Derek's Blog

I've just been skyping my colleague Derek Chirnside who alerted me to the release of the Horizon Report for 2006, the third editon of this annual report which is a a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.

For those who share an interest in looking forward to what the future may hold, this report provides some interesting insights. Each year, the report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact in higher education over the next one to five years. The project expressly focuses on the ways that interesting emerging technologies can be applied to teaching, learning, and creative expression.

In this report, four key trends identified that reflect significantly changing attitudes toward technology
and communication that surfaced again and again in the research:

1. Dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted.
   
2. Mobile and personal technology is increasingly being viewed as a delivery platform for services of all kinds.
   
3. Consumers are increasingly expecting individualized services, tools, and experiences, and open access to media, knowledge, information, and learning.
   
4. Collaboration is increasingly seen as critical across the range of educational activities, including intra- and inter-institutional activities of any size or scope.

So, what are the technologies we should be watching (and preparing) for? According to this report, they are:

• social computing - <1 year
  
• personal broadcasting - <1 year
  
• phones in our pockets - 2-3 years
  
• educational gaming - 2-3 years
  
• augmented reality and enhanced visualisation - 4-5 years
  
• context-aware environments and devices - 4-5 years

The report expands on each of these technologies in detail, and each section contains some links to examples or further information. Overall, a worthwhile read, and a useful document to generate discussion and debate around how our insitutions are (or will be) positioned to adopt and implement these technologies.

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Jonathan alerted me to the release of part three of Back to School with the Class of Web2.0, and draws attention to some of the things he found of interest. (I'd blogged about parts one and two earlier)

Of special interest to me is School2.0, described as a brainstorming tool designed to help schools, districts and communities develop a common education vision for the future and to explore how that vision can be supported by technology.. It's a very timely read in conjunction with some of the thinking contained in the recently released Students First publication here in NZ.

I wasparticularly drawn to the strap-line in the heading of the web page:

There is no one path to the school of tomorrow. Technology is repidly breaking down the walls of school and letting the world in; harnessing it is key to building tomorrow's schools and students. Integrating it into the school's ecosystem is everyone's responsibility, and will ensure multiple paths to success.

The process takes into account the people, the learning 'ecosystem', the technology & infrastructure, and what they call the 'supporting elements' that include Performance Driven Administration, Leadership and Collaboration and Technical Support.

From a first read through I am impressed, although there is definitely room for expansion of the ideas and the processes that could be used. As it stands at the moment it is provides only a framework for discussion. Apart from a 'contact us' link, there's no indication of a wiki or forum area that may appear as part of this initiative - something that I'd have thought would be a natural adjunct to this sort of resource.

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I've been participating in an online course over the past few weeks with a group of teachers who are sharing experiences and exploring ideas around the use of new technologies in education. This week we're looking in particular at the impact of Web2.0, or social networking tools, and how they may be shaping the expectations and learning behaviours of students.

With that in mind I was very interested when Clarence pointed me to a paper by Henry Jenkins titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century which explores the notion of media literacy through a lens of identifying what skills and abilities (competencies) learners will require to participate in real spaces and with real ideas, allowing them to interact with others globally for authentic purposes.

Clarence points out that the majority of the paper is spent in exploring the 11 skills Jenkins says that are needed to fully take control of participating in this culture:

1. "Play??? the capacity to experiment with one???s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
   
2. Performance??? the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
   
3. Simulation??? the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
   
4. Appropriation??? the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
   
5. Multitasking??? the ability to scan one???s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
   
6. Distributed Cognition??? the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
   
7. Collective Intelligence??? the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
   
8. Judgment??? the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
   
9. Transmedia Navigation??? the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
   
10. Networking??? the ability to search for,synthesize,and disseminate information
    
11. Negotiation??? the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms."

Clarence's entry provides a more complete discussion around the intent of the paper - however, I was interested to read the first comment that had been made on this blog which contained the following statement:

As Jenkins tells us, we need to look beyond our kids having access to tools (blogs, wikis, etc.) and we need to learn how to use them effectively in our classrooms to support their learning.

