Having a little spare time up my sleeve I was able to have an explore through youtube and see what was out and about that might provide ideas, inspiration and challenges. I found a couple of clips worth having a look at. The first clip is called "Origami Animation" - a great clip to highlight the process of stop motion animation and a simple idea.
Talking about things that challenge us and inspire us - my friend Deb has done it again and sent the following link to me: Digital Ethnography.
On the site is a great clip which I have embedded here. This video challenges thinking at all sorts of levels. See what you think - a great resources to use in a staff meeting to get discussion happening:
A number of times I have posted on my blog things about games and game playing (Halo 3, ADF, Wii, Games on the Road etc), over the weekend a 'fan' of mine, and I say fan as she is part of my Del.icio.us network and we have reciprocal links sent me site that I might find interesting. The site called Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation from Jamie McKenzie site FNO. I first came across Jamie at a presentation in Alice springs in the late 1990's, I was never really inspired or engaged by Jamie but I enjoyed the challenges his ideas posed, so I have continued to follow his work for some time.
This latest article as takes up an interesting discussion around the ideas of Marc Prensky (a person I do find engaging and challenging) and his notions and ideas around the digital natives vs the digital immigrant.
Why I have felt compelled to write about it, is that one thing that has always struck me and dare I say it made me feel a little annoyed is Marc's notion of a digital divide between people of certain ages. I have always thought that some of this is purely to beat up an issue to make it 'enrage' more senior members of the community that do not fit in the supposed 'Digital Native' category. I was lucky enough to be born just as computers made their way into classrooms (Commodore64, Apple IIe), just as the atari game systems entered homes and I was fortunate enough in Alice Springs to have school leaders that saw the emerging IT environment and invested in labs and rooms with computers for student access. In the mid 80's I had teachers with high level IT backgrounds working with students on BBS systems (public Bulletin Board Systems) with students in the UK and USA. I worked on award winning publishing projects run out of the UK communicating, chatting and emailing schools long before it was considered vogue.
I am one of many in this mould and whilst Marc's interest and evangelism about games and game building really inspires me, I do have to balance my views with that of my generation and what we did as an Australian - with a different take on the world. The article is worth having a read, and it is worth considering what a debate would be like between the two! And this is what education and learning is about, being able to see both sides of an argument, being able to discuss and talk about issues and have the capacity within each of us to know that what we do is valuable, that each of us is at different points on a learning/experience continuum and that talking, sharing, exploring together will make us all more knowledgeable and skillful.
Thanks for the link Deb, this one got me thinking...
Tags: Jamie McKenzie, Marc Prensky, Games, Del.icio.us, debate, digitalnativies
Recently i was trying to catch up on the growing amount of magazines and readings i have sitting around and i came across the term Lifelogging (see lifelog). I had not heard the term before and was intrigued by the concept. I have in the past played around with trying to record a form of diary but always found that it was difficult to remember to follow up and record yourself, although getting a laptop with an inbuilt camera makes a huge difference.
Lifelogging is as you would expect the recording of your life and activities through all aspects - conversations, phone calls, sms, email and web pages - even down to what you did during the course of a day. I find this an interesting activity and whilst the majority of people will not undertake this level of recording there is still something to be said about the ability to capture the important moments or the moments that are important when we look back. I believe that social networking sites (myspace, facebook, bebo) are the start this type of life recording, the children and young adults of today will in most cases continue to use social networking sites as a way to communicate and stay in touch with friends as well as form relationships, add to this the developing technologies that make capturing voice, email, video easier and simpler and we start to have the foundations of an environment where major parts of their life can be recorded.
Image for a moment what potentially our grand children will be able to watch and view about our lives, experiences, personalities and individual traits - make you think about the recordings that are made, do we want people to see us in all our glory or will be subjectively refine and select the views and experiences we wish to share.
In thinking about the term lifelog and its implications for the classroom, imagine asking students to develop and create a lifelog for a solider fighting at Gallipoli in World War 1 if they had all the current technology available too them -
What would they say, show and share?
What would it look like and what implications would it mean for all the families in Australia especially given the huge loss of life?
How would friends deal with news of the fallen dead
How would they communicate it on a lifelog knowing that the dead soldiers families might read it?
What images might a solider take of what they experience?
I need to share a recent blog entry by Mark over at 21st Century Skills (not because Mark rates as the highest commentator on my blog) but because his post points to a resource I had not previously come across but looks to have a lot of potential to share lessons, resources and ideas.
