This blog has moved ...

After over a year of deliberating, I've finally moved my blogging to a new site. Thanks for viewing what I have posted and let's continue the journey.

Please visit my new site at http://reflectingforward.weebly.com/ 

Fuzel Collage - very cool app for creating ... well, collages.

There are thousands of mobile apps for sharing images. New to the iPad (but not new to iPhone) is Fuzel Collage.

It's free, though does have some in app purchases that extend functionality, however I've used it a couple of times and have found that the built in functionality is just fine.

It allows you to create a simple collage or to create an animated collage where individual images appear for a few seconds before the final collage is displayed. This to me is where it likely has some really cool applications for knowledge sharing.

Here's a quick look at the interface for putting together a collage from items already on your camera roll.

Select your images.

There are plenty of options for arrangement and layout.

Animation gives the best finish in my opinion. You can choose music from your iTunes account and set the time for the images to arrive in your collage.

You can edit the layout.

There are many options for editing each image separately on your collage.

And there are enough options to share your finished masterpiece.

Sometimes technology underwhelms.

Sometimes you wonder what is the point.

I'm annoyed that a set of tools that I love using on my laptop and chromebook are useless on my device of preference, an iPad.

Google today released Slides for iOS and an updated Docs for iOS. They are both pretty much unusable for anything serious on an iDevice. I've waited for ages for Google to deliver some useful editing of Docs on iPad. Because I have a big investment in Docs, Forms and Sheets. On my laptop they have been my goto apps because of the ease of sharing and collaboration; and the functionality (except a table of contents that makes sense) was sufficient for my needs.

But my device of preference is an iPad. And now I'm tired of waiting for the functionality I want. I'm going to ditch Google's mobile apps. They just don't deliver any value.

The way I see it now I have 2 options for creation of documents - Apple's iLife or Microsoft's Office for iPad. Both are far more functional. Neither are what I would like. In reality I'll probably end up using Pages from Apple and Excel from Microsoft. I don't use slide shows much, so I'll probably use Apple's KeyNote if I have to.

You know what would be really cool?
A desktop version of Notability.

SAMR in 120 seconds

The SAMR model is a framework used to evaluate the technology being employed in your classroom. It has been developed by Dr Ruben Puentedura and has become a standard tool for many schools and individuals for reflecting on the use of technology in their classrooms - obviously with the aim of making changes to the tasks that students are working on.

The model is deceptively simple, and the following video shows you the model in 2 minutes, along with an example all the way through.

There are many references to the use of SAMR in schools, both in NZ and internationally. IMHO, SAMR is a really useful framework to help you reflect on what you are doing in your classrooms with technology. 

Here are a couple of images that try and explain aspects of SAMR - 

Hover over the green dots for more info.

This version has Bloom's for comparison sitting around the centre circle, and has a bunch of apps added around the wheel as some way of indicating what might work for various aspects of the model. [Do note that many apps can be used at many levels of any of these models, so the appearance (say) of Google Docs at the bottom right doesn't preclude using Google Docs in conjunction with activities in the upper left section of the screen.]

Click on image to see larger version

I've included the following links as places that you should find some value from if you want to explore further.

Using the SAMR model in an NZ school.

Kathy Shrocks guide to SAMR

Using SAMR to teach above the line

The good ol' days ...of 2008!

Was just going through some of the files I have in iTunesU in advance of a bit of research I'm doing around the use of LMS and similar tools in our environment here at school, and I came across a series of videos I had downloaded from "Learning and Teaching Scotland". Recognising Stephen Heppell as the commentator in these two videos made me have another look at what he said. Haver a listen - what Stephen said in Scotland "way back" in 2008 is still perfectly relevant, and will remain perfectly relevant into the future.

Pay particular attention to the role of the teacher as Heppell portrays it. Do you believe it? I know in my subject area of interest it is so true. Some of my Year 11 students are currently engaged in work and they are producing an output far in advance to the skills I would bring to the same task. But at least I have guided them this far, and I know where their next steps should be, and where they can get the skills they need if I don't have them in my head.

So listen for 2 minutes to Stephen on the School of the Future



and again on the aspect of Emerging Technologies (note that this was 2008!)

