This slideshow provides the framework for a discussion about how educators can model ‘creative integrity’ and how they can assist students to leverage the Creative Commons as content creators.
Is social media a new thing? No, not really – just an evolving use of media, an ecosystem of tools and a rich variety of opportunities. Now we are seeing great ways for students to collaborate. Listen to these two important innovators, and enjoy the conversation.
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I read a lot of stuff, then I tweet a lot of stuff! But I also can’t resist blogging things that to me signal an important idea, change, or some experimentation by me or others.
So I tweeted, then blogged about something that is VERY exciting to me. Just over the Christmas hols I’ve been chatting with friends about my iTouch, eBooks, iPhones, Kindles, and the art of reading. I love reading, but I don’t always remember to carry my book around with me. I admit, I am looking forward to the flexibility of reading digitally more and more.
Here is the next thing that will work for me, and perhaps for you! LifeHacker explains:
iPhone/iPod touch only: If recession budgeting meant choosing an iPhone/iPod touch over a Kindle when the dust cleared this holiday season, you’re in luck: Stanza is a free and fantastic ebook reader for your iPhone/iTouch.
The free application comes pre-loaded with several sources for downloading free or public domain books (including the entire Project Gutenberg library), so you can easily download books like The Art of War, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, or Walden in just a few seconds without spending a dime.
However, if you want to get new books, Stanza also comes with a bookstore with which you can purchase popular new titles as well. Prices range from $8 to $15 based on the books I browsed. The reader itself is fully customizable, so if you don’t like the standard black text on white background look, you can just as easily pick something that suits you. Stanza is a free download for the iPhone or iPod touch.
Better still, this is a fantastic way of providing ebooks for students!!
No excuses now..any library or classroom can get into this easy form of distributing quality reading.
Stanza [iTunes App Store]
The 2008 Horizon Report, Australia and New Zealand Edition, has recently been released, and is available online, and to download making it an easily accessible and important addition to your professional reading.
The Horizon Report series is the product of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education around the globe. This volume, the 2008 Horizon Report, Australia–New Zealand Edition, is the first in a new series of regional reports, and examines emerging technologies as they appear in and affect higher education in Australia and New Zealand in particular.
Information on all the Horizon Reports may be found, and downloaded, at
http://www.nmc.org/horizon
Participation on an Horizon Project Advisory Board is by invitation, and so I’m thrilled to have been invited to join the first Horizon Report for K-12
This is really exciting for me! I can’t make it to Dallas for the launch of the Advisory Group (no secret sponsors), but I will really relish the opportunity to contribute in some small way to this project. I will be joining my fellow bloggers Kim Cofino (International School, Bangkok), Julie Lindsay (Qatar Academy, Qatar), Gary Putland (edNA Australia) and Westley Field (Skoolaborate and MLC School, Sydney) in this new endeavour. I don’t know the others, except for the inspirational Alan Levine from NMC, and Marco Torres.
Horizon.K12 is a new project that applies the process developed for the New
Media Consortium’s Horizon Project with a focus on emerging technologies for elementary and secondary learning institutions.
Members of the K-12 education community are encouraged to follow the Advisory Board’s progress as the discussion unfolds.
Great “choose your own adventure” via Youtube media. I love this idea – let the students make their own media adventures!
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The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education — Publications — Center for Social Media at American University.
This document is a code of best practices that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Download the full report from the Centre for Social Media.
Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms. This expanded conceptualization of literacy responds to the demands of cultural participation in the twenty-first century. Like literacy in general, media literacy includes both receptive and productive dimensions, encompassing critical analysis and communication skills, particularly in relationship to mass media, popular culture, and digital media. Like literacy in general, media literacy is applied in a wide variety of contexts—when watching television or reading newspapers, for example, or when posting commentary to a blog. Indeed, media literacy is implicated everywhere one encounters information and entertainment content. And like literacy in general, media literacy can be taught and learned.
