Have just watched Geoffrey West give a talk on the "simple" mathematics that governs the growth of rats, people, cities and companies. Well worth 17 minutes of anyone's time.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
What happens when you let 13 year old students take control of their own learning?
Been thinking of how to write this post for a while ... and have decided to just let the student work speak for itself.
What follows are some examples of student work from a group of 13 year old girls who have were challenged to do something that they would be proud of ... something that they could show their parents and teachers that what they had done was of value to both them and to others as well.
First up is a website that a couple of girls put together for our Social Sciences faculty in an attempt to revamp their resources for teaching a unit to Year 8 students on biosecurity. These girls actually placed 3rd in the TVNZ Netguide Web Challenge last year.
Another student created a website on the holocaust, inspired by her religious studies teacher.
This student has a sporting outlook on life - so she set herself a goal of developing a website that looks at sports for the 2012 London olympics.
If you have a good look at all of these sites, you'll see the quality of the work these girls have put in. Add to this the fact that they had to research the various tools (eg Weebly, Google sites, Wix, Yola etc) to find the one that gave them the result that they were looking for. In most cases that meant that first choices of web building tool was not the one that made the cut ... often girls found that the site they had chosen didn't give them the outcome they wanted and they had to go back and rethink their choices. Add to this that they had to find the tools themselves ... little or no direction came from me ... the "guide" said "you know what the task is ... you find the tool to suit".
Another project these students were asked to do was to tell a digital story using Scratch software ... so there was some restriction here ... they had to use Scratch (it was a programming module after all), but the students had free range of the story they wanted to tell - the only requirement again was that they needed to be proud of their work. To be honest, many of the students produced outstanding work, but I chose this one to show here ... the sound is poor (haven't worked out why), but the student who created this had never used Scratch before and her story was a well known Maori legend ... enjoy it
What follows are some examples of student work from a group of 13 year old girls who have were challenged to do something that they would be proud of ... something that they could show their parents and teachers that what they had done was of value to both them and to others as well.
First up is a website that a couple of girls put together for our Social Sciences faculty in an attempt to revamp their resources for teaching a unit to Year 8 students on biosecurity. These girls actually placed 3rd in the TVNZ Netguide Web Challenge last year.Another student created a website on the holocaust, inspired by her religious studies teacher.
This student has a sporting outlook on life - so she set herself a goal of developing a website that looks at sports for the 2012 London olympics.
If you have a good look at all of these sites, you'll see the quality of the work these girls have put in. Add to this the fact that they had to research the various tools (eg Weebly, Google sites, Wix, Yola etc) to find the one that gave them the result that they were looking for. In most cases that meant that first choices of web building tool was not the one that made the cut ... often girls found that the site they had chosen didn't give them the outcome they wanted and they had to go back and rethink their choices. Add to this that they had to find the tools themselves ... little or no direction came from me ... the "guide" said "you know what the task is ... you find the tool to suit".
Another project these students were asked to do was to tell a digital story using Scratch software ... so there was some restriction here ... they had to use Scratch (it was a programming module after all), but the students had free range of the story they wanted to tell - the only requirement again was that they needed to be proud of their work. To be honest, many of the students produced outstanding work, but I chose this one to show here ... the sound is poor (haven't worked out why), but the student who created this had never used Scratch before and her story was a well known Maori legend ... enjoy it
Ultimately, the girls all reported that they had learned a lot and enjoyed the freedom of choice of project. The quality of work speaks volumes for the spirit in which the girls approached these projects. I hope you enjoy them.
Monday, July 11, 2011
What price 14000 resources for teaching and learning ... try free!
The PBS (public broadcasting service) has a track record of providing some pretty useful resources for teachers. I've used several resources (like the "Growing up online" resources) many times. Now PBS have made over 14000 resources available free of charge for teachers here.
As you can see from the image above the search options are pretty standard, and once your search is done you can see the type of resource (see below)
According to the PBS site ...