Storehouse - cool app for story telling on iOS

According to the iTunes tag, Storehouse is ...

Share your world through Storehouse. It’s the easiest way to create and discover beautiful stories.
Combine photos, videos, and text to meaningfully document your experiences. Publish your stories for friends and followers, or share them by email, Facebook, or Twitter. Explore stories created by your friends and our community of storytellers from all around the world.
BUILT FOR MOBILE
Storehouse was designed for mobile, from the intuitive touch-based interface to the way we allow you to create and share on-the-go.
UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY
We’ve made laying out photos, videos, and text so easy that anybody can create beautiful stories. Easily add photos and videos from your iPad Camera Roll, Dropbox, Flickr, and Instagram. You don’t need to be a designer to put together something stunning.
SHARE YOUR STORIES ANYWHERE
Stories look great on all screen sizes so you can rest easy knowing that you can share them with anyone.
DISCOVER STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Get inspired by exploring stories created by our global community. Instantly travel the world, learn a new skill, or discover interesting places and people, all from your iPad.

Here's their promo video.

It appears that Storehouse has just won an Apple design award in the past week or two as well. So, I gave it a try.

Firstly, the interface is clean and that usually makes for a simple app. And it pretty much is. The only issue I had was trying to find the embed link ... finally found it on the web view on my laptop - on your iPad is simply gives you the option to open in Safari, but the once there you can get the embed code for your website or blog. IMHO they should have this as an option on the final "publish" page too.

Anyway - here's my simple Storehouse just taken from some random pics from my camera roll. Embedded of course! This app could be used for any story that has plenty of visuals and short video. 

123D Catch - 3D Fun from AutoDesk

123D Catch is an AutoDesk product. It's free for your iOS device and there is a web version for your laptop available at http://www.123dapp.com/catch . There is also a PC version that you can download from the same site.

According to the iTunes description ...  

Use your camera to capture the people, places and things around you as amazingly realistic 3D experiences. Capture friends, sculptures, buildings or anything else you can photograph. Automatically transform them into interactive 3D models that can be shared with friends, family, and an ever growing community of 3D photographers.

• Turn your photos into realistic 3D models by taking a series of photographs from different angles.
• Be guided through the process of capturing all angles of your subject with the Integrated Photo Compass.
• Capture 3D portraits of your friends, museum displays, architecture, plants, cats or anything else you can photograph.
• Share your captures with friends through Twitter, Facebook, Email and SMS.
• Showcase your work and follow other amazing 3D photographers from around the world through the in-app gallery.
• Store your captured objects in the cloud to access them from all your devices.
• Use the 123D Catch web app for healing and 3D printing your captures in a web browser! (123d.autodesk.com/catch)
• Export 3D models in a variety of formats from the 123D online community for use in other 3D tools and projects.
• Works on your iPad/iPhone & iPod Touch.

I can recall using this app on my iPhone about 12 months ago and being underwhelmed. It was not easy to use and you always seemed to end up with models that were just too buggy for much other than showing that you could capture a 3D image. Since late last year the app has had a major refit and it now has a slick interface and is really easy to use. 

In the classroom next to mine the ever creative media studies teacher has been working with year 8 students on stop motion video and they have all these cute little models - including a Sylvanian families house. It looks like this ..

So, I tried to use 123D Catch to get a 3D image of it ... it looks like this at first cut.

So what? I hear you say. Well, unless you have an ulterior motive, then all you've done is use some disk space up, even if it is in the cloud. But, I just do happen to have an ulterior motive. In fact, a couple of them.

Ulterior motive 1: 

123D Catch lets you download your image in a number of formats.

So, I can take the .stl file into our 3D printing software and print out some replacement parts when the doors get broken.

Ulterior motive 2:

Some of my year 10 students are messing around with 3D modelling, animation and gaming using AutoDesk's Maya and Unity's Unity3D. I am too. Its all new to me, and I'm no a graphic artist. My game is about minions (and zombies) and I need a home base for my minions. So, I can take the mesh file of the Sylvanian house that 123D Catch gives me and take it into Maya, where I can make it the required minion colour.

From there I can output as an .fbx file for use in Unity and ...

