DrJim's Blog Take 2

DrJim's Blog Take 2 2008-07-25T06:16:40Z http://blog.futurepd.org/atom.aspx Quick Blog Is Google Taking Over the World? tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-06-26:7d848c9a-766f-4891-9895-3820c75aa2d5 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-06-26T15:05:42Z 2008-06-26T14:59:00Z

The main reason I mention Google again is that, at the Unconference, Mike Leishman and I had a chat about whether schools would ever adopt a Google end to end solution like Google Apps for Education. Letting Google handle mail, file serving, document and spreadsheet handling, the whole lot. It made so much sense to me as it would take the burden of the school’s network infrastructure and add the flexibility of document collaboration, etc. (For a great example of how this works, have a read of Tom Barrett’s ICT in my Classroom Blog). The consensus was that we were probably still a fair way away from that.

Well, this week the NSW Department of Education announced it was dropping Microsoft Outlook/Exchange in favour of a Gmail solution for students. (Link here). At present it only applies to student mail, but makes me wonder what might be next.

DrJim

Image citation : www.gmail.com

]]> Wikipedia vs Gilligan's Island tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-06-23:587bea34-3690-43b8-b552-fbad2db7c226 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-06-23T09:58:11Z 2008-06-23T09:56:00Z

But I guess the main point of his argument is the growth of participatory media. That Web 2.0 tools take us from being consumers to being creators and collaborators. I have been talking about that for a while now, but only from an Internet perspective. It’s interesting to think of how the same may be becoming true of mass media.

]]> It's all about the TAGS tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-06-02:f6b6886f-18b3-4bb4-aa49-822f114af1b9 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-06-02T20:35:36Z 2008-06-02T20:29:00Z My daughter is involved in a mammoth task at present. She is tagging all of her music. Like most people her age, she has a huge volume of music in digital form and accesses it from her MP3 player. It’s a combination of CDs she has ripped, music she has downloaded, tracks she has obtained from her friends and other audio from goodness knows where. I too have a fair number of audio files. The main difference between my daughter and I is that all my music is sorted in folders alphabetically, by artist then year then album whereas Gemma doesn’t seem to have much of an organising strategy. So I was surprised when she told me that she wasn’t going to rename or arrange her music files, only the tags. She explained her logic like this.

It doesn’t matter what the files are called or where they are stored. The software and hardware she uses looks at the tags and allows her to sort and filter her music accordingly. So the more accurate the tagging, the easier it is for her to build playlists “No-one plays albums .... people make playlists”. When she builds her playlists, she can use the tags like artist and genre to find the music she wants. When I try to build a playlist it takes me a long time, as I have to navigate through my organised but convoluted folder structure to get to individual files. I can’t really apply any filtering to my files because of the lack of metadata.

This got me thinking about other media I create and use – images, video, web pages. At present, I don’t really tag anything. I know my camera adds metadata to my photographs – date and time, as well as the other standard EXIF tags. Newer cameras than mine also include GPS location data with the photographs. It only remains to implement some sort of facial recognition algorithm and the tagging is complete. Best of all – it is all done automatically. Once again, it doesn’t matter what you call the image or even where you store it. It’s the metadata that is key. In the age of information explosion, it’s likely that tagging will become more and more important. How do you tag yours?

DrJim

Image citation : http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanflynn/367600665/

]]> Series vs Parallel Learning tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-05-28:5b142333-3d8d-4085-bc5c-249bcc34cfd0 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-05-28T13:19:43Z 2008-05-28T13:10:00Z

He tried to teach me once, but I’m not a very number-savvy person, so I never really got the hang of it. When he did it in the maths classroom, the teacher forbade him to use his own method and made him use the method we had to learn in class – threatening to mark him with a zero unless he used the “proper” method.

I spend a lot of my time helping educators come to grips with the latest developments in ICT and their application to the classroom. Inevitably, a lot of it is applications-based (increasingly web-embedded applications-based - but that’s another blog post). Invariably, workshop participants want handouts and notes on how to do stuff. Yesterday, we were working with audacity in a workshop and I demonstrated some common features, including how to import audio we had created or downloaded outside of the program. When the teachers came to use the software, one of them asked me to show her again as she had missed it and it wasn’t in the notes. I showed her, but while I did so I asked her what a student would have done in that situation. She replied that the student would probably have fiddled around until they got it. I asked her to explain “fiddled around” and she said that she probably meant experimented. I then asked her why she didn’t experiment and she said it was “different” for adults.

Later on I was talking about editing sounds and cut a piece of voice from one track and pasted into another, using the toolbar buttons. While helping someone, I needed to do it again, but this time used CTRL-X and CTRL-V. This completely threw the teacher, as I used a different method of achieving the same thing. I explained that, depending on the operating system and the application, there could be up to 5 or 6 ways of cutting and pasting data. The teacher asked me “What’s the best way?” and seemed a bit nonplussed when I told him that the best way for me might not be the best way for him. “Why can’t the software writers come up with just one way of doing things?” he replied. I think he went to the same teacher’s college as my old maths teacher.

