learning - innovators are the ones who open up new possibilities and create new entry points for others to follow through. But the concept of “duty of care” is a real one that K-12 educators must deal with. Whenever you invite someone to interact with your learners the potential and expected benefits must carefully weighed against the potential risks. While a lot of American research is cited that dispels a lot of the myths surrounding use of the internet, there is precious little that carries similar weight in an Australian context. So do Aussie educators assume that the North American findings are directly transferable or do we proceed with caution and push for more research to be carried out with our own population?

“Duty of care” assumes that the students under my care will be cared for and not exposed to any risks that a parent or caregiver would consider unreasonable. In the case of using the web, that parental point of view could swing from parents who use heavy filtering, perhaps have deliberately chosen to not to get web access at home to the parents for whom the web is a big mystery and they don’t give much thought to where in cyberspace their children might be because their awareness levels are just so far behind.They just don’t know.

Peter Simmonds, our DECS Learning Technologies Projects manager was an all day attendee on that Friday and he used the Outdoor Education analogy to good effect. To paraphrase his words, outdoor education could potentially be a very risky undertaking (think rock climbing and kayaking as two examples) but the educators involved have developed such well developed protocols and guidelines that the risks have been diminished to their very slightest and are now considered to be safe activities for students to be involved in. Teaching and learning online activities also would benefit from the development of protocols and guidelines that would turn the use of blogs and other online tools into a safe, highly valuable and essential learning practice. Doing so without this happening is like trusting your ropes will hold you down the rockface because of your experience rather than taking the time to check and ensure that the activity will not end in disaster due to human oversight or negligence.

The framework under development and started on May 2 by the gathered group of volunteers is a positive step in the right direction for Australian education.

Authored by Graham. Hosted by Edublogs.

pamela bone

2008-05-09T08:29:00+00:00

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die
- Aubade, poem by Philip Larkin
- Quoted in Pamela Bone's book about her fight with cancer, Bad Hair Days

Pamela Bone, journalist and author, died recently, from cancer, age 68

Here are some of the other battles she fought and about which I'm in agreement with her:

She supported the Iraq war because Saddam Hussein was a horrible, fascist monster who had to be got rid of. That was a consistent theme in her writings, that genocidal dictators must be stopped
She criticised the peace movement that protested against the Iraq war but failed to have any plan to overthrow a fascist dictatorship "... why millions of people marched last year (meaning 2003) not to denounce the world's worst dictator but to prevent the overthrow of that dictator."
She asked publicly why western feminists failed to speak out against human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam "When did cultural sensitivity trump women's rights?"
She criticised the dreary cultural relativism that pervades the thinking of so many of those once described as on the Left. "Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies?"
She maintained her optimism and in saying that the overall trend in the world is positive

reference:
podcast interview
She talks here mainly about her illness and attitude towards death (also some references to her job as a lead writer at The Age, the Iraq war and her visit to Rwanda). It was good to hear her voice - on feeling really ill with terminal cancer, "... it felt like being slapped in the face and told to get out of the human race"

Bone writes her final column

... Calm and clear to the end

Why we stay mute on Islamic sex apartheid Pamela confronted Germaine Greer for failing to speak out against honour killings

Western sisters failing the fight
"LET it be recorded that in the last decade of the 20th century the brave and great movement of Western feminism ended, not with a bang but with a whimper"

UN must act to save distant people the failure of the UN to act against genocide in the Darfur

The silence of the feminists

Dislike of George Bush's foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech

A Digital education revolution - Australia wide symposia

2008-05-09T08:05:21+00:00

A Digital Education revolution
Realising the possibilities - managing the realities

The Australian Council for Educational Research and education.au supported by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), are presenting a series of symposia to explore and illuminate the possibilities and the realities of the implementation of the Digital Education revolution (DER).