... I have my minion base just on the outskirts of town! ( and my own minion on the edge of the path ... but that's another story).

Videoshop - Nice addition to iOS apps for simple publishing

According to its iTunes entry, Videoshop has the following attributes.

Videoshop is an easy video editor with fast editing tools, filters and many other effects for personalizing your videos.

FEATURES
1. Music: Integrate songs from your iPod to your videos.
2. Trim: Cut out any unwanted moments.
3. Slow motion: Adjust video speed to slow or fast.
4. Combiner: Merge multiple clips into one.
5. Text: Type your own text with color or various fonts.
6. Voice overs: Record your own voice over the video.
7. Sound effects: Choose from animals noises, farts, explosions, laughter, and more.
8. Animated titles: Introduce your videos with animated titles.
9. Filters: Select from several Instagram-inspired filters to enhance your videos.
10. Transitions: Choose from 10 transitions to animate between video clips.
11. Photos: Create slideshows easily.
13. Stop Motion: Create Vine videos with stop motion recording.
14. iTunes store: Access and purchase music directly from the app.
15. Reverse: Playback videos in reverse.
16. Copy: Create duplicate video clips.
17. High resolution videos: Supports up to 720p.
18. Share on Vine, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or by E-mail.

Now - what Videoshop does is the usual video composition stuff - it takes your pictures and existing video from your camera roll, but using all of the functionality above you get some cool results.... all very quickly.

Here are a few screen shots and a finished 40 second video. All took about 5 minutes this morning between classes. Really easy, really quick!  I got this app when it was free on the App Store though its regular price is around $2.50.

Apply effects and themes

Sharing options

Start screen

Original images

Original images

And the finished video using "vintage effect".

It's about Culture, stupid!

"The purpose of education is to focus on the culture of schools", says Sir Ken Robinson during his keynote on Day 1 of the recent EduTECH 2014 conference.

Along with 5199 other educators I sat in the dark of the Brisbane Convention Centre at 4:15 pm waiting for what (I'll be honest) I expected to be the absolute highlight of the conference. 90 minutes later I, along with most others in the auditorium, rose to give him a standing ovation. It was an incredible experience to listen to such a wonderful story teller.

Now - the messages? Well, there were some of the old ones. Creativity, industrial schools and the like. But the context had changed a little from the past. He spoke passionately about the current obsession with PISA results and their use as a ranking system. He is perfectly correct when he observes that education policy is now as important as defence policies in many western governments. He rolls out some incredibly powerful graphical representations of the changes in population growth in general, and the shifts from rural to urban in many of the big cities of the world. LA and Sao Paulo were particularly impressive with the scary growth that has happened there over the past 50 - 75 or so years.

Back the culture of schools as important. He talked at length about the nature of agriculture and the shifts in farming as industrialisation really kicked in. The shifts from diversity in the local farming area to one where mass production of crops, aided by machines and fertiliser, had changed the landscape (and the land). He spoke of the problems of soil health and disease that easily results from this type of farming, and a major response to this move has been to see organic farming increase in importance. Where if you get the conditions right (get the soil right) then diverse growth happens.

He talks of the 4 principals of culture: diversity, ecology, fairness and care.

He says that growth comes from beneath (and he shows a great visual of a tree to support this). He makes the point that politicians are usually only passing through, and very little of what they do will stick. Teachers must make the difference - the revolution must come from the ground up.

He urges teachers and educators to see the world through the eyes of students. Move towards more organic education. Move away from the battery hen format of curriculum and assessment to organic and free range.

He ends with two short videos - one that has been on Sunday (or 60 minutes) recently - the Landfill Orchestra and one from a school that I didn't quite catch - but was in the Middle East and looked at kids responses to the same task that had been worded differently. It was something around giving kids a partially completed drawing (in fact it only had a triangle in it) but one group of students was given the image with the instruction: "complete the house". The other was given the instruction : "complete the image". The difference between the outputs of the students was astounding. [I must find that video somewhere!]

I'll leave you with this short clip from Sir Ken's keynote. I hope more of it appears online in the coming weeks. It was an honour and a privilege to listen. It as the fastest 90 minutes of being "lectured" I have ever witnessed.