Our world is a parallel world. Simultaneous multiple communication, p2p, hyperconnectivity. Everything happening at once, lots of ways to achieve the same goal, personalised learning – all these phenomena move us away from sequential living and serial learning. Teachers still talk about the low level of “technical skills” many of their students have in the classroom. “We were using program X and the students couldn’t understand it or figure out how to use it.” But give them a new phone or a handheld gaming device. Let them loose on a new gaming engine or social networking platform. Then you will see their problem-solving, investigation and goal-orientation skills. There is never “one correct way” for them. There are always many ways, and they are always the right way.

Image Citation : http://www.ted.com/speakers/view/id/177 ]]> All you need is YouTube tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-05-16:a815db79-e4e6-4705-bd05-774f0b4c74bf Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-05-16T12:37:57Z 2008-05-16T12:32:00Z

I got to thinking about this as the culmination of a few things that happened in a short space of time. Firstly, I went to see the movie Iron Man. Now this is a great movie, but if you are a real fan, you should stay to the very end of the credits after the movie. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this out until after I’d seen the movie (and left before the end of the credits. But it was OK – I just went to YouTube and did a search and saw what I had missed.

Then I read Will Richardson’s latest blog post – where he talks about how he brought his son home a boomerang from Australia and the first place Tucker goes to find out how to throw it ... is YouTube.
Then Paul Reid, who is trying to cure my Mac aversion (I actually don’t have a Mac aversion – I just don’t use one) responded to a post I made to Echalk about using 2 screens, telling me about Spaces and Expose .... and of course he added a couple of links to videos. Not on YouTube, but after watching the Apple video, guess where I went.

So, if a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth? Obviously, we need the same sorts of critical literacies that we apply to print-based resources or even other web-based resources. But that aside, just how useful is YouTube? Well, as far as I can see, it’s incredibly useful. From a school perspective, it just has to be one of the most amazing resources available. I set myself some tasks at random to see if YouTube could help a student who was struggling conceptually or needed extension and found the following.

English : See how different actors have portrayed Shakespeare’s Richard III soliloquy. I found versions by Sir Ian McKellen, Al Pacino, Sir Laurence Olivier, John Barrymore and also a version with vegetables.

Maths : Pythagoras’ Theorem. 125 movie demonstrations on this – everything from rap songs, cartoons, live demos to working it out on paper.

Chemistry : Aromatic substitution reactions: Only 5 results here. But all were animated and explained the phenomenon far better than I could on a whiteboard.

Engineering : Damped Oscillations. Physics as applied to everyday objects including swings and rollercoasters.

Geography : Plate tectonics. Again, many cartoons and animations. Ideas for school projects.

I could go on.

In every case I was able to find a host of videos that were relevant and useful.

Of course, I’m being facetious when I say “All you need is YouTube”. There are many problems associated with its use – authentication, contradiction, confusion, inappropriate comments to name but a few. It can be a huge timewaster. When I get a few spare minutes, I’ll sometimes browse through YouTube, using search terms like cool, incredible, amazing, etc. Minutes can turn into hours quite easily. Those are probably the main reasons many schools ban the site. I’ve never been a fan of banning things, only of education and accountability.

]]> Extrapolation beyond the ordinary tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-05-06:e268d451-16c8-4c1e-ad09-eb545418839f Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-05-06T21:14:06Z 2008-05-06T21:05:00Z
My mum had a problem with her printer so I popped over and fixed it for her. This is worthy of note on a couple of levels. Firstly, my mum is in her seventies and has just bought her first computer. She doesn’t know the difference between a file and a folder. I had to slow down her double-click speed almost to the minimum before it would react to her double-clicks. She has to get me to do stuff for her like burn her photos onto CD and install her printer. She watches and listens. I talk her through things and watch as she does them for herself. She's learning - slowly - but she's learning.

My mum the technophile

What’s really cool however, is that mum is in the UK and I’m in Australia. I got her to install one of the many (free) remote connection tools and now I am able to take over her computer from here and fix her printer. The next step is to install Skype and freak her out with video and audio at the same time.

The technology itself is not that new or even that complex (I don’t think), but it got me wondering.

*****Digression Warning*****

It actually got me thinking about the planet Echronedal in the novel “The player of Games” by Ian Banks.

