I feel a little like an international jet setter these days as I presented two workshops at a mini-conference in Tauranga hosted by the Waimarino ICT cluster. Unfortunately I missed all of Michael Pohl’s opening keynote as I struggled with the Bethlehem College protocols of not allowing non technicians to connect any devices without a technician doing it- including plugging in the data projector! I had made a wiki showing some of the ways I embed ICT into my classroom practice and was trying to add the links in tabs in Internet Explorer one by one and the their PC lab computer froze when it got to something it didn’t like. After fighting the good fight a couple of times I gave up and went back to plan A and asked for help from the technician’s to hook my Apple onto their network which he did in a few seconds. I had made a back-up plan C of a Keynote of screen grabs but that would have been a lame imitation when trying to show the interconnectivity of the web

After lunch I moved onto a second group of folks wanting to podcast with a PC. An exercise fraught with complications I hear you say but I had asked them to download Audacity and the Lame Encoder beforehand to save time. I showed the assembled group a smattering of our podcasts and then we got down to business.

Following a similar practice run session with Upper Moutere School last week I managed a work around to record a digital story using PhotoStory3 and export it as a .wmv file which I converted using www.zamzar.com to a .mov file which can be uploaded to Podomatic which makes these podcasts with graphics ready for iTunes. But these sorts of digital mazes can be a bit bedazzling for novices.

The final keynote was by Neil Melhuish, our MoE e-Learning Project Director. I had not heard him speak before and found his message interesting and challenging. I asked him if I record and edit his keynote. I was not disappointed. Unfortunately the sound quality of the recording left something to be desired so I won’t post it. Note to self- don’t chaw your way through crustly chocolate bars while recording with an iPod. They are very sensitive.

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Neil spoke about the way that we record knowledge in the 21st century. The challenging thing (for me) that he talked about that I hadn’t thought of before was the culture-centricity of the way we organise knowledge through the Dewey system. I have always accepted it as being the way that it is and thought of it without challenge. Looking closer though at say the Religion 200’s category. From 200 to 288 all of the subcategories are based on Christianity. All of the rest of the world’s religions lumped together only get 11 subcategories. This is the way Encyclopedia Britannica organises information in its 39 volumes. The way we can co-create knowledge in Wikipedia means that the rest of the world gets a look in- that’s a good thing.

Neil spoke also of the advances in giving children in developing countries access to 21st century learning via the OLPC scheme. I went to order one myself a Give1-Get1 OLPC laptop last Christmas but didn’t realise that the deal finished in 2007. I really do like the idea of giving a laptop and getting a laptop. Neil had a few to pass around. So much for my geekiness- I couldn’t even get the thing open!

I had to hop it smartly to the airport after the keynote and once there had a few moments to spare so opened my laptop to see if there was any chance of open wi-fi. I knew Neil’s nearby presence because I noticed olpc-mesh in my nearby devices. Even closed the clever little things were roaming looking for laptop friends to play with as Neil checked his luggage without shutting down the laptops! LOL

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Via my aggregator (sorry I clicked away from it before I recorded who gave me the link) I came across this little beauty written in the form of a webquest- All About Explorers. It helps students realise that all that they read on the web may not be entirely the real thing! A bit like the story of efforts to save the Pacific North West Tree Octopus!

Just because it’s out there doesn’t make it good!

All about Ferdinand Maggellan…

“This Portuguese explorer was born on October 12, 1492 in southern Spain. It is an amazing coincidence that he eventually became a world explorer, because that is the day Christopher Columbus first landed in El Salvador, thus discovering a New World. Magellan is best known as the first person to travel completely around the globe.

Early in his career, Magellan was first a soldier. During the Battle of Hastings, Magellan was seriously injured. His leg had to be amputated as a result. The wooden leg that replaced it never fit him properly, and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He also lost an eye after being shot by an AK-47 during the same battle.

It was not long before King Ferdinand of Spain noticed this rising young star with whom he shared a name. In 1519, at the age of only 27, the King enlisted the support of several wealthy businessmen, including Marco Polo, Bill Gates, and Sam Walton, to finance an expedition to the Spice Islands.

But Magellan, was not content to travel the ordinary way. He had to be different. Magellan took his five ships, led by the Trinidad, west instead of east. In the process, he discovered a new route through the Panama Canal, which shortened travel times to Asia considerably. In the process, he also discovered the Pacific Ocean, which he named after his daughter.