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I spent all of last week in Wellington, two days of which were spent exploring implementations of the e-Framework. The group included information architects from the Ministry of Education in NZ, and Dan Rehak from Carnegie Mellon University, James Dalziel (Director of MELCOE and inventor of LAMS) and Dr Malcolm Read (executive secretary) and Louisa Dale (partnership manager) from JISC in the UK.

Coming from these discussions, I was interested to read this morning an announcement of the formation of the Tetra Collaboration, who...

...will work together on projects that address the needs of education, research, technical infrastructure, service oriented architectures (SOA), federated systems, and application frameworks.

Tetra will demonstrate the potential of the JISC's e-Framework, will be built on open standards and IMS specifications, and is committed to developing sustainable community source solutions for education

One of the first Tetra projects will be to continue the work of the Bodington open source learning management system to produce Bodington - Next Generation or Bodington NG. Seems like the focus of this endeavour will be on developing the Bodington product further with an emphasis on developing and implementing an SOA enterprise e-framework based on the Sakai standards etc.

Michael Feldstein expands on this announcement with his own thoughts on his e-Literate blog

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I had my first real look at Second Life earlier this year, and was impressed with the relative ease with which a 3D environment could be created as a context for online interactions etc.

SLoodle is a project to integrate the VLE platform Moodle with the 3D world of Second Life. Imagine a Moodle course that, if you wanted, could turn into a proper 3D interactive classroom with all your Moodle resources available to your students in the virtual world. As their intro says:

Two developer communities have come together to create entirely new teaching tools that motivate while offering hands-on exploration.

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I've just received an upate from the GVN team about progress with the orphanage in Nepal that was built from the funds raised from the trek I participated in a year ago. The picture above is of the children in front of their now completed orphanage, together with some members of the 2006 GVN trekking group. There's a full update about the project available on the GVN website.

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Google have recently released their Google for Educators site, containing links to 12 of its web-based applications, along with information about how they can be used to support education.

No surprises with the tools and applications they've assembled here, but useful to have access to all via the one website. The menu provides links to a teacher's guide to 12 Google products, including basic information about each tool, examples of how educators are using them, and lesson ideas.

Google's moves are part of the company's strategy to assemble a suite of applications that are tied to an internet connection instead of a single computer's hard drive, and is yet another indication of the growing movement toward the use of software that can be accessed via the web from any internet-connected computer--even productivity applications such as word processors and spreadsheets that traditionally have been tethered to a desktop machine. (see recent eSchool News article).

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The Learning Circuits Blog has posted a Big Question for October which is "Should all learning professionals be blogging?". This question caught my eye (and imagination) as it seems to me that, like many new developments, there is a level of expectation being generated within the education community that you need to be blogging in order to be 'current'.

While I've personally found keeping a blog a really valuable personal and professional endeavour, I'd hesitate to say that every educational professional (assuming this includes teachers, principals, consultants, ministry officials etc) should keep one.

Which got me to thinking - why do I keep a blog? Well, here are the reasons that come to mind:

• it's helped me establish a discipline of recording some of the ideas, thoughts, references and tips that I come across in my daily work.
  
• I've been able to create a 'repository' of these recorded items which I can then go back and search for at a later stage (when my memory has let me down)
  
• it allows me to share these things with colleagues without having to send repetitive emails - and it allows some of my colleagues to keep a track of what I'm up to through their RSS feeds etc
  
• through the comments that people leave I've received both affirmation and constructive feedback on ideas and things I've shared -helping me grow and gain confidence in what I do
  
• it's forced me to read other people's blogs in order to maintain currency in the things I'm thinking and writing about
  
• it's made me set up an RSS feed reader in order to manage my time and energies, and to learn new skills relating to skimming and scanning large amounts of information
  
• I've used it as a place that I can send people to to find references, papers and presentations that I refer to or use when speaking to groups
  
• I've become linked to a community of people I'd previously either not known of, or only read about in vague references - I can now interact with them through their blogs, and they with me.

Do I think all educational professionals should be engaged in these sorts of behaviours - absolutely yes! Do I think that therefore all educational professionals should be blogging - well, I'd certainly encourage them to try, but there are more ways of engaging in these sorts of behaviours than blogging. Some keep written journals, others meet regularly in professional groups, and others still publish papers in refereed journals - others blog!