I went a writer’s workshop conducted by Ian Banks in Edinburgh in the early 90’s. Someone asked him about where he gets his inspiration. After a hilarious story about a journalist being convinced that an author would have to be on drugs to write a novel like “The Wasp Factory”, he said that most of his ideas were mundane observations that he extrapolated beyond the ordinary. He was driving down the motorway one day and there was a fire on the median strip. The fire was travelling down the strip unchecked. Presumably it would continue to do so until it ran out of fuel or someone put it out. He wondered what would happen to a fire on a long strip of land and developed it into the planet Echronedal, which has an equatorial belt-like continent with a fire that has raged for centuries and travels around the planet, driving the population in front of it. The land regenerates after the fire has passed over it. It’s a pretty neat idea from a simple premise and a pretty good read to boot.

*****Digression Over*****

So, I got to thinking about what remote desktop technologies could develop into if we extrapolated them beyond the ordinary. Jimmy Wales is famous for thinking “What if we could take the sum of human knowledge and make it available to everyone?” Well, what if we could, in real time, take a peek at anyone’s desktop? Wouldn’t it be interesting to look at, say, Stephen Hawking’s desktop, watch the screen as he went about his writing and research. Or, keep an eye on Peter Gabriel as he produces his new album. You could have different levels of interaction – observers, contributors, authors, etc. And you could have multiple desktops with varying levels of privacy.

So, if you could keep an eye on someone’s desktop, whose would it be?

DrJim

Image citations
My mum :o)
The Players of Games - www.amazon.com
]]> The Gen0 Workplace tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-04-18:94b1cce6-1c8c-4e63-96c3-b9bfdfe31a0d Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-04-18T18:44:58Z 2008-04-18T17:45:00Z
I also find that looking at citations of people like these takes me to other interesting places too. I’m reminded of how, when Dirk Gently was lost, he would find someone who looked as though they knew where they were going and follow them. This would sometimes get him to his destination, but more often take him somewhere that was far more interesting.

So I was looking for some research material to back up Prensky’s claim that often “students have to power down when they come to school”. This led me to an article by Kathy Fredrickson, who was talking to her students about work and was told “I would prefer to have a job where I can listen to music, instant message and work at the same time.” She goes on to ask how many employers would allow that.

I must admit I found it quite thought-provoking. If the nature of learning has been changed by digital technologies, what about the nature of work? In many ways, the changes in the workplace due to ICT infiltration are more pronounced than in schools. My good friend Leah Vogler tells a great story about her dad. He was a Haulpak engineer. When he was close to retirement he was given a laptop, as the engine diagnostics interfaced directly onto a computer.

Computers are so prevalent in the workplace now, but their use is generally task-driven and quite specific. Is that what makes them so commonplace? In many cases the computers in our schools seem to be there because someone thought it would be a good idea to have them there. I couldn’t see many businesses buying stacks of hardware and networking gear without a really clear idea of what the benefits would be .... but that’s a post for another day.

In the meantime, what are your views on how the workplace might change as the next generation of workers comes through?

DrJim

Image Citations
Haulpak - http://www.flickr.com/photos/subiyurek/1369200793/
Multitasking - http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomaspurves/361807318/
Dirk Gently - http://www.audioeditions.com/showauthors.cfm?author_tex=Douglas%20Adams]]> Rube Goldberg meets Web 2.0 tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-04-01:d57f0238-7852-407c-bf45-4cf7356d19d4 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-04-01T17:38:56Z 2008-04-01T17:28:00Z Everyone’s talking (and blogging) about Diigo, the new best thing.

Now, I’m not very big on new best things. They rarely live up to their promises. I’m particularly wary of tools that are replacements for other tools. In this Web 2.0 world of the perpetual beta, I find it difficult to keep up and am reluctant to invest time in new technologies that look like they are just tweaks of old technologies. On top of that, when something novel does come along I find I’m no longer the enthusiastic early adopter I used to be. I take more convincing now than I used to about the value of the next new best thing. I often wonder if these technologies are just like Rube Goldberg Machines - complex ways of doing something that's actually quite simple

As for Diigo. Well, I got an friend invitation from good old Alex Hayes. I normally listen to what he has to say, so I went and had a look. My first impression was “Oh dear .... it kinda looks like Facebook”. My next impression was “Oh-oh... they want to install a toolbar on my browser”. I don’t like toolbars. Admittedly, you don’t have to install the toolbar, but it makes using the app easier. Ok, so what does it do?

Well the first thing I found is the old social bookmarking thing. I’ve never quite got into social bookmarking – I have a del.icio.us account but never really use it. I always have my laptop which has all my bookmarks on it. I can usually google pretty much any site I’ve visited in the past without any trouble. But I do know that social bookmarking is used by lots of people and has many school-based uses.

With Diigo, you can have lists, watchlists, you can even make a slideshow out of your favourites (although I’m not sure why you would want to). Nothing too novel.

It’s also a contact manager, has little applets like a comment wall, etc and has the ability to create groups like Ning does. Nothing new there either.

