Derek's Blog

I spent yesterday with a group of intermediate and secondary teachers in Levin, followed by a community meeting chaired by the Mayor for Horowhenua. The focus was on how the community in that district might be able to play a greater role in supporting the work of the local schools in educating their students. I shared with them the publication on Personalising Learning I blogged about yesterday, in particular, the section on "Strong and engaged communities".

Encouragingly, there was quite a bit of interest in this, with each person bringing their own level of understanding and interpretation of personalising learning to the discussion. One thing that I noticed was that there was a general assumption in the meetings that personalised learning should be a feature at all levels of our education system, with some discussion taking place at the meeting around the importance of the transition points in our education system (primary to intermediate, intermediate to secondary etc). This is something I whole-heartedly agree with, and it was doubly pleasing in this context as this was exactly what the community meeting in Levin was setting out to do. But as Stephen pointed out in his comment to my post yesteray, this is something that the NZ discussion document fails to recognise, focusing solely on personalising learning within the compulsory school sector.

All this said, I was interested to read tonight an article by BBC News education correspondent Mike Baker, in which he shares some concerns he has about the personalised learning initiative in the UK. In his article, titled Tailoring lessons for every pupil, Baker claims that, in their efforts to implement personalised learning in UK schools, educators will, again, have failed to realised the importance of taking parents, employers and other lay people along with them on the ride to the latest new thing.

Agreeing that change in our school system is overdue, Baker goes on to report on how the use of ICT has also failed to fulfill its promise if bringing about that change. He quotes Andrew Pinder, chair of the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta), who told a conference this week that schools are "one of a relatively small number of industries that do not look as if they have changed much over the past 30 years".

Earlier this year, Becta published its annual report which has been summed up as saying that much money has been spent on IT in UK education with little discernible return. Pinder is reported as saying that Becta research concludes that about 15% of the UK's 25,000 schools have shown some gains in performance as a result of the technology that's been poured into them.

I came across a more forthright version of Pinder's speech on Donald Clark's Blog post titled BECTA on the offensive, in which he (Clark) begins with:

In a blistering analysis on the wasted spend in schools, the new Chair of BECTA, Andrew Pindar, blamed the teaching profession as being the block on progress.

These reports from the UK, who have been the trailblazers for the path NZ is about to follow, provide some stern warnings that we'd be best to take on board lest we find ourselves having similar things being written about us in the future. The things we need to take on board include:

• there's some courageous leadership required if we are to achieve a radically different view of schools and schooling. This will require risk taking and vision - the current climate of extreme risk aversion is stifling such leadership.

• We must address the policy issues that are creating some of the biggest blocks to us achieving these changes - the standard patterns of lesson delivery to classes of 30 kids in square classrooms is as much to do with the policies that support this as it is with teachers not wanting to change

• personalising learning must impact across all levels of our system - both life-long and life-wide, so let's quickly get to the next version of a document that reflects this, and engage all levels of the education system in the discussions.

• the involvement of communities must be pivotal in all of this, not just as a something that is "ticked off" because it is referred to in the document. There must be meaningful engagement and collaboration, much of it initiated by community leaders, not leaving it solely to school leaders and principals.

• Technology/ICT of in and of itself will not bring about the change that is required. ICT can enable and facilitate powerful shifts in behaviour and thinking, but on its own it is not a "magic bullet".

Schools, in [Pinder's] opinion, are organised in the wrong way. They need institutional reform, not management by individuals. One must separate the institution from its staff. In education the workers are in control and run the system for their benefit. They can't go out of business, are massively funded and supported by the state and have therefore have no reason to reform themselves. Reform must come from the outside.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Ministry of Education have just released their discussion document Let's Talk About Personalising Learning (PDF download) which is available through the TKI site.

I've been waiting to see this since hearing Education Minister Steve Maharey speak so passionately on the topic at the ULearn conference earlier this year. His focus on personalized learning reflects what is happening on other parts of the world, where an increased emphasis on meeting then needs of individual learners, providing greater flexibility and choice within our education system, is a key goal of government education strategy.