Website for more information

Where

Sydney, The Harbour Marriott, Circular Quay
26 May (8.30 -3.30)
Brisbane, Novotel, Creek Street
28 May (8.30 - 3.30)
Adelaide, Stamford Plaza, North Terrace, Adelaide
2 June
Melbourne, The Sebel - Albert Park, Melbourne
3 June
Perth, Duxton Hotel, St George’s Terrace
12 June

Registration

Online registration: http://www.acer.edu.au/proflearn

Terry Anderson's Proposal

2008-05-09T08:04:09+00:00

I want to first state that I am sympathetic with Terry Anderson's plaint. I have heard him over these last few years making the case for research in e-learning in Canada. And I agree that there is a case to be made. But I would like to caution that it's not an obvious case, and that the result even of a successful petition is not necessarily what we might envision.

Here in New Brunswick, I made a case at the provincial level for the sort of program Terry envisions nationally - a Canadian JISC or EdNA, for example. The proposal was well-received and the audience - members of the e-learning industry here in New Brunswick, including members of the Canadian military engaged in overseas training - was receptive.

But it's not clear that the sort of presentation I made would be accepted as a national proposal.

First, for the benefit of our international audience, I should point out that Canada is a confederation of ten provinces and three territories. These provinces share power with the federal government. In the Canadian constitution, education at all levels is a provincial responsibility. This has not prevented the federal government from making substantial investments in the field over the years, through established programs financing, through Council grants, and through project funding. But there is the widespread belief in Canada that there should not be a federal *coordination* of education in Canada, which would include e-learning research.

Which leads to my second point. The provincial ministers of education, when they got together under the auspices of CMEC (Council of Ministers of Education, Canada) did launch a research program, funded to the tune of some $86 million, if I recall correctly. This resulted in the creation of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) and this body *did* produce a research agenda.

It is not exactly what I would call a forward-looking agenda. Without having conducted a systematic review, I am hesitant to make specific criticisms, but much of the work seems to me to be less relevant than I would like and in some cases - such as the 'learning profiles of famous Canadians' series, outright frivolous. I don't agree with all of the presumptions underlying the development of the research agenda, and have openly questioned these presumptions in various forums.

CCL has launched a "21st Century Learning Agenda" which looks a lot like the 'school 2.0' stuff coming out of the U.S. and which has toiled in relative obscurity here in Canada. Their website, Change Learning, focuses essentially on the work of John Abbott. The site looks like an average edublog, is about as informed, and even has 'blogs', though an apparent absence of RSS feeds. If you were to join the discussion, started a half year ago, your post would be post number 6.

There is another major research path in Canada, one that has historically been dominated by a small group of people. It begins in the 1990s, with the Virtual-U project (TeleLearning NCE) based (mostly) at Simon Fraser University and led by Linda Harasim and other notables. Given the results of the project, which spent $14 million over 4 years, the criticisms in the student press seem prescient. There's more on Virtual-U here.

This was followed by the unlamented EduSource project. It was in a certain sense a carry-over from Virtual-U. Funded by CANARIE, it spend something like $6 million to produce a network of learning object repositories in Canada. Though the website is still extant, the federation (and associated initiatives, like GLOBE, limps along). This in turn was followed by LORNet, involving many of the same people, which is also a network of learning object repositories. The research themes combine to produce the "TeleLearning Operation System -TELOS."

This is a research program. One could argue that it is not a very good research program, in that it consists of attempting to do pretty much the same thing over and over, and inasmuch as it is mainly focused on replicating the university network online. One could argue that it's not enough money - though given what we've gotten for the tens of millions already spent, one could argue that more spending would be good money after bad.

You see - from my perspective, the problem is only *partially* that we haven't invested enough in e-learning research in Canada. The problem is also that our investments have been badly managed, and have gone to support projects that should not have been supported, or which though well-intentioned turned out to be less well managed. And moreover - since these projects continue to be a going concern - the best evidence is that the allocation of more money would end up in the hands of the same people, doing the same thing. I mean, after all, can we *really* imagine that the money wouldn't be absorbed by the CCL people and the LORNet people?

