Education au – Phillip Adams

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Here’s an Australian icon – we have a huge respect for who he is and what he represents!

Phillip used a lot of stories to tease out the idea of change, and what is happening in our lives now with the introducation of technology.

However, I have to agree with his belief that there is a desperate need to teach kids in the new technology, about the new technologies.

Any teacher would have to agree with Phillip “that unless you process data, it won’t become knowledge, and without knowledge you won’t have wisdom. There is a ‘seduction’ with new technologies. On the other hand technologic determinism is dangerous. Not a single railway line running across the Nallabor – but shunted, choose, switch, change.”

So Phillip urges us the need to be selective.The danger is when it is not selective because we now have a conflict between technology and the human brain. Where there isn’t a thinking framework for uptake of technology. Not just weaponery,but also information technology!

Coming as Phillip does from media I was also interested in his comment about what is happening to media. Up till now media have acted as gatekeepers for information dissemination – but media are starting to lose out in the unmediated world. Research, thinking and communication is taking place in new technology spaces. Where the mediated world was warped or biased, and pervasive conservatism, at least we were all on the same page – we knew in our countries, what the commen agenda is.In the media world this doesn’t happen. It is now easy to go into information loops. Biased blogs, devote their lives to viewpoints that review their own thinking. E.g. communism. The umediated world is open to all possibilities. The promise, the speed, is staggering. The downside is the increasing narrowness of views, and increasing madness.

Ahh…..exactly. That is exactly the issue that is picked up by EPIC 2015 – and the journalists who were concerned about what the future of the media and communication is. I have this in my links under Web 2.0

The trusty old concept came up, that is so valid for consideration of online environements:

Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom. Our job? Help students on this progression.

Only if educators buy-in to the technology do we have any chance of helping our students get to knowledge and wisdom rather than being caught up in a vortex of misinformation.Technology is a good way toengage with the minds of kids in forming and shaping their understanding.

Education au – Opening Comments

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

We have had some really interesting leadup ideas to launch this seminar, and set the context for the speakers today.

The focus on new technologies as communication and new cultures that emerge is vital to keep at the fore of our work as educators. It was good to hear that literacy was considered to be core – but expanded. The idea that kids are no longer literate, or that literacy is being corrupted by new ways of communication is an important concept that we need to talk about more often.

Rob Welford, Queensland Minister of Education, made the point that the Xbox has brought new meaning to literacy. We have a mismatch between what students know and teachers are teaching.

As he explained, the www has allowed us to be swamped with information, with insufficient skills to be descenring – leaves our students bereft of the ability to know what to do. How can emerging technologies be harnessed and employed to develop this knowledge, sense of citizenship, history, etc and create their own self worth and self values. These are at the forefront of what education needs to deliver for our students.

So our mission is to

Develop capabilities.
Connect young people with knowledge.
Learn you to become discerning citizens.

Gerry White CEO of Educationau shared the expected vision for technology engagement. A fact to consider? In a comparison of Broadband usage in OECD countries we have dropped from Number 5 to Number 17. The reality to consider? Well, kids know the technology, they talk the lingo, They google, they shop, they talk online.

He urges us to…..

Maximize opportunites for our young people. What’s changed? Everything but the size of our brains.!!

Education au – Creative Capable Connected

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

It is 9.30 on the 4th August, and I am attending a seminar in Sydney being hosted by education.au, which will focus on furthering the debate around building a new vision for education in Australia.

There will be a few bloggers here today, and so we hope to be able to provide comments live from the seminar to compliment the podcast of the seminar. Very exciting!

To put you in the picture here is an overview of the day.