I was impressed, however, by the ability to annotate web pages live (sort of) and share them – that is cool and I can see me having a use for that. Or at least I did up until it crashed my browser on my desktop under XP and my notebook under Vista. Before anyone suggests I change my browser to opera or firefox or safari or mosaic - I don’t want to and I shouldn’t have to. But that’s another post.

In short, my jury is still out on Diigo – watch this space.

DrJim

Image Citations
Diigo Logo - www.diigo.com
Rube Goldberg Machine - http://www.flickr.com/photos/madstillz/511517972/

]]> Looking in the Wrong Place Again ... tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-03-19:fdbc8955-5c63-40b3-b968-d2bcf980508f Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:45:53Z 2008-03-19T09:29:00Z I came across something interesting last week in the fallout of the draconian closure of Al Upton’s Mini-Legends blog. (We're all behind you, Al!!!)

It was a link to a research paper in the journal “American Psychologist” which has the following citation:

Online "predators" and their victims: Myths, realities, and implications for prevention and treatment.
By Wolak, Janis; Finkelhor, David; Mitchell, Kimberly J.; Ybarra, Michele L.
American Psychologist. 2008 Feb-Mar Vol 63(2) 111-128

Link here

Unfortunately, it is a subscription article. If you want to read it, you have to pay for it. LiveScience has a synopsis here.

It’s important to realise that the paper was written by researchers at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Centre, rather than some journo at A Current Affair and uses real research methods and real statistics to draw its conclusions. Some of the conclusions may surprise you. For instance ...

“From 1990 to 2005, the number of sex abuse cases substantiated by child protective
authorities declined 51%”

That seems very different to what the media would have us believe.

or

“In the year covered by the N-JOV Study, more online molesters were arrested for soliciting undercover investigators posing online as adolescents than were arrested for soliciting actual youths”

Maybe our youths are more able to spot the dangers than the police undercover officers.

or

“Posting personal information online does not, by itself, appear to be a particularly risky behaviour”

There are many more conclusions, or myths as they are referred to in the LiveScience article.

Before I open the discussion of the article, I want to state my position here. I recognise that the dangers posed by communicating with strangers using ICT are real. There have been cases of kids being abducted, raped and murdered by strangers they met on the Internet – just not very many. Research (real research, that is) shows that the overwhelming majority of child abuse of all kinds occurs in the family home with a trusted adult. Yet according to the media, there seem to be no paedophiles out there – only Internet paedophiles. At least they are the only ones who seem to get media coverage.

I smile and shake my head when I watch the news. Whenever anyone gets arrested – for anything – the footage always seems to be of the police carrying their computer out into the van. Technology gets a raw deal from the press – technology sells. But is it another case of us looking in the wrong place again?

And it carries into the classroom. The vast majority of student “technology” issues I am asked to deal with aren’t really technology-based. Mostly, they’re caused by ineffective classroom management or poor pedagogy. Construct rich curriculum that is engaging and relevant using technology and you won’t have to worry about kids playing games and visiting inappropriate websites. Have a proper policy with clear goals and appropriate consequences (and enforce it rigorously) and you can allow students to grow and develop their skills in a supportive environment.

DrJim

Image citation : http://www.flickr.com/photos/marice/157762586/

]]> The One-Man Band and the Conductor tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-03-12:49b7653e-0ab1-46ff-ac19-20678f9fac67 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:48:17Z 2008-03-12T15:46:00Z We have gone from a situation where a student’s knowledge was a subset of the teacher’s knowledge. The teacher “taught” this and the students (sometimes) “learned” it. In this model the teacher’s knowledge is static, and the student’s knowledge grows.

becomes

But when we introduce ICT, the model has to change. In many cases we see the teacher’s skillset as being less than and different to the student’s.

The bit that is shared between the 2 tends to be mundane, applications-based material – using office products, internet “research”, etc – not the stuff that many students find interesting and engaging. Because of the prevalence of the first model, many teachers are reluctant to move into the realm of the unknown. They restrict the use of ICT to the things that they know and understand.

To think of it in terms of Papert’s Jet-Powered Stagecoach, they turn down the power of the engines until it stops shaking the stagecoach. No wonder many kids hate using ICT at school but love using it outside. (As an aside – thanks to Paul Reid for the analogy of the QANTAS model of education – we sit in rows, face the front, strap ourselves in so we can’t move and turn off all our technology).

Upon trying to rationalise this, I was put in mind of the image of the teacher as the one-man band. I have to know how to play the accordion, the drum, the harmonica and guitar in order to make my music. I am in control of everything and the music is only created using instruments I know how to play.

