Personality Types and Your Classroom

Thanks to Sue T at "and another thing" (great blog Sue) for pointing me to mypersonality.
At first I was startled at the results, but after my initial surprise, I found I have had plenty to ponder. I'd never seen myself as a strategist before, but upon reflection, thats what I do all the time. I generally sit back, analyse and assess a situation, formulate a plan for action and when the time is right....act. Not everyone does that!

The site gives lots of informative quotes and support, as well as lots of links off site to personality support/information groups.

Sign up and take the tests, then post your widgets.
I can see lots of practical educational applications for this. What personalities are there in your class? How can you modify your teaching learning strategies to enable the others types to succeed? Do you plan for multiple intelligences?

I showed this site to my staff and some where keen to give it a go. Will be interesting to try and develop a group personality for our staff. Might make planning a bit easier.

Presentation to School Leaders

Roger at LIPS has a presentation incorporating elements of the shift happens/paying attention "series" presentation.

In Rogers words:

Readers may be interested to see the way that elements of the ‘Shift Happens’ series have been incorporated into this presentation for a group of school Principals, encouraging them to take a lead modelling role in the use of ICT, based on an imperative which is growing exponentially.

Good stuff Roger. Keep it up.

3 steps for 21st century learning.

I love EduBloggerWorld! If you haven't joined yet, then click the badge in my sidebar and join up. I was browsing through EBW and just stumbled upon this cool video by Jackie at Teacherhacks

Find more videos like this on EduBloggerWorld


Simple, practical and achievable. What more could one ask for? Be sure to visit her blog for support materials.

Digital Schools Statistics

Roger Pryor at Leaders in Public Schools has a post explaining the many and varied benefits of utilizing web2.0 tools in your school. In it he links to tech learning articles on web 2.0 and professional development, which has a great list of resources to share.

Roger also links to Key technology trends , another techlearning article. Note point 4. bandwidth crisis looming. I've blogged about this before using the term exaflood.

1. Not long ago very few schools had a large number of laptop computers.

2. Ubiquitous Computing Is Growing Rapidly
3. Ubiquitous Computing Practitioners Report Substantial Academic Improvement
4. A Bandwidth Crisis Is Looming

Today the Internet bandwidth per student is 2.90 Kbps (or kilobits per second per student) according to the survey. Furthermore, schools say they will grow this to 9.57 Kbps per student by 2011—a 3.3-fold increase. But the ADS 2006 team believes that as much as 40 Kbps may be needed in five years. As the number of computers in schools increases and the ways in which students use computers change, more and more bandwidth will be needed.

It is unlikely, however, that many schools are budgeting for a 14-fold increase, although technology directors are generally aware of the challenge. The hard costs of the bandwidth required to support the growth in online learning, home connectivity, and ubiquitous computing are unknown and likely to require additional research.

5. Online Learning Is Growing
6. Professional Development Is Key
7. Low Total Cost of Ownership Is Increasingly Important
8. Some Product Categories Will Grow at a Rapid Rate (IWB's and handheld/mobile devices)

The article gives graphs and stats, well worth a read.

Cool New T Shirt

When Darren Draper said that he'd left a box of t-shirts at the doorway of the main building on ISTE island, I just had to go inworld as soon as I returned from work and grab one "before someone stole the box". (Daren's words)

Whilst I was expecting to get a t-shirt, I wasn't expecting to meet such a range of friendly folk attending the NECC conference in Atlanta though. Had a wonderful time listening to conference highlights from the participants. sounds exciting, though a bit overwhelming...and there are still 2 more days to go.

I made some great new friends. I'll certainly be visiting more regularly.

I live in a relatively remote part of NSW Australia and Second Life provides me with a real, and achievable way to connect with others.

Thanks Darren.

Did You Know? 2.0

Karl Fisch (assisted by Scott Mcleod and Xplane) has posted the reworked "Did You Know" presentation at YouTube. In my opinion this is a much better version than the original.
The beautiful but unobtrusive design allows the ideas embedded in the presentation to come to a much greater prominence over the glitz and flash that most presentations have a tendency to become.
Well done to those involved in its production. It's a piece that I'll be using not just to share the idea, but as an example of effective presentation style.

A laptop for every student?

Well! There's a suggestion! Scott at Dangerously Irrelevant has costed out what percentage of the US GDP would be required to provide a laptop to every teacher and student.

Does every student need a laptop?
Would classrooms be more relevant if every student had a laptop?
Would trading in paints, brushes, glue, scissors , sporting equipment and even musical instruments, for laptops make classrooms more (or less) relevant?
At what age would a student recieve one? The requirements for year 1 are very different to year 12.
Could the money be spent more productively elsewhere? (Building maintenance, paints, brushes, transport, health, water resource management, rollout of infrastructure.)