While in the Orient, Magellan traded with the Chinese for spices, silk, and small plastic toys which he could bring back to Europe and sell at huge profits.

In another bid to buck the trend of the day, Magellan continued west after this, and his expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the globe on February 29, 1562. Magellan, unfortunately, did not live to see the completion of the trip. He died of old age only six months earlier, but his accomplishment still stands today as a testament to human willpower and the spirit of discovery.”

Terry Freedman, blogger and podcaster from the UK has just posted this on TechLearning Blog.

“Here in the UK we use the term “ICT” — Information and Communications Technology — rather than “educational technology”, and in many schools it is taught as a discrete subject. So what is it that makes an ICT lesson excellent?

In this list, I have tried to suggest some of the characteristics that may be present — although I hasten to add that one would not expect to see all of them in the same lesson!

This is taken from a much larger list that I published in my newsletter, “Computers in Classrooms”, back in December. You can download the newsletter from here, if you wish to look at the whole list. Look at the list below and tell me what you think:

• The lesson forms part of a unit which forms part of a scheme of work. There is a good starter activity, one that gets the pupils settled down and in the right frame of mind to do the work the teacher has planned for them.

• The teacher spends time at the start letting pupils into the secret of what the objectives (intended learning outcomes) of the lesson are, ie what is intended to be achieved by the end, and how this lesson fits in with the preceding and following lessons

• Pupils are given open‑ended tasks (as far as possible), or at least not tasks with a glass ceiling. (Even lessons designed to impart a set of skills can still be more interesting than “drill & practice”).

• There are plenty of resources for the pupils to use, enabling the teacher to give quality guidance, ie not confined to explaining how to save the document! Such resources will include “how to” guides and posters, on‑screen help (which the pupils will have been taught how to use), and each other.

• Ample time is allowed for the plenary, thereby allowing it to be somewhat more useful than the POLO model: Print Out and Log Off. The plenary is an essential part of the lesson, used to check what learning has taken place, consolidate learning, and prepare pupils for the next stage. In fact, a lesson might have two or three plenaries rather than just one at the end.

• Homework is set in order to consolidate and extend the pupils’ understanding of the work they have been doing in lessons.

• Pupils are given plenty of time on the computers, with the teacher helping individuals and small groups.

• Work is set at an appropriate standard, taking into account the pupils’ prior learning and attainment, and what is expected of their age group in terms of national standards.

• There is a lot of questioning – probing questioning – and assessment for learning techniques are in evidence.

• There is a good range of material to provide for differentiation (higher attainers and children with special educational needs) and personalised learning.

• The teacher is aware of individual pupils’ needs, such as their individual education plans – and makes use of the assessment and other data she has – remember: data only becomes information if you do something with it!

• Not all work takes place at the computer: there is ample opportunity for discussion and reflection. What is important is not the use of technology per se, but the appropriate use of technology.

• Pupils respect the equipment and the room. For example, they do not leave discarded print‑outs on the floor.

• Pupils are happy and confident enough to try out things which the teacher has not actually shown them: they ask help from each other or look at the posters and manuals that are available for them.

• Pupils keep looking at the clock on the wall, because they want to get to a certain point in their work before the end of the lesson. They have a sense of urgency.

• Pupils want to work at lunchtime and other non-lesson times.

• Pupils want to show off little tricks they have discovered, such as keyboard shortcuts.

• Pupils ask questions that the teacher is unable to answer.”

I feel bad because I have taken Terry’s post in it’s entirety to post here. I do so because it is such a great list and I identify so much with his points and I want to encourage people to read it who may not necessarily follow my encouragement to click and read. Posted with permission from the man himself- thanks Terry.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach wrote an excellent post that reflects what has been festering in my mind since taking up the ICT Facilitator’s role this year. I have attempted to ‘make the shift’ in my classroom but how can I best encourage others to make similar moves in the way they learn and teach. She highlights nine principles needed to make a shift to 21st century learning pedagogies.

If I can quote her- “Real change, transformational change happens when there is personal ownership of the new technologies and concepts. Today’s new economy is all about human capital, which starts with the educators in a school and then extends outward to all members of the school community.”