I propose that teachers try to move away from that model and think of themselves as orchestral conductors. The conductor doesn’t have to be able to play all of the instruments to create beautiful music, but she knows how the music is made, she knows about tempo, dynamics, pitch. She can tell when the piccolo player isn’t paying attention or when the bassoon player is out of time. The skills of the conductor are different to the skills of the musicians. Teachers should concentrate on where their skills are – curriculum, pedagogy, engagement, learning and let the students make their beautiful music.

DrJim

Image credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwr/296388301/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/larigan/2207115811/
]]> When things just work tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-02-19:f816ad99-7bcf-42cf-bcfe-92be008531f6 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:49:57Z 2008-02-19T14:02:00Z
My son got a Playstation 3 for Christmas. This is cool for a number of reasons, some of which may surprise you. Firstly, you can play games on it. (Yes, really!). But games have changed with the advent of the latest generation of graphics processors. Playing a game like Assassin’s Creed is more like watching (and taking part in) a movie – the graphics are just so good.

It’s also a Blu-Ray Disc player. When you first watch a Blu-Ray disc on a high definition (I mean a real Hi-Def – 1080p) screen, you should prepare to be impressed. I wasn’t prepared and it caught me off guard. I didn’t realise how low the graphics level was on standard DVDs until I saw a Blu-Ray.

It also plays standard DVDs, burnt DVDs (of your own video, of course), CDs and almost any shiny round plastic thing you may have lying around.

But none of that is surprising. What surprised me was how easy it connected to my home network and just started doing everything. It plays my music, shows my photos and all the video I have on my main media server (well, not everything .... but almost). The latest firmware includes DivX decoding, so most things play straight off. For those that don’t, the free media server software I use (TVersity) transcodes on the server and streams to the PS3. That is what I found surprising.

However, my kids didn’t. They didn’t know explicitly that the PS3 could do all of those things, but they weren’t surprised to learn that it did. There was an expectation that it would do everything. When I pointed out that there wasn’t a TV tuner, I was told that this year there would be. When that happens, I’ll probably retire the Home Theatre PC that took me months to build and configure – I simply won’t need it. My wife will stand there shaking her head (again) as another project that took so much of my time and effort is superseded by mainstream technology.

Good job I can use it for the Airbus cockpit Joe and I are building :o)

DrJim

Image citations
PS3 : http://www.flickr.com/photos/trojandan/14870383/
TVersity Logo : www.tversity.com
]]> Ready for Take Off tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-02-14:074df513-f568-4d18-8a38-848b1d46fa60 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:50:30Z 2008-02-14T09:41:00Z

I’m constantly amazed by not only the volume of information available for free on the Web, but the sheer diversity of it. One of the true powers of modern ICTs is their ability to unite people with common interests – even if that interest is highly specialised.

My son Joe is training to be a commercial pilot. I’ve always been interested in aviation too, so we’ve had some great fun with Microsoft Flight Simulator X. He bought a Saitek Pro52 Joystick and throttle kit and then a set of rudder pedals. Every so often, we lug all the gear from his room into the home theatre and fly using the projector – it’s pretty cool.

One of the neat things about FSX is the ability to support multiple monitors for different displays, so we tinkered with that. I was looking for some information about how to configure them when I came across the Simpit community – a group of people engaged in building a replica cockpit, complete with realistic displays and controls. Example. We looked at each other and decided it might be fun to try. I got in contact with a couple of schools who were getting rid of CRT monitors and got a stack of those and we have started building. You can follow our progress on the Echalk Ning.

What’s interesting is that there are perhaps 200 or so people in the world who are doing the same thing as us. Through forums, blogs and wikis we have the facility to contact with most, if not all of them. I can’t imagine tackling such a specialised project without the expertise of these people – pilots, flight engineers, instructors, software developers and amateurs like us. Everyone has something to offer and seems only too glad to help.

It’s not just us, people are making music, software, hardware, electronics, video, film and TV, joined by technology to a community of practice that couldn’t have existed a few years ago. Every day I get tweets from people doing workshops for teachers around the world asking for people to say “Hi” via Twitter and noting the amazing responses that happen almost instantly.

What are we doing to harness the power of these connections?

What are you doing?

J

Image citation : http://www.flickr.com/photos/paas/565935526/ Christian Paas photostream

]]> Social Networking and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-02-06:d6323076-0843-4da5-afa2-816e2a8b9cfd Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:51:07Z 2008-02-06T13:33:00Z A strange thing happened to me this week.

I was delivering a workshop on motivation and communication skills for a school. A couple of the things I spoke about was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the path to self-actualisation. I also spoke about the Facebook Friends Wheel application. I was using it as a metaphor for personal and professional relationship webs, to highlight the importance of developing a strong set of relationships in and out of the workplace. During one of the discussions, someone made the point that they didn’t “get” Facebook or MySpace or any social networking and could I help them see the value in it. A couple of others murmured agreement and so I tried to explain why it’s so popular – communication, common values, instant feedback, etc. Although they understood it, they still didn’t “get” it. They weren’t being rude or obstructive or anything. In fact I think that they actually wanted to “get” it, but couldn’t.