Sir Ken Robinson at EduTECH 2014 from EducationHQ on Vimeo.

A Smorgasbord of Ideas for the Classroom from EduTECH 2014

As well as the keynotes, there are sessions at conferences where you just need to balance them by finding some solutions that just might work in the classroom to make some of the big picture stuff glue together.

Think of them as the "but what will I do Monday period 1?" answers.

So this post just takes some ideas from a few of the sessions I attended and mentions them as places to go, apps to try or ideas worth exploring.

1. Microsoft OneNote Setup Tool for Teachers - now that OneNote has versions for PC, Mac, Surface, iPad, Android then this app has to be considered for some of the content creation, sharing, collaboration and feedback options. Now, I have to admit that if all Microsoft's products, OneNote is the one that I really think is pretty cool. It's more functional on a PC than a Mac or an iPad, but it still has some cool features on most platforms.

I stumbled upon a session that showed how this add on for OneNote in the Office 365  'store' allows you to construct complete workbooks for yourself, your course and your students and then deploy them automatically through OneDrive. The tool let's you customise the workbooks for students and then by default you can see all of theirs in your version, but they only see their own and any content that you have pushed out. It's new and it looks really cool. Can't wait I see if it works as they showed. 

2. Much talk around the power of programming or coding and it's place, or at least, it's lack of place in current school curricula. It is suggested that every student should know how to code to some degree. Those proposing this state that it is part of the natural flow to digital literacy, that students should know how to control the device and the network for their own creativity, rather than solely rely on using someone else's apps. So there were great examples in Gary Stager's session that showed the awesome art that comes from applying simple mathematic concepts using programming languages such as Scratch and presumably whatever the current version of StarLogo is. The stuff Gary showed was certainly cool. He was big on Turtle Art 

3. The Maker Faire concept. Again, promoted by Gary Stager, but his push on this came from his own passion that kids learn by making stuff. Of course, Gary was a student of the great Seymour Papert and Seymour of course was a firm believer that mathematics education in particular is need of a major overhaul. Gary talked about the recent Maker Faire in San Francisco which was attended by 150,000 people. 

He showed 'awesome Sylvia' and wow - be prepared to be blown away by this now 12 year old girl who was only 8 when she started her website. There are all sorts of ideas here.

You get a sense of how wonderful kids are when you see this from them ... this video from super awesome Sylvia was posted in 2010 ... as Stager says "this is what 8 looks like".

Now, just in passing, I wonder to myself at the use of language, technology, art, mathematics, science that is being shown here... lots of rhetorical questions spring to mind!

4. 3D printing. Build something useful. For the first time we can actually do this. Get kids to explore this. As Gary pointed out, often these 3D printers are tucked away from the 'main stream' classes where they are only seen by the 'dumb' kids in tech classes. (Ian McCrae from Orion Health says exactly the same thing!)
Gary referred to his book "Invent to Learn" and he also has a couple of new books due soon on 3D printing and featuring Super Awesome Sylvia!

5. Augmented Reality. Not too much going on here, but did attend a session by someone using Aurasma with school wide events. Worth exploring more as both teaching resource and letting students have voice. Can be used easily with QR codes if you are in to those or with any kind of trigger.  The guy I saw had used in conjunction with a 3D manipulation tool called Augment. Again, worth exploring. I've used Aurasma before and it's time I revisited it.

6. Chris Betcher is someone I first met at a show in Auckland several years ago. He's an enthusiast and always has good ideas. He ran through a potpourri of simple ideas, often iPad apps to do with image manipulation and photography. But he tried things and he has several ideas worth following. I particularly liked his repurposing of a politician's speech using Audacity and GarageBand. Chris is currently half way through an ambitious project of creating something new every day for a year. Check out his site at mydailycreate.com. His concept with this is that he might just uncover a few things that can be deployed in his classrooms as creative stuff for kids. I'll leave it to his blog to tell you about the apps and ideas that he has already done so far this year.

And as Chris says - "create is a daily activity'.

That's about it as a roundup from the "practical, doing" stuff. 

