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.

 

 

 

 

Reflections on old friends and past deeds

In 2009 I ran a series of classes with 13 year old students looking at the the future of education and we used ideas from The Horizon Reports. Despite the work being really quite challenging for students and staff involved, it did give the opportunity to students to self direct and take considerable control of their learning.

Now, for a number of reasons, we discontinued the project. The first site the girls put up to share their project was in March/April of 2009. It used the 2008 Horizon Report as its base and we rolled in a number of "guest speakers" by means of video and YouTube to help set the scene. Once the project was complete (April 2009) I thought "That's it - no one will visit this site ever again." So it was with some surprise that I looked several months later to see that the site was attracting visitors still. Into 2010 the site was attracting more visitors, though the site was not updated at any stage.

So, today in my inbox was the usual start of US school year updates ... and so I thought I'd go back to one of my old friends, Wikispaces, and just see if anything was still happening around the old site. Here's what I found. Looks like around 25 views per day pretty consistently ... most views are coming form the US, but a lot from Canada, UK and Australia too. Views from NZ hardly rank.

So - whatever these students did, and whatever they wrote and contributed, some people in other geographies are finding some value in it.

The other thing I thought about was my own blog - this one. I haven't written much this year - not that I haven't wanted to, just have not found the time/priority to do it. Despite this - the viewership has actually gone up! Now that tells me something!

Anyway - my reflection is this.

I blog for two main reasons.

1. Reflecting in a public environment about educational matters is important - to me anyway. It helps me clarify my own views and opinions.
2. Just maybe ... something I have to contribute will spark something in someone else, somewhere else.

I have students blog for the similar reasons.

And you never know how long after you said what you said - someone else might just find it useful. On this blog the main attraction has been the post on Google Docs as a time line creator. I put this up last year some time. Every day several seem to head to this page. Great. Whatever I said then was true at the time!

Project Tomorrow

Just been reading "From Chalkboards to Tablets: The Emergence of the K-12 Digital Learner" from the Project Tomorrow group. Apart from the easy read of the 17 page report about the learning opportunity that over 300,000 students say they want, the interesting points for me were the following ...
 "The impact of the teacher in the technology usage equation also appears to have changed. In 2003, 31 percent of seniors in high school said that their teachers’ lack of knowledge about how to use technology was a significant barrier to their own use of technology at school. In 2012, only 18 percent of students in grade 12 felt the same way. However, 40 percent of the Class of 2013 say that a major obstacle to using technology at school is that their teachers consciously limit their technology use." (Page 9)

 And from the very first page of the report ...

"Our coaches were mostly college students and they helped teachers set up their first email account, do searches for lesson plans online and format class newsletters. At the same time, these college students were tasked to work with students at the schools during their computer lab time and in afterschool programs. We soon learned that the coaches were engaged in a vastly different set of activities with the students than with the teachers. With the students, the coaches were setting up electronic pen pal relationships using instant messaging and social networking sites, conducting web quests with NASA, the Jason Project and National Geographic, and helping the students self-develop HTML and programming skills to create their own websites and multi-media presentations. More importantly than the difference in the sophistication level of the respective activities, however, was the seemingly insatiable appetite that the students had for using technology more effectively within their learning lives." So, if you believe the numbers, students believe 20% of their teachers lack sufficient knowledge about how to use technology to enhance learning. But 40% consciously choose to inhibit students use of technology. For the full report go here.