In the ensuing discussion, someone started to draw parallels between Maslow esteem/relationship phase and the need for personal affirmation. Maybe this was why many younger people found Facebook so powerful – it met their need for the respect of others. When I asked this person where she found herself on the hierarchy, she indicated she was pretty close to self-actualisation and her needs insofar as respect from others was concerned were being met both personally and professionally.

I used this information in another session at another school the next day. I lined the teachers up by age and asked all those with Facebook accounts to put their hands up. As I expected, Facebook accounts were held by mostly younger teachers. I then asked them to think about Maslow’s Hierarchy and where they stood. Almost all of the Facebookers were operating at either the Love/Belonging or Esteem phases.

I just wondered if that may be one of the reasons that Social Networking is so popular.

J

Image ref : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow

]]> He's behind you!!!!! tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-01-22:b4b44ffa-33c5-4f06-9af4-98fe9ef94738 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:51:41Z 2008-01-22T10:21:00Z I remember as a child going to the Christmas pantomime (Peter Pan) at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow. In particular, I recall my frustration when the crocodile appeared and Captain Hook couldn’t see it. I kept on shouting “It’s behind you!!!” but he would never look in the right place. I thought he was really stupid- you can never find what you are looking for if you look in the wrong places.

In the past week or so, many Australian lists have been discussing the latest MCEETYA report.
National Assessment Program - ICT Literacy Years 6 and 10 Report.

MCEETYA is the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs – big league stuff!!!.
From the Executive Summary of the report –

“Australia’s national goals for schooling assert that when students leave school they should be: confident, creative and productive users of new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, and understand the impact of those technologies on society (MCEETYA, 1999: Goal 1.6). The Australian National Assessment Program includes the systematic assessment of the extent to which this goal is being achieved through triennial sample surveys of students in Years 6 and 10.”

From what I can see, the report documents the assessment of tasks students in years 6 and 10 were asked to complete that measured how good they were at
a) Using graphics software to make a flag and a photo album
b) Finding information from a closed web environment
c) Using Microsoft office to make documents and powerpoints

The results showed that nationally, 49% of year 6 students and 61% of year 10 students met some arbitrary proficiency standard. None of the tasks had any real communications focus (remember the C in ICT). There was no mention of any Web 2.0 technologies. It looks like a computer applications competency test.
I wonder how many of the year 10 students who couldn’t make a photo album using the software provided have albums in Flickr, MySpace or Facebook. Of those, I wonder how many learnt how to do it without any adult intervention.

But that’s Australia .... I went looking to see what the US was doing. Admittedly, I didn’t look very hard and what I found may be unrepresentative. Someone’s blog mentioned the State Educational Technology Directors Association. SETDA is the principal association representing the state directors for educational technology. They have a suite of tools for determining educational technology effectiveness called Profiling Educational Technology Integration (PETI): Resources for Assessing Readiness & Use. Guess what the suite of tools is – a bunch of surveys that are Microsoft Word documents. These ask questions about how students find information and use PowerPoint, etc. Not a single mention of any Web 2.0 technology.

Part of the problem of course is that technologies change rapidly and bureaucracies lumber along, getting further and further behind. That then begs the question – are their findings relevant or useful? Are they looking in the right places? How will we ever be able to judge the effectiveness of current educational technology practice if we are always looking at what we were doing years ago? Is it even worth the effort?

]]> The Dangers of Blogging tag:blog.futurepd.org,2008-01-08:e791658e-5bd4-4507-948d-0290028b74b8 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:52:08Z 2008-01-08T09:01:00Z per se.

I’m naturally suspicious of technologies that are fawned over as the next great thing. Last year Bruce Dixon and I talked about such things over a latte at the Lorne Conference. We were talking about Interactive Whiteboards and their power to distract people (teachers, parents, governments) from real educational issues. So I’m always on the lookout for articles that have a slant one way or the other. Imagine my delight when I logged into the TED site and was greeted with the hilarious Yossi Vardi on the dangers of blogging. Do yourself a favour – take 6 minutes to listen to him.