Living on the Future Edge

I've borrowed the title for this post from Ian Jukes of whom many of you will have heard. Ian's been around for a while now and delivers some pretty energetic keynotes. I watched him deliver the final keynote at EduTECH 2014 in Brisbane yesterday.

In this he gave a fast paced, emotive plea to Australian education to make the rapid change required to deliver the kind of education that will be relevant for learners of today an into the future. In his presentation he pulled no punches. He based much of his presentation on the work of Richard Florida and his Creative Class project, ( http://www.creativeclass.com/ ) and that of .... Clayton Christiansen and his Disruptive Innovation projects. http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/

Now, I'll have to admit that I have heard Ian before and while I have not read Florida or Christiansen I am aware of their work. So, it was good to hear and see what some of their research is showing, and I'll try and capture the essence of it as Ian shared it.

1. Many of us know the 'industrial' model that Sir Ken Robinson and others have described in some detail over recent years. We all nod in agreement that the Industrial Age has long gone and we are in the Knowledge Age. But as I sat and watched comments such as ...

'90% of routine cognitive tasks will be taken by either software or outsourced'

'By 2025 the average number of careers (note : not jobs, but careers) that school leavers can expect to have by the time they are 38 is 10 - 17’

'Part time is the new full time. The corporation of the future is the corporation of size 1. You will have multiple part time jobs with multiple organisations at the same time, all on contract.' [Ian gave an example of his own company hiring via oDesk. They posted a job on oDesk and within 20 minutes had 238 applicants. They hired a developer in India. oDesk does all the rest - keeping track of the work the developer does and sending this to Ian's company.]

2. The rate of change is/continues to be exponential.

Moore's Law still applies to the computing part. Doubling of the number of transistors every 18 months and halving the cost.

Fibre optic cable can transmit vast quantities of data at the speed of light. And I mean VAST ... And the speed of light is pretty quick from memory, too.

As Sugata Mitra observes, 'there is no need to know. There is the need to know how to know and when to know.' 

We have incredible amounts of data available. And the tools we have for manipulating that data and transferring it are incredibly powerful and cheap today on comparison to just a few years ago.

All of this leads to a crucial, and I would say tipping, point...

In the now, and in the future, there is a new learning disability. This is those who are digitally illiterate. Today and in the future, it is as important to be digitally literate as it is to read and write and do basic arithmetic.

This is big. How many of us believe that today's students, the so-called digital natives, are digitally literate? They may be tech savvy, but are they digitally literate? From my own experience I would say no. Many don't know file types, they don't know how to protect their systems from corruption, and if corrupt how to restore. They don't know the language of the network they depend on.  How many of our teachers and administrators are digitally literate? How many of our colleagues can use multiple devices, operating systems, applications and create their own content for the network in any form other than via a word processor and email?

As  Steven Johnson said, 'chance favours the connected mind' and if we really believe this, or of we even suspect this is true, then why is it that we have extensive discussions in schools about just how to block students from social media sites. Business and individuals are communicating via these means for real work and real learning and we want to ban them because we don't understand how to make our students aware that they are really useful tools. They are using them outside of our school networks anyway!

3. The world will only pay for what you can do with what you know.

Given that if you can harness the power of the networks to know, then what you do with this is critical. 

I loved this comment - Neck down is minimum wage! Neck up is where the money is.

And of course this is the non routine cognitive work that Florida talks about and that we hear so often is the domain of the 'creative class'. And the creative class jobs are increasing.

Now - this graph is quite scary for a country like NZ. We have a huge agricultural dependency. The jobs are rapidly going in numbers as smarter ways of farming, more technology and bigger machines replace the people aspect. So what do the rural people do? Move to the city will be one corollary to this. But also, given that the requirement is now to continually recreate our own knowledge base and skills, and given that the power of the network let's us do this anywhere, we need to be opening pathways for students to explore their creativity and to explore what it means to be in the space where knowledge value and creativity happens. In reality, they can do this,from anywhere. They don't need to be in 'school' to,do this. Sure there is a social role that schools provide, even a custodial role while parents are 'at work' ... but parents  aren't going to be at work in the future according to many of the futurists - they'll be at home ... so the kids can be too. Why will a parent in the future want to send their children to a school unless it serves some real vaue?

