Learning - Thinking - Playing

Who's your Yoda

The other day I was lucky enough to get a back door invitation to listen to a session for teachers by Marco Torres. I have heard a lot of positive comments about Marco and and so was really keen to see him in action and listen to what he had to say.

One of the things he covered in the session I attended was about having mentors or people that you can look too for support, guidance, even feedback. The term that Marco used was "who is your Yoda", being a play on the StarWars character Yoda; a jedi master who tutors Luke  in the way of the force. Recently I had not payed a lot of attention to this part of my life and personal growth. During the session I got too thinking about who I actually had as my mentors and funnily enough I realised that the mentors I have are both human and abstract in a sense. Since my work and life has moved into the online world so much I  would actually class podcasts and blogs as a form of mentor where I draw inspiration, ideas and feedback. Whilst these tools help me with this role, I am missing having a mentor that I can chat and communicate with IRL around my ideas and actions and thoughts.

Marco also talked about having people in your "nowNetwork" where you can get support and guidance quickly and easily - your Yoda and nowNetwork are vital for various parts of your life. So who are yours:

* Professional
* Personally – Friends
* Personally – Family
* Technology

One of the other little gems I picked up from the session with Marco was a new item from funtwo - the young man that posted his guitar solo of 'pachelbel canon'. He has a new video, well new to me. I have embedded it here for your pleasure.

Thanks Don.

Juggling - I wonder if they still do this at Uni

When I studied for my primary teaching degree at a wonderful place in Adelaide called Magill, I majored in physical education and related disciplines. One of the activities we had to undertake in our first year course was to learn how to juggle , which led onto circus skills. The idea around this activity was for me as a student to explore and understand skill acquisition and development as well as putting myself in a zone of learning that was not initially comfortable. This situation is so relevant today with the acquisition of skills and knowledge with ICT, it may not be physical but for a lot of people the acquisition of skills and knowledge is seen as a major risk.

The following TED clip is from Michael Moschen (2002) on juggling i like this clip because of its links to applying this skills with learning - the complexity of the skill development and the capacity to break down the skills and applications. Watch for the demo and discussion around the 5 ball juggling pattern and his breakdown of the skill and links to learning - "why the hell should I learn this".

Just for the record I can still juggle today.

A big shout out to Mauritius

Just recently I started to add a few features to my blog site - have had trouble finding time to do so. Anyway one addition was a FeedJit Traffic Map - I just wanted to say a big HELLO to the person in Mauritius that visited my site. I hope it was of interest and helpful. If you come back again please drop me a comment.

Not a funny but a fun one...

When I was a full time primary classroom teacher I used to get my class to makes these mouse trap cars - it always provide great entertainment and provided a way for students to test hypotheses about the size of the drive lever, wheel base, wheel size and configuration etc.

The following video does a great job in detailing what you need to do - for those that work in metric the follow link may be of use - metric conversions.

Mousetrap Powered Vehicle! - A funny movie is a click away

Education Departments - IT section misfits

I write this blog with a lot of personal experience (and it is a follow up to a previous post on Slow moving systems), I was once in a senior position within an Education Department IT Services unit and saw first hand the issues that are faced. It is interesting as a teacher that I was able to get into such a position at a relatively young age without having to go through the bureaucratic condition that befall many in these departments. I do have to say that this was my undoing - although I was good at the job I had to do, I had to go outside the prescribed government structures to get things done in a timely and efficiency manner (for me). This did not mean I committed anything criminal, I was just very strategic and worked the system to its fullest, which is another story.

From my experiences and observations the following became evident - this comes from work in and with a number of Australian government educational systems:

• Within these departments there are lots of good people with great ideas and strategies to help schools, the problem is they are at a level where they cannot make a meaningful difference, they do not have the right connections higher up the organisation or they do not have the support of their managers to help foster ideas and developments.
• Many in these IT departments are managed by people that have little experience outside government systems and only know how to work within red tape and bureaucracy, stifling change and innovation. Nearly all have no idea of the real tools that students and teachers are using to enhance education.
• Many technical staff members in these departments have very large egos and do not like to admit being wrong or making a mistake (see my post on this). Many technical staff do not know how to relate to teachers nor are interested in bridging this divide, many do not know what real customer service is, some do not have a clue about what the core business of education departments are and that is to provide education to students and so by providing the best possible service to schools and teachers. There are some techs that do a Stirling job - but they are generally far and few between and if smart get out of these environments.
• The senior management within IT departments tend to be only concerned with a few things - making sure their bosses are not upset, covering their arses and trying to develop a budget for the big things and cutting the items that are generally making a difference.