And all of *that* said, it is worth noting that the best research in Canada has taken place outside that sphere of well-funded influence. Projects like the Multiple Academic User Domain (MAUD) which was already doing what Virtual-U was funded to do when it was funded. Projects like WebCT, which came to define an industry. Projects like Alberta SuperNet. Like Canada SchoolNet. Like BC Campus. Like the Public Knowledge Project. And - dare I say - the loose collaboration that is the e-learning edublogging connectivist community in Canada.

My perspective is, though we have been very innovative in Canada, we have been inept at *managing* that innovation. And that this is precisely because we seem to always feel that it must *be* managed, that it must be coordinated, that we must align to a common 'research direction' because we're so small, that we must create the 'CanadArm' of global e-learning by focusing on our niche excellence (which we can then sell to the U.S. - or at least try.)

So when someone says to me, "we need a research agenda," I take pause. Because, my first question is something along the lines of: "What are the odds that a coordinated research program would in any resemble the work that I am doing?" And when I answer that question ("zero") my concern becomes that a coordinated research program would siphon what few resources make it my way as part of Canada's only *actual* e-learning research program (at the NRC) and redirect them to the CCLs and the LORNets of the world.

To be honest, I'm not interested in a research program or a research agenda. I have no real faith that such coordinated efforts at research, particularly in an undefined field such as e-learning, work.

My preference would be to see a network of supports put into place for an *uncoordinated* research effort. I would like to see the Canadian e-learning community provided with free (and easy to use) web spaces, free discussion areas, free applications and free online services. I would like to see support for a news exchange system - an aggregator of Canadian research blogs. I would like to see Canadian researchers publish in open journals and newsletters available to all educators. I'd like to see support for open content and open archiving - a genuinely free and open repository of learning (and other) resources.

Most of all, I'd like research in Canada to stop trying to create 'commercial applications' or 'commercial networks' - even when we succeed at this, we just end up selling them to the U.S. anyways. We need to think about the idea of 'research as infrastructure' - we need to conduct research by actually providing services to people, instead of conducting study after useless study of 14 graduate students and their online course.

Is this likely to happen? No.

So, while I am sympathetic with Terry Anderson's proposal, and would like to see something positive result, I am cautious and sceptical in that support.

Moodle Moot AU 08

2008-05-09T06:29:36+00:00

Today I got notification that my presentation for the Moodle Moot in Brisbane 2-3 October has been accepted. So hopefully I will be meeting up with some of my “virtual friends” there.

Currently the organisers are still looking for presenters.

The keynote speakers are

Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Developer of Moodle
Professor Erica McWilliams, assistant Dean(research) for the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology.

For more information go to http://www.moodlemootau.org/

Blogging Corner

2008-05-09T06:22:04+00:00

Yesterday I created a new edna group for blogging educators.

Blogging Corner is a place for bloggers, would-be bloggers, and blogging mentors. Whether you are just starting out on your blogging journey, are some distance along the track, or have loads of experience, we hope there will be something here for you.

Content and activities so far

* Forum: Questions and Answers
* Choice: What do you use to blog?
* Wiki: Where is your blog?
* Forum: Blogs in the classroom
* Wiki: Recommended blogs

You will need to register with edna Groups to participate because the group does not allow guest access. However all educators are welcome.

Multiliteracies Conference Notes

2008-05-09T06:21:09+00:00

Multiliteracies –Teaching The Consumption and Production of Multimodal Texts

Dr. Geoff Bull and Dr. Michelle Anstey

www.ansteybull.com.au

Session One

Teaching The Consumption and Production of Multimodal Texts.

What is a multimodal text? Goes beyond just straight print text, can be interactive, linear and non-linear. All texts have values and the reader is an active constructor of meaning from the text. (This is an interesting point as students move more into construction of texts for wider audiences beyond their classroom. Are they aware enough of the different ways the words and images they choose will be interpreted?)

Written paper texts are generally consumed in a linear fashion, but digital text can be very non-linear. Even television can be non-linear and interactive (i.e. reality television) where you can use SMS and web voting to influence and change the direction of the text. Processing a text means drawing on the experience of other texts. Texts incorporate a variety of semiotic systems – decision making can be influenced by preferences. Both digital and non-digital formats of a text are produced these days. Design and aesthetics of a text target specific cultural groups.