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Click image for full sized graphic

Several posts have been made this week about personal learning environments which led me to post my most recent attempt to diagram the way I see things moving.

Christopher Sessums started me off with his post on (re)defining blogs. In this he discusses the way in which blogs are being used for a variety of purposes other than simply an online personal jounral, and asks "when is a blog no longer a blog?" . His question is:

do we need a new definition of this space we have been referring to as a blog? Is it simply a matter of adding an adjective, as in this is my personal blog and this is my academic blog? Is a blog more a personal learning environment when framed in an academic setting?

A post by Helen Barrett takes this thinking further with her mash-up of different web2.0 tools which she considers could be combined together for a powerful ePortfolio system. While I'd concurr with the direction that Helen is thinking, I'm not sure that I'd see the portfolio as the centre-piece - rather, it seems to me that she's described a PLE from a different perspective, with the digital archive and digital portfolio being important dimensions of this.

I have been working with an extension of these ideas, in particular, how the evolving understandings about personal learning environments relate to understandings about the 'managed learning environments' that schools and educational institutions are developing and working with. A managed learning environment is a term used by JISC in the UK, and is explained on Wikipedia as:

A {learning management system] can be considered a sub system of a MLE, whereas MLE refers to the wider infrastructure of information systems in an organisation that support and enable electronic learning on a wider scale.

1. Personal Learning Environment that is "owned", managed and maintained by the individual learner, and
   
2. Managed Learning Environmentthat is "owned, managed and maintained by a school or insitution.

A paper recently released by Scott Wilson, Oleg Liber etc titled Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems provides further useful insight/ This paper uses a design theory approach to argue for the evlolution of a VLE (virtual learning environment) into a PLE. This paper contributes significantly to the discussion around PLEs - although I am still wondering about the extent to which a school or institution-based VLE/LMS canbe morphed into a PLE, or whether we shouldn't accept that, with modification, these sorts systems will be required, and that our efforts should work in parallel to develop the sort of PLE that I've tried to illustrate in my diagram.

No doubt these thoughts will continue to evolve...

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Here's a great site I came across this afternoon - Shelfari - allows you to create your own "virtual bookshelf"of books you are reading or have read, linking you with others who have read the same book, and creating a virtual book club in the process!
I've created a simple shelf with some of the titles I refer to regularly in the work I do - link to it here!

As an extra note, Stephen Harlow pointed me to LibraryTwoPointZero where the writer compares three Social Cataloging Applications: Gurulib, Librarything, and Shelfari.

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The latest edition of Innovate is now online - this edition the contributors explore, assess, and illustrate the potential of open source software and related trends to transform educational practice. David Wiley's article provides a useful overview and background to the use of Open Source software in education, while the rest of the contributors focus on particular aspects of the use of open source software at both tertiary (higher ed) and school level.

There's also a most interesting article by Stephen Downes that introduces readers to Intute, an open access Web site that represents a significant step forward in the evolution of learning object repositories. He writes:

Created by a network of British universities and the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC), a federal British initiative, Intute represents what learning object repositories were meant to be but never became.

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From time to time I blog about a new application or product that is available on the web that is part of the family of products under the "Web2.0" label. today, thanks to colleague Jedd Bartlett, I was introduced to a fascinating blog titled Solution Watch. The authors of this blog have compiled a comprehensive list of Web2.0 applications, organised under headings that all teachers will related to immediately. There are three separate entries on the blog:

• part one covering tools;
  
• part two covering office applications;
  
• part three, real cases of Web 2.0 (now live)

So - if you're looking for applicatons to assist you with note-taking, grade-books, organisers, curriculum help, or office applications - here's a good place to start.

There's a really interesting piece at the end of part two which explores the comparisons between various web-based word processors. Definitely a link to add to your del.icio.us account!

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I had the opportunity to attend a part of hte IBM conference here in Christchurch last week, and was introduced to some of the education projects that IBM has been supporting. One of these is TryScience.org which I've had the chance to play with now and can recommend.