The NZ discussion document focuses on these areas:

• effective teaching
  
• assessment for learning
  
• curriculum
  
• strong and engaged communities
  
• professional leadership
  
• highly supportive system

Interestingly, there is no actual definition provided. There are plenty of suggestions of what personalising learning might be, including:

• working to build a system that is geared up to equip every young person for the future
  
• a way of renewing Clarence Beeby???s vision of equal opportunity for all students
  
• not only about putting students at the centre of our system.. but about making learning meaningful for them
  
• regarding students as individuals who engage in a dynamic, two-way process

Internationally, there is similar work going on, In 2005 the DfES in the UK released a white paper called Higher Standards, Better Schools for All - that sets the scene for personalized learning, focusing on increasing choice for parents and students.

They've since set up their DfES Personalised Learning website for the UK personalised learning initiative, providing details of the five components that they've identified:

• assessment for learning,
  
• effective teaching and learning
  
• curriculum entitlement and choice
  
• organising the school
  
• beyond the classroom

There are already some interesting perspectives coming through from the UK research, including this list of Personalised Learning Research Summaries - a series of research reports written by eight head-teachers and/or deputy head-teachers/vice principals in the UK who've written on each of the five components of personalized learning as set out by the DfES.

One of my favourite background papers on personalized learning comes from the UK's FutureLab titled Personalisation and Digital Technologies, in which, as the title suggests, there is an exploration of the ways in which ICTs can and are contributing to the personalisation of learning.

Well, the scene is set - it will be interesting now to see in what direction(s) the NZ education system goes. Will personalising learning simply become the current 'buzz term', ensuring that anyone who is clever enough to include reference to it in their planning or reports will achieve a tick for their funding approval - or might this be the catalyst for truly transforming an education system that is undoubtedly still intensely "institution-centric" and "delivery-focused"?

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting entry from Helen Barrett on her e-portfolios for learning blog in which she introduces a model of portfolio differences. The model is a response to what she sees as a lack of understanding between the use of portfolios for learning and for accountability. The model stems from the work of Dr. Evangeline Harris Stefanakis in her book, Multiple Intelligences and Portfolios, which contains a diagram placing portfolios along a continuum of Learning and Accountability. The model combines Stefanakis's diagram and some of Barrett's work, and is called the Stefanakis-Barrett Model of Portfolio Differences (PDF)

I rather like what the model portrays - particularly because it emphasises a continuum view rather than a binary choice, and in this respect complements the thinking I've been doing and writing about on the scope of the online learning environment.(PDF dowload), and the continuum model I've developed to show the differences between established and emergent approaches within our education system.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just spent the weekend in Rotorua attending a 10 year celebration of the beginning of the Primary Open Learning (POLO) primary teacher training programme in Rotorua. This is a programme that I had a part in establishing when I was working at the Christchurch College of Education. Back then it was difficult to imagine the programme would last for ten years! To date there have been 163 graduates of the programme - most of whom are now teaching in and around the Rotorua or central North Island region. The Rotorua programme is a regional initiative based on the distance education teacher education programme that CCE have been running since 1995. Similar programmes have been run in Gisborne, Panguru and Te Aroha - but only Rotorua has continued for 10 years.

This is a credit to the vision and leadership of a number of people, including the principals association of Rotorua who initiated discussions with the Christchurch College of Education, to the management and staff of CCE, and to the long term commitment of Ann-Marie Hunt (left rear in photo above) who has been the local coordinator of the POLO programme since it began - and the many other lecturers and staff who have worked with the students there. It also owes a lot to the partnership that has developed between CCE and the Waiariki Polytechnic that has been the local "home" to the project since it started.

The theme of this weekend was "making a difference", and during the weekend I heard many stories from students of how this programme has made a difference in their lives, and how they are now able to make a difference in the lives of the students in the classes they are teaching.

The weekend was also attended by some of the past and present management team from the Christchurch College of Education, making it especially significant for them as it also marks the end of the formal relationship with the College as an entity, as in six weeks time it will amalgamate with the University of Canterbury.

The final part of the weekend was a poroporoaki that held in the Wharenui at Waiariki Institute of Technology(see picture below). A feature of the Rotorua POLO programme has been the wananga, led by Peter Moeau, that were held in this wharenui. Many students spoke of the significance of these experiences throughout their course - in preparing them to work with Maori students in mainstream schools.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now here's some serious competition for the traditional print media publishers - WikiJunior, a project of WikiBooks, aims to...

...produce a series of full-color booklets for children aged 8 to 11. The subjects will be appealing to kids, and the writing will be light and friendly. These booklets will be richly illustrated with photographs, diagrams, sketches, and original drawings. The texts will also follow a format, so that each booklet, while different, will also have certain common features.

I downloaded a PDF copy of the solar system booklet - 97 pages packed with information and images. The layout is pretty basic from a design perspective, consisting largely of headings and blocks of text, with the occasional image inserted here and there. The image quality is pretty good on the whole. The main headings are phrased as questions that students may come seeking an answer to, but without an index of them it's pretty hit and miss as to whether you'll find the question you want. I'd have to say that the language level may be a bit challenging for many students in the target age group - many comparable published texts that I've watched my 9-year old become engrossed in would have a greater amount of visual material including annotated graphics etc to make it easier to access the meaning of some of the scientific and technical terms.

That said, this is an interesting development which will deserve to be followed to see how it develops and how the resources being produced are used.

A further 8 pages follow that provide details of the GNU Free Documentation License which tells you what you are able to do with regards copying and distributing copies of the booklet.

Thanks to Kevin Kruse for the heads up on this one

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting to watch the news tonight and see more on the leaked emails saga that is dogging NZ politics at the moment. With this in mind, I was interested to receive an email from Rich McIver from IT Security today, advising me that his company has just published "Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips ".

The authors ask why is it that...

when it comes to emails, there are no accepted standards? Even though 6 billion emails are sent every day, almost no one agrees about simple things like email etiquette, how to organize a note, or whether emails are considered private or not.

• etiquette
  
• communication and effectiveness
  
• mobile email
  
• productivity, folders and filtering
  
• email filtering
  
• tricks, hacks, backup
  
• system specific email (which is pretty much a hard sell for google mail, but worth noting all the same)
  
• privacy and security

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A useful resource from UNESCO called Using ICT to Develop Literacy is now available as a PDF download from their website. It's an easy read - concise and useful, focusing on five key ways in which ICT can support literacy

1. Enhancing Learning
   
2. Broadening Access to Literacy Education
   
3. Creating Local Content
   
4. Professional Development of Teachers
   
5. Cultivating a Literacy-Conducive Environment

"The word ???literacy??? is often used today as a substitute for the word ???ability??? or ???competency???. For example, ???computer literacy??? is the ability to use computers, and access and create information through a computer. Such uses should not be confused with the term ???literacy??? as we use it here, i.e. the skills related to reading, writing and communicating in the written form.

Examples of other uses of the word ???literacy??? include:

• Information literacy: The skills required to organize and search for information, while also analyzing that information.
  
• Critical literacy: the ability to engage in critical thinking, and judge the intention, content and possible effects of written material.
  
• Mobile literacy: The ability to use mobile technology, such as a mobile phone and its non-voice features.
  
• Media literacy and research literacy: The ability to be a discerning reader and the ability to find various types of information.
  
• Cultural literacy: the ability to understand cultural, social and ideological values in a given context.
  
• Legal literacy: the knowledge of basic legal rights and how to protect those rights.
  
• Visual literacy: the interpretation of images, signs, pictures and non-verbal (body) language. "

One of the focus areas, professional development, is a particular interest of mine, and on that subject, here are a couple of other links that I found over the weekend:

???Cultivating Digital Educators??? - a paper by two school teachers from the US in which they share their experiences and ideas about how to transform a traditional school environment into one where teachers effectively use technology for collaboration, curriculum development, instructional delivery, and student engagement. Their presentation is available as an 18min movie download and is worth viewing.

Beyond Spray and Pray PD - an article by Wesley Fryer in TechLearn nothing new here at all, in fact, everything he reveals in this latest 'epiphany' is what has underpinned the ICT PD cluster schools programme in New Zealand for the past six years - but always good to have this affirmed!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's a public holiday in Canterbury today, so I've had an opportunity to browse and ponder a few articles that have come via my RSS feeds. Linked to my musing about the advice I should give my daughter in a recent post, I was interested to read about a recent report from the US titled "Are They Really Ready To Work? Employers??? Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st. Century U.S. Workforce" (PDF file). TechLearning uses the heading Workforce Readiness Crisis for their commentary on this report, while the Partnership for 21st century Skills group (who commissioned the report) lead with Most Young People Entering the U.S. Workforce Lack Critical Skills Essential For Success.

