Upwardly Mobile

Will Richardson began the keynote by articulating his vision for the future.

Our students can create and grow their own personal learning networks.

The power of this comes from putting educators in to powerful learning communities.

Sheryl followed up by saying that in her experience, that in NZ, we as educators have a really good understanding of community and personalisation.

I personally found this keynote reinforced the time and effort I have put in to developing my on-line presence and the importance of building my personal learning network (my PLN).I am involved in connecting with teachers and developing my own network, I participate and learn from events like K12 Online, so it was really cool to hear from the people whom I follow and whose knowledge I draw on. For me, this keynote was very real and engaging because these speakers were talking a language that I not only understand, but live through the networks I have built and continue to build.

How can we help kids to become literate? (technology)

Will points out that at the moment our kids are sharing often inappropriate ’stuff’ ie. through bebo. Our kids in the future are going to be extremely ‘Googleable’. What are we doing for the kids in our schools to prepare them for this future. He asks, how are we teaching them to share ‘well’? Are we preparing them to live in these networks? We want our kids to be ‘clickable’ but we have to teach our kids to do this well?

I really liked the way Sheryl clearly explained the difference between Communities of Practice and Networks. For me, it really clarified the NEED to not just waffle along in our networks - but to have a shared goal and ACT ON IT!

Online communities for teachers provide a “Safety net that builds bold and creative teachers”. Will Richardson

What is a community?

It is a group of people with a shared interest who connect.

Communities of practice are people who work together to improve in a specific area. In Communities of Practice, co-construction is key. A feature of communities is that they build and grow. Sheryl points out that at the beginning you may have a leader driving the community but in time, this will progress to being totally co-constructed and driven by the community. Effective communities become self-regulated, user-owned and they have a clear purpose.

Communities of practice have benefits over and are quite different to a network. In order to create Communities of Practice we need to:

Share the work we do - connect.

Cooperate with sharing

Collaborate

ACT collaboratively for change. MOVE on making that change.

Sharing online is really easy and is the factor that is able to make these communities and networks really work.

Will Richardson addresses the question

How do connections build communities?

When people have a presence, they are clickable and online - people help you to ‘connect the dots’. It is really important to continue to discuss and share and post. The community shares within their walls, but it is important for individuals to go back to the network and share and bring this back to the community.

I think that the message came through loud and clear at the end of this keynote.
The world is changing and we are doing a disservice to our students by not adapting and effecting change in our classrooms.
Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Hitlab is a research centre based at Canterbury University involved in - Creating engaging and interesting learning experiences.

Hitlab are currentley doing research in to Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmenting the real world with digital content. This may revolutionise the way we are working with computers. New ways of developing education potential.

MagicBook

AR based learning medium - combine a picture book with some digital content. Merging the real and the digital.

AR allows interaction, multimodal learning, encourages collaboration and it’s engaging. You are interacting with the stories.

Looking towards creating mixed reality books - taking an already published book and working with the author to augment the books using AR technology. Students can move in to the book and explore the book in a new way.

There is a move to bring AR to mobile devices - the iPhone is given as a specific example.

Also working on an authoring tool to put AR technology in the hands of teachers. You are able to download the application from the CORE website. The markers to use with this software are printed in your uLearn handbook.

Install the software on your computer (here) you need a webcam and the print out markers. It’s not ideal to use the markers on glossy paper so maybe try printing your own.

Open house on Friday 4-7 at the University of Canterbury! I HOPEFULLY will be there - but I am not sure what time my flight is…

Tags: Augmented Reality, ulearn08

“if you want any time, any where access to data and information systems and it’s online - the iPhone will deliver that” RED (Renaissance Education Division

There are a huge number of aps available - showcasing evernote - A FREE application for iPhone

Evernote - Evernote allows you to take a snapshot of something ie. a written document, it uploads it straight to your space on their website, it then syncs that to your laptop and iPhone.  you are able to search for any words in the photos you have taken - search typed text AND handwriting.  Electronic notes!