Speaking of infrastructure...would the current infrastructure that's already in place cope with such a massive hit?

Thanks Scott. As always, you got me thinking.

Daughter2.0 (What good are libraries?)

Was reading a post today by George Siemans at elearnspace regarding the future of libraries.

....this presentation doesn't say anything new for those familiar with the changes in technology and the context of knowledge. It does, however, present those changes from the perspective of libraries. In the process it provides some interesting statistics and observations (89% of college students begin their research with a search engine vs 2% in libraries,......

elearnspace

Thanks George...Interesting but not surprising.

Being a rather cool and damp Sunday afternoon here, I have my 10 yr old daughter beside me, spread out on the carpet, tapping away on our our old Toshiba laptop and buying some clothes for her penguin at clubpenguin.

"Hey Daughter!" I ask. "If you needed to know something that you didn't already know, where would you go to find out?"

Without pause or hesitation she turned her head and looked at me (one hand still on the keyboard) and replied "Google! Why?"

"Oh just interested" I answer."What is the library useful for?"

"What? The club penguin library?"

"No the town library."

"Nothing!"

"What do you use the library for in club penguin? "

"Well you can read other members' writing, and you can play mancala against other players."

So through the eyes of a ten yr old Aussie girl, our town library is irrelevant, yet an online multi player library contains stories, games and fellowship.

I'd imagine that the cleverer libraries in our culture would have to look at fostering a sense of online community as an addition to their local community if they were to survive.

On a side note: I read out to my wife the figures on how only 2% of college students use libraries to begin research. She had just interrupted her guitar rendition of Cavatina in order to make us all a pot of tea. (Don't you just love cool damp Sundays?)

Her response? "Do people still use libraries?"

Blogging with 6 and 7 year olds.

Rachel Boyd has an awesome presentation at teacher tube on blogging with young children.

Well done Rachel, it's inspirational.

Podcast Research - Help Required

This request from Jane

Hi all

I am currently undertaking research looking at the question: In what ways does podcasting enhance oral literacies?I have been gathering data in my own context but I would love to hear what other teachers have found when using podcasting in their classroom programme and add voices from further a field into my final write up.

I am intersted in authenticity: * Audience * Context * Purpose * Self confidence

If you could provide an example of your students demonstrating any of these things I would love to hear about it and incorporate it into my study. Please leave me a comment on my blog including the country that you are commenting from. Please could you include this request on your blogs with a link to this post, I would love to get as much information as possible. It will be great to have a piece of research that says - This is worthwhile doing, and this is why.

Jane

*** ICT U Can!

Children, blogging and safety.

Karen Mann at Web2Wanderings has a post regarding issues of internet safety when it comes to young children. (Lets say K-6)

My understanding is that blogs can be moderated if set up that way and therefore before any item is published the teacher could have the final approval. I guess I will have to follow up on this under the NSW system. If you have come across similar restrictions, please let me know.

Its a tough one Karen. I have had a students' blog blocked by my organisation.
I complained, (well actually I requested an unblock), and I got a sympathetic hearing by a well informed senior administrator, (yes...they do exist), and the blog was unblocked very shortly afterwards.

I did have to make some modifications though.

1. Parents need to be aware of their child's participation (publication).
2. No child is to be identified. We limit names to first names only. Though it has been suggested that we may need to consider using only initials. (Overkill, or good sense?)
   
3. All comments are to be moderated.

Pretty easy to do, and very sensible when you consider the unsettling implications of some alternate scenarios.

Quentin D'Souza at Toondoo

Congratulations Quentin!

Not only do we have proof that administrators can blog, (if one can call Quentin an administrator), but now we know they can "toon" as well.

Quentin blogs at "teaching hacks". Always a good read.

Quentin D'Souza - Featured Dooer!

ToonPress - The Blog at ToonDoo - The Cartoon Strip Creator - Create, Publish, Share, Discuss!

Are Schools Losing the Game... (the power play).

How is your organisation dealing with web2.0?

Thanks to Scott Mcleod's halfbaked musings at dangerously irrelevant, I discovered this post from Wesley Fryer

Schools need to respond to the technological power play

The power play is a hockey term, I'm not sure what we would call it here downunder, but here is the part that stood out to me.