Or what about this one; Are College Students Techno Idiots? - from Inside Higher Ed reporting on a recent report released by the Educational Testing Service (US) which finds that students lack many basic skills in information literacy, which ETS defines as the ability to use technology to solve information problems.

"Crisis", "lack critical skills", "idiots?", - these are powerful and emotive words. The picture painted here is grim, and focuses our attention again on what Neil Postman refers to as The End of Education in his book subtitled, "redefining the value of school."

Predictably, each of the articles tells just one side of the story - but the beauty of the web is that you can also read the reviews and comments that people have left to help get a better understanding and, perhaps, more balanced perspective. But the challenge remains the same - just how seriously are we taking this "crisis" - and how many cohorts of students will we graduate before we come close to sorting things out (I've got three more children to come through the system yet!).

Yesterday I spoke with a teacher who is helping coordinate a group of local secondary schools to form a cluster for the purposes of participating in an ICT professional development programme. The enthusiasm was evident, as was the extent of preparation etc. But the major concern revolves around the priorities as seen by the principals and senior management of the participating schools - whether to invest time and effort in the ICT PD programme, or in the other, competing priority they've identified - behaviour management. (MMmmm he muses, let me see - choice between preparing these young people for their future, or learning how to control them in class??)

Now I don't want to demean the situation - let's face it, the issue of disruptive students and inappropriate behaviour is not insignificant in our secondary schools, and is has a major impact not only on those who are mis-behaving, but everyone else as well who has to wait while the problems are sorted etc. But all of this serves to illustrate how the tyranny of the urgent so often becomes an excuse for not addressing the more important, long term issues we must find solutions to.

The problem seems to me to be one of relevance - we keep coming back to the fact that we operate a school system designed to meet the needs of the past, barely the present, and certainly not the future. Technology is certainly has a major part to play in this, and as Postman says in "The End Of Education";

"Technolgoical change is not additive, it is ecological. A new technology doesn't change something, it changes everything!"

I'll end this little rant with a quote passed on to me by my friend and mentor, Tony Mander, from a recent book by John Lienhard:

So with Menocchio in mind, let us look about us once more at over a billion computers that have been thrown into the world during a scant two decades. Like Sebastian Brant, we tell one another, ???Gee whiz, look at all the information our children can now access???. The real changes that the computer is bringing about ??? changes in the way we see reality ??? remain invisible.

We hardly yet have an adult generation that has known the personal computer from birth. At this writing, you and I still see the computer against the backdrop of the not-computer. We typed before we word-processed. We learned the algorithms of arithmetic before we used hand calculators. We memorised facts, algorithms, and spellings.

All of us see the personal computer against the backdrop of a world without it. What we cannot see at all is how a mind will work when it has never known anything else. What did they say about books in 1501? In the end, whatever was said was irrelevant because it was ??? ipso facto ??? useless commentary. For everyone looking at the new books in 1501, the future was as hopelessly unpredictable as it remains today.

Lienhard, John H. How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines. Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 171

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago I blogged about a newcomer to the social networking software scene called Shelfari. I've been adding to my collection during the weeks since then, and have also begun exploring with a couple of teachers ways in which this application could be used in a classroom context.

Recently I received a communication from Mark Williamson, co-founder & Board member at Shelfari who has shared with me a piece of code that will allow my shelf to be linked directly to my blog. That is what I am experimenting with here. Seems to work well, with the books on my shelf being dynamically displayed here within my blog.

The forward and back arrows allow me to scroll through my collection and the link to Shelfari takes me directly to my home page on Shelfari, which, thanks to the keychain in my Mac, automatically signs me in ready to go. However, having this centred as an entry in my blog isn't where I'd prefer to have it, so I've suggested to Mark that he create a script that will allow me to put this in my side-bar, perhaps with the most recent book on my shelf, or the one (or 2 or 3) I am reading at the moment - with the same navigation arrows and links to my shelf in a pop-up browser window - now that would be really cool!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I sat with my wife and 20 year old daughter last night watching a television documentary about Darfur and the crisis that exists there. The images were compelling, as was the commentary and interviews with those involved. It made me think of a recent entry I made on my blog about the interactive game, Darfur is Dying, and wonder just how effective playing this game is in really helping children understand the situation that the people in this country are facing.