"This next-generation digital media service empowers PreK–16 educators to re-imagine classroom learning, transform teaching, and creatively engage students. It brings together the best of public media, produced specifically for educators, from PBS, WGBH, and 55+ public media partners. This flexible service includes high-quality content tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards. The service is freely available to educators as a basic service that can be enhanced with premium solutions for schools and districts-designed for seamless media integration and customization. The basic service offers:
- Unique access to best-in-class resources from PBS producers and partners and technology resources tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards
- A robust content library of thousands of digital core curriculum resources, designed with today's student in mind
- Carefully created, purpose-built media: videos, interactives, audios, lesson plans, multimedia, professional development, and more
- Ability for educators to search, save, share, and review content
- Cross-platform flexibility to display on classroom presentation tools to mobile devices."
"There are five types of media resources in the service: Audios, Documents, Images, Interactives, and Videos. Many resources include supplemental materials such as lesson plans, discussion questions, and background essays.
To view a media resource, first click on the media resource title or thumbnail image of a resource from your search results. This will open the resource page identifying additional information about the resource. Click on the large image to play an audio, video, or interactive, or, to enlarge a document or image resource. Videos can be enlarged to full screen by clicking on the four arrow icon to the right of the volume control below the media image.
The service includes individual resources and groups of resources designed to be used with one another. Group resources include a "Group Index" on the right side of the page. To view an individual resource within the group, click the resource within the index. It will appear on the left side of the page."
To me, this looks like it should be part of every school's repertoire of online resources.
To view a media resource, first click on the media resource title or thumbnail image of a resource from your search results. This will open the resource page identifying additional information about the resource. Click on the large image to play an audio, video, or interactive, or, to enlarge a document or image resource. Videos can be enlarged to full screen by clicking on the four arrow icon to the right of the volume control below the media image.
The service includes individual resources and groups of resources designed to be used with one another. Group resources include a "Group Index" on the right side of the page. To view an individual resource within the group, click the resource within the index. It will appear on the left side of the page."
To me, this looks like it should be part of every school's repertoire of online resources.
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Entitlement to Change
Last week saw the NetHui conference in Auckland - a meeting of some of the best minds in NZ to discuss the future of the internet and what our parts were in it. Now, apart from the obvious question "What was I doing there?" - there were a number of takeaways from the conference - but the biggest came from Larry Lessig. Many of you will know that Larry is a Harvard law professor, and is co-founder of the Creative Commons. He was the keynote speaker on Friday morning - and the 40 minute presentation he gave has left me in a somewhat mixed state ... a state of both unease and excitement.
Unease, because in a time of intense change, change by its very nature creates unease. Excitement because we are in those times where the network is allowing anyone to claim their "entitlement" and to recreate culture. He talks of "entitlement" and "entitlement yielding change" often in his early part to his talk. I'd encourage anyone to watch this - it is challenging. It's 42 minutes.
If you are interested in how the web, this network, is "yielding change", then these 42 minutes will fly past.
How will students exercising their "entitlement" affect what we do in our schools? This is the big question for me. Anyone got some thoughts?
Unease, because in a time of intense change, change by its very nature creates unease. Excitement because we are in those times where the network is allowing anyone to claim their "entitlement" and to recreate culture. He talks of "entitlement" and "entitlement yielding change" often in his early part to his talk. I'd encourage anyone to watch this - it is challenging. It's 42 minutes.
If you are interested in how the web, this network, is "yielding change", then these 42 minutes will fly past.
How will students exercising their "entitlement" affect what we do in our schools? This is the big question for me. Anyone got some thoughts?
Sunday, July 3, 2011
DESMOS - new tool for the Maths student
There are lots of pretty cool maths tools out there these days. Another has arrived, and works in a browser. It's pretty cool. Have a look at the video intro below
Desmos is easy to use, very easy to use. Students will love it. Head to here to use it.
Here's an example of the output.
Desmos is easy to use, very easy to use. Students will love it. Head to here to use it.