The GPS

Locly - a free ap to use with your built-in GPS.  Finds what is on locally for you - it figures out where you are and tells you what is on around you!

Verizon together with Samsung have put together an amazing project for New York schools.

I really like the way that the education board has decided to approach issues surrounding disengaged students, low student achievement and high drop-out rates. In this clip they talk about turning educational success in to a desirable brand.

What a profound statement to come from an education board.

What an amazing project. I think it is an great way to give students a tangible incentive to attend school - while in theory the incentive should be just getting a good education, obviously this is not working at the moment - so go to the source. Find out what kids want and what kids recognise as being valuable and target them that way. Like any good exercise in branding, the brand loyalty will come once consumers (students) are on board.

I will be watching this case study with great interest. It seems to me an extremely forward thinking project. I do have a couple of issues that I will be looking in to further. One is the idea of the targeted advertising to students through the mobiles. The video says that this is carefully done but I would like to know more about how they went about doing this and what measures are put in place to protect our students - for example will it be full of fast-food advertising.

The second question I have is surrounding teacher professional development. I can see that as far as an incentive goes, students are rewarded for time spent in school and maybe for completing tasks etc. on their mobile. However, I am really interested to find out what sort of programme (if any) the teachers have gone through so as they can really begin to harness the power of mLearning. One of my favourite sayings at the moment which I saw on a poster in my university supervisor’s room is that you can’t put a combustion engine in a horse… I will post back when I find out more about this. However, in the meantime I would love to hear your feedback so please leave a comment.

I would LOVE to visit New York and see how this is all working out.

Tags: Free phones, mlearning, USA

Chris Betcher recently organised a podcast between myself and Liz Kolb.  Liz is pioneering the way for cellphones in education in America and you can read more about what she is doing in schools on her blog.  Chris managed to find a time to suit all of us across 3 time zones for a Skype chat.  He live streamed our conference call through his ustream channel which was fantastic as we had a live audience with whom we were able to interact.

The podcast sounds great.  For me it was awesome to be able to chat with someone whose work I am a major fan of.  It was great to be able to hear about all of the neat things that are happening in America as we in NZ aren’t quite there yet with the access to some of the amazing web applications she was talking about.

Anyway head over to the virtual staffroom and see what you think - would be great to get some feedback!

Tags: podcast

Currently there is a great deal of hype around the area of 21st century learners and a myriad of buzz-words floating around. Genetically, students have not changed. However, the world they will be entering when they leave school has changed and therefore the skills they need to contribute to the work-force do need to be taught in schools. The skill that stands out to me as having the most profound effect on the way we teach is that of information literacy.

Never before have students had so much access to information. The argument that always comes up is that not everything you read on-line is accurate - which is absolutely correct. But, are we teaching our students to deal with this? Are we teaching them how to deal with massive amounts of information and are we teaching them what to do with it? Hedley Beare has written extensively on the future of schooling. He states that it is ironic “that teachers currently give the information out to students that they have already deemed to be correct. There is not authentic context requiring students to critique information”. It is the ability to critique and use information that is such a crucial skill.

To any teacher who complains about students who simply copy and paste information from the internet, I argue that they are not giving students a task that requires them to do any more than this. They are not requiring their students to access and use information in a meaningful way. I feel very strongly that many teachers themselves have not had to access and make sense of information in the same way that we are now expecting our students to.

I believe that labeling students the digital natives puts students in to a category where teachers may believe that their students inherently have skills that they the teacher often do not (particularly in regard to the internet) and that therefore these skills do not need to be taught - let alone by someone who sees them self as not having grown up on the internet and therefore a ‘digital immigrant’. I think that the terms digital native/digital immigrant have their place to describe what is potentially a new generation of student. However, I think that the overuse of these terms can have a negative impact in assuming a set of skills - particularly surrounding the use of the internet that students do not yet have.

Teachers today need to integrate making effective use of the information available on the internet in to lessons. No longer can it be the elephant in the room that can be ignored if we don’t want to see it. To me adapting lessons to teach students to make effective use of and deal with the information available to them is one of the most important skills we can give our students.
I wrote the above post in response to a discussion about 21st century skills on the eFellows discussion board. We would love to have more people contributing to our discussions. Please feel free to head over and add to our conversations. www.efellows.org.nz

Image: http://flickr.com/photos/will-lion/2595497078/sizes/o/

Stuff posted this article about the findings uncovered by Australian television documentary researchers about Aussie teens and their cell phone habits.

“Teenagers are increasingly spreading around homemade porn on their mobile phones …

For an episode that will air in mid-October, Cannane’s team investigated how young Australians consumed porn and he said they were blown away to discover how rife homemade porn was among teenagers.

“We went down to the back of Town Hall steps and the first guy I went up to, a teenager, ‘I said do you have porn on your phone’. Yes, bang straight away, shows it to me,” Cannane told AAP.

Cannane and his team went out on the streets talking to groups of teenagers for the discussion-style program and found almost all had some type of porn on their phones, thanks to developments in picture and camera phones. ”

Seriously, life was much easier when I was in high-school 10 years ago.

Something that a number of students involved in focus groups I have conducted has been students questioning whether or not their phones would become regulated if they were to be used for school.  They are talking about the personal content on their phones - and while none have specifically mentioned pornography, and example of offensive content such as racist images was given.

So - debates about what is and isn’t acceptable on a person’s private property that is being used for school will really start to heat up as the walls come down and cellphones creep in to schools. However, I think this is healthy.

I see our current students as guinea pigs for the future.  There is no precedent that has been set by people in the past as to what is and isn’t acceptable to be published on the web and more importantly there have been few examples showing students the potential ramifications of their actions.  As adults we have the foresight and the social maturity to make good decisions about what we do and don’t want published.  It is our current teenagers who I feel are going to get burned in the future by their actions today.  It is our responsibility to at least open their eyes to this.

Tags: lessons, safety, students

I find it astounding that people assume just because you may choose to use cellphones in your classroom that it means that you allow your students to text throughout your lesson.

You have got to be joking me.

It doesn’t matter what type of learning task you develop for your students - whether it involvers butcher paper and pens or cellphones, it is up to the individual teacher to manage the behaviour of their students in a way that allows them to gt the most from the learning experience.

Currently students already are using their mobile phones in class even though most schools have rules in place restricting (usually banning) mobile phones at school.  Txt bullying is still happening, students are heading to the ‘toilet’ to reply to messages or to meet with friends arranged via text.  They are covertly texting with phones hidden up their sleeves, in blazer pockets, in pencil cases and in school bags.

This article was posted on NZ news site Stuff this morning.  It talks about research that has found when we are actively using mobile phones - talking, texting, web browsing - the key decision making function of the brain shuts down.  The implications of this on driving are obviously huge - and life or death.  However, when you consider the implications of this on students who are covertly texting during their lessons you begin to realise the impact that this could potentially have on their learning.  John Medina, director of the Brain Centre for Applied Learning Research in Seattle sums this up best in his video hang-up and drive

The slideshow below also gives some AMAZING insights in to the way the brain works and how as teachers we should all be considering the way we ‘teach’ our students.

One of the ideas that has come through loud and clear from the students is that if they are going to use cellphones in class it MUST be scaffolded (my words not theirs!) and broken up in to bite sized specific tasks.  Giving them free-for-all cellphone use does not work - which is no surprise to me - just like giving kids a text book and saying go for it use the book to learn.  However, what I have always advocated for is giving teachers the freedom to use these tools should they so wish as there are so many functions that can be used to enhance student learning experiences - WITH THE TOOLS THEY ALREADY HAVE IN THEIR POCKETS.

Let’s get cellphones out in the open in classes - take away the thrill of the chase so to speak and take away the taboo that is having a cellphone in class.  However, continue to manage lessons to ensure effective learning takes place - praise and reward positive behaviour, deal with negative or off task behaviour.  Continuing to ignore ‘under-cover’ cellphone use in schools is hopeless - the research speaks for itself.

I have been lucky enough to have my hands on a developer iPhone from Vodafone for the past few weeks. It has led to hours of much fun and much procrastination!

Whenever I tell people about my research, the first thing they want to know is what do I think about the iPhone and do I think it will be the next big thing in schools.

I am undecided.

Unless you have held, touched and played with an iPhone (or an iPod Touch) you really can not begin to understand this little device. However, the potential of the iPhone doesn’t come in to its own until you have personalised it and loaded it up with your own applications (many of which are free and I am really looking forward to seeing the direction some of the apps in the future will be heading - especially in education).

The iPhone really does bring you anytime access to information - which is extremely powerful. The screen size is more than adequate for reading lengthy documents, and the highly inutitive user interface does lead to an engaging and easy way to access information. I can definitely see devices like the iPhone changing the way we live - as in the short time I have had the iPhone I have certainly used it in a way to do things I wouldn’t normally do.

Examples include accessing the internet when out-and-about to solve just-in-time access to information like restaurant guides, whitepages and quick internet services. The GPS and mapping function has been particularly useful - locating driving (or walking directions) to a given location, mapping out local facilities like restaurants, hotels or carparks etc. which has been particularly useful when traveling to Napier and Auckland recently and would have LOVED to have used this while in Sydney over the weekend (however, I don’t think downloading data on a roaming connection might be in my best interest!).

Interestingly however, when we put it to the test against a Nokia 6121, the Nokia came out stronger nearly every time. With 3.5g download it was super fast, and using the cell tower locations combined with Google Maps, the mapping was superb - and you could do all the same mapping features as on the iPhone - except for the specific directions (but you can see these for yourself anyway) - and it was faster - MUCH faster and you didn’t have to be outside to get a good satelite link for the GPS.

The iPhone is great - don’t get me wrong - and I would LOVE to have one in my handbag any day! A fantastic screen size and the ability to completely tailor it to your lifestyle through some seriously nifty applications (like Shozu which listens to any piece of music for 12 seconds then tells you the song, artist and album then gives you links to the song on the iTunes store and YouTube so you can watch the video too). And of course the iPhone covers all the necessary bases as a full mp3 player and phone also. The way that it seamlessly uses whatever internet connection available (using 3g only when no approved wireless connections are available) makes going on-line something you don’t even think about - you just do and it just works. The thing that gets me everytime with Mac products in general is the incredibly intuitive user interface - once again they have nailed this with the iPhone - you zip in and out of applications so easily and quickly.

So, are iPhones the way of the future in education? Potentially, yes. Are they the ONLY way for the future - no - of course not. I still feel that educators should be working towards a future where we make use of all of the tools students have access to - whether that be a full size laptop, a UMPC, an iPhone, a 3g phone or a basic mobile phone and I still maintain that none of these devices will come into their own in the classroom until wifi access is available and seamless.

you can go to telecom directly to be confused by their plans yourself here.

Mobile Data - $3/MB

See information on their site here

To me, Vodafone’s plans make sense - they are still too expensive for many New Zealanders, but the $1 a day casual rate certainly makes dipping in and out of the mobile internet on an as needed basis realistic - and will in time hook people in to using the mobile web and then they will probably move on to plans.

To Telecom,  I can not for the life of me work out these seemingly free plans with 0MB of data… hmmm.

I also can not work out which phone you would buy that actually has internet access as from their very limited number of phones there doesn’t seem to be the ability to search for phones with internet capability.

Meanwhile, TestraClear have decided to get in on the mobile act too and are offering mobile data at $3/MB - are you crazy - that is THIRTY times the cost of Vodafone’s casual rate.  Oh - and by the looks of it - the phone they seem to be offering isn’t web capable anyway.

Tags: mobile web, Plans, pricing, Telcos