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The Tower, the Cloud, and Posterity
Going digital may be the most significant inflection point in the history of human record keeping. Never before has so much information been available to so many people. The implications of having more than a billion people with persistent connections to the Internet and exabytes of information freely and openly available cannot be overstated. With every significant innovation comes unintended consequences and amidst the plenitude we now enjoy in this arena are found a host of new cautions, threats and risks. We would never turn back.
Learning management systems now make it possible to capture and preserve the classroom contributions of tomorrow’s Albert Einstein.
The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual — or consumerization — is reducing the individual’s reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones.
Nintendo Wii Remote, sometimes nicknamed “Wiimote”, is the primary controller for Nintendo’s Wii console. A main feature of the Wii Remote is its motion sensing capability, which allows the user to interact with and manipulate items on screen via movement and pointing. A familiar ‘toy’ in many families, the wii has now entered the classrooms at St Josephs College!
Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demonstrated his cool Wii Remote hacks at the prestigious TED Talks – the key global innovation forum in the world. In this he demonstrates how to turn a cheap video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer. Teachers and students around the world have downloaded Johnny’s free software to create interactive tools for their classroom.
Recently Anthony, our e-learning integrator, took this idea and made an interface out of a simple IR pen and a Wiimote that is capable of turning any data projector into an interactive whiteboard irrespective of the surface that is used. Anthony claims that this simple setup costing less than $100 installed coupled with the free Smoothboard software has the potential to be one of the most exciting innovations for some time.
A number of staff have been trialling the Smoothboard with early results being very promising.
Students in Gary’s science classes have been running interactive lessons using learning objects developed by the Learning Federation. When Fergus, our Head of Social Sciences, saw the demo in Gary’s class, he requested a pen and wiimote immediately and now eagerly awaits delivery!
After hearing that we would be demonstrating this technology in the staff room, said
I’d better get mine organised quickly, before a rush from other staff. The flexibility makes this the perfect solution for my classrooms.
My mission is to keep an eye on this exciting experimentation – we’re grabbing video clips of the action. Meanwhile watch the TED talk about this Wiimote revolution.
The current issue of Kairos online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology and pedagogy, has an article by Karl Stolley – The Lo-Fi Manifesto – which I particularly enjoyed, given our penchant for fancy and flexible web tools for connectivity.
Discourse posted on the open Web can hardly be considered free if access requires costly software or particular devices. Additionally, the literacies and language we develop through engaging in digital scholarship and knowledge-making should enable us to speak confidently, unambiguously, and critically with one another……And as teachers, we should actively work to provide students with sustainable, extensible production literacies through open, rhetorically grounded digital practices that emphasize the source in “free and open source.”
Jump over to The Lo-Fi Manifesto and also checkout the substantial explanations in the drop-down panes for each element. Some of these concepts are highly relevant to our discussions about 21st century learning or the digital and design environment within which such learning takes place or is supported.
“What program do you use?” is a question I often get about the slides I use to present my work. I have concluded that the proper answer to the question is to counter-suggest the asking of a different question, “What principle do you use?” John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity
The ability to “read” a medium means you can access materials and tools created by others. The ability to “write” in a medium means you can generate materials and tools for others. You must have both to be literate. Alan Kay, “User Interface: A Personal View”
In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web
Don’t make me jump through hoops just because you don’t want to write a little bit of code. Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think, (2nd ed.)
This is progressive enhancement: it works for everyone, but users with modern browsers will see a more usable version. We are, in a way, rewarding them for choosing to use a good browser, without being rude to Lynx users or employees of companies with paranoid IT departments. Tommy Olsson, “Graceful Degradation & Progressive Enhancement”
Because they share a common parent and abide by the same house rules, all XML applications are compatible with each other, making it easier for developers to manipulate one set of XML data via another and to develop new XML applications as the need arises, without fear of incompatibility. Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing with Web Standards, (2nd ed.)
judyoconnell.com 