Here's an example of the output.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Livebinders - another cool sharing tool for the classroom
I have been meaning to give Livebinders a serious work out for some time, and took the opportunity last night to rearrange a pile of stuff I've been wanting to share with staff at our school for some time, but hadn't found the tool to quite do it.
Here's my problem ... like most of us, I read a lot, usually reading my RSS feeds via Feedler Pro on my iPad. When there is something I want to keep or share with someone else I made the decision I didn't just want to email the link to others - I wanted a way to share with others the rich 'original experience' of the original item. So, I started looking for a tool that could collect all of the items I wanted to keep. I'd been an EverNote user for a while, so decided to try this - and it works well for collecting all of the articles.
The next problem was what to do with all of the articles ... by default they all end up in the same EverNote notebook - so last night I rearranged, merged, tagged items and also created a series of notebooks for the major topics I'm interested in. Then by dragging and dropping the "notes" into the right notebook I have a series of notebooks that can be shared with anyone.
The last piece of the puzzle is to use LiveBinders to present the entire set of notebooks to my audience. The process is simple - head to LiveBinders, create a free account and start creating a digital ring binder with as many tabs as you like - you can put all sorts of content into a tab.
Here's a short video from the Livebinder web site.
For my first its as simple as adding the shared URLof my Evernote notebooks.
So, give Livebinders a try ... they are easy to set up, and very easy to add content to. I can see these being very efficient ways of creating digital textbooks for students, and for students to create digital artifacts.
Here's my problem ... like most of us, I read a lot, usually reading my RSS feeds via Feedler Pro on my iPad. When there is something I want to keep or share with someone else I made the decision I didn't just want to email the link to others - I wanted a way to share with others the rich 'original experience' of the original item. So, I started looking for a tool that could collect all of the items I wanted to keep. I'd been an EverNote user for a while, so decided to try this - and it works well for collecting all of the articles.
The next problem was what to do with all of the articles ... by default they all end up in the same EverNote notebook - so last night I rearranged, merged, tagged items and also created a series of notebooks for the major topics I'm interested in. Then by dragging and dropping the "notes" into the right notebook I have a series of notebooks that can be shared with anyone.
The last piece of the puzzle is to use LiveBinders to present the entire set of notebooks to my audience. The process is simple - head to LiveBinders, create a free account and start creating a digital ring binder with as many tabs as you like - you can put all sorts of content into a tab.
Here's a short video from the Livebinder web site.
For my first its as simple as adding the shared URLof my Evernote notebooks.
So, give Livebinders a try ... they are easy to set up, and very easy to add content to. I can see these being very efficient ways of creating digital textbooks for students, and for students to create digital artifacts.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Teacher Challenge - a great site for PD
Over the past week or so I have been reading some of the entries in this "30 tools in 30 days" column from the Teacher Challenge blog. What a cool way to introduce 30 cool web 2.0 tools for teachers to learn about! This site is introducing a new web 2.0 tool each day in a simple and concise way that may help a lot of teachers get to feel more confident in their knowledge of some of the tools that are available to them at no cost.
What I like about the format of the 25 entries so far is that they have a simple format for each entry which shows you what the tool is, how to use it and has both the link to the site to register for your account and some suggestions for further use.
What tools are there so far?
plus #24 "Wikipedia" and today's #25 "Jog the Web".
While there aren't many that I haven't used or known about (a couple of these are new to me) - it is great to see ideas of how other people are using some of my favourite tools. Livebinders has been on my list to use for some time now since I created my first one ages ago and haven't been back since!
Jog the Web and Wetoku are both new to me. And I am wondering if Little Bird Tales might be something I can use with my own 4 and 5 yr olds at home for a bit of father/kids time?
Jog the Web and Wetoku are both new to me. And I am wondering if Little Bird Tales might be something I can use with my own 4 and 5 yr olds at home for a bit of father/kids time?
If you have yet to try some of these tools, then you will find this site a source of great fun - both for you and your students. There is a lot here - easily 30 weeks of PD for those who have yet to experience any of these fantastic tools.
Enjoy the site!
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