When presenting a text to students, decide what you want the students to know and be able to do? We were shown two multi-modal texts and had to consider the contexts – which they were published. Two images shown from the Iraq war – one from early in the war and a later one. Our group discussed the difference between the two and came up with many different possible interpretations. A photographic technique is the use of the Y-vector to attract attention to a specific part of the photograph. (“Punch Into Iraq” – The Australian March 2003 and The Australian July 2007.)

Texts are becoming more screenlike. Showed an example “The Penguin Book: Birds In Suits.” Layout offers a number of starting points and boxed in texts mean shorter, simpler sentences. The traditional ways of decoding a text do not always apply to more screen like texts. Previewing, skimming and scanning are skills that involve eye movement on a text. Look at a similar topic using various texts and work though with your students how to make meaning and navigate the information.

Jakob Nielsen - useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html You have 30 seconds to grab your reader’s attention. Looked at the changes of the National Geographic front page from 2003 to 2008. Changed so that signal to noise ratio had improved.

Obvious statement – start with a purpose then choose the technology or tool to suit.

Session Two

Consuming and Producing Still Images

What is your literacy identity? Use of prior experience with text, knowledge, cultural knowledge and experiences, social knowledge and experiences, and technological knowledge and experiences. Break away from “doing school” and re1ate to the “life world.” Showed “Anzac Day - Simpson And His Donkey” cartoon for the Australian April 26, 2001. Showed KIA ad showing a van with a sign “New To Country, will Work For Less.” What reaction do you have and what trigger that reaction? Having the skills to understand a mobile phone contract or to undertake a rental agreement – who has the power and to clarify - this is using critical literacy. Advertising texts is a good place to start but you can move onto other forms of texts - scientific texts cited as an example where one scientist was presented in their work environment in their lab coat etc. while the other was interviewed in the street with opposing points of view. Who appeared to be more authorative ?

Why study still images? We get so much information today via visual images that we run the risk of taking them (and what they mean) for granted. What role do images play in a text? A few examples - a pulp mill leaflet from Tasmania with an open ended question, a Donna Hay recipe book showing toffee apples and a magazine article showing a hand drawn map of the Huon Valley.

Color is used in images – harmonious colours and contrasting colours used to evoke feelings or to draw attention. Plan a colour script for a piece of writing – examples cited were Pixar movies and children’s picture books (The Lorax came to my mind as a good example. Another planned example of color combination I came up with were the Miami Dolphins NFL team whose team colors are Coral and aqua - the colours and the names match the image.)

Showed through a number examples of children’s picture books where images and how they are presented are really important to the story being told. One example was “Black and White” by David Macaulay. The front cover consists of four separate images that present images in different ways using different colours and styles presenting a significant challenge for the reader to decode. We were also shown the book ”Fox” by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks where the text was designed to match in with the illustrations.

Session Three

Moving Images

Hidden agenda aim of the session was to ensure that we never view a moving image in the same way again! How do we get meaning from “moving visual”? Are we always conscious about how we gain meaning? Use codes and conventions to do so. Gave an example of how a group of friends may see a movie together, but discussion will show that they viewed it in many different ways. Use grabs of video from what the students themselves watch advertisements, soap operas etc. in 5-30 second segments. Does not contravene copyright of material – as it is covered under “fair use”.

Talked about male and female ads and the various choices made by advertisers to differentiate with choices of colour, music and pace. Looked at camera angles in covering men’s and women’s sport and how it changed over time. Can be an interesting study when viewing the Olympics. “Literacy by stealth” assists boys who are literacy-reluctant. Trend, emerges from research that a lot of student learning comes from moving image, up to 25%. This has implications for texts presented in the classroom. If teachers do not include “moving image” as part of their teaching, they will become increasingly irrelevant (as well as not doing their job.) Use the extras sections of DVD to look at storyboards (excellent reason to use tools like Comic Life). It is important to explicitly teach the metalanguage. Big and little, zoom in and out then become characterisation and context.