My 20 year old daughter has just returned from a six month stint in central America as part of a Global Volunteer Network scheme - spending three months in Honduras helping build a house for a family, and a further three months in El Salvador working in an orphanage. Her experiences were nowhere near as extreme as what we watched together on TV last night, but they have left her just as troubled about how she as a single individual might work to alleviate the suffering of others. She has spoken to me at length about the plight of the young girls she worked with in the orphanage, plucked from a life of poverty, but destined to a life of prostitution or roadside begging once they are too old to remain in the orphanage - how terrible the cycle is.

She has returned to NZ with thoughts of training as a teacher (focusing on her interest in science, particularly chemistry) - but is currently wondering just where she might best put her energies. Understandably, she wants to act now - but is also discerning enough to understand that there may be a lot more she can achieve with some sort of training or qualification behind her.

It's a dilemma - How might our education system better prepare our young people for facing this sort of world? When in our education process is it appropriate to expose students to this sort of situation? Can it be done without appearing tokenistic? How do we best prepare our students to develop the right attitudes of mind and dispositions to cope when they are exposed? What sort of qualification does it take to prepare one for work in this area?

I can't help but find myself contemplating the message in the letter that Will Richardson wrote recently to his kids, titled Dear Kids, You Don???t Have to Go to College. What advice should I give my daughter?

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Following up on the discussions that have been taking place around NZ after Lisa Galareau's keynote at the ULearn conference, here's an interesting report from FutureLab titled Teaching with Games. it's the result of a one-year project supported by Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Take-Two and ISFE.

The study was designed to offer a broad overview of teachers' and students' use of and attitudes towards commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computer games in schools. It's aims were to:

1. identify the factors that would impact the use of these entertainment games in school

2. describe the processes by which teachers plan and implement games-based learning in existing curricular contexts

3. provide recommendations for future games-based learning approaches in schools for teachers, developers and policy makers.

Of the key findings from the project, a couple that caught my eye were:

• Using games in a meaningful way within lessons depended far more on the effective use of existing teaching skills than it did on the development of any new, game-related skills. Far from being sidelined, teachers were required to take a central role in scaffolding and supporting students' learning through games.

• Where previous studies have suggested that games need to offer a fully accurate underlying model to be of benefit for formal education, this study suggests that for the game to be of benefit to teachers, it need only be accurate to a certain degree: there may be wider inaccuracies within the game model, but these do not necessarily preclude the game from being used meaningfully in a lesson.

(Note: Lisa Galarneau's talk at ULearn is available here - requires registration)

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, just published the latest stats on the state of the blogosphere and its growth. it makes for very interesting reading - here is just a quick summary:

• Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.

• Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.

• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.

• About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.

• About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.

• There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.

• The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.

• Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

click image for larger version

I've been contributing as a guest to an online course run by my friend Derek Chirnside, and today we were discussing the issue of the ways in which people participate in online communities. In particular, we were talking about the different phases people seem to go through when they begin blogging.

I shared with him a simple framework I've developed, based on my thinking and experience in this area - so tonight I thought I'd commit to putting it into diagramatic form and sharing it here for comment.

My diagram attempts to illustrate how many participants in the online environment move through phases as they gain understanding and confidence.

1. consumer - The first phase is where participants (often referred to as lurkers) simply read and explore the posts of others. Far from being passive as the word lurker suggests, consumers can be very active participants in an online community - just not yet visible to others.

2. commentor - as this label suggests, these people make comments on others posts (either on blogs, or in discussion forums), often seeking clarification, agreeing with a statement, or offering a suggestion or link to something similar.

3. contributor - as this label suggests, contributors are those who have started their own blogs or who initiate new threads on discussion forums. They are confident about putting forth their own ideas etc.

