After the frustrations of the previous post, (some of which has still to be resolved grumble), it was nice to get out into the provinces again and work with some really nice folk, teachers. Monday last I had the privilege of going to a friend’s school to do some introductory presentations on digital storytelling, wikis and blogs. The three hour long sessions were part of a bigger day for a group of rural schools on their annual combined curriculum day. To make things easier for myself I decided to gather together my digital storytelling examples on yet another wiki, http://digistories.pbwiki.com/.
It was interesting to find that the most popular session was to be the digital storytelling one with some 20 participants, with 7 for the wikis and 14 for the blogs. This was interesting in itself but the reason for the diminished interest in the wikis and blogs was further re-inforced when only 2 participants in both of the sessions could truly say that they were even aware of what either was. By the end of each of these two sessions though all participants had a brand new blog and wikispace and at least soem basic knowledge of what they could possibly do with both. Not bad work all in an hour and suggestive that given a little gentle assistance even the novice can get themselves into Web 2.0 fairly effortlessly.
Of course the challenge now is for the teachers involved to actually develop sound pedagogical rationales to use the spaces. This is of course one of the on-going problems of the one-off PD type sessions and one that I have wrestled with quite a bit of late. During the previous week I worked with a number of classes setting up similar spaces. This was doubly interesting because the school I was working with was a special development school. The task this time was to engage in a conversation with the teacher, (and in most cases the class), to determine whether they were looking for a blog or wiki and then to explain to the students just what the space we were creating could do for them. Once this was established I then set about creating the space and the member identities. This was all done within an hour block which was quite a challenge as it was also on one of those days when dear old edublogs had decided to do some upgrade works. Picture if you will some 16 mildly intellectually disabled students watching an interactive whiteboard to see there new edublogs identities created only to see a blank screen come up, not once but three times.
In the end I did manage to get the spaces set up however having only one hour on that one day to work with the teachers I am left wondering how and what they and their students have made of their spaces. I will be heading back to the school next week but do feel quite guilty that I haven’t been able to check in with them in the interim. Hopefully the enthusiasm and interest built up previously, (blank blog creation screens notwithstanding), will still be there and we can really start them on their Web 2.0 pathways. And that is probably the biggest concern in all this seeding many teachers familiar with blogs etc are doing; can we provide the neccessary ongoing support so that the use becomes embedded in real education outcomes and not just become a fancy add-on or worse something that becomes just too hard because vital support is unavailable.
This evening has been one of those frustrating events where you begin to question whether you really know anything about computers at all. Having had a really pleasant last couple of days introducing a range of teachers and students to the wonders of blogs and wikis I came home tonight to do a little updating on the new Lenovo Thinkpad that I had purchased, having left my school and the leased notebook that accrues to teachers in the Victorian Edcuation Department. Though I now own a Macbook that I really enjoy, I thought that as most of the schools I will potentially be working in have Lenovos, I should also purchase one of them also. My thinking is that it is just more re-assuring for teachers to see you using the same machine as them plus it is also easier to direct them to where you think they should go if you share a common machine.
Thinking a new computer would also be nice to have as the previous one was more than three years old I have been quite disappointed to have, on more than one occassion already, had to hit the “kill” button or have had apps quit unexpectedly. I also have become almost innured to the fact that Vista constantly wants to question my state of mind whenever I want to make even the most modest install or change to any of the applications. I just love the darkening screen that preceeds a stern warning message questioning everything but my parentage, almost any time I presume to do something other than word processing or the like.
Tonight though things really got serious. The said laptop came pre-installed with a 60 day trial version of Microsoft Office, (which still has some 30 days left to run I should add). Given that I have begun to rely on this laptop, (though given this discussion I am wondering seriously why I do this??), I decided to convert the trial version into a fully operational version. My wife and I have a three user licensed copy of Microsoft Office Professional that we have only used two of the licences for which I figured I could load up.
Now according to Microsoft’s site,
“You can convert your trial version anytime during or after the trial period.”
Following the instructions as shown above, (at least I thought I was), I endeavoured to enter said product key but was told this key was invalid. After checking the help etc I found that somehow my trial version of Word was now corrupted and wanted to restart every time I wanted to shut it down. In addition I was unable to access any of the Word Options which should have enabled me to activate or change the status of the application.
Deciding that maybe I would try the phone helpline I checked out the details online only to find that Microsoft reserve the right to charge $80 or more for whatever they regard as other than a standard assist. With this in mind I rang with a little trepidation to be greeted by the standard options, “If you want ABC, press 1 etc, etc”. Having done the menu press through three menus I was finally asked to give the activate number that I was seeking to find out. Having endured the recorded voice saying that it couldn’t understand my silence for the mandatory three times I was finally forwarded to a real person. Now this person was on rather dodgy line which combined with a fairly heavy accent made the conversation rather hard to continue. Finally, after some eight or nine minutes, the consultant decided that I needed someone else to deal with my enquiry. Accordingly he gave me a new number and path to call which I duly did only to find myself in the same menu as before finally arriving at basically the same place I had been previously complete with the recorded voice asking for my non-existent activation code. After the three non-responses I was greeted by a nice cheery female consultant who, after suggesting that I uninstall the trial version and then install the purchased version, again decided I needed help from higher up.
This time I was placed on hold with music that made even elevator music seem faintly appealing. The next consultant finally came online and wanted to know my full name and other details. Being wary of possible dollar charges for this service I suggested that he really didn’t need this information to which after two or three minutes of ever more increasingly strident conversation, he finally agreed. Having been taken through all of the steps suggested by the previous two consultants I was again confronted with the suggestion that the only option was the un-install my trial version. This of course complete with the need to backup and store pst files, contacts etc before re-installing essentially the same program and then associating all the files again. Upon telling him that the Microsoft website suggests that I really didn’t need to do this, after again another ten minutes on the phone, it was suggested I again needed an even higher level of technical expertise. So once again it was bak to the rather blary music, this time punctuated by the annoying reminder that I was important, followed by other suggestions that I could always go online and submit my query in this format, as if.
Finally, some ten minutes later, I was able to speak to another very heavily accented male consultant who again wanted to know all my personal details under the premise that he might need to call me back……. Having convinced him that for all intents and purposes I was John Smith whose phone number was XXXXXXXX, (pick any digits you want to insert in place of the X’s, he again led me down the same set of procedures that consultant 1, 2 & 3 had taken me. By this time, some 65 minutes after I commenced my quest, and with my sugar levels running dangerously low, (after all it was dinner time), I knew what was coming next, the suggestion that I un-install and re-install. By now I was so well versed in the spiel that I actually suggested back to my consultant friend what he was going to tell me next, to unistall etc to which he suggested that was indeed his solution though if I was unhappy he could always pass me onto his supervisor.
By this stage I had had enough and given that there was already a corruption in my Trial Word I decided that 70+ minutes was more than enough time to chat with call centres on foreign shores and I bade my friend and Microsoft goodnight. Now all I have to do is backup and un-istall, surely this won’t take 70 minutes, will it?? Stand by…..
When I was full time in a classroom I was fortunate to have access to an interactive whiteboard. Initially we had quite a steep learning curve climb to get the board working efficiently. (We did the board installation using labour from within the school community working from the support documents that came with the board, CRAZY!!!).
Soon things were running quite nicely such that I even decided to blog about my experiences. After a couple of years working with it when I moved from that room to another room without a board, my teaching life became quite traumatic. I have also since presented at a number of conferences on the use of IWB’s including at the last three national IWBnet conferences. Any time IWB’s are talked about, one of the major points of discussion that arises is the hoary old question of the best board brand or type. To my mind this is a self defeating and fairly pointless excercise, any board used well is a great investment in time and money but the best board in the world used inefficiently is an incredible waste of resources.
It was interesting then to read a recent post from Simon Lewis, an Irish Education consultant who also has a blog at Anseo.net. During an IWB course that he was conducting recently he managed to get together five different types of IWB’s for the participants to evaluate. As part of the exercise Simon surveyed the participants in as he said
“…….to check out all the options without interfering salespeople then surveyed them on their experiences.”
Simon then summarized the results in a pdf document. To me the interesting aspect of all of this is not so much the results, but Simon’s discussions and reflections on the reasons given by the teachers. One would also wonder what would be the reactions of non-novice users?
For those interested, I have also posted the details contained in this post on the IWBnet Conference Ning in the interest of stimulating discussion there as well.
One of the problems in starting up logs with students is that they want to inserts images and they don’t care where they get them from. To often the easiest source is to do a Google images search and choose the first picture that turns up and insert into the blog. Now the biggest problem with this is that most Google images are copyright. When confronted which this problem. Most students simply say it’s the easiest way to find an image they need.
Once shown Flickr, and how to locate and source creative commons licensed images things tend to improve. In a previous post I’ve alluded to a couple of movies that I have added to my test blog which shows students how to use the advanced search function in Flickr to search only for those images that are creative commons licensed. This has proved reasonably successful, however, many students still complain that the images on Flickr are often not as suited to school use they would like.
Some educational departments and bodies have addressed this problem by providing specific digital image repositories such as the UK scran digital image repository. Fabulous as this repository no doubt is, access is restricted to UK schools both to locate from and add images to. This would be fime for schools in the UK who are looking only for images of activities or things specific to the UK but one can imagine a UK student wanting a picture of a specific US basketball player as one of my students was wanting to last year. In this case the student is unlikely to be able to find such picture in the repository.
Some teachers are alert to this problem of locating images and go out of their way to create their own repositories of images that might be suitable for students to use. A colleague is using a paid image repository service to house some excellent images of flowers, animals and other digital pictures that many students would love to be able to include in their online spaces. Whilst this is great for my colleague students, other students can’t access unless they have access to this specific URL.
On pondering this problem I remembered that Flickr has the capacity to add tags to images. I wondered if I added a specific tag then this would identify to my students images that they might wish to use the webspaces. The tag had in mind was the tag “pics4school”. The students could search the pictures that had this particular tag and any other tag that I had used to indicate what the picture was about. Consequently I went through a number of images that I had on my hard drive and added them to my Flickr account the link for which you can find in my sidebar. I added the tag “pics4school” plus other tags to describe images to each of images, I loaded. I also made sure that the images were licensed according to creative commons to allow students to use them freely.
About this time I also came across a great little search engine developed by John Johnstone which enables you to search Flickr on multiple tags including by ‘any‘ or ‘all‘ as an option for your search function which also searches only for created commons licensed images. Up to 50 images can be accessed per page which enables you to quickly scan to find the image most suitable. Giving a test run with my tags I quickly located only those that had “pics4school tags” and the other tags I wanted.
Another interesting alternative Flickr search engine is compfight.com.
Given that many teachers who are into Web 2.0 activities have a Flickr account, I am wondering if you could join in this activity by uploading to Flickr images that you think students might like to include in their work. To standardise things, you need to make sure that you give the images the tag “pics4school” alongside other tags that students might likely search for them by. you need also to make certain that the images are licensed under creative Commons licences which will allow students to use them preferably as an attribution non-commercial licence.
What do others think of this idea? Can you see such an undertaking being useful for students in schools? Would you be able to add images with a “pics4school” tag? Just imagine if only 100 educators worldwide added 50 images each, overnight students would have another 5000 images from which to select to add to their online space. I think it could be worth the effort, how about you? If you think you could help or know of others that could help please spread the word amongst your network, you can even link back to this post if you wish.
One day a week I go back to my old school to “do things with the computers”. Sometimes it is fun stuff that involves working with students such as introducing grade3-4 students to the joy of Garage Band. This is great fun and so enlightening both to the students and the teachers who are generally watching or working in as well. Gee it also makes me look really good as a teacher and if I let it, the ego is massaged massively :).
Sometimes it can also be a little deceptive as I can generally troubleshoot pretty well when errant students click on the “other button”or the like. Sometimes this bites back too when the teacher has to continue the exploration and more than one or two miss hit buttons occur at once. That sense of helplessness about how to solve the problem can lead to lack of desire on that teacher’s behalf to do no more than the safe aspects of computers, (but more of that another time).
Some other times life is much more humdrum as in today. Some time back I ran a session where a group of teachers got together to set up blogs. Now it was my mistake but I thought we were setting up class blogs which all students were to belong to when in fact the intention was to set up individual student blogs. It wasn’t until we had almost completed the process that the true intention of the exercise finally got through to me but by then it was well after school and most teachers had to beg off to do the normal things of picking up loved ones etc.
As a result we had to revisit the whole enrollment again which because of timetable constraints and other commitments etc meant we really couldn’t do it all together or some tried to do it by themselves in small grabs of time. Because of this slipups and other problems occurred which of course I felt quite guilty about. In the end it was going to be easier for me to go back through the records and make sure that all of the students were properly set up with a blog and functioning Username and Password that were familiar to them.
Some four hours later of checking and renovating I finally think things are as they should be and the students can start their blogging journey. It all goes to show that there is still a long way to go before we could safely say that ALL teachers can easily enter their students into the blogosphere. Also just the one hour or so to enroll and ensure that your students are a member of a blogging or wiki community can be more than many teachers can spare especially if they are trepidatious about blogging in the first place.
Having been a user and a real fan of TeacherTube for some time now, I have been rather disappointed last three or four times of sorts to use it. My problem is that when I go to upload the videos. The upload process runs all the way through to the final stage, which then times out. This is very frustrating, and I am not sure why it happens, but it has happened on more than one occasion. Just when it seemed things on a daily worker properly I have been able to manage to upload the movie. at first I thought it might have been be movie type that was causing the problems but having converted movie into other formats I had the same timeout problems. I also thought it might have been my connection speed. However, on checking, it appeared not to be the case.
It got so frustrating, but I ended up using another service, Splashcast. Splashcast is pretty neat, because you can splice together, all manner of different presentations, including PowerPoints images and movies. The test Splashcast movie I uploaded follows. The interface by which you upload your presentation can be a little confusing at times but once you get used to it is okay. I have yet to try to merge different aspects together, but I will try soon. Here’s one of my Splashcast movies, (oh and the embeds are easy too).