There was considerable time spent in the deconstruction of the short film “Star” directed by Guy Ritchie, and the making of “Walking With Dinosaurs.” Geoff paused and talked us through the different codes and conventions of the what we were seeing, hearing in terms of soundtrack and also dialogue.

Moving Images blur the lines between fiction and non–fiction. Walking With Dinosaurs is an example of fictionalising facts - a story is created to demonstrate what scientists have learned and determined from their research. Presents issues about authenticity – how do we determine it and identify it? Talked about the role that virtual worlds, (Second Life) have in disturbing the paradigm about what is real life.

Overall, a very good day that confirmed many of the practices that occur in my room in terms of using digital content to teach specific concepts and cater for the multi-literate learners in my classroom. It also highlighted the usefulness of an Interactive Whiteboard in the classroom and provided many useful explanations of how texts are constructed to use in discussion and analysis with my students. I still would like to have had wireless to look stuff up as we went along - it is very much a preferred learning style of mine and in line with the whole multi-literate point of view. Text is still important but the ability to decode and make sense of the other text forms is a crucial part of being literate today. I wonder if digital literacy can be construed as something else or just the digitisation of the three forms of written text, still images and moving images? There has to be more to that as this [multiliteracies as covered today] mainly deals with the consumption angle while the creation would bring other things to consider. Something more to tease out at a later time - or perhaps my readers would like to kickstart with their points of view.

Authored by Graham. Hosted by Edublogs.

Schools give communities options

2008-05-09T02:01:09+00:00

Reflecting on the parent teacher night last night I am filled with satisfaction. Having predominantly taught at year 11 and 12 levels, I was given a year 9 class this year. I was filled with fear at this and that fact that it was all boys. It is now the class that I would fight to keep. Their enthusiasm and curiosity fills me with joy.

Last night I explained to parents that the course is structured around various activities that last about a fortnight. The entire content is on my Moodle site (www.watiwara.org) and so there is flexibility for students to spend more time on topics of interest to them and dig deeper and to also work through topics of less interest quickly. I explained that I have chosen, in all cases, to use software that is free for students to take home and continue with their learning there.

Parents were thrilled with this and each had a story of something that their son had taken home and was almost obsessed with. In one case the student had hooked his mother into the activity and she spent time talking about how much she loved it.

One parent asked 'How does one find out about these things?' and then proceeded to answer her question with “I suppose that's why we go to school”. Schools have a responsibility to show students and our community options.

Call for eLearning Papers: Open Educational Resources

2008-05-08T17:30:33+00:00

The next issue of eLearning Papers, a series by the elearningeuropa.info-portal, focuses on Open Educational Resources (OER). The eLearning Papers looks for articles on OER and their use in education at all levels, taking into account the aspects of global development and Web 2.0.

The contributions should focus on one or more of the following themes:

* Lessons learned and best practices of OER projects, tools and initiatives
* New findings, facts and figures of OER development and usage
* Discussion and position papers on how the OER movement can be supported
* Pedagogical innovations and OER, does OER make any difference?
* Transferability and usability of OER
* OER as a way to create and support sustainable development
* Business models around OER

The deadline for article submission is 30 June 2008.

[Comments]

Opensim demo running on a stick

2008-05-08T10:39:37+00:00

I made a video of what Ive been up to with Opensim, you can watch Opensim Gnutopia demo on youtube or download Opensim demo.

Here’s some images from my Opensim aka Gnutopia.

The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..

gnutopia aerial view	gnutopia house	gnutopia map
gnutopia near bridge	gnutopia on hill	loginscreen

I used the following software packages to set up my Opensim on windows.

Webserver On Stick - for apache,php,mysql. I included the webserver so I could use OpenSim Web Interface (Redux).

OpenSim Web Interface (Redux) - it allows grid citizens to create User Accounts to access the grid. Grid Owners can also manage all users for the grid. very light CMS system included.