1. People- change is best sustained if people are able to support each other on their learning journey if they can learn in supported groups- we are not islands and the collaboration we strive for in our classrooms needs to be modelled by ourselves as adult learners. This is where action research can be such a powerful tool. He aha te mea nui? He tangata. He tangata. He tangata.
2. Leadership- because any sort of change can be threatening the support and guidance of those in leadership roles can be critical- the process can be so un-necessarily difficult when classroom teachers are not well supported by those they look to for leadership.
3. Including all members of the learning community- everyone is part of the process- efforts need to be made to bring all on board- whanau, support personnel, professional colleagues, the wider community.



4. Developing a shared vision for how things need to be- the need to make sure that teachers together articulating the core beliefs. Our new NZ curriculum statement goes some way to addressing this issue.
5. Own it- this phrase has been very powerful for me since I first heard Sheryl say it at TUANZ last year. It’s good to use 21st technologies personally before ‘going public’. Become familiar with them, practise and become used to them. My first experiences with communication on line was through the use of email- personally with relatives overseas- because I could see the immediate uses of it I became better at using it.
6. Communication- we in NZ at the bottom of the globe can be as connected as anyone globally- geography has become less of an issue through UStream, Skype, Twitter etc. Communication with teachers and students outside of your classroom. I am able to communicate with people from UK, Australia, USA, Canada, Uzbekistan- all over.
7. Know your culture and try to anticipate trends- Sheryl says that participatory media has a tendency to ‘go viral’- we need to try and think ahead of the possible consequences of giving these tools to children. A number of children in my class now have their own personal blogs not moderated by me. I endeavour to have given them the skills and common sense to be safe on line.
8. We do not know what we do not know- new things will come along that are totally random- we can expect the unexpected. We will need to be able to run with these new challenges.
9. The power of collective wisdom- we all learn together. We are all learning and what each of us thinks matters.

Thank you Sheryl for insightful post. I encourage my readers to read Sheryl’s blog in its entirety as she is able to write in much eloquently than I but I wanted to write my own version to help me move my own thinking along by giving it my own ’spin’.

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Thanks to Paul Harrington et al for this little quest. Questionaut is a fun quest as it attempts to get your brain to think logically and go exploring! At first play I found it rather frustrating until I realised that there was a rhyme and reason to it all. There are eight levels in the quest and at the end of each level you get asked a variety of science, maths or English questions.

For example in this level you have to put an icicle in the test tube, open the box of matches, open the LPG gas, strike the match, light the burner and turn the gas up to boil the melted icicle which forces steam onto the fan, which lifts the plug hole to let a wee man out to ask the five questions which you have to answer correctly to fill the fuel to get you on to the next challenge.

I am back home now after an excellent few days away at the L@S conference. I have ideas buzzing around in my head and I need to get them posted before they whither.

Simon Evans hosted a workshop entitled, “Did you Know, New Zealand?” focussing on Karl Fisch’s video and we debating what it meant in a NZ context.

Simon used his interactive whiteboard to lead the discussion using DeBono’s hat thinking which was a good way to do it. He recorded the session with our handwritten notes in a slideshare which is best downloaded to read clearly. I was impressed with the technology.

Click here to see and download the presentation.

There was only six of us in the room F2F but more joined us via Skype and with the Cover It Live Blogging Tool. It was a very powerful session I thought on a variety of levels-not only with the way Simon facilitated the discussion, the way we brought in other people via the live blog commenters and Skype but also in the way the people in the room worked together to enhance the presentation.

As you can see from my screen grab it certainly made us keep intensely involved with the number of communication modes- listening, responding, researching, recording, typing, twittering. We really had to concentrate to do all these things at once.

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Well done Simon. It was a ‘high risk’ session that paid off.

As our Waimea-South ICTPD cluster enters its final phase I thought I would construct a Voicethread to chronicle what we have learnt along the way with responses from all seven schools in our cluster.

I was really proud of the way my nine and ten year old students at Appleby School articulated what they felt their learning with computers had achieved this year.

I was also pleased that a number of teachers locally and around the globe were able to record their views. It would be great if you were able to add your own comments and grow the resource.

If you want a ‘how to’ to on using Voicethread go to my Bling4yrblog for help.

Thanks to Chrissy for quicktips on adding Voicethread to Edublogs.