Along the way messing around with movies and thinking it might have been the format that was the cause of my TeacherTube problems I went looking for alternatives to convert my movies. As readers may recall I have been a long time advocate of Zamzar but the two extra popups that come with Zamzar plus the sometimes quite long time lags between uploads and the conversion meant alternatives were looking better. vconvert came highly recommended by some others and I was just about to give it a try when an email via oz-teachers popped up from Brenda Aynsley suggesting that she found the free download Any Video Convert to be a great option. A short download and install later I was away converting much quicker and with mor options than any of the online conversions. Hmm am I arguing against one of my conference premises that we hardly need any apps stored directly on our computers these days, I guess I am….
Thinking a little more about videos I recalled that I had read another email somewhere about a Firefox Add-on that I had tried but not really used in the past. A quick tour of the emails and I came across Download Helper which now sits nicely in my toolbar and alerts me with the spinning three ball icon when I am viewing a page that has media content in it. A click on the drop down arrow next to the balls enables me to download a copy of the media content for off-line viewing. Neat, now back to the TeacherTube problem.
:) Update from Jason at TeacherTube 
Now you have to love this, the nice folk at TeacherTube are obviously out there checking the web for blog and other references to them and not only that but reading them too. Not long after I posted this post Jason, the CEO no less, posted a comment re this post that explains the problems I have been having and even better suggests that they are being actively addressed. Now that’s service, (though maybe a suggestion for Jason that a note on the T/Tube site re potential problems over the past few months of their rapid growth might have saved me and possibly others a little bit of grief??). Great to see though that an initiative such as T/Tube aimed specifically at education is getting so much support that it is outgrowing its servers.
As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am a member of the great oz-teachers listserv. Ever so slightly more regularly the posts are taking on a Web 2.0 focus which is encouraging. So it was on the weekend that Marie, a distance education teacher posted a query as to how to facilitate a blog for her junior students. As is usually the case on such a supportive community , Marie received a number of very helpful suggestions including a small commentary from this blogger. One of those who gave some very relevant advice was the very creative and astute Anne. Anne decided to paste her response as a post on her blog and suggested that I do likewise on this blog. As a result of Anne’s suggestion I have pasted my response below which should be read in conjunction with Anne’s posted response to Marie.
Given that you are working with junior distance ed students, like Anne said my experience is that when introducing blogging to students it is easiest for a number of reasons to set up a class or group based blog. Class blogs take the pressure off of all students to write all of the time yet have the blog continue to grow. It also means that you, the students and parents have only one webspace to have to focus on initially and that things are easier for you from an administration point of view.
Especially in your situation with Distance Ed it would be relatively tricky I would have thought to set up a closed blog. That apart, at the schools I have worked in, and that is in excess of 300 blogs, we have always had the blogs completely live to the web. Part of the process of working with blogs is educating the students about the fabulous opportunities as well as the many pitfalls that can occur from using the internet. This can only be done by working live to the web. Students draw so much encouragement when they embed maps such as Clustrmaps which show where their readers live.
As far as personal images go, as Anne says there are a number of ways in which these can be altered. It can also be useful for students to discover ways of showing images that don’t include facial features. Again this is part of educating the students about being aware of the pitfalls of using the internet, Most parents also, once they realise what the images are to be used for are only too ready to allow appropriate pictures to be inserted into the blogs.
Hi Marie, like Anne suggested, I would definitely start out with just a general blog probably with the aim of telling about what is happening. In the class situation, this is relatively easy, and probably in the distance ed situation where students maybe doing lots of diverse things, there will also be lots of things to talk about.
One thing you might like to take account of the is the fact that blogs, especially into blogs allow you to set up categories. This is a powerful way of allowing individuals to access just their work. In the case of Middle P Prattlings, http://mrpbps.learnerblogs.org/ ,you can see down the left-hand side the list of all the students in grade, listed as categories. You can also see in the posts, the name of the post-author and the category in which the post belongs.
As far as safety goes, there are lots of resources out there that may help. On all of our later blogs, we have included a set of rules that you can access and copy at http://mrpbps.globalstudent.org.au/the-rules-rule/ . The Commonwealth government cyberquoll site http://www.cyberquoll.com.au/hub.htm is also worth a look at. As far as Copyright goes the smartcopy site http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/allright/index.htm is well worth a look at especially to yourself and you might also like to consider the copyright for kids linked on my test blog http://mrpbps.globalstudent.org.au/ .
To get some idea of the other tools, and which it is in things it you can use to spice up your blog, you might like to have a look at http://saltysolutions.pbwiki.com/ and http://projectingpassionately.pbwiki.com/FrontPage which both have short discussions and examples of a range of other add-ins some of which Anne has mentioned in her post.
Are there are a number of blogging portals out there, the one that I like use edublogs http://edublogs.org/ . To help get you started with edublogs, you can find a tutorial handout http://www.box.net/shared/mhta5gtc0c , that you can download at my blog http://johnp.wordpress.com/ at under the tutorials tab. On my blog, you’ll also find a link to a new book that I and a colleague have written as an introduction to blogging and lots more elements of Web 2.0.