Opensimulator - I use the OpenSim.be Nightly Builds. You might find it easier to use these builds

Secondlife client from Linden Labs

Probably the best thing about the way Ive done this is that I can run it from a memory stick which makes it easier to demonstrate and use when I’m not connected to a network on other peoples computers, thats a fairly common scenario in education, I can also leave them with a copy which is a nice bonus. Unfortunately in Australia our isp’s offer internet packages that set limits on how much we can upload and download otherwise I would have this running all the time. Perhaps someone out there could help out, i would love to have a Wikiversity region connected to osgrid or something like that.

I might put a howto on a wiki if people end up asking lots of questions.

leighblackall

2008-05-07T22:00:18+00:00

Otago Polytechnic will be signing the Capetown Declaration on Open Education this Friday 9 May in G106 at 12 noon NZST.

While I and several others are on record expressing reservations over the wording of the Declaration, this signing is more about our expression of support for the spirit of the thing, and reaffirming our commitment to open education formally set in place by our Intellectual Property policy (2007).

Otago Polytechnic has been at the fore of almost every recent step in the international effort for Open Education including significant work on the Wikieducator platform; use of popular and internationally recognised media and communication platforms; developing an Intellectual Property Policy in line with open educational practices; adopting a NZ Creative Commons Attribution copyright license; and ensuring that its spokespeople are very much a part of the dialogue on educational media and communications nationally.

As a result we have featured in international news: twice on CreativeCommons.org; twice with the Commonwealth of Learning, numerous times in educational journals and quite a few weblogs. Many thanks for all this support. Our joining in the Capetown Declaration will see that Otago Polytechnic remains in this spotlight, confirming our commitment to Open Education and our role in leading New Zealand towards a progressive and appropriate future for its educational institutions in our local and global society.

I sincerely hope as many people as possible can drop what they are doing and be there to show support for this act of solidarity and leadership. Otago Polytechnic will be the first education institution in Australia or New Zealand to join 157 other institutions in the Declaration since it was penned September 2007.

the importance of and potential for the enhancement of mentoring

2008-05-07T12:18:00+00:00

marvin minsky has recently written a great series of articles about the importance of cross age mentoring and how networks open up new opportunities for that - on the OLPC wiki

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Marvin_Minsky_essays
Memo 3 essays (all four)
Memo 2 -> drawbacks of age based segregation

extract:

From where do our children’s self-images come? Of course, they copy a lot from their parents, siblings, teachers, and friends but (as noted in Memo 2) they also tend to emulate familiar public “celebrities,” so that many children come to know a lot about athletes, pop-stars and actors, but few can recognize the name of a single philosopher, scientist, or mathematician, because such achievers are rarely mentioned either in classrooms or media. The images of those celebrities must have substantial effects on our children’s goals—yet those descriptions are mainly fictitious, crafted by publicists to grip our children’s attentions for countless thousands of valuable hours. And even when those biographies are accurate, they don’t often demonstrate qualities that we should want our children to admire.

the teacher's union conservatism is just as bad or worse than the education departments conservatism on this issue - look at what DECS (Ed Department) and the AEU (Union) have done to Al Upton's students (update 3):

"Mentors/coaches – any communication between students and adults overseas was strongly advised against. DECS and AEU representatives agree on this"

probably a good idea but not sure

2008-05-07T10:56:00+00:00

It seems very reasonable to me that University students should have some requirement / expectation to:
a) broaden their outlook, not just be there for vocational reasons
b) use their knowledge to help the disadvantaged of this world

Macquarie University has developed such a programme:

ALL students at a leading university will have to undertake volunteer work and study subjects from the arts and sciences under an overhaul of its curriculum designed to provide a broader education and more socially aware graduates.

In a first for an Australian university, Macquarie University vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz today will announce a partnership with Australia Volunteers International that will create a mini peace corps, giving undergraduate students the opportunity to do volunteer work overseas.