Sheryl is now safely back in Virginia from the Shanghai Learning 2.0 conference and has posted a link to the recorded archive of our Elluminate Session. I really do recommend that you listen to it as the other speakers were spot on with their contributions- well worth listening to again.

To listen to an Elluminate session click on the above link and you will need to give permission to open a Java application, it will check for the latest version and automatically load, wait a bit for it to open, it starts a little scratchy and then Clarence Fisher tells us about how he uses Web2.0 tools in his isolated school in Canada, followed by David Jakes, myself and Chris Betcher.

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Clarence talks about how a class can be limited with just one teacher and the need to open the classroom doors so that children can learn from each other and other teachers/experts from around the globe.

This slide shows his representation of how a network of links has developed through blogging. Our class blog would be very similar I think. We learn things from friends and from friends of friends.

Do have a look/listen- you will not be disappointed.

When trolling the internet I came across this Mediasnackers website with a series of very interesting ten minute podcasts from Wales I believe. My eye was immediately caught by podcast #88- an interview with Sir Ken Robinson. I have long been a fan of Sir Ken Robinson but there is plenty more of great listening here as well, focussed on creativity and youth using and creating technology in the 21st century-

• Stephen Heppell
• Christopher Sessums
• Michael Furdyk TIG

Some names I know and some new ones to explore.

We have been developing our Moturoa Class Blogmeister blog for three weeks now and the kids are loving it. David Warlick asked in the Blogmeister forum for some quotes about how blogging has affected our classroom dynamic, student attitudes, and, of course, student performance for an upcoming Tech Forum he is doing in Long Beach, CA. this week. I took the liberty of scalping some of the replies…

My response is that…

Blogging has given my class and myself a window out to the world from the South Island of New Zealand and our parent community an opportunity to participate in the classroom activities.We have an authentic global audience for the events that happen in our school. By blogging we know that people outside our classroom walls are interested and involved in what we do. We have a real purpose for writing to inform, to educate, to connect.

Through blogging we have built real friendships with children in different timezones, with different accents and beliefs. These links help bring the children across the globe closer together.

And here other people respond..

Blogging:
- celebrates thinking
- supports and reflects growth and thoughtfulness
- encourages self reflection and creativity
- invites a variety of perspectives
- widens understandings
- encourages decision making
- affirms and challenges viewpoints
- exposes our perceptions
- develops networks
- links people through thinking and learning
Lorraine Watchorn

Blogs can engage students in a purposeful practice of writing that can promote deeper learning. Blogging can foster classroom conversations that matter. My having a weblog shows them that I make writing a priority. My having a blog lets me share my writing and learning with my students who have blogs. We’re in this together and we learn with
and from each other. I use it as a tool in the classroom to ensure that the students and I are talking, reading and writing about how and what we are learning and thinking. We interact through comments. We have others outside our classroom enter the conversations. We work at building a community who respect and encourage each other. We learn to disagree agreeably. We write to learn. We blog to learn.
Anne Davis

Blogging has given my six and seven-year olds a window to the world. They see themselves as part of a global community–a community that shares things about their lives and feelings, reads what others have written and gives and recieves comments. This international audience gives my students a purpose and they are motivated to do their best writing on their blog.
Kathy Cassidy Kathy is a keen follower of our podcasts as well. It is interesting that we link with other like minded Web2.0 enthusiasts around the world.

Here I am on the last Friday of my school holidays at Brightwater School and I thought I would have a go at live blogging from the venue. If we move too fast then I will give up and write by hand. David has show notes as well and Janice has links that will go up on our cluster web site later.

David is into language literacy and thinking tools. He seems like a nice bloke but as he might find this blog I had better say that. LOL. So here goes…

David believes we need future focussed, literate thinkers. As a nation we need people who know how to cut through the spin and get to the truth. We need critical, creative thinkers so we can survive the challenges of the 21st century.

NZ teachers are sensitive observers of children’s learning and thinking we should celebrate that and be aware of the dangers of spending our time trying to assess thinking skills.

We then looked at seven selection criteria for thinking tools. I have just tended to grab a thinking tool but David helped us see a sensible pattern and a criteria for selecting which particular thinking tool that you might use for a particular reason.