Direct link here

DrJim]]> Connection Is King tag:blog.futurepd.org,2007-12-14:cf6643f6-8552-45b2-a3b1-5d1fbfae58f2 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:52:35Z 2007-12-14T20:54:00Z When I started blogging again, I said that I believed that, in these times, connection is king. We need to be connected in order to do business. The tools we use for that connection may change, but the connectivity the tools bring is essential and irreplaceable. At present, among the best tools we have are the so called Web 2.0 tools – blogs, wikis and the like. But this causes problems. How can we ensure our students are equipped to do business on these terms, if we don’t understand the tools and can’t use them? Worse, we might not see the value in them. I said a few years ago that most teachers I know would climb over each other to get a skill, tool or procedure that could be relied on to improve outcomes for their students. The problem with ICT was that it had failed the reliability test. Many of us are familiar with the scenario of the kids swinging from the lights while we try to fiddle with computers, projectors, speakers, etc in order to demonstrate something. Only last month, at a Web 2.0 tools workshop I was running, Edublogs decided to upgrade their server at precisely the time I was asking teachers to create Edublogs accounts. I’m used to the vagaries of the Edublogs servers, so had some accounts I had “prepared earlier” for just such an occasion. We set up Blogger accounts and went back to Edublogs later in the day, when the server seemed more stable. I’m used to such inconveniences and can work around them. But should teachers be expected to do the same? To become so familiar with the vagaries of technology that they can trouble-shoot and work-around common problems.

The reason I ask this is Karl Fisch – author of The Fischbowl – has just won the Edublogs “Most Influential Post” award for a blog posting entitled “Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?” Karl reckons it’s not. He likens teachers who are technologically illiterate today to teachers not being able to read or write 30 years ago.
Bold stuff!! He certainly has a point – particularly about those teachers who seem proud of their lack of knowledge. I meet teachers like that all the time. “I’ve taught chemistry for 25 years and never needed computers in order to teach it well.” I wonder how relevant their chemistry is. I wonder how many chemists don’t need to be connected.

Image source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharonpe/769373174/

I have always worried about ICT literacy levels in teachers. I also worry about undergrad education students and their level of immersion. I still see too many new teachers with few skills and no real ideas on how these tools can be used. I wonder what our Universities are doing? I ask them – all the time. The last time I asked, one senior academic told me that (at least in Australia) “Universities don’t take it very seriously at the moment because they can't afford to and don't have to. This is largely as a result of Government policies and the fact that there is little requirement for teachers to demonstrate skills or knowledge.“

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/re_teacher/1603316195/

So where does that leave us? There will always be the bright evangelists, but they are thin on the ground. Will the Federal Computers for Schools money make a difference or will it be a box-drop? Should teachers be forced/encouraged/mandated to demonstrate a technological literacy that will enhance their classroom practice?

]]> Another Digital Divide - The Will's and the Will Not's tag:blog.futurepd.org,2007-11-29:00dd7cf6-7585-4c34-9054-6c782999729e Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:53:09Z 2007-11-29T19:41:00Z I’m a fan of Bill Thompson’s column on the BBC digital website.

He’s a straight shooter who has a fairly light-hearted approach to a serious subject. However, a recent column raised an interesting point regarding people who have low (or non-existent) technology skills. It was regarding the problems some people faced in migrating their Sky broadband email accounts in the UK across to Gmail. Some people who used e-mail clients like outlook had to manually update their settings. Sky gave their customers “how-to” guides, but a small number of people had problems and the vocal minority gave voice. To quote Bill …

“The apparent inability of users to read or carry out the simple instructions needed to give them access to an improved or upgraded service is deeply depressing.”

He goes on …

“But I am starting to think that anyone who can't follow the step-by-step guide to updating their Outlook account settings really shouldn't be using e-mail at all - they clearly have so little understanding of the technology in their hands that it's like letting a small child play with an unlicensed nuclear reactor.”

Later, it became clear that he had over-simplified the case and published an addendum, apologizing to an extent but still sticking to his guns over the broader issue of people not taking responsibility for their own technological skills.

As someone who works with teachers, I meet a wide variety of people – some who are skilful educators and understand ICT well enough to use it in a myriad of authentic ways and some are only beginning their technological journeys, but are willing to loosen the straps a bit and let the students have some control. Then there are those who seem unwilling to try to integrate ICT into their curriculum. They cannot see the value in it and “look the other way” pedagogically.

There is a bigger question here. Should we write these teachers off? Or is it the case that these are the very teachers who need more support?

Photo : http://www.flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/719558697/]]> When will Google stop ... tag:blog.futurepd.org,2007-11-04:9e461cf6-f545-4e8c-b616-5bb5fb5a15ac Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:53:36Z 2007-11-04T20:09:00Z ... making great applications?

Hot on the heels of all the other cool Google toys, comes Google Notebook

Anyone who knows my views on information literacy knows that I am keen on giving kids tools to help them develop critical literacy skills. Among these are information organising tools like Microsoft EndNote, for example. This is a great app, but, coming from Microsoft, you have to pay for it.