Key issues to be addressed include:
* Collaboration * Interactive tools
* Networking
* New ways of thinking and learning. Speakers
The seminar will bring together:
Phillip Adams – a controversial broadcaster, writer and film-maker. As presenter of Late Night Live, he has interviewed thousands and can boast to be ABC Radio National’s largest driver of demand for podcast downloads (50,000 downloads for May 2006).
James Farmer – a Melbourne based online communications designer. James is the founder of edublogs.org, the largest educational blogging community on the web. James has worked as a lecturer in research and education design at Deakin University and is currently the Online Community Editor at The Age.
Annika Small – CEO of Futurelab UK, responsible for developing the strategic direction, establishing partnerships and exploring new opportunities for Futurelab. Annika has focused on developing compelling interactive learning resources for those excluded from traditional education.
Mike Seyfang – a consultant with over 25 years experience in ICT. Mike’s achievements include the envisioning and conception of the Microsoft and South Australian Government Innovation Centre.

Wikipedia Adds Citation

Posted on August 2, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Seen on digg: commented on at The Savvy Technologist:

Wikipedia has added a feature called “Cite This Article” to its site. The feature appears as a link in the Toolbox section of each page and provides key bibliographic information as well as citations pre-formatted in all of the major forms. Interestingly, they add the following note at the top of each citation page:

Most educators and professionals do not consider it appropriate to use tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as a sole source for any information — citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibiliographies may result in censure or a failing grade. Wikipedia articles should be used for background information, as a reference for correct terminology and search terms, and as a starting point for further research.

Here’s an example citation page for the Wikipedia article about basenjis.

Wikipedia is the ‘mumma of all wiki’ and shows clearly what can be done in a good collaborative environment. Wikipedia is a great complimentary resource to other online sources of information and this citation facility will further embedd wiki technology into our thinking.

The K12OS.org reports on the NECC conference, at which there were a host of great speakers. Catch lots of podcasts or audio playback of sessions and interviews. Adam Frey from Wikispaces.com (the mp3 file) talks about free wikis for teachers. He has a very Australian accent!

He says,

Technology for too long has been complicated and too hard to use.

Of course, making things easy is what Web 2.0 is about.

Teachers are finding wiki an easy way to work on web pages together.

Teachers and students are taking advantage of this technology in their classrooms – and example of using a wiki from a teacher in Georgia – students using a wiki to create a study guide to share with their fellow students. This wiki was created entirely out of class time purely from student motivation to study and use a technology to help them.

Its easy and its fun!

Web 2.0 and teaching

Posted on July 25, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Recent read of Teaching.Hacks through my Bloglines aggregator (how much is there to catch up on!!) has brought an excellent tool to my attention – I am thrilled with the move to Wiki of the Teaching Hacks resource. Check it out right here.
I plan to add this Wiki to my PD toolkit. Useful points to highlight:

lots of connections to show the strong relationship between learing and teaching in a Web 2.0 world
An explanation of Creative Commons (for those who are new to the concept) and how this applies to schools and copyright issues
everything else you need – RSS, Social Bookmarking, messaging
innovative tools and how to use them
information literacy also rates a good mention

Any comments go directly to the blog which you will find here.

In addition, Quentin of Teaching.Hacks talked about Risk Taking Educators and Web 2.0.

” I am curious if those educators who are willing to post to blogs, collaborate in wikis, and generally participate in the read/write web are more likely to take risks than other educators. I’m thinking that I would see a strong correlation, but you never know.

I thought I would create an informal survey and base it on Gene Calvert’s Risk Attitudes Inventory.”

You might consider taking part in the survey.

Web 2.0 and searching!

Posted on July 24, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

While I have been away from my blogging my bloglines has filled to bursting with news and developments in the blogosphere. It will take a few weeks of intensive reading and thinking to get back on track.

However, a message in from ReadWrite Web is important to share to keep the discussion going about web searching and the technologies driving this. It is particularly important to be aware of changes and developments if we are working from a digital/information literacy focus with a view to supporting student research processes. We need to understand what is happening in the field, and be aware of the impact of changes on the strategies that we promote.

Read the full post from Read/Write Web, and learn about 3rd generation search technologies.

“Traditional search engines are (were?) based on information retrieval technologies. They implement operations such as boolean queries, proximity searches, text relevance and link analysis.”

“Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.”

OK – then we had better start revising our information literacy strategies pronto to incorporate these changes.

Part two will be along soon!

Web 2.0 changes everything!