As Anne suggested once you start blogging there are lots of other skills, and things to learn about, which will no doubt be challenging but also very exciting.
Every so often, almost as penance, I conduct hands on sessions where I lead novice teachers through setting up a blog and/or wiki. Without fail, the biggest problem that holds the process up, (apart from the various portals having technical issues or undertaking an upgrade), surrounds teachers not being able to access their email from the shared machine they are using. This is sometimes due to issues of accessing school or system based email accounts via the web from public computers, (interesting that some educational instutions want to restrict even staff members access to email). More embarassing though is the situation where the particpants can’t remember their login details or passwords because they rely on their personal computer to remember and enter these details for them.
In the past I have used dummy gmail accounts and other workarounds to short circuit these problems so that the participants can get a blog to work with but just the other day I was acquainted with another email service, mintemail, that may provide another option for my problem. Basically mintemail is an instant short term mailbox that can exist and be used for between 4 hours and 3 months before it disappears. Mintemail will also automatically verify your details for a range of websites and you can enable email forwarding to any other permanent email account you wish to. Hopefully next time I am running a workshop session then I will not have the problem of assisting participants who can’t get past the big first step of subscribing whilst the rest of the room is champing at the bit to get posting.
It strikes me that mintemail might also be a viable alternative when enrolling students to online portals and services, especially if teachers want to take advantage of the forwarding option.
Today was day 3 and the last day of the national science teachers conference and it was time for my second session. Unlike yesterday where I attracted a grand audience of five today 23 participants were expected. Scanning the list of those who had nominated to come along I was quite chuffed to see some names who were identified as University based or education departmental folk amongst a number of other names who were unkown to me. Of course being scheduled in the last group of workshop options the final attendee numbers were a little down on those expected and just a tad disappointingly, (or perhaps it might have been just as well), the missing delegates were those very departmental and uni based ones. One of the latter who did join us had attended an intro to Web 2.0 session I had run at the corresponding conference last year. Questioned as to why he was back he generously said that whilst he had learnt quite a lot last year he knew that he still had lots to learn and was after a refresher course.
As it turned out the group was pretty much homogenous with little knowledge of blogs, wikis or anything Web 2.0. Having been told this, (I usually try to suss out the group before launching in to my spiel), I sort of gulped and took a deep breath because I had planned to do a more advanced tools mashup. My feeling of disquiet was further accentuated because of the fact that pbwiki, where I had housed the presentation was having big problems. Fortunately I had also placed the content of the presso into a Wetpaint wiki presentation, (though I did have to do a few renovations during the morning keynote session, hmm wireless internet is so distracting). Unfortunately though the service on the wireless dongle was only one bar and kept crashing my Firefox, (big demerit point for them). In the end I pre-loaded all of the relevant pages which given the level of expertise of the audience were basically rendered irrelevant. Fortunately, (is there a pattern here?), I do have an online version of an introduction to blogs presentation on my science site that I have done in the past that I could refer to which was put to good use again before the last ten minutes was taken up in a large rush trying to at least do a bit of the add-on content from the wiki windows.
Overall the session went pretty well and we covered a lot of territory. The experience does go to re-inforce once again that the vast majority of educators are still well behind the pack. Mine and the other three Web 2.0 focussed sessions would have attracted less than one percent of delegates of supposedly the leading or aspirant science educators in Australia. Given my experience at CONASTA I wonder just what the state of play is in other subject based teacher organisations. I know that Graham had to use an IWB session to infiltrate some web 2.0 content into a presentation he gave to the Literacy Educator’s conference recently, but what of the maths teachers or LOTE, (Jess is leader in this area so how far is she able to spread her knowledge?). I know from experience that the SLAV, the school library association is making big moves thanks to the likes of Jenny and Camilla and interstate Judy and Jean. They bit the bullet recently and hosted Will for a great session to an basically sell-out crowd in Melbourne that I was fortunate enough to attend. Is Web 2.0 still the province of the IT crowd and isolated classroom teachers or schools or are subject assocations becoming at least aware of the possibility and embracing initiatives on a larger scale as has SLAV and what is the situation elsewhere than Australia or am I just jaundiced?
Just in case you think I am the latter, I really enjoyed my little session today and I got some good vibes from it then and later too. Maybe the dam is breaking and my friend from Uni will be back again next year though telling of his successes with blogs and wikis??
Here I am at the national conference for science teachers in Australia CONASTA57 and as I have done at the past 3 conferences I am offering a couple of sessions this time around the Web 2.0 theme. Of interest as I perused the program was that despite the fact that there were quite a range and breadth of sessions on offer, of these there are only 4 that focus on elements of Web 2.0. This would seem relatively concerning as most of the teachers that are in attendance at the conference are from the secondary or tertiary sector, the very students for which Web 2.0 based tools would seem most appropriate.
Conversation with a number of delegates have also been illuminating. These discussions suggest that quite a few delegates are aware of blogs and wikis at least and one or two have admitted that they are actively looking at investigating Web 2.0. Many though have very little understanding of any of the elements or principles that underpin it. Even more concerning I was told by one delegates who had just presented one of the major presentations that the organisation that she works for had tried to use the internet five or six years ago but that it had turned out to be too hard. She went on to suggest that she didn’t think that teachers over 30 were all that interested into putting time and effort into learning these new skills and the best hope was in new graduates entering teaching. She was interested when I suggested that many of the leading lights in the incorporation of Web 2.0 tools into the classroom and beyond were in fact the baby boomer teachers.
To support my presentations I decided to work them up as wiki based presentations, (though the presentation is more linear akin to a slideshow rather than a traditional wiki). This has allowed me to embed examples of the student’s work and other tools that exemplify what I am trying to present. Given the previously described level of awareness of the territory the content is by nature not really that revolutionary. One of the presentations is a retrospective on the Passion Projects that the senior students at my old school were involved in during 2007 whilst the second is an presentation of some of the tools that can be used to add to blogs, wikis and the Web 2.0 classroom.
Though I haven’t blogged for some time again ……. and I have more than six drafts almost ready to publish, I just had to slip this one in before the others because it is sooo interesting. For some time now I and my wife, who works in another branch of education, have been playing around with tools for presenting training materials via the web. Vicki has been having quite a lot of success using Articulate Presenter which outputs in a neat Flash based player that can also accommodate attachments amongst other attributes. We have also used a number of other screen capture tools to capture with narration screen navigation.
It was interesting then to read about Flowgram which is in Beta now but promises great things methinks. The output is flash based and allows the presenter to use annotated live web pages. The pages are completely active however the presenter is able to direct the users attention to anywhere on the page through the use of highlights. In addition other content such as digital images and movie content via YouTube, or where schools are concerned TeacherTube or the like can be referenced. The whole presentation can be narrated and embedded into other webpages including Web 2.0 spaces. The embed file shows as a series of images in a slide show format which when clicked opens up the flash based player and the presentation. Very interesting indeed.
As WordPress.com doesn’t enable Flash without specific widgets an example of Flowgram from Joi Ito can be found here. At present the 1000 “tester” spots offered have been filled but you can register an interest or take in the Flowgram blog.
There was some fascinating reading in the Age , (originally from the Washington Post), about the take up of mobile phones world wide. According to the article, the adoption of mobile phone technology….
“is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.”
The author Joel Garreau goes on to point out that mobile phone technology uptake is greatest in the developing world and that countries like Bangladesh with 98% mobile coverage has 30 million mobile phone users compared with only one million who have landlines. Garreau goes on to detail some of the changes that the use of this technology is bringing from the emancipation of market women in Nigeria to the use of mobile technology in global terrorism.
With the convergence of capabilities being built into mobile devices one wonders as to the future of the laptop especially in these third world environments. It also brings into question the future of the main players in the software market. Maybe Nokia will become the new Microsoft.
It’s interesting then to see that Adobe has now gone online as I found out via the Age and that Kiwi who loves to play with all things new and novel Allanah. This continues the trend to online or open source albeit with what may ultimately turn out to be teaser products. I had direct experience with this just the other day. For some time now I have utilised a free entry level Box.net account. Wanting to transfer a 12Mb zipped file I was faced with the 10Mb upload limit on the Box.net account. In the end it was easy to pay the US$3 for an excess upload. It does beg the question tough whether some of these products are not using these free services as loss leaders that are designed to entice you into using the product beyond our needs? (Maybe it’s the influence of the TV program on the ease of credit that is swaying my thinking).
Back to the question of mobiles and coverage it’s interesting to reflect on Sue and her upcoming holiday. But then hang on, my wife and I have a mobile account with one of the main Aussie providers 3. Now though we can actually see the nearest phone tower from our back yard in bayside Portarlington, unless we stand in the middle of the road running past our place and the wind is blowing the right way we have at best intermittent mobile service. When we do get a signal it is more than likely that the eminating tower will be located not on the local hillside but rather somewhere else across the bay. Now least I look like I’m bashing 3, our neighbour has tried the other 2 major carriers, Telstra and Optus with basically the same outcome. Hmmm.
One of the neat things about spreading the word about blogging is when your advice and suggestions are acted upon. Often after conducting a PD or similar I’ve wondered whether or how the participants will use the information we have discussed. Over the last couple of days then it’s been really neat to discover how some folks are actioning the information.
Flipping through a Twitter stream I came across reference to a post on using blogs as the vehicle for a Book Crossing type exercise. The post sounded just like an idea I trialled a few years back so I left a Comment on the blog. All the while the name of the blog author sounded oddly familiar as did the avatar image. I was quite chuffed then to find this morning an email from Helen to say that she was actually a participant in one of the PD sessions I had conducted last year when she first learnt about blogs. Neat, (and top blog too).
Having checked out Helen I decided to look in at the blogs that I assisted the seven teachers last week to set up. To be expected, we are just coming off the Easter hols, six out of seven were just as we left them last week. One teacher has however been in and begun to model it ready for next term. A little bit of a worry though, (especially given the recent blog-images problems), was that two of the test blogs still carried, (though admittedly only thumbnails), images of a student and a fellow teacher. I had stressed during the PD that images were potential problems however the teachers attention was obviously, (and understandably given the amount of information we were churning through), focussed elsewhere at the time.
Earlier on I had received an email from a colleague who has a really neat blog running for his class called The Goss. Two to three times a week one of his students is given five minutes to do a vocal presentation to the class around a teacher nominated topic. The student’s vocal is recorded and added to the blog alongside the written text. In addition students can add images to add further interest to the post. Last year I had suggested Flickr as a great place to head to. To assist I made a couple of TeacherTube videos showing how to access and credit Creative Commons images from Flickr. Unfortunately it seems Mr KT had missed the part about sourcing Creative Commons as the other day he received the following comment.
Comment:
Your article is interesting BUT you do not have my permission to use my photo. I want you to remove my photo removed immediately. Have you ever read the All Right Reserved on every page of my flickr site? Stop stealing photos. I am sure you can go out and photograph one yourself. STOP being a thief!
Mr KT has taken the pic down and now has a better understanding of Creative Commons :).
At the end of term one of the students at my old school where still I work one day a week came over to me to say he had a new blog to exhibit flash animations that he and a couple of fellow students were making. Of course I had to have a look. Now it’s really professionally gratifying when you see students spontaneously working with the tools you have introduced them to for their own personal growth entirely independent of schools. (Each of the students involved were in my class 2 years back when I introduced them to both Flash and blogging.) My only concern is whether eleven year old students administering their own blogs, including the responsibility for moderating comments albeit entirely disconnected from their school, is not fraught with the potential for problems.
All of these cases bring into question whether I still carry some, if not primary, responsibility for any of these online activities? How far back does liability stretch?
Most members of the educational blogging community are now well aware of the difficulties that have befallen Al Upton and his grade in South Australia. Fellow Aussie bloggers Sue and Graham have both written very cogent posts that both provide essential background and important reflections on the situation as it has unfolded.
The fact that Al has been so diligent and upfront with the parents of his students and the authorities and yet has had these problems is of concern. As the educational blogging community is growing so rapidly, (this evening I worked with six new bloggers and tomorrow evening I work with another group), many of these new entrants begin their blogging with a minimal appreciation of the potential for problems. They often have a “knowledge” that there are dangers out there but most often they don’t have a fully developed concept of the connectedness that blogging provides. This raises the question as to whether in our zeal to promote the many positive sides of blogging we may not be giving enough attention to the need to also hasten slowly, (not that this was necessarily the problem in Al’s case).
Another aspect of this situation that warrant some thought is the effect that this concentration of well meaning support and attention might be having on Al. (I realize that even my writing this post and the 2 comments I have left on Al’s blog is contributing to what may or may not become a problem however ….) There have been numerous cases where flag bearers for causes whether they are asking for it or not, have had the pressures on them magnified because of the focus on them. Support is important but….
Though on a different topic Will Richardson ponders the risks of excessive commentary in these reflections that given the level of support for Al may also have a place in this situation. As Will says
“Can anyone really read through 130 comments? Are we getting too distracted, too connected, too participatory for our own good? Are we simply adding to the echo chamber of nodding heads, or are we doing what we need to do to move the conversation out of the blogosphere/twitterverse/ustreamland?”
As many other commentators on Al’s and other blogs have noted, innovative practice rarely if ever progresses without at least one or two hiccups on the way. The important thing probably is to not indulge in mass hand wringing over these problems. Better to look upon them as opportunities to better learn how to use and present practice as positive and desirable.
One thing that you notice when you drop out of the community for any, (especially an extended), length of time. is how much the landscape can change. Things like the beta release of pbWiki 2, the latest edublogs feature that enables you to add up to fifteen users at a time, (oh where was this just two weeks back when I and my colleagues enrolled 123 senior students with their new blog), a little further back Jo’s post about TokBox video chat , Sue’s new role as the edublogs helper via the edublogger ‘mag’ or arguably worse than that you miss out on some nice synthesis work by some ex students now in grade 5 who have set up their own blog to showcase their work with Flash animation.
You also miss out on the opportunity to ruminate on and get some assistance in solving problems. In my new role I am working with a number of schools and of course I can’t resist giving advice even when I’m not too sure myself. So it was that when I was asked about an easy way to capture student’s voices I replied that iPods were definitely not the best option. But that was where the contribution faltered.
I had seen what looked like a simple generic MP3 player with a voice recording option in a catalogue however when I purchased it the player proved far too complicated for teachers to us, though most students could probably make it work :). Anyway the next day another catalogue arrived with a SanDisk Express 2Gb player for less than half price advertised in it. After a quick trip to town I now have an eminently suitable plug and play recorder that importantly works. So now 2 iPods, a couple of generic mp3 players and more than a few hundred dollars later I have finally found something that is usable.
It again begs the question as to how many others have had the same or similar experiences trying to make the technology accessible in our classrooms. Whither the central authorities and departmental people? Probably spread too thinly trying to scramble to keep up themselves.
I wonder who will read this post, maybe no-one immediately but just in case someone somewhere still has their aggregator pointed this way I can tell you that this is probably one of the trickier posts that I have written since I have been blogging.
If you check back on the Recent Posts list you will see that it has been almost six months since I last posted. Prior to that I had been quite a regular little poster. I was also quite chuffed to check the stats and see that I had built up a reasonable level of readership. Six months ago though I managed to slip the gate and the posts dried up almost overnight.
It wasn’t like I didn’t want to post; things just got very busy. It wasn’t like I had given up on blogging; blogs and other things Web 2.0 are still a big part of my work. It wasn’t like I didn’t have things to share, thoughts to explore, ideas to try to explain, feedback to seek; it’s just that I got out of the habit. Worse than that though I also neglected the feeds from other bloggers that I had so carefully assembled.
After a couple of weeks of missed routine the blogging behaviours became supplanted by other activities so that it sort of became a little embarrassing contemplating that my blog was idle yet others continued to grow and flourish. Yes, I have checked back on my RSS feeds list every now and then in this past six months, (though admittedly not as assiduously as in the past). I have also often thought throughout the days that have past that “I should post about that…..” though until now I haven’t committed. I’ve also composed this post numerous times over, (often somewhere between 2-4AM in those sleepless hours). Alas though the keyboard was not next to the bed, (probably just as well my wife might suggest).
It does have me thinking though whether blogging can wear off. Is it going to be “faddist” for many nascent bloggers including our students? Are we going to commit the same ‘error’ with blogging etc that we have done with so many otherwise great educational initiatives/approaches, that is turn them into orthodoxies or universal panaceas that we insist on our students being involved in. Worse still if in prescribing and dictating the manner and format that we wish the students to use we extinguish the vital spark that can make blogging an enervating experience.
Hmmmm maybe I did need the rest, maybe I was captive of a self imposed orthodoxy that said I had to post each day? Only time will tell and maybe I will find time to post tomorrow 
Oh in case you were wondering, some of the reasons for all this neglect include, moving house to a great new location across the road from the beach, deciding to cash in my role as a classroom teacher and heading into the role of educational consultancy, trying to finish off a book that a colleague and I have been writing, plus the usual little indulgences along the way.
A quick update……. It seems like it hasn’t just been me that has taken the blog hiatus, checking the feeds I find that Paul has also had his attention otherwise diverted. Doesn’t make me feel quite as bad :).
Here I am on the Gold Coast typing reel bad
Reading Chris‘ recent celebratory post related to reaching the tipping point I was prompted to check out where I was on the tipping point scale, (I wonder who else had a quick check of their stats after reading Chris’ article?).
It was interesting then when Emily came to check about a ping back that had appeared on her blog, to check out her post/comment ratio. It was very heartening and indicative of a mature attitude to the internet that Emily wanted to know what “a ping” meant and I was pleased to assure her that the pingback was actually a big compliment to her blogging.
Checking her stat though I was aghast to find out that Emily was already well past the tipping point with 24 posts attracting 42 comments. Checking her Clustrmap revealed that she has attracted some 818 visits in the two months her blog has been active. These are pretty impressive stats and indicative of a site chock full of information. I was even more impressed to find that one of her commentators was a dietitian delivering some advice on her expressed desire to also work in this area.
Oh my ratio is close to the tipping point 216 posts vs 209 comments, damn and I’ve moved the point again :). Please feel free to tip me over.
Did you know that 25 years ago, at 11:44am on September 19, 1982 Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman posted the first recorded instance of the smiley emoticon to an online electronic bulletin, during a discussion about the limits of online humour and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly. You might like to check out the original message at CMU site along with some reflection from Scott Fahlman himself.
In another serendipitous moment only today I was excitedly approached by Doug to see if I had read his latest page. Apologizing for not having done so I loaded Doug’s Page to find it full of smiley’s, albeit modernised versions. This got me thinking a little on how generations even in this computer age still, (though with increasing speed), adopt, adapt and then discard the markers of the time. Taken in this context, 25 years is quite the best reason for celebration for the ubiquitous little smile.
If you are interested in pursuing the smiley bit a little more I was interested to read the CNet news reflection on smiley’s and their future and if like Doug you are fascinated by them then you might like to peruse the complete list of Yahoo emoticons.
This is an aggregation of the blogs and social bookmarks from John Pearce, a primary school teacher in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
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