Creativity is facilitated by technology. There was no 'app' industry 5 years ago. Last year it generated $10 billion in revenues. There are 800,000 jobs in app development currently, growing incredibly fast.

This graph, again from Florida, shows that we are at around 25% of jobs in the creative class now. This will grow to around 50% in 2018. How many of our students are ready to move straight into this space as a result of what we are helping them with in our schools today?

Of course, the rest of the jobs are being replaced by smart software or outsourced to lower cost of manufacture and delivery countries.

As has been said many times before, we are in danger of becoming irrelevant to our students if we don't make the required changes in our classrooms to cope with this sea change going on around us. Our students will learn from where they see the value to them.

Again, I'm reminded of Mitra's work ... kids are not stupid. They have, as Robinson says, tremendous capacity for creativity. Mitra has shown that kids can and will learn on their own via the web if they have the desire. A question is then how do we harness the best of the web and develop the digital literacy skills for them in a way which is beneficial for all learners. This will require some considerable thinking and lots of action, testing and trialing and it will threaten many individuals and schools and systems of education. It worries me that in education we still spend so much time on planning and consultation and inclusiveness and equity and replanning and reinventing what already exists .... We need to apply more of Fullan's 'ready fire aim' and hurry things along. 

A final reflection. 

There is a convergence here. Whether it is Robinson, Mitra or Jukes or Florida or ... the messages are powerful and we are seeing the evidence all around in business of massive change. The explosion in mobile has driven this much faster than we thought. We've only had tablets and 'smartphones' for a few years, yet these have rapidly changed everything. They have brought the power of the network to everyone. And as Carly Fiorina said to Tom Friedman all those years ago, 'Tom, what you have witnessed so far is only the forging and sharpening of the tools. The real revolution is yet to come.' Well it's come. We're in it. This is sea change stuff and we'd better respond fast. Or the next generation will not be so keen on sharing their children with a system which is a relic.

'There is a default future rushing towards us,' says Jukes. 

Sometimes you only get one last chance to catch the wave.

Oh, and it's not optional either! 

The Future of Learning

Sugata Mitra is known for his "Hole in the Wall" research project in India in 1999. He's known for the TED Talks he has given. He's known for being the TED winner for 2013.

Today I had the privilege of listening to him for 60 minutes as the opening keynote speaker at EduTech 2014 in Brisbane. This post has a few of my observations and then links to his previous research.

Let's set the record straight from the start. This guy is so genuine. He's a modest, thoughtful, dedicated, intelligent, sensitive, reflective researcher. He speaks from his heart and his mind.

So - what did he have for us today? Sooo much ... where to begin ...

I'll begin where he did. He gave the now standard "today's schools are designed to produce conformity, obedience, instruction following" that is now the hallmark of many - Sir Ken Robinson in particular. But that's OK - because there are young teachers at this conference for whom the rationale for educations systems being constructed the way they are might be new.

But he quickly moved to the killer stuff for me. Here's my paraphrased backstory. He started some research in a non-English speaking area. The kids were Tamil. They were 12 years old. The question he left them with was something about DNA. They didn't speak English. The resources he left them with were basically Google and in English. As he states "a pretest would see then score zero, and when he returned in 3 months, a post test would show them score zero". He was stunned at the results. And so presumably is anyone who has followed the story.

So, he's gone on to show that 9 year olds left alone with an internet connection can answer GCSE questions and retain the information for 4 years!

He asks the question "Is knowing obsolete?" Not to say that "knowing how (and when) to know" is obsolete - quite different!

From his research and commentary we know that examinations see students at their lowest "ebb" for learning. We know that the "friendly adult" (aka Granny cloud) is a powerful motivator for kids. We know that his SOLE ( self organising learning environments) work. We know that these are potentially in conflict with what most think of  as 1:1 technology initiatives. We think (well, he does, and I don't know enough about them, but I know he knows more than me!!) that these SOLE environments are on the edge of chaos according to "Complexity Theory".

So what are my takeaways ...

• explore through practice these ideas 
• get some big questions applicable to our environment
• get some supporting "friendly adults" to support
• change the collaborative space
• enjoy the ride and the results

So - here are some of the backstories from Sugata. Thanks for the opportunity to share!