Called the Global Futures Program, it will develop programs with local communities throughout Australia, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. Some form of community work will be compulsory for all undergraduate students at Macquarie under the new curriculum, to start in 2010.

In addition, the university will require all undergraduate students to study subjects from the humanities, social sciences and sciences so that arts students must take science subjects and science students must take arts subjects.
- top uni's peace corp subject

I realise also that this is being done to the students from above, the problem of "political correctness". When I went to University in the late 60s, early 70s many of us worked out these issues for ourselves; there was no need for the University to introduce courses in support of the Vietnamese revolution.

change that's hard to believe in

2008-05-07T10:48:00+00:00

Noel Pearson on Obama:

"Despite the long debate on welfare reform and the clear benefits of America's Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act 1996, Barack Obama hesitates to accept a social-policy truth that sticks out like canine testes. Responsibility and choice should never be subsumed by a focus on structural solutions; when this happens, you end up with the kind of shallow determinism that Obama ultimately falls victim to. He would be truly radical if he was equally vehement about equipping citizens to seize opportunities and convert them into capabilities."
- Pearson on Obama

clearly, the little children are NOT sacred

2008-05-07T10:16:00+00:00

The Mullighan Inquiry has found that there is widespread sexual abuse of children in South Australia's Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands:

The report, by former Supreme Court judge Ted Mullighan, found children had been selling sex for drugs, petrol and cash on the lands, in the state's far north.

The report found that at least 1 in 10 children had been sexually abused (often repeatedly). The evidence came from the parents of the children. Because of fear of retribution not one victim would give a sworn statement (source)

This follows on from similar findings in other indigenous communities around Australia, for example, the Little Children are Sacred report.

The author of that report, Rex Wild QC, said the APY Lands report was the fifth such report to identify the same problems in indigenous communities.

"It's about time somebody put them all together and said `there is a problem right around Australia ... let's resolve it for the whole of Australia, not just piecemeal'," he told ABC radio.

Although the current Rudd Labour government supported (when in opposition) the earlier Howard government 2007 intervention into the Northern Territory, no such intervention is planned in this case. While government and opposition fight over the "right approach", the child sexual abuse continues.

Reference:
No indigenous intervention for SA

Knowledge Bank

2008-05-07T09:51:26+00:00

Next week I’ll be presenting 5 slides in as many minutes to a group of hungry teachers in Victoria at the invitation of Carole McCulloch … for the “2008 Innovation Showcase - Transforming Learning through Innovation - Friday, 16 May 2008 – Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, Audstralia…“

You can download the Powerpoint slide here - PPT

You can download the Powerpoint show here - PPS

Better Blogging

2008-05-07T06:19:51+00:00

One of my aims all this year has been to become a better blogger.

I feel I have learnt a few lessons so far but have quite a way to go.
Here are some of the things I feel I’ve learnt:

choose topics that others want to know about
don’t make your postings too long
use a bit of white space to make it easier to read
use tags to help search engines etc. to find you
connect to the blogs of others if you can.
when you visit some one else’s blog, let them know you’ve read it: write a comment.
be on the lookout for blogs of others and list them in your RSS reader - getting time to read them is something else!
Today I’ve learnt from my friend KerryJ how to put an image in- so here I am last Friday in Brisbane airport doing my posting.

Today I have come across a couple of sites that may help you with the same process.

First of all the 2008 Comment Challenge.

Challenges are very popular with bloggers of all walks of life. By taking on a challenge you challenge yourself to learn or do something new. The 31 Day Comment Challenge is running from May 1-31 2008, but don’t let that put you off. There is a list of activities, one for every day of the month

Day 1: Do a Commenting Self-Audit
Day 2: Comment on a blog you’ve never commented on before
Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service
Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment
Day 5: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t agree with
Day 6: Engage another commenter in a conversation
Day 7: Reflect on What you’ve learned so far
Day 8: Comment on a blog outside your niche

The second site I found today was Sue Waters’ blog Mobile Technology in TAFE. Sue’s recent posts have been related to blog cleaning, layout, and what she calls the weight problem.

