Learning - Thinking - Playing

ICT Presentation - NZ School Perspective

The following video clip is a presentation from Luke Sumich, the principal at Summerland Primary School in NZ. This presentation was given to the ACCE Study Tour group visiting as part of the NECC study tour June/July 2008.
Luke's passion, drive and presentation style is inspiration and very direct, this is a great clip to show leadership teams and staff to help paint a picture of what is possible and what schools are doing with ICT, staff development and engagement. The video has been broken down into 3 parts.

I recorded this presentation on my Flip Ultra video camera - an example of the audio and video capacity.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

A second inspirational event - Mathtrain.TV

It is just after 3:30pm on Friday afternoon and I (we - the Ed Tech crew) have just had the pleasure of talking to an amazing educator (Eric Marcos) who has setup an online Maths Video sharing site called MathTrain - check out our podcast (Ed Tech Crew) when it comes out next week as it is an amazing story,
or go to the site and have a look:

Inspirational - the piano

I know it is not a Friday Funny - but very inspirational. For me it would rank up there with the theme from Schindler's List in regards to emotive response. Enjoy.

Lost Diggers - 26th May 2008

Today (26th May 2008) in a small field in France near the town of Fromelles, teams of Scottish and Australian archaeologists start a dig aimed at identifying missing Australian diggers missing since the Battle of Fromelles in World War I on the 19th July 1916.

I recently posted a story about ANZAC day and discovery of my family war time history. Since then I have immersed myself in this history and the sad story about the battle of Fromelles, which my great grandfather fought in. I will not linger on the battle but if you are interested in more details please read the book "Fromelles" by Patrick Lindsay - the thing to note is that this battle was the single largest loss of Australian life in a wartime conflict, even greater than Gallipoli.

From this research and discovery there is a chance that my great grandfather is one of the missing soldiers buried in Pheasant Wood and that today or in the subsequent days we might find out more information about these missing soldiers. Also as a side story to this whole event is the fact that the discovery of these soldiers and missing graves was only made possible by the research and dedication of a Melbourne school Teacher who undertook a personal mission to find these soldiers. To Lambis Englezos I am truly greatful.

The following picture is of the small plot of French land that will today hopeful shed light on the missing soldiers of Fromelles and possibly my great grandfather. Google Maps link...

For more details on the dig read this article...

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.

Imagine that technology in our schools - IronMan

I recently went to see the movie IronMan, I like my comic books and heroes and was keen to see this movie. I am not really going to write a movie review as that is for others and it is always such a subjective thing. No I want to talk about the small clips that appeared in the movie showing "Tony Stark" planning and developing his IronMan suit - these scenes are what I want to talk about.

Imagine having a 3D tool to display and map your ideas and designs and then with simple physical movements flick away components or ideas that you either didn't like or didn't require. Then as you idea develops you can place your hand or other object within this field to assess how it fits or looks. This is what we saw in the movie - interestingly as I watch these scenes I could not help but think of the educational application and capacity to use it as a tool to explore other locations and environment i.e. a natural extension of Google Earth. I also started to think about the use of it with words and concepts and the capacity to map things from a number of different points of view - not everyone would like this type of learning with visuals being a major component. But as a teacher imagine the learning and the developments that might occur when investigating data and real life information and looking at it in a visual 3D platform that can be easily manipulated with gestures, fine and gross motor movements.

If I then take the next step and link this type of technology with what was put in the paper this week about the development of emotion and thought control for video games (article) - then the possibilities are just astounding. Our teachers and students could be involved in activities based around holographic visual representations of data, concepts, resources, environments and they will have the capacity to modify and test ideas with motion and thought. And to cap it all off they could be doing this live with other students in other location anywhere in the world - working collaboratively and developing their knowledge and possibly even designing and developing for real world application.

I wonder how far off this is.......... it is great just to imagine. I hope I am around to see it.