1. Teaching and Learning linked - helping children learn.
2. Smart Tools - not just reading but also writing, not only listening but also speaking.
3. Subject specific - some tools best suit themselves to one subject eg using a time line best suits historical texts and narrative sequences.
4. Text linked - if a tool evokes the same type of thinking as the tools then that’s the one you should use for example a T-chart is best suited to being a basis of argument or persuasive writing.
5. Thought linked- memory, creative, critical, caring, reflective…
6. Brain Friendly- aligned with how the brain learns naturally- visual imagery.
7. Developmentally appropriate- some tools are best suited to particular age groups.

During morning tea with yummy muffins we made this concept map. The thing that impressed me with all of these thinking tools was that the same tool is being used across all age groups but with an extra component added at each level to develop the thinking. For example at the beginning level children simply record the have, are, can and give examples. They can then turn this into a text report with a simple definition, text body and an ending.

At the next step up level children can add group attributes and their report text may have an engaging opening (a hook), parts and more uses for the topic. Their text report then would have an interesting opening sentence, a definition, the body of the text which may include more detailed part description of and uses for the topic followed by a satisfying closing sentence.

Now David adds…

“When teachers use texts to engage students with different types of thinking, they operate on the brain as assuredly as neurosurgeons. The neural fabric in the brain is re-structured or pruned during every lesson taught. In this sense, the very structure of our brain - the relative size of different regions, the strength of connections between them, even their functions - reflect the lives we have lead. Like sand on the beach, the brain bears the footprints of the decisions we have made, the tools we have learned, the actions we have taken.”

You can see from David’s quote why he is so sought after. That paragraph is the most elequent on this blog so far! It resonates with a blog I read somewhere where a father was talking with his son about what he had learnt at school that day. The son said he had been building muscles for his brain. How cool is that?

Paul Wilkinson joined us virtually from Christchurch for a time and listened via Skype. With Call Recorder I was able to capture this sound bite from David about knowledge and knowing. This again wove itself into my thinking about creating learning in the classroom- content is only a context for learning and metacognition (there we are- the first time I have used that word in context).

David’s Sound Bite 2.5MB 2 minutes

This is the first time that I have tried to add audio to this blog and I will be very impressed with myself if it works. It did- I hope David doesn’t mind!

The other text type that I found particularly interesting and useful was the narrative. The narrative lends itself to sequenced timeline. In the past we would have constructed timelines, patted oursleves on the back and moved on. David suggested that a time line is not an end in itself but a process on the way to learning. We need to take it a couple of steps further for children to develop narrative plot structures in their writing. Simply to do that children construct a time line with different colours of text signifying prior and new knowledge. Then take one event on the timeline and expand it with who, where, what, how, why questions.

Seeing I was the only participant from my school I worked with Brightwater staff as they developed their more advanced timeline about their winning breakfast with Olympic triathlete, Hamish Carter, as a reward for 100% participation in the walk to school promotion.David suggests also we complete an events analysis…

• Was it OK that this event happened?
• Was the event really needed?
• Did the event achieve its purpose?
• What can we learn from what happened?
• What could you change from what happened?

And then ask what can we learn about life from reading this text. This made the link in my mind to the Lighting the Literacy Fire post I wrote earlier about making text-to-self connections.

The day was well spent and there is lots more for me to ruminate on. I would like to participate in one of David’s study groups as it sounds really interesting.

Another highlight of the day were the contributions made by Paul Harrington in Wales and Paul Wilkinson in Christchurch. If you read the comments on this post you will see the conversation going on in there as the day progressed as well.

Paul has directed us to a useful Freeville Thinking Tools wiki that he is working on with templates for thinking tools and David’s shownotes will be available to us soon via Centre4 I presume.

Hopefully this blog post will become an interesting focal point for the on-going discussion of the thinking tools that we learnt today. If you are going to blog about it how about adding DrDavidWhitehead (no spaces) to your tags so that we can find your blog and link together.

One last thing before I go out and enjoy the sunshine…

During the day David put up a chart on the non-interactive whiteboard showing the links between the text type and the thinking tool that best suits it. This is what managed to get from my hand-written bird scratchings. I know I have missed some tools and probably got some wrong. Please help me edit the linking chart by adding your comments either in this blog or on Flickr directly and I will change it.

I enjoyed the day and learnt a lot that I can practically use in my classroom next week. Thank you David and Brightwater School for hosting us.

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