Helping teachers use technology effectively in the classroom means far more than simply providing a technician who can keep computers,
printers, networks, and content filters working appropriately.
Addressing instructional technology support needs also means:

1. Having administrators who understand the importance of studentsusing technology to not only CONSUME content, but also appropriately PRODUCE and SHARE content on the global stage of the Internet in safe and constructive ways.
2. Having administrators who expect and require teachers to REGULARLY ENGAGE students in Internet-based collaborative projects throughout the school year, not just at the end of the year when required assessment tests have been completed.
3. Providing CERTIFIED TEACHERS to serve as mentors, coaches, demonstration teachers, and hand-holders to other teachers less saavy and with less initiative when it comes to instructional technologies.

We need more than technicians providing technical support in our schools, we need leaders and mentors, (and the budgets to fund them). These mentors need to come on top of adequate technical support. According to Wes Fryer again

- school tech support levels are 10% of industry standards (1 onsite tech for 50-70 machines, that is considered adequate in business, where needs tend to be less complex)

Are we wasting money providing more technology to schools, without giving technical support to that same technology, along with supporting the "upskilling" of teachers?

A final point. Wes, when speaking to teachers a a recent conference states:

I heard several teachers relate stories of “technology out of control” in their schools, where part-time teacher-aides (responsible for staffing school computer labs) were unable to prevent students from accessing pornography from school computers, bringing pornography and other objectionable images from home on USB flash drives, and printing many of those images on the school printers.

Probably a common scenario in many schools accross the globe. Another blog I read, Parallel Divergence, raised this issue last October in the post The trouble with web2.

We've all heard the hype on web2, how is your organisation dealing with it?

Key Question

Rather provocative Scott.



Dangerously Irrelevant: Another key question

If individuals at home can see the transformative effects of digital technologies, and corporations can see the transformative effects of digital technologies, why can’t schools? Are they just incompetent, dunder-headed organizations compared to other institutions or is something else going on? In other words, why WOULDN’T schools see the same transformative effects of technology that we’re seeing in most other sectors of society?

For and against IWB's

Sure to be a passionate discussion starter:
From Tony Richards

Learning - Thinking - Playing

All this has got me thinking. I am going to start a little ongoing post of the "for" arguments and the "against" arguments, in line with this I am going to also list alternatives as many schools do not give any thought to the possible alternatives.

I welcome any comments - suggestions - arguments and ideas:

Encyclopedia of Life

A remarkable concept! More here
I found it on George Siemans' blog, but references are popping up everywhere.

Many of you may have to watch this from outside of your corporate network because its hosted on youtube.

As an aside, I saved a neat video from youtube the other day and went to upload it to teacher tube, but then read the terms and conditions of teachertube. No advertising. A shame really (though understandable) because a lot of really creative and pertinent work is in the form of corporate advertising.

Has anyone found a workaround?

Sound Familiar?

I do understand the arguments for child safety, duty of care, and such, but when schools/teachers are having success with an innovative program, and the child safety issues are covered as much as possible, then why continue with the ban and block culture?

I am pleased to say that in NSW schools, projects are considered on their merits, and are unblocked,trialled and monitored. This is a good start. Conditions apply, but those conditions are usually insignificant when compared with the alternative...the loss of the project completely.

How does your school deal with the issue of blocking harmful sites?


Here is a take on the situation from Dangerously Irrelevant.
Dangerously Irrelevant: Principal blogging not allowed

This tale’s been told before. Technology coordinators who are more concerned with disabling than enabling. Technology personnel that we would hope would be progressive, forward thinkers regarding digital technologies but instead are regressive gatekeepers. Teachers and administrators that try to move into the 21st century but run into the brick wall of supervisors or support personnel. Superintendents that allow such situations to occur rather than insisting that their district figure out how to make it work (like other districts have). Educators that fail to understand that the world around them has changed and that their relevance to that world is diminishing daily.

Were you Paying Attention?

Darren Draper of Paying Attention fame, now has a blog dedicated to the presentation.

Drape's Takes

With so many people out there "Paying Attention", it must be time to write about it. These are my takes (you know - my opinions, thoughts, ramblings) on the world of Educational Technology.

Connectivism, what is it?

Kind of makes me wonder why I haven't come across this before. On first reading it makes so much sense. I'd like to see some critiques of the theory. I'm sure the digital Taliban would have many. Here is George Siemen's paper explaining connectivism. George has a blog here

elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.

Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.

More on Grip Fix Turn

Kim Flintoff has a great elaboration on his use of the term Grip Fix Turn over at his blog


More on Grip, Fix, Turn : Grip Fix Turn

What I was trying to suggest, as others have done in different ways, is that a proficiency with ubiquitous forms of technology use and a comparative comfort with technology engagement does not necessarily confer any expertise or control or any deep understanding of the technology, the culture producing or surrounding it, and more especially the capacity to engage with critical awareness and assessment of technology use.