I'd guess it's best use would be for senior primary and junior secondary students. The publicity states that "TryScience is the collective knowledge of thousands of science expertis in subjects ranging from archeology to zoology, and it's presented in a way that ignites the imagination of children"

In the "Fieldtrips" area I tried the "catch a cultprit" activity! A crime has been committed, and you are required to use your skills of observation and science knowledge to find the perpetrator. Completing the exercise called "Suspect Sketcher" requires intuitive deducation and attention to detail - the basis for scientific discovery!

within the TryScience environment there are five distinct areas to exlpore:

• Adventure - interactive experience.
  
• Experients - hands-on scientific activity
  
• Field Trips - visit science centres throughout the world
  
• Curious - investigate scientific topics in the news
  
• Live Cams - offer a real-time look at some of the world's most interesting science and technology exhibits.

There are plenty of other activities to explore and engage with - I've only started to scratch the surface, but I'll be sharing this with my son for sure, and observing just what takes his interest.

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Here's an interesting initiative started by four women from various parts of North America called Women of Web 2.0. According to their site; "Women of Web 2.0 is for all who are using the tools of the internet whether it be in a classroom setting, leading seminars, authoring books, maintaining blogs or wikis, or just enjoying the tools of the internet in an educational and exciting way."

One of the women involved is Sharon Peters who I met in Montreal at last year's AERA conference, and then visited her in her school where she is doing some really exciting stuff with her students.

Perhaps some of our Kiwi "women of web 2.0" might look at joining their community and contributing some of the experiences they're having down this end of the world??

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Windows Vista and Office 2007, according to industry analysts, may be the last time Microsoft can really cash in on these lucrative personal computer products, as software is increasingly distributed, developed and used on the Internet.

Interesting article in this morning's New York Times titled Is Windows Near End of its Run? It features an interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer in which he comments on what he sees is the future of the company.

The most interesting part of the interview for me comes at the end where Balmer is commenting on the importance of community as being one of the key change drivers in the future:

I think one pervasive change is the increasing importance of community. That will come in different forms, with different age groups of people and it will change as the technology evolves. But the notion of multiple people interacting on things ??? that will forever continue. That???s different today, and we???re going to see those differences build. You see it in a variety of ways now, in social networking sites, in the way people collaborate at work, and in ad hoc collaboration over the Internet. You see it in things like Xbox Live, the way we let people come together and have community entertainment experiences. And you???ll see that in TV and video. It???s not like the future of entertainment has been determined. But it???s a big deal.

I'd have to agree - although it's not going to be as easy as it sounds, as there's an emerging tension appearing in the discussions about community around what I'd call the issue of 'ownership' - who decides a community is a community, who runs it, whomakes the rules, who can join, how do you 'unjoin' etc? The tension exists between those who see communites as an entity that can be formed, managed and controlled, and those who regard communities in a more 'ecological' way. I've found Stephen Downes paper on Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge useful in this regard. He proposes that "the learning of knowledge is distributive, that is, not located in any given place (and therefore not 'transferred' or 'transacted' per se) but rather consists of the network of connections formed from experience and interactions with a knowing community. . The distinction here is that it's not the community per se that's important, but the network that enables the ecology of a community to operate.

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Now that I've had time to read the Students First report from the Secondary Futures Group I thought I'd muse a little on what is in it. it is a good read - in fact, an essential read for anyone with an interest in the future of our education system!

There's a strong link between the central theme of this report (Students First/customised learning) and the emerging focus of the current Minister of Education and his Ministry (Personalised Learning). Throughout the report there is reference to how ICT may contribute to the sort of educational future(s) that are envisaged, but ICTs themselves are not the drivers, nor are they presented as the 'magic bullet' that will immediately solve our problems.

The report identifies four trajectories that reflect emerging trends in education and learning as well as a
stronger focus on the purposes of education and the desired outcomes:

1. Customised learning pathways - where student and teacher define a customised learning programme (note reference to teachers and learners working together to customise/personalise learning, NOT learners isolating themselves and making decisions about what and how they learn without reference to others).

2. Linked-up learning programmes - recognising that learning happens from more than one site (where the idea of a 'learning hub' is discussed, sounding incredibly like the Virtual Learning Network that received a significant amount of money in this year's budget)

3. Multiple learning portals - recognising that several modes are used for learning ('portals' being used here in the wider sense of the 'windows' through which learners might see/access/participate in their learning - not simply in the online sense)

4. Synchronised learning platforms - providing a network of learning and other services is available for each student (the use of the term 'platforms' may be problematic for the technologists among us, but in this context the use of 'platforms' refers to the range of educational interests that are being served - not just a schools perspective)

The diagram below (from page 11 of ther report) summarises the way in which all the elements referred to in this report are woven together.