Posted on June 20, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Try telling everyone this! It is a great thing to discover what is changing around us with the uptake of Web 2.0 – but it is not always as easy to communicate this to people who are not engaged in these discoveries via the blogosphere.

A post from Doug at Borderland asks "terms like social and networking are used to describe the change, but what do those words mean?" Indeed! and it is not easy to explain this to newbies to Web 2.0. However, I would say that reading about and dipping into social networking tools is probably the best way to explain.

The paper from FutureLab looks at Social Software and Learning and the 'shape' of learning as a result of the transformation in the new technology environment of our students. However, the post by Doug draws together some of the key people and ideas. Read it – it will make you think. Also Dough alerts us to Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New Literacy, a paper that Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel presented at a recent AERA conference demonstrates the difference between two of various possible mindsets regarding traditional and new classrooms.

I have found that the visual image of Web 2.0 – the extended mindcloud – has been a great visual starter at sessions I have run. 'Participation' and 'Remix' provide two good concepts to open up the discussion with people, before actually going into showing and discussing social software. I am also adding Michael's Academic 2.0 concept model to my discussion pool.

Take 'remix' as an example – and ask just how many kids now buy a CD or album, and listen to it in total, just as they bought it. Everyone understands that kids like to remix their music, and they like to deliver it to their ears via an mp3 player. This alone marks kids as different to the adult generation's experience of adolescence.

In schools we still need to 'introduce' teachers to new ways of thinking, organising and doing. Until we do that we will not see the required curriculum change to 'learning space', 'learning times'. The blogosphere is a great tool to point teachers to blogs that discuss, demonstrate, and showcase great school initiatives. I like squidoo and some wiki as well for this. Much easier than talking about it!

Innovating Collection Management for Web 2.0

Posted on June 18, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

I have spent some time recently absorbed with assessing papers written by students in a MAppSci (MLS) library program. The topic this time was the development of a Collection Management Policy.

This is not the first time that I have been involved with this topic – but it is the first time that I recognised that the extent of inequities in schools will make it impossible to establish good Web 2.0 or Library 2.0 practices, and will guarantee the loss of good school libraries and good teacher librarians.

The papers and presentations from the conference in Washington DC tell one side of the story. The papers I have been marking tell the other side of the story. What I have seen from some of the schools is some of the following:

teachers with no experience attempting to manage a quality school library
Principals who expect a school library to be run on a minimal budget of AU$3,000 to AU$4,000 per year
Poor collections, over 10 years old
DOS based library systems using OASIS software
qualified staff working for only a few days a week
qualified staff being used for RFF (relief from face-to-face teaching i.e. managing someone elses class by providing a 'library lesson')
lack of curriculum integration due to RFF
lack of collaborative planning and teaching

Worst of all is the fact that the policy framework can include criteria for managing digital resources – great! NO! these resources are websites, CDrom, intranets maybe. Is there any mention of Web 2.0 concepts or social software? No way! Did anyone mention a Wiki, or blog or Flickr image collections? I wish!

So we see the constraints that some people have to work with. We also see a total lack of awarness of the current digital agenda.

Are these some of the reasons why school libraries are 'not the flavour of the month' with some digitally savvy administrators ?? Who is missing the point? Us or them???

Might be worth reading The Value of Libraries from Stephen Abram, or helping save school library programs for learners by adding to the TeacherLibrian Wiki here.

Managing Digital: Innovations, Initiatives & Insights

Posted on June 18, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

The 21st Annual Computers in Libraries conference and exhibition was held in Washington, D.C., on March 22-24, 2006.

Computers in Libraries is the leading conference for librarians and information professionals who need to know about the latest technologies, equipment, software, and services available.

Even if you couldn't attend the Computers in Libraries 2006 Conference, you can read the articles, view the powerpoint prentations, listen to the podcasts, or visit the web sites of the many presenters including Debbie Abilock (of NoodleTools fame), Joyce Valenza, and Alice Yucht, all of whom have the school library perspective.

There are almost five dozen presentations. Topics include: