What I learned . . .

• kids want to be online all the time and given the choice of an ordinary handheld and an iphone or ipod the majority will choose the iproduct

• many apps can be used for educational purposes, by end of July Classroom 2.0 will publish a list of about 300 Apps they’ve reviewed.
• educators are now writing Apps specifically for educational purposes
• qr code is really powerful and has exciting potential in the educational context

 
Human impulse is to write (21st Century Writing).

Kathleen Blake Yancey believes writing has been affected by the context of history from 1940’s to present

• war and distance created need for people to write letters
• school writing disciplined and punishment oriented
• freedom of graffitti writing, letters of freedom of gaol
• writing process, moves that lead to final product, process became very linear and unlike process real writers use. Energy and using steps in the way they need to be used not as a prescription.
• process became digitised, formatting and publication possible
• writing for connection – visual display powerful in writing
• connection is new and exciting and part of process who for, which medium and why.

Writing is about connection. What does that look like now?

1.  Blogging from school to the world – responses are important and a measure of success, teaches respectful reply. Students like the environment.

2. Take on the personna of characters creating back stories in poetry, drama, blog that represents the author, historical character, scientist

3. Information Ecology, past information owned by experts.

Create a concept map to answer question, search of blogosphere to answer the questions. Found not possible so had to go further into other forms of information: academic, mainstream and alternative. How do we know we can trust resources? Need to be explicit in posing questions.

Go to Time Magazine and see top 100 list of blogs.

4. Blogging as learning in action.

Give an explcit task to pursue and share on communal blog. Where is poetry seen in culture? Students can see poetry almost anywhere but how is it poetic? 

Signs project all signs are about what you can’t do. Used to be words alone. Became mixed and now all pictures. Need to participate not be a voyeur. (Blog Projects done at Virginia Beach Schools)

Three types of participation

1. Experts and laypersons are composing knowledge eg citizen scientist,

2. Citizens composing news, when people help each other information seems to be more reliable. Not just crisis driven but stories of people are being told and their stories are part of History.

3. Citizens have composing power in form of facebook, twitter, blogs etc. This means we need to develop understanding and control of these tools. Need to know which tools are to be used and when to support effective and appropriate connection

Gladwell’s keynote addressed THREE BIG IDEAS he wanted all attending NECC 2009 to understand it is important for students and teachers to understand them.

1.  WORK HARD

Put in the effort and success will come your way.

2. RESILIENCE / PERSEVERANCE

It’s okay to make mistakes so long as you learn from them.

Trying harder brings greater reward and develops in the individual a respect for things that are difficult and require perseverance to achieve.

3.  EXPERIMENTATION / EXPLORATION

Learning is not linear. There are many paths to the same place. Gladwell quoted Gayleson who believes there are two kinds of visionaries / innnovators / geniuses.

a.  Conceptual – those who have bold ideas and change the world view quickly eg Picasso.

b.  Experimental – The innovator who explores through trial and error, makes mistakes and through perseverance finds a way to genius and innovation, eg Cezanne

Key to learning from mistakes is the quality of feedback given. The feedback MUST be

- Timely

- Targetted

Technoogy is a wonderful facilitator for feedback eg. twitter, facebook, SMS etc.

It’s not the “where ” of learning it is the “how”. Students need teachers who are energetic, enthusiastic, and creative. Teachers who promote learning and make it meaningful.

The video clip is from an excerpt where Gladwell is saying the American Education System is great for the top and the bottom.

The concept of connective writing is not about the act of publishing it is what happens before and after publication.

Reading and writing now, are not what they were.

They were:

• Reading to inform, teach and indoctrinate.
• Writing was for the few, the elite of the literatii.

Now  they are skills used by all. They are vital elements for

• Personalisation and establishing relationships based on trust and with respect between readers/writers as the basis for interaction across the web.
• Self sponsored learning and we need to help our students to get to this stage.

What will be the life span of the printed page word?  It is in doubt because the printed word is not as easily accessible when compared to the fast flexibility that is provided in the www environment.

Writing is ubiquitous . . . it doesn’t have to be DONE at a particular time in a particular context.

It happens any where any time when the mood strikes, the link or the connection is made.

Connective writing stems from what we read because ideas for writing have beginnings in what people have read. Others’ thoughts and ideas are reflected upon and writing is then produced.

Sceptics question the quality and preciseness of the information. The audience requires quality and preciseness and they will ensure ideas are fine tuned and written in a knowledgeable way as knowledge is no longer the domain of the few. It is outside of us all. It exists in the world in the space of the www.

Writers on the web synthesise their ideas and link them to sources and context. Writing has to be linked. It cannot occur in isolation. It has little meaning if isolated, unlinked and unread.

What does linked writing look like? Look at Borderland.

Publishing is a cyclical process? It is not only writing it is reading. Is the way we read being changed by  our www experiences? Teachers who know their students and observe the way they work in a classroom can tell you reading for the students of today is a different more complex skill than it was even 20 year ago. The NCTE has endeavoured to address this with their recent NCTE Definition of 21st century literacies.

Do online readers use the same reading strategies as a paper reader?

Is literacy more dependant on images than words?

Is reading as we have been taught and tested still relevant?

What strategies are there to teach reading in an online world?

How do we use web 2.0 and blend it with the best of pedagogy to ensure our students learning needs are met?