Now those clever people at the Googleplex have come up with their own web-based version. It seems to work quite well - and has the added bonus of being free. I have no particular affiliation with Google, but they are doing some very clever things.
]]> Reverse Engineering tag:blog.futurepd.org,2007-11-02:2dcd41a6-c22f-4957-bd78-44edc3591be5 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:54:10Z 2007-11-02T11:10:00Z

The principle of reverse vending is fascinating. Instead of putting money into a drinks vending machine and getting a can, you put the (empty) cans back in and get money. It’s environmental friendly, cost effective and smart for all sorts of reasons. Many years ago I read a report on innovation that said one of the best ways to innovate is to take an accepted procedure or practice and reverse it. On Slashdot today, there is a great article about a university professor who used the principal of reverse engineering on Wikipedia.

University of Washington-Bothell professor Martha Groom was looking at Wikipedia as reference source for her students and found many areas lacking in depth and detail. So, instead of asking the students to submit a term paper, much of which would no doubt be taken from there anyway, she asked them to write (or rewrite) an appropriate Wikipedia article on environmental history.

To quote an AP article at Physorg.com,

“For her students, the Wikipedia experiment was "transformative," and students' writing online proved better than the average undergrad research paper.

Knowing their work was headed for the Web, not just one harried professor's eyes, helped students reach higher - as did the standards set by the volunteer "Wikipedians" who police entries for accuracy and neutral tone, Groom said.

The exercise also gave students a taste of working in the real world of peer-reviewed research.

Most of the articles were well received, but Groom said some students caught heat from Wikipedia editors for doing exactly what college students are trained to do: write an argumentative, critical essay.”

This just seems to work on so many different levels, not least of which is that it solves many of the problems associated with assessment authenticity and plagiarism.

I love people with simple, smart ideas :o)

Image Citation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukasw/18704022/

]]> My Life Online tag:blog.futurepd.org,2007-10-22:86787fc8-1853-4b2b-be7d-b09d46220522 Dr Jim Mullaney 2008-03-19T09:54:40Z 2007-10-22T21:56:00Z

I had an interesting discussion today with an old colleague about how much of our lives is currently online, what the trends are and where it might possibly lead. I must admit that, at present, not much of my life is online. I have a website, a blog (obviously), a Flickr account, an iGoogle page and a couple of Gmail accounts (one for signing up to websites, one I use for Google services). I don’t have a myspace account or a second life existence but I am on Facebook, although there’s not much there and I don’t look at it very often. There’s nothing very private or personal about my online presence, so I haven’t been very fussy about my privacy online.

In my pocket, I carry my trusty Ipaq rw6828, which has my phone book contacts, calendar, some photos, music and video, a few documents and some software. It syncs with my outlook but, although I really like it as a device, again I don’t have anything mission-critical on it. If I lost it, I would be slightly annoyed (although not too much, as it would give me an excuse to get an even cooler toy) but not devastated.

I have been interested in the move of applications to the browser and pondering what that might mean. If all my documents are handled by Google Docs or Zoho Writer, what might that mean for the consumer? Should I move my contacts and calendar online?

In some ways, I guess it might be quite a good thing if all I need is a browser to manage most of my productivity tasks. They are free for the most part, at least for the present. I probably trust Google enough not to lose my documents – I trust Flickr with my photo archive (although I have several backups on various media. Call me paranoid). But the trust is from a data integrity viewpoint, not a privacy viewpoint.

Billy Bragg had a very public bust-up with Myspace last year when it seemed that the terms & conditions accepted by Myspace users (you know, the bit with all the legal mumbo-jumbo that you don’t read … you just tick the “I agree” box at the bottom) entitled Myspace to use content uploaded by its users – Billy’s songs in this case, without compensating the artist. Billy complained and in a move that surprised many people, including yours truly, Myspace relented almost immediately. Now, I haven’t written any songs that are commercially viable, but how concerned should I be about a huge corporation like Google taking care of my documents?

So, after we have moved our correspondence and our documents and photos online, what’s next? Many people have chosen to extend or parallel their existing lives or even create new life in online environments. From the Sims, World of Warcraft to Second Life, virtual existence is big business. Now I must admit to having a bit of a hard time in relating to such existence. I remember reading about someone who was engaged in real life and having a relationship with someone else in the Sims. The story goes that she felt so bad about two-timing her Sims boyfriend with her real-life fiancé that she broke off her engagement with the person she lived with in order to spend her time online with a clean conscience. It’s probably apocryphal, but it exemplifies the problems associated with living lives that are heavily virtualised. Earlier this year, there was the much-publicised virtual rape on Second Life. The boundaries are starting to blur. There is certainly enough commerce, interaction, and socio-politics in such virtual worlds for many people to take them seriously.

As for me … like most people, at present I’m happy living a hybrid life, slipping into the virtual parts of it when appropriate, but not taking it too seriously or pushing too much of my psyche online.

Image copyright Billy Bragg (c) www.bilybragg.co.uk

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