Chance favours the connected mind!

It's been a while since I posted ... so here goes a short one to get back into the swing of things.

Steven Johnson, author of "Where Good Ideas Come From", is someone new to me, and this short 4 minute clip to me gives great sway to why cultivating a PLN is so important in learning and teaching these days. We all want to have the great ideas, the creative ideas ... but if only we knew how ...

Listen to Steven as this animation gives you some good ideas about how to get those "good ideas". Think of the coffee house and the camp fire and the drinking hole ... and using your PLN and storing stuff away when you first hear/see it ... gives you some great ideas for developing your thoughts using tools that are there to help. Think Twitter, think blog, think EverNote, think RSS, think FlipBoard ...

This is a great starter for "getting started"!

"Chance favours the connected mind!" - awesome!

Extending Google Drive functionality - Lucid software - a great addition to Google Drive/Apps

One of the really cool things about Google Apps for Education (and other versions) is its ability to integrate with other web based applications. You can add applications to your GAFE or Drive account using the "Connect More Apps" button from the Create dialog box.

As you can see in the above image, two Lucid products are connected to my Google Drive account, Lucid Chart and Lucid Express. (More about Lucid Express shortly)

Earlier this year I stared using LucidChart with some of my senior students as they started to formalise their work around flow charting and programming. What surprised me was how quickly those that had a solid foundation of using GAFE became quite sophisticated users of Lucid Chart. (though in hindsight I probably shouldn't have been surprised)

Functionality is somewhat crippled in the free version - you are limited to 60 items, but you can always break the flowchart into several sections if you need to.

Of course, Lucid Chart does far more than just flowcharts - as the next item shows.

Summary - Lucid Chart is well worth a look. And there is an iOS app for it too!

Now - just a couple of days ago an email arrived announcing LucidPress. It looks very cool, its in Beta at the moment, but I have had a quick look and this is certainly a tool that I'll try and use for an interactive newsletter in the next week or so. Check it out here.

NZ Data at Wiki New Zealand

Came across this site the other day - Wiki New Zealand 

Didn't know it existed. Don't know how long its been around for. It's short and to the point - it houses data (and graphs) of stuff about NZ.

According to the site
"Wiki New Zealand was born on a picnic blanket, the product of a simple realisation: informed decisions are good decisions. To get the best outcomes for our communities, our country and our world, it is important to make decisions that advance ourselves. And while good is subjective, informed is not. To make informed decisions requires clear, digestible and unbiased information. This is Wiki New Zealand."

 A quick look shows all manner of interesting information ... being  a teacher I zeroed in on some that I thought might be of value to me ...

And this one too! Must drag this one out at the next review!!

I like the stated simplicity of the aims of the site - these next few lines grabbed from their site.

Building knowledge enables informed decisions, which leads to better outcomes. Data alone does not build knowledge, but it is a crucial component. Wiki New Zealand brings data together in one place and in accessible formats. Topics are presented from multiple angles, wider contexts and over time. Presenting this data in similar forms invites users to compare, contrast and interpret it easily and without bias.

Wiki New Zealand won’t tell you what to think. Its job is to present data on a wide range of subjects relevant to New Zealanders. Your job is to draw your own conclusions, develop your own opinions and make your decisions.

Wiki New Zealand is not entirely impartial. It is proud to have one agenda. Know your country.

The Individual Responsibility for Professional Development

Many teachers have some form of "personal learning network" or PLN. If you don't, then it isn't too late to start and, in fact, is pretty much essential to be a functioning participant in the environment of education we find ourselves these days. This is all because there is just so much happening that unless you are linked in somehow to "the network" the you are being left behind.

So, what does my PLN look like?

Well, I don't go far without my trusty RSS feeds from a few places that I couldn't do without.  I was gutted when Google killed off Google Reader earlier this year - but I've gotten over it slowly and I am now happy using InoReader as my aggregator and I prefer to read on my iPad using Feeddler Pro. Finding a few people to follow is not hard - the web is full of them. My feeds come from around 50 sources currently. No - I don't read them all - in fact I often have hundreds unread and so occasionally I purge the lot. But often I'll skim the headlines and go from there.