In contrast to the soundbites that were chosen by the media to release this document into the public forum, this report actually contains a framework and rationale that we'd do well to consider and engage with if we're truly to have any chance of building an education future that is relevant in the 21st Century.

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Clipart from Clipartheaven.com.

This morning's headline on the front page of the local paper read Blueprint for learning Changes which caught my eye immediately. It's a press release about the first of five reports to come out of the Secondary Futures Project .

The release begins with "Classrooms of the future will see computers replacing books and children logging on from home PCs for interactive lessons with overseas students. " Oh dear! What year is this - sounds like discussions we were having back in the 1980s! We should already be living in this future (and many are) - not reporting on its possibility here in 2006.

Now I don't want to sound negative about the Secondary Futures Project itself - it's been very successful in engaging thousands of people in discussions and making submissions about the future of secondary education, and their website is technically and design-wise quite awesome. But I'm dismayed if this press release is an indicator of the sort of reporting we're going to see from the results.

I know that it's always going to be difficult to convey the depth of a report like this in a series of newspaper "soundbites" - but I expected more than "Face-to-face teaching will be complemented, or sometimes even replaced, by online learning, e-learning, television learning and hands-on learning," Surely this isn't news to anyone. They key issues will be around how this will be achieved, in particular, how we're going to address the numerous issues associated with current present social, policy and political mindsets (see my blog entry Tackling Online Learning in Secondary Schools)

One of the issues that will certainly need clarification is that of what is meant by personalised learning. I heard our Education Minister speak at length about his view on this at the recent ULearn conference in Christchurch, but it would seemt from comments in today's Press report, the shared understanding of this concept needs a lot of work. Compare these two statements from the press release...:

"[The report] champions personalised learning, where teachers and students collaborate to build tailored learning programmes around a student's interests.

personalised learning [takes] decisions on what should be taught away from society and gave it to teenagers... and questions the wisdom of leaving students alone at home to study, which raised "care issues" and meant young people would miss out on important social interaction.

I can recall 'epiphanies' like this appearing at various times through my teaching career - the fact is, learners have been doing their learning both in and out of school for as long as I can remember. I watch my own children - they are enthusiastic about the learning opportunities they have at school, they are equally enthusiastic about the learning they do when they attend their swimming lessions after school, or when they are learning how to play some new computer game at home. Seems to me its our 'system' thats been a bit slow to realise that it doesn't have a monopoly on learning.

I guess a part of my has become cynical since my experience with the Correspondence School a few years ago, where it was exactly this sort of vision that drove a group of dedicated educators to develop that school into a world leading provider of online learning experiences for students. Problem was that that it requires vision, leadership, commitment and appropriate levels of funding to achieve this - something my Correspondence School experience has made me wary of, and something that appears in short supply in a political environment that is so risk averse and conservative.

Don't get me wrong - this is my passion, I'd love to see our schooling system evolve in ways that this press release tells me the report suggests. So, putting my cynacism about newspaper reporting aside, I went onto the web to read the report for myself - to exercise my ability as a 21st century learner to learn at any time, anywhere and from the wealth of resources that I can have delivered right into my home - and have now downloaded the document titled "Students First" to read and consider in its entirity.

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I had a play with the Google Docs and Spreadsheets release this morning after reading about it on TechCrunch - it all looks very promising. It integrates the previously separate Writely and Spreadsheet product silos into a single control panel and admin area (the previous sites for those products redirect to docs.google).

After logging onto the site using my Google account, I was able to very easily begin a new document, making use of the WISIWIG editing tools available.

A weakness at this stage, as pointed out in the TechCrunch article, is the fact that at this stage you can't embed a spreadsheet within the word processing document - but I'm sure that will be addressed.

While there may be concerns about using an online word processing and spreadsheeting system because of the fact that potentially sensitive documents are stored on Google???s servers, I think there's a big future in this sort of initiative. There's been speculation for a long time about the use of web-based applications being the way of the future - and perhaps now we're seeing the beginninng of what it will look like.

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Google has recently launched a portal to connect literacy organisations around the world. The Literacy Project enables teachers, organisations, and those interested in literacy to use the internet to search for and share literacy information. The site makes good use of other Google features including Google Maps and Blogger to create the community space for the project. There's more about the project in this BBC news item.

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For someone who has been using Smartboard technologies since they appeared in NZ I was interested to watch this YouTube clip from MIT that introduces a new product that is under development in their labs. The software they're developing adds an extra dimension of "smart" to what we're currently used to seeing!

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(click image for larger version)

Exactly a year ago today I was on my way to Kathmandu to link up with 40 others from around the world to trek up to Everest Base Camp as part of a fund raising effort organised by Global Volunteer Network. The fundraising we did was to go towards building an orphanage in Kathmandu. While I was there we were able to visit the site where the orpahanage was to be built, and meet a group of the children who were going to be housed there - most of whom had a disability of some sort or another.

One year on it has been interesting to reflect on that experience, and to receive an update from the organisers, with news that the building is now complete, and that, just a few days ago, the children were moved in there. The image above was sent with the email and shows a group of the children on moving day.

I'm sharing this on my blog because a number of those who visit the blog from time to time so generously contributed to the fundraising effort, and this is to say thanks on behalf of these kids, and share the progress that has been made!

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I'm spending the day in the Hawkes Bay today, presenting a keynote and workshop at the "Team Tamatea" conference - around 130 local teachers spending two days of their holidays listening to some interesting messages from how to deal with boys at school to using comics to develop literacy skills.

I'm preparing for my workshop after lunch and saw a note on TechCrunch about the release of a new product called SlideShare - a new service that lets users upload PowerPoint or Open Office presentation files and share them online through a You Tube-like interface.

I immediately signed up (you have to request an invitation to join while the produce is in BETA) and soon received email confirmation, so set about uploading the slides from the presentation I'm about to give. You can access them here.

I can see all sorts of possibilities for this service - according to the TechCrunch article there are others in this genre also - their writeup is worth reading for more info.

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Here'san interesting twist to the idea of a personal learning environmetn (PLE) - a product called NoteMesh, descibed as...

"a free service that allows college students in the same classes to share notes with each other. It works by creating a wiki for individual classes that users can edit. Users are free to post their own lecture notes or contribute to existing lecture notes. The idea is that users in the same class can collaboratively create a definitive source for lecture notes."

I know a numberof teachers who currently use public wiki spaces like Jotspot or SeedWiki to create wikis for their students to work on documents collaboratively, but this takes that a step further by providing a little more in the environment - features akin to a learning management system - where the class as a whole can manage the notes they make in relation to a particular course.

I like the fact that there is a history feature, which keeps track of all the edits made to the notes, allowing users to easily revert the notes back from a corrupted state. The service is now open to international users (ie New Zealand) to be able to register and use for free!

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It's always fun to imagine what the future might bring. The Future of the Internet II contains the results of an eight-part 2006 survey of technology experts and social analysts that inspired thousands of fascinating forecasts tied to eight compelling question sets about the state of things in 2020, including: Will English be the dominant language? Will more people choose to live "off the grid"? Will virtual reality trump "real" reality? Will autonomous machines leave humans out of the loop? Will national boundaries be displaced by new groupings?

The web-based survey of 742 internet stakeholders was undertaken by Pew Internet, and asked respondents to assess provocative proposed scenarios for the year 2020 found significant support for and against each.

There's some great reading among the many links from this page - or you can download the full report in PDF format.

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How cool is this idea? Using a mobile phone linked to a photosharing database, you can document your experience of life in a continuous manner, or, as the publicity says, The WayMarkr project breaks down our self imposed walls of perception by giving us an alternative perspective on our daily interactions.

The intro video is worth a look, and a quick read through the faqs will also inform.

I'm sure there must be ways in which imaginative teachers and students could use this sort of technology in an educational setting - would love to hear from those who try!

Very similar to the story of three young women who recently won the Yahoo Hack Day competition with a camera, a handbag, a pedometer and a Flickr account!

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