Who else will listen!

The National Curriculum Board is responsible for developing an Australian national curriculum for all students from Kindergarten to Year 12, starting with English, mathematics, the sciences and history.

National curriculum will be developed collaboratively. It will be the product of Australians working together to develop a world-best curriculum.

http://www.ncb.org.au/default.asp

Your students can start collaborating in two minutes.

The html link

The Flip Video is less that $200, takes 60 mins of very acceptable quality 640×480 video, has built in sound and can download the footage simply by plugging the flip out usb plug into any usb port. Too easy.

From the recent ACER produced NSW Institute of Teachers e-magazine The Knowledge:

According to the OECD’s Education Directorate, PISA 2006 suggests that ability
streaming tends to increase the impact of socioeconomic background on student
performance. The earlier students are streamed by ability, the stronger is the
impact of a school’s average socioeconomic background on performance, and the
greater are between-school differences. According to PISA 2006, schools that
stream students for all subjects tend to have lower student performance on
average.

 

 

Google notebook context menu will change the way you research as you surf the web. http://www.google.com/notebook/

This Google Earth animation animates the effects of rising sea levels on low lying land masses. The powerful learning for Geography students, for example, is obvious. There are a number of scenarios like this available for immediate public use using the google earth engine. http://earth.google.com/ig/directory?synd=earth&pid=earth&num=6&hl=en&url=http://www.google.com/mapfiles/mapplets/earthgallery/Rising_Sea_Level_Animation.xml&output=html

They say:
“Learning Technologies
Learning Technologies is a unit of DECS that promotes and facilitates the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to enhance the learning of educators, students and children. ”

Link: http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/learningtechnologies/pages/LearningTechnologies/

Occasionally one comes across very clever ideas. This is very very very clever. http://livescribe.com/index.html

This is the guy who gve the keynote address at the IT Managers Conference. This is actually a vodcast of his address to S.A. government officials. But the concepts are similar to what we heard…

Here is the link to what was essentially the text of the speech we DID hear: http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=56

For some time there has been talk about (and real movement in) the way we use computer tools. It has gone from locally installed applications, to network installed applications to, finally, web applications.

Web apps like Google Writer have been around for a while but have not really taken off because they are not fully featured or intuitive for the MS Word user.

Relatively new on the scene is Buzzword from Adobe. It looks and feels like a fully featured word processor. As it is a web app, it doesn’t need to be installed – it is ready to go for the user with an internet connection.

The most significant feature from my perspective is that it allows you to genuinely collaboratively write with one of more colleagues (or one or more students). Simply create the document, then choose to share it with people who get sent the link to the document.

Have a look at www.buzzword.com

I was asked by John Byrne, IT Manager of Waverley College to participate in a panel discussion at the IT Managers’ Conference in Wollongong today.

The number of computer vendors in the foyer and the level of sponsorship for the conference speaks volumes for  where the SELLERS think the control is around $ in schools when it comes to ICT. Fascinating.

For many of the tech guys, the issue remains around power and control. One session explained how to set up school wide wikis. We are not on the brink of opening up a conversation with the classroom next door. We want to have a conversation with the planet. But using social networking sites to build networks and connect with real people cedes control and that scares the hell out of everyone in schools.

What do you know about e-Portfolios? Leave a comment.

Website by Tom Kuhlmann, who is the VP of Community for Articulate and who authors the Rapid E-Learning blog. The blog is very popular because it contains good solid tips.

I did the martinlutherking.org, http://www.internic.net/whois.html, Don Black Stormfront thing with a group of Year 11 students in class today. It blew them away!

We were actually in a discussion about Islam. It went like this: Brainstorm topic, mindmap, Black Muslims, black power US 1960s, alternatives to Black Power movement, Martin Luther King, hey check this out. Ended up with a student generated project around confronting Islamic stereotypes.

AIS IT conference program. I am sitting on the Day 1 panel. Looking forward to it.

I found this presentation, long as it is, uselful in helping me understand what all the fuss is about social networking. It honestly left me wondering if I had the COURAGE to engage myself in a global social network. This is what Marco Torres was busy doing. We all, as senior teachers, have the skill to do it. But the courage??

Click here:

I have just read the article on the ‘Myth of the Digital Native’ for which Adam provided the link.  The writer’s comments certainly resonate with many of the things we have recently discussed, including this quote which Alyce has also essentially touched on in her recent post:  ”access to information does not equate to knowledge”, or in Alyce’s words, learning. 

I agree that the construct of digital native and immigrant is neither necessarily helpful, nor accurate, particularly 7 years after Prensky first conceptualised it.  Thinking like this can unfortunately reinforce the fears and anxieties of teachers who have not yet been able to reach the levels of integration and transformation with ICT in their classes.

Two other ideas which struck me from this article relate to:

1. the role of  peers and  teachers as mentors/ facilitators

   “(technology) cannot replace the insights that students receive by struggling to make sense of information with both peers and mentors”

Adam’s identification of the need to provide a ‘moral compass’ resonates here also.

2 the power of community, which Marco so vividly demonstrated.  The writer speaks of the need to consider “diversity rather than dichotomy”.   A shift away from the individualism and divisiveness which has characterised society in recent times is yet another hint of that idea of the Kingdom that Narelle suggested.

The success of recent online movements such as GetUp in focusing community opinion and action is a great case in point of how the community potential of ICT can be utilised.