The following link to an article by Martin Levins is really what got me going on this subject and just highlights the idiocy of those that manage and work in some of our Educational IT Service Departments. 

Come on guys - start getting with the program and stop being a barrier for innovative students and teachers to jump over.

Recycle Water Bottles

I had to post this clip simply for the great ideas as well as for the environmentally friendly ideas - I liked the camera tripod.

2 Liter Recycling - A funny movie is a click away

Making Mistakes Pt II

Recently I posted my thoughts on making mistakes and playing it safe, and as I sit here catching up on other blog posts I came across this post by Vicki Davis the Cool Cat Teacher who also talks about students making mistakes, she has included a video clip from YouTube called "Let Me Fall Cirque Du Soleil" which I have included here. I like the clip, Thanks Vicki.

The Why 2 of Web 2.0 - my take...

Today I had the opportunity to attend a professional learning session titled "The Why 2 or Web 2.0" in Sydney. In general the session had an audience consisting of a very large number of teacher librarians with a nice even spread of primary and secondary representatives. More information and takes on the next episode of the EdTechCrew.

The presenters today were:

• Will Richardson (Educator and Writer) Blog - Wiki
• Westley Field - Director of Skoolaborate
• Judy O'Connell - Head, Library and Information Services, St Joseph's College
• Christine Mackenzie - CEO Yarra Plenty Regional Library

Will talk about the idea of looking through a lens for this presentation - as a parent (his perspective) He indicated that he has very few answers but has a number of very good questions.

Will talked about the idea everyone with a mobile phone with a camera is know really a journalist - report, and can use there networks to distribute ideas and stories. A direct example occurred in Sydney yesterday where there was a shooting at Star City casino where a person was shot twice. Channel 10 news ran the story and used good quality images from above the crime scene taken by a member of the public.

An interesting stat to come out of the presentation was that IBM internally have 26,000 blogs and that the company whats to get employees to share their knowledge and ideas. Things are changing around the read write web.

The use of social networking sites to do things differently - the story of a student that passed away at his old school and within a few hours a site was set up in memory of the deceased student and people came to share there stories and memories of this person - within a very short time 400 people we members of this page. Students using these tools in fundamentally different ways than what adults would think off.

A few books talked about that I am planning to check out include:

• Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky see you tube video on his thoughts here...
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
• Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Unabridged)
• The World is Flat
• The Book is Dead (Long live the Book) - Sherman Young

Will talked about the ideas that there are lots of kids that do not have access to go instruction on say biology - we should be teaching them to find and locate this information/content. We should then be enabling these students to create networks with others and collaborate around the idea of biology. The fact that these networks could be located anywhere in the world should really not matter.

We need to talk about how we educate our children to find information not to remember information because it is contained in a test - we need to teach them how to find information, how to validate and confirm information and how to share that information and make the best use of it for the task or activity at hand.

Teach students and teachers to read contextually online - being able to read and write hyper textually is a key skill to develop

A great wikipedia story from the presentation - a student did a bit of work on an assignment (fairly rubbishy) then posted it onto wikipedia and watched as others put information and details in to make it a very good assignment. Although he got a poor mark for his work (which was really not his) he should have received and A for the thinking and application to get the required information in such a creative way.

Wesley Field talked about online environments and the 2007 Horizon report.

Showed an example of a new $15M building that will be built at MLC in Sydney for the Junior school- he showed on screen a second life virtual representation of the new building that was constructed by a 17 year old student that has allowed teachers and others to explore the environment and look at the furniture and colour schemes. A really great application - more importantly was the fact that a student was engaged in building this and that this virtual representation was able to help the designers as well.

Wesley then went onto sow an empty shopping centre that could be used by students to do research and build their own shops and look at the development and growth of shops - layout, costs, business models and a whole range of other areas. A very powerful idea and one that would enable amazing opportunities for students.

I found myself in the sessions doing what our students would do, I had my laptop connected to the Internet and when I was not developing ideas around what I was hearing or looking at sites that have been mentioned I would drift off and follow up other ideas - although it may have looked like I was not paying attention - I was but doing it my way in a multi modal way.

Overall a good day - some of the presenters lacked a little direction in their message and one seemed to meander a little but otherwise a great day all up.

Good to meet you Chris and all those others I met.

A video to share with your staff - Learning to Change

The wave of change is fast approaching...

Why 2 of Web 2.0 - Will Richardson

Currently at an event in Sydney listening to Will Richardson - you can also check it out here on uStream (will post more later including audio and footage from my flip):