4. commentator - a commentator is someone who frequently takes a 'meta' view of what is going on, providing a level of leadership within the community. Their contributions will often draw attention to the 'bigger picture', making links with other work - analysing and synthesising the contributions of others.

In my conversation with Derek C, we spent time discussing our observation that so many of the growing number of online courses we've seen require students to operate their own blog, or to become active participants in an online forum. What we observe is an inevitable spread of participation, with few people actively contributing or initiating posts etc. While some of this may be put down to differences in learning style or personality, I believe that we should also be thinking about the fact that a semester long course, for example, is simply too short a time for someone who has never seen a blog before to suddenly be expected to have one up and running as a part of their course participation.

What about making the reading of other people's blogs a course requirement, or simply adding comments to the course tutor's blog etc. as a legitimate learning activity. This would build into the course the opportunity to explore and understand the nature of the blogging experience and how knowledge is shared and developed through these interactions - before asking learners to jump off the deep end and create their own.

I'd be interested to hear of what others think about this model - and how it aligns with the experience that you've had in online groups and communities.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's arrived - George Siemen's book Knowing Knowledge, is now available. I have only just downloaded it and skimmed through, so can't comment in detail, but have been following some of George's thinking on his Knowing Knowledge blog in the lead up to this publication, as well as his Connectivism blog - and look forward to reading it with anticipation.

True to form, the book is available in a range of formats:
.pdf Download (free)
Book Wiki (for individuals to edit, change, discuss the book)
Colour Images (on flickr)
For Purchase (via Lulu - Amazon will be available soon)
Siemens says: "feel free to share with colleagues who you feel may find this discussion of interest..."

This is certainly a different type of publication - and is sure to generate some healthy debate and discussion. As Denham Grey says in his review of the book:

George is right - in some ways knowledge has and is changing. It flows faster, reaches more widely, resides in many more distributed spaces, is more closely tied to the individual, comes at us from a far richer ecology and requires new orientations. I wonder though, if the fundamental nature of knowledge has changed at all?.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A few months ago I blogged about a semantic search engine called Quintura. Recently, the developers of the product emailed me to say they've just released an online version of Quintura, which I've been playing with for the past couple of days.

Unlike the previous version that required a client download, this version is completely online and available directly from the home page. It's works much more quickly, and the pesky movement of the search terms is now much more controlled and easy on the eye. I'm really quite impressed by the way the tool "works with you" to refine your search terms - something that I could see working really well with school-aged kids as they learn more about search terms and inquiry.

Once you enter a search word or phrase, it appears in red among a 'cloud' of related words and phrases. As you hover over these, additional sub-clouds appear. Clicking on any of these related words adds them to your search. As you carry this out, the list of search results in the lower panel is changing dynamically.

Another useful thing is that you can choose to search the web or images - both work just as simply and speedily. You can save any search cloud that you've created, send it to a friend ir invite a friend to use the product. In addition, there's a very simple movie available that provides you with a tour of the product. Just today I've recommended this to a couple of schools to try out - so I'll be interested in the feedback they provide.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"InterActive Education:teaching and learning in the information age" is the largest ICT and education research project so far in the UK. The aim of the project was to find out more about how ICT can be used most effectively to enhance teaching and learning across the curriculum with all phases from primary to post-16.

The findings of this project which has been going since 2001 are now available. No real surprises in the two key findings:

• Teachers continue to be centrally important in designing and supporting learning with ICT across the curriculum, and
  
• The potential of new technologies was still not being fully realised

• Hardware and infrastructure are necessary but not sufficient
  
• Teachers lack confidence to take risks with ICT in teaching and learning
  
• Teachers need to understand more about how to put ICT to use in teaching and learning
  
• Teachers question the relevance of ICT-based learning to achieving in the current assessment regime
  
• The impact of out-of-school learning is underestimated

• building partnerships between researchers, research students and teachers;
• establishing up networks whereby teachers and researchers may work together to design and evaluate projects which use ICT as a tool for learning; and
• promoting the use of video data to facilitate analysis and reflection about teaching and learning.

All very interesting stuff - mostly reinforces what we already know through our own research here in NZ. So... if we know this is true, what are we doing about it to change things?