Moshi Monsters has taken our school by storm.

The program was first introduced , in Beta form, by Anna Rossvoll, of the GLOW team in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Driving across the UK gives plenty of time for thinking and discussion and that is where this idea evolved.

This little program seemed as if it might be the answer to introducing the students (and their teachers) to regularly using the web for working, playing and communicating.

Aim: to learn to be responsible users of Web 2.0 and social networking in a secure environment.

Charateristics of Moshi Monsters program:

• Create own Moshi, it is up to the creator how outrageous or demure a Moshi might be.
• Encourages students to take responsibility for the monster they create, it needs to be named, clothed, fed, housed, have friends and generally be very well cared for, if neglected the Moshi can become very nasty!
• Students earn currency, Rox, with which they are able to keep their Moshi happy and content. They earn Rox, by playing the variety of games available in the Hall of Puzzles. The student and their Moshi achieve higher and higher levels.
• Moshi’s live in Monstro an ever evolving and developing land especially for Moshi Monsters.
• Moshi creators are able to invite friends to join in chat on the noticeboard.
• Moshi creators may visit each other’s sites and rate them.

Benefits of using Moshi

• Students are simulating a social network in a safe environment where no one is to invite a friend to join if they are not known to them as part of the school community. Each student has to accept their friends and delete or report those who act inappropriately.
• Students use the Beta edition of the game, however, with parental permission they can become members at a cost which enables a wider range of choice when purchasing items for the Moshi.
• Moshi Monsters is a game environment, it uses games and puzzles to develop students literacy, numeracy and thinking skills.
• Creativity, communication and collaboration are encouraged.
• It is competitive among friends and personally.
• Great vehicle for developing good social skills and collaboration in a whole class situation when modelling how to access and create a Moshi.
• Excellent opportunities for authentic communication about internet safety and appropriate and inappropriate use of social networking sites.
• Discussions about what constitutes constructive comments (in preparation for blogging)
• Requires students to plan and make decisions.
• Develops good social habits, every day I have students asking if they can be my Moshi friend, as they do of all the teachers. It is a good way of students and teachers getting to know alittle about each other and at the same time observing good social networking etiquette.

Teachers found using the program as a whole class activity early in the year was great for

• team building,
• turn taking
• developing positive relationships
• classroom management.

New teachers who had not used an IWB before found

• students taught them a lot about the boards, especially not be afraid of breaking them!
• built confidence with the IWB.

Moshi Monsters has provided an ideal opportunity and environment for teachers, students and parents to talk about what is happening in the world of Moshi’s. Parents are often as interested and excited as their children are about Moshi Monsters with quite a few students becoming members under their parents approval.

Involvement in this community is a great way in which our students are able to exercise responsible and appropriate actions in a social networking environment. The lessons are learned and the rules for our school community observed.

The students value this opportunity so much that they are prepared to observe the rules and enjoy the opportunity to be responsible participants who are able to create, communicate and connect in a fun, motivating and engaging way.

The opportunity to be trusted, develop confidence as social networkers and be constructive commentators is preparing these students to engage with the www community in a meaningful and discerning way.

This is a far more powerful way of having students learn about the www. All too often educators and education authorities try to block students out of sites that have great educational merit rather than teach them to be discerning aware global, digital citizens who actually know what is right and what is wrong.

Our presentation was his support act. We planned it using and a new tool called Prezi. 

Prezi is an interactive tool which allows for great flexibility of presentation. Click on the link to see the main themes addressed in the presentation.

We presented a recount of a week in the life of a class at Belmore South Public School  and their introduction to using Web 2.0 tools. 

The class is the new  Allstars09 and their teacher is  Kim Pericles.

For the week I was her co-teacher and we all had an interesting time.

There were so many things we learned together. The main thing we learned is that teaching “the how to” of Web 2.0 and then encouraging creative responses and ideas is very very hard.

The eventual results; however, are well worth the time, the endless questioning, effort and talking.

One of the groups who produced an excellent animation were Dushan and Verin. Roses Division has received a 4 Star rating on Goanimate.

Do you think it is clever? If so follow the  goanimate link and vote for their animation.

GoAnimate.com: Roses division Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!
 

Back in the classroom again but this time it is a luxury … an aid to set up the Macbooks and working alongside Kim.

We have a presentation to get together before Friday… with a new class.

Having the class for the first 45 mins of the day I couldn’t resist doing a bit of research. It was a fascinating exercise and the students were wonderful.

They were prepared to explore with me what it means to be students in the 21st Century and then either singly or in groups record their thoughts.

The thing that I found most interesting is that it is not only we the educators who need to make a huge paradigm shift to become 21st Century learners so do they.

How can students conceptualise what 21st Learning might look like if they only have 19th and 20th century models to refer to?

What views do they hear from home in the media? 

It was then that the questioning needed to take a different tack. We then explored what they considered to be the most important aspects of their schooling.

They feel they can communicate and collaborate really well. We talked about man going to the moon and especially about the Apollo 13 mission where creative problem solving saved the crews life.

Some suggested it is necessary to take risks and try doing things in different ways. Tony and Deon pointed out that if you do the same thing all the time nothing changes, nothing is exctiing. Doing things differently is exciting and interesting.

The boy, on the whole, were more animated and more engaged by the notion of risk taking, stepping outside the box, being creative and using technology to support the creativity.