Perhaps you have some tips for me or some good blogs for me to visit?

Virtual Classroom Project - Final Reflections

2008-05-07T04:06:18+00:00

The inaugural phase of the Virtual Classroom Project is coming to a close. The official in-world meet-up to officially conclude Leigh Blackall’s (SL: Leroy Goalpost) residency on jokaydia as our first Educator-in-Residence will take place in the next two weeks. Details will be posted as soon as the date is finalized.

Before we conclude, however, Leigh and I will use voicethread to engage in conversations about his work and his experiences as our Educator-in-Residence. I hope that you will find some time to not only listen to Leigh’s thoughts but also contribute your own questions or comments. Please check back regularly as we intend to keep contributing to the voicethread throughout the final two weeks of Leroy’s residency.

So, if you’ve been following the project or attended our inworld meet-up during jokaydia’s April Festival, please add your thoughts. Leroy and I are looking forward to an engaging discussion.

Click here to listen to our voicethread discussion or use the embedded player below.

Democratizing Innovation

2008-05-06T15:12:06+00:00

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Homebuilt recumbent construction detail 1, originally uploaded by xddorox.

... was a book that I read a few years ago now by Eric Von Hippel. Someone brought up the notion of "democratizing innovation" on Wikiversity the other day which reminded me of how it would make another good reading group, so I've started one for it here: Eric Von Hippel:Democratizing Innovation

Now there's a good chance that I won't be able to participate in this reading group all that much but I like the idea of Reading groups on Wikiversity and I've been involved in creating one before, so I created this one because I think that Reading groups are a great model of a learning project that can work well in the Wikiversity environment. This book appealed to me for such treatment because it may be of some relevance in helping us understand the processes involved in the development of large scale collaborative wikis and, in particular, the development of Wikiversity. I was driven by a desire to establish the reading group in the chance that others over time may find it useful to have structure already in place to discuss this text. This was greatly assisted in this case by the text being freely available in PDF format under a Creative Commons license.

This is one of the features of wiki based Reading groups that I really like, the fact that the group can exist over long periods of time and experience fluctuations in activity but because of the written nature of the discourse it doesn't suffer from the temporality of the face-to-face Reading group which is dependent on synchronous interactions around a specific text. So starting the group now, even though I probably won't actually take it much further at this point, has I think merit in the long term for my own learning process and for Wikiversity.

And this is also what I'm finding particularly interesting lately -- how I'm starting to use Wikiversity as my predominant learning environment, call it a Personal Learning Environment if you have to ... but also possibly in a form that I've not seen discussed in other PLE discourses. The fact that I'm creating projects that I may not at this point have time to participate in immediately, but anticipate that if others do start contributing I will be inspired to participate myself is quite unique I think; it's as if i'm setting myself and others up a space to potentially learn. But I don't consider myself a "teacher, i'm more a technologist, but I am a learner and I want to learn in communities where-ever possible so what better way to facilitate my own learning than by creating a space where a community can form around, in this case, a text?

The other thing is that this is something quite different to what Wikipedia is all about.

While Wikipedia is a great resource for a part of the learning process, it is not so good at being a space for working through the personal or communal process of learning, for journaling, recording, keeping bibliographies, etc and for the kind of free discussion of any idea that comes up. This does happen in Wikipedia, but not really out in the "open" so to speak; mostly these kinds of socratic learning experiences and debates happen in Wikipedia talk pages, where pretty much anything goes, and they are behind the scenes for most readers, and rightly so. Wikipedia is about creating quality encyclopedia articles, not facilitating the spaces where ugly old learning may take place. Ideas in Wikipedia articles need verification, they need sources, written/published sources ... while in Wikiversity, they don't. Ideas, debates and opinions should be out in the open.

I think that Wikiversity may truly be the big sister to it's brother Wikipedia one day and that some of its recent critics will have their words forever quoted from wiki history pages or listservs. I'm working in that direction from now on, from the position of both creating a space for my own individual learning, but also in creating spaces where others can participate along with me, or even without me.