ANZAC Day - personal links and capturing the past

For a very long time (actually from my secondary school days when I completed an English project) I have been interested in using video and audio to capture the memories, stories and experiences of our elderly Australians. Simply to try and collect the rich history about what lives were like in our past. Each year we are fast losing these memories with the fading of minds and passing of these Australians.

I have always enjoyed the movie Schindler's List - simply for the story and difference one person made during such a terrible time in our world history. It is from this movie that Steven Spielberg established The Shoah Foundation to videotape and preserve the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. And it is an extension of this idea that has always captivated me.

One of my long held dreams is to enable our students (anyone really) to go out into our communities and start to collect these stories, memories and experiences of our elderly and to then use technology to store and make available these stories - with the ability to link related and common elements so that anyone looking for specific ideas and topics can view multiple ideas. I have always envisioned this process taking place with either a video camera or audio recoding device, for me these technologies are now at a price point and access point that this activity could easily be started and undertaken on a large scale and I want to get things happening. I have always been a hoarder and collector of things that I think may become important or valuable in the future - and to me the collection of these memories is so important , not because we think we may do with them now but what future generations may want to do and use in the future.

This has all come into sharp focus for me because I have been starting to develop an interest in my family history, which really kicked off three and half years ago with the passing of my grandmother, someone who I later found out had such a magical and wonderful life - most of which I had never heard nor had ever had the chance to talk with her about. It is this loss for me that has driven this idea further. On the passing of my grandmother I was given some papers and materials that she had collected from other family members about our history and what an interesting story (for me anyway).

One of my responsibilities pass to me is the care of our family medals from relatives that fought in the two world wars. It is my great grandfather who fought on the Western front that has triggered all these memories. Whilst I was in Echuca with friends I was reading the Weekend Australian newspaper and there was an article in the paper entitled "2000 sacrificed on worst day of butchery" which talks about a tragic unnecessary slaughter at a place called Fromelles in France. In that article is a list of all the solders killed on that day, and my great grandfather was one of them. Upon further investigation I have since found that the Australian War Memorial is try to collect the images of all Australian that have fallen in war (Roll of Honour Photographs) and that from the 2000 soldiers that died that day in Fromelles - there are only 17 images. As of today there are 18, I have photo's of my great grandfather that I will send to the war memorial to be copied and placed on public record. And it is this link and effort to collect our history that has again sparked my interest.

My ideas, funding ideas and structure is still being developed, if you are interested in being involved please contact me @ tony@itmadesimple.com

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Lest We Forget

stroke of insight

An amazing story.....

They’re playing it too safe

I came across the following article the other day entitled "The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes" it resonated strongly with me in regards to the work I do, the consultancy activities I undertake and the general business decisions I make. Funnily enough I have a quote I carry around that says "Have the courage to fail - if you're not failing, you're not taking enough risks."

This quote is from Mark Burnett - and if you are scratching your head wondering who he is, well he is the creator of the reality TV shows "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" and when you hear his story of how he developed his business from nothing when he first arrived in the US to what he has achieved it really gets you thinking, I also like the shows a little.

The main points I get from the article and quote is that making mistakes is all a part of learning - yet as people in general we are conditioned to not try and make mistakes, which may not be the best thing for us. I believe that this mistake making ties in with creativity and links with what Sir Ken Robinson was talking about in his TED presentation which I blogged about here.

To me creativity and making mistakes go hand in hand, I experiment and test ideas/thoughts/activities and hopefully I end up with something I like. Sometimes it goes wrong, it is what I do when it goes wrong that is the key for me - I need to learn from these experiences and take this learning to help in my next experiment.

Let's make sure we make the most of our mistakes, and not be afraid to make them and that our children do the same thing so that they grow and learn without being afraid of failure, as funny as it seems we need to get over this to truly move forward.

 

Immersion - Artistic views from another angle

I am always in awe of the skills of artists and musicians - the capacity of humans to make such varying forms of art has always inspired and energised me. The following clip provides another way that technology can be used to provide a different view of those artistic endeavours.

And who said second life had not potential learning or educational benefit. Take the time to watch this inspiring clip