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amanda Rablin pose a number of questions to my previous post about MLEs and PLEs that I thought I'd respond to in a fresh post as they are questions of significance that I've not yet made clear in what I've written. Her questions and my responses are as follows:

Amanda Where does the concept of digital portfolios fit into your diagram?

Derek: Great question - and very topical. If you follow Helen Barret's thinking, then the whole PLE is an ePortfolio. My thinking is still evolving on this, but here's how I see things at the moment:

1. when we are talking about ePortfolios were talking about two key components; (a)the repository(ies) of personal artefacts and (b)the means of exposing selected artefacts for a particular purpose.
   
2. in a PLE, the aggregation of personal sites containing audio, print, video aretfacts forms that central repository (the key here is that they can all be searched, sorted, indexed/tagged etc for location and re-combining)
   
3. The thing that is missing then is the tool for aggregating the selected items/artefacts and presenting/exposing them for a particular purpose - eg as a CV for a job, or as evidence for an assessment etc.

It may be that at some stage in the future we'll see an intermediate stage introduced (via a suitable piece of software) that allows all of the stored artefacts and items to be aggregated and indexed prior to being presented for viewing as a selection. (I think I have in mind something like my RSS aggregator, but with the ability to build up collections over time)

Amanda Do you think the school or system should provide protected (non-public) versions of web 2.0 tools so that students can explore them in a 'safe' environment? - as safety is often a concern if schools in some way endorse this environment.

Derek: Safety is a major concern, I agree - although our response can often be 'alarmist'. That said, I think there may possibly be a place for the development of 'protected' versions of these tools that will allow educators to work with. Working with students to teach them the habits and accepted behaviours within these environments can be done safely before they venture out into the open world of the web.

There are already a number of such tools out there as I've blogged about earlier, and I know of some teachers who are using these as an alternative to the open environments.

In addition, a recent newcomer to the blogging scene, VOX, provides you with the opportunity of limiting both the viewers and those who can comment on your posts. This makes it an appealing product to use with young kids from a safety point of view. The good thing about this is that it makes it easy to migrate to other levels of access when you want to.

At the end of the day, however, we'll need to acknowledge the fact that as far as a PLE goes, students are already working within the open environments, and are (often) ahead of their teachers in understanding the standards of behaviour etc of being a part of such communities.

Amanda In the development of a system, do you see that the items feeding into the PLE will be combined in a portal of some sort? Or do you see that a school would only provide an MLE with external links where appropriate?

Derek: The idea of establishing a portal as a PLE is something I'm keeping an open mind on. A couple of years ago I would have thought this was an inevitability - the only way to manage everything. Now I am persuaded to the view that a PLE is more a conceptual thing than it is a particular application or system.

My reason for thinking like this comes from looking at the ways in which young people are already behaving with these technologies. In some cases they have a blog which they have 'hacked' to the point where it acts as an aggregation point for their various other sites and communities. Others are using applications specifically set up to act as an aggregation 'hub', such as Vox, Mulitply, NetVibes, or PageFlakes for example.

A third option that is emerging now is the use of customisable browsers such as Flock or Firefox, which, with the addition of various plug-ins, can act as a central point of reference for the PLE.

Regarding the development then of a system, I think a school's priority should be on the development of a MLE, and the components within it. As long as what they do conforms to open standards, and the principles of a services oriented architecture (soa) then it should be possible for links to be made with external systems as is appropriate - including the student's PLE.

For some further reading on the nature of systems in this regard I'd recommend a paper by by Scott Wilson, Oleg Liber etc from JISC titled Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems. They do an excellent job of explaining how current systems used in education follow a consistent design pattern that is not supportive of personalisation.

Amanda How do the PLEs of students link in to each other? eg. Would it be like a myspace or elgg experience or would they be making connections with each-other through the public tools and within the MLEs separately?

Derek: At the heart of a response to this question is our understanding of how the nodal network operates, with each individual having responsibility for their own particular 'node' etc.

In this regard, I see applications such as elgg and myspace as being useful models for how individuals may create their PLE, and the fact that these tools have quite powerful "community building" functions built within them makes them more useful still. However, the important thing will be the adherence to open standards and specifications (such as RSS) that will allow for the easy exchange of data and resources.

Hope that's helpful?