Twitter is another of those tools that I just couldn't do without. Not that I send a lot of tweets - but I send a few. But I do find the immediacy and shortness that 140 characters gives means that you get the message pretty quickly. Its also a great way to get a response to a question you have - just tweet your question and let the crowd respond. I also fond it useful to follow the hashtags for certain events - that way you get to see what others are talking about - related to the event.

The two of these tools work well with another favourite tool of mine - EverNote. EverNote is one of those tools that can be everywhere - I have it installed on my laptop, my iPad and my iPhone. It syncs with my RSS feeds via Feeddler Pro meaning I have access to all of my notes no matter what device I have. EverNote is far more than just a collection space though - you can share your notes and notebooks directly over the web and of course you can create audio and insert photos directkyminto your notes from an iPad - attach files etc, and clip pages from the web. I don't use anywhere near the number of features that it has, but being able to keep order to my RSS feeds that are worth keeping is great.

Of course, subject associations are a great place to learn. My subject has a useful website at NZACDITT, but of more value to me is the active discussion board they run via Google Groups. Most of these groups offer a range of automated updates via email - and I usually find one or two nuggets in each daily update - thanks to the contributions of others in the group!

Others that I use, but not as much as the above three, are LinkedIn, Symbaloo, Pinterest, NetVibes, Google+, Paper.li 

In the end - it doesn't much matter what you are using. What does matter is that you are using something and you are keeping up with the growing importance of digital competencies in your subject areas of choice.

Change comes from the ground up.

How to change education : from the ground up.

Readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of Ken Robinson. But this time he goes that little bit further, IMHO, and starts to touch on those aspects that we, as teachers, can actually work on to see change - the change that we've all been on about for the past 10 years ... As usual, the Knight says is better than anyone - so listen to this carefully ... and then I share some other thoughts below.

Wow! There is so much in these 24 minutes. What follows are my observations and thoughts - but I'll couch my comments now by saying that this video, plus what I read in the Herald today have given me further insight into my own position on learning and teaching and what should be done. So this particular post will have a couple of sequels ... so apologies if it seems a little disjoint at the moment. 

So - my key take always from this

• The basics of education are "why we do this", and not any particular group of subjects
• purpose of education 1: economic - but the economic environment now is vastly different than the one in which current systems of education were set up ... And today we need adaptability and creativity (IBM research). These are 'bottom line' competencies that business want today but they claim that our largely one size fits all system discourages.
• Purpose of education 2: cultural - in an increasingly global environment, we need to understand other cultures and perspectives well. Value systems are not the same. It's interesting to note that he refers to the Middle East dramas at present. I think you only need consider the changes in the likes of Egypt, Libya and the like over recent years - changes there have not been driven by the leadership in the country - it has been by the people in the street finally saying they've had enough.
• Purpose of education 3: social - and we need to engage. Our society needs to be 'rediscovered' by every generation - and we can't do this without open debate.
• Purpose of education 4: personal - education is about the individual. We know individuals are diverse, everyone has different talents, interests etc ... But a key driver in education today is still conformity.

Robinson then makes the point about governments in general ruling from the top down - the command and control position. And I think about our current environment here in NZ (by current I mean over the past 10 - 15 years) where it seems to me that the teacher unions and many of the teaching profession are in conflict with the Ministry of Education and the Minister in particular. "You cannot run a system by alienating the people who do the work."

 

So, if getting back to basics means getting back to the student/teacher interface, and don't clutter it with other stuff unless it adds to that relationship, then we will have to 'undo' a lot of the "institutionalised" structures we have built. I have maintained for a while that there is far too much 'compliance cost' in education these days - teachers are spending too much time doing everything but teaching - there is a form (or several) for everything. Then of course there is the incredible workload that is the assessment regime.

 

There are a few other points that Robinson makes in the last 5 minutes of his talk that I think might be in complete contrast with an article I have just read from Professor Elizabeth Rata from Auckland University, so I'll stop for now and revisit this is another post. I have the feeling that, for me anyway, there are a number of issues that are becoming increasingly clear about what we can do and where we should head, and I'm looking forward to trying to put all this together over the coming weeks.