The Australian Lesson Exchange
(ALE) is a relatively new wiki for all Australian Educators from all
states and territories. Its a place to share your stuff! Fellow Aussie
edubloggers may like to check it out!
With the recent interest in Australian Citizenship and the
test people are now required to take to become an Australian, I could not help
but share the following - nothing to do with ICT or computers:
To be an Aussie you'll need to be
able to pass this test.
LANGUAGE
Do you understand the meaning, but are unable to explain the origin
of, the term "died in the arse"?
What is a mole?
Are these terms related: chuck a sickie; chuck a spaz; chuck a U-ey?
Explain the following passage: "In the arvo last Chrissy the
relos rocked up for a barbie, some bevvies and a few snags. After a bit of a
Bex and a lie down we opened the pressies, scoffed all the chockies, bickies
and lollies. Then we drained a few tinnies and Mum did her block after Dad and
Steve had a barney and a bit of biffo."
CUSTOMS
Macca, Chooka and Wanger are driving to Surfers in their Torana. If
they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca
Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a
brown eye and having a slash?
Complete the following sentences: a) "If the van's rockin' don't
bother _____ b) You're going home in the back of ______ Fair suck of the ______
I've had a gutful and I can't be fagged. Discuss
Have you ever been on the giving or receiving end of a wedgie?
Do you have a friend or relative who has a car in their front yard
"up on blocks"? Is his name Keith and does he have a wife called
Cheryl?
FOOD
Does your family regularly eat a dish involving mincemeat, cabbage,
curry powder and a packet of chicken noodle soup called either chow mein, chop
suey or kai see ming?
What are the ingredients in a rissole?
Demonstrate the correct procedure for eating a Tim Tam.
Do you have an Aunty Myrna who is famous for her tuna mornay and
other dishes involving a can of cream of celery soup?
In any two-hour period have you ever eaten three-bean salad, a chop
and two serves of pav washed down with someone else's beer that has been nicked
from a bath full of ice?
When you go to a bring- your-own-meat barbie can you eat other
people's meat or are you only allowed to eat your own?
What purple root vegetable beginning with the letter "b" is
required by law to be included in a hamburger with the lot?
CULTURE
Do you own or have you ever owned a lawn mower, a pair of thongs, an
Esky or Ugg boots?
Is it possible to "prang a car" while doing "circle
work"?
Who would you like to crack on to?
Who is the most Australian: Kevin "Bloody" Wilson, John
"True Blue" Williamson, Kylie Minogue or Warnie?
Is there someone you are only mates with because they own a trailer
or have a pool?
Would you love to have a beer with Duncan?
The people to be granted citizenship are the ones who call it a crock and cheat.
The mighty Geelong Cats won the AFL premiership on the weekend, defeating Port Adelaide by a record margin of 119 points. I was lucky enough to get a ticket to attend my first grand final to see my team win its first premiership in 44 years - as an avid photographer I had taken my camera along to capture the memories.
The next day I loaded my images from my camera onto my MacBook Pro through iPhoto, like a lot of photo management programs you are given the option either prior too or after importing your images to delete the photo's from your camera. Like most times I selected the 'delete' option (I guess you can see where this is going). As I was viewing my images in iPhoto and changing the orientation of some I hit a small snag - the program stopped and started to think, and think, and think, and think. Not wanting to sit around and wait I forced the program to quit, I then opened up iPhoto again and to my shock and horror the last imported images were not listed, nor could be found on the mac or digital camera. I was mortified and a little p###ed off - how could this happen.
After ranting and raving for a little while I sat down and started to apply some logical thinking processes to the situation I was in - firstly the memory card in the camera is a little like a hard drive in the way information is stored and that when photos are deleted they are not actually deleted but just the information that shows that the photo's existed was deleted. A little like removing your letter box - you are still living in the street, people just do not have a simple and easy way to find you.
I then set about looking for digital image recovery software to help me with my situation, amazingly there is a lot of software out there that can help. I came across the following program that was very basic, free and easy to use: http://www.download.com/PC-Inspector-Smart-Recovery/3000-2242_4-10261986.html
I recovered all my files and was again happy and in alignment with the world. So what did I learn from this whole situation:
When transferring images from your camera to the computer do not auto delete until images are safely stored on my computer.
Make sure I back up my images regularly (I really do not want to lose any again)
We should all know these steps and they are very simple, yet how many times do we forget them.