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The debate around the use of interactive whiteboards is one that appears to polarize educators wherever i go - people either love them or loathe them. A couple of posts I read over the weekend have left me feeling that we need some sort of balance in the debate - and certainly some clarity of thought about what the issues actually are.

Take for instance Tim Stahmer's post titled "maybe the board's not that smart" in which he expresses his objections. He states:

I came away still not seeing the value of paying all that money (around $1000 plus the cost of the projector) for something with limited instructional purpose.

Gary Stager reiterates this point in his post titled Classroom Vice; he states:

My greatest concern about conflating "interactive" whiteboards with modernity is that this new technology creates a fossil record of ancient pedagogical practices. The whiteboards represent a pre- Gutenberg technology that reinforce the dominance of the front of the room. The priest chants from the "interactive" whiteboard while the monks take dictation on their tablet PCs.

Sadly, I'd agree with many of the observations included by these two, I've seen plenty of examples of the poor use of these tools - use of drill and practice-type activities, reliance on them as 'motivation' devices, and dependence on the templates provided by the developers etc. All true - bust surely there's more to it?

in the same post, however, Stager states:

I applaud Supt. Vallas for his commitment to 1:1 computing. The portability, functionality and power of a modern laptop in the backpack of a student by definition challenges many of our notions of school.

Now I'm not going to disagree with this in principle, but, like my observation of the poor use of interactive whiteboards, I've seen equally poor use of student laptops, particularly where these are viewed as "instructional tools" by the teacher! In a recent research project here in NZ the researcher spoke to me of comments from students who were told to "close their laptops while I'm talking", or that "schools desks are for books, not laptops"!

Surely the issue is not about the technology but about the pedagogical practice? As long as we have an "instructivist" approach to the use of any technology in our classrooms we'll face the same concerns, no matter what the technology is.

I've seen some wonderfully creative and innovative classroom programmes where students are using laptops as personal tools to create, communicate, and publish. In these classrooms the potential that Stager speaks of is certainly being realised.

Similarly, I've seen many instances of creative and innovative use of interactive whiteboards. I was possibly one of the first people in NZ to be using one regularly in a programme I ran at the Correspondence School. It was a professional development programme for teachers and we used a variety of approaches including group work, problem solving, challenges and reflection. The whiteboard was one of the technologies used, usually as a point of focus from individual and group feedback, or for demonstrating a task or something that someone had developed. Participants would move from their seats to interact with the elements of screen, offering ideas and opinions, using the tool set to annotate and manipulate - and at the end of such sessions, the record of what had been done was saved and stored on the course website for access at home or elsewhere for review and reflection.

We didn't regard the whiteboard as an "instructional tool" (although arguably, at times, this is the way it was used) - rather, it was a part of the repertoire of teaching and learning devices that were selected from as was appropriate.

In some classrooms also I have observed these boards being used with young students in equally creative ways, as this picture from a classroom I visited illustrates:

The interactive whiteboard in this classroom is positioned in one of the learning bays or stations, and students are confidently working as a group, collaboratively using the board to construct a representation of their ideas and thinking using some mind-mapping software. This is quite a contrast to the perception that Stahmer makes in another of his posts where he says that:

Mounting the technology in one place in a classroom anchors the focus to that one place. In many ways it reinforces the space as teacher-centered with rows of students facing one way, the attention on one spot.

We need to move the debate away from regarding the technology as the villain (or hero) and instead focus on the pedagogy here. As long as we see classroom teaching as being about "instructional practices" we're going to have problems with hwat we see happening with any form of technology.

The problem, as I see it, with interactive whiteboards can be summarised in the following thoughts:

• they've been over-sold on the promise of 'motivating' students
  
• they're too similar to previous technologies used in instructivist classrooms (the chalkboard, whiteboard and OHP) and therefore get used with a subsititution mentality
  
• there's an emphasis on the use of pre-prepared templates in the way these are sold and promoted (olften by the manufactuers) which reinforces an instructivist approach, and
  
• the fundamental approach to teaching and learning in many classrooms (reinforced by curriculum and exam pressures, timetables and subject silos) means that an instructivist pedagogy prevails!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Click image to enlarge

After receiving feedback on the previous posting I did about my thinki