Every now and then I come across something that I just sums up a lot of stuff I’ve been reading and thinking about – here’s one of those. It’s a slide presentation by Andrew Hinton titled Architectures for Conversation (ii): What Communities of Practice can mean for Information Architecture and is available on SlideShare.

Andrew’s done a great job of bringing together a whole lot of thinking about information architecture and how it relates to our understandings of “communities of practice”. I love some of the metaphors he uses – like, why Wikipedia is more like an AK-47 than like an M-16, and how he distinguishes between communities and communities of practice.

Each slide is annotated if you view it in full-screen mode, and with 71 slides make sure you give yourself a bit of time to read it all! An informative and entertaining presentation.

Just received an email from my electricity supplier in Christchurch – telling me of an educational website they are sponsoring called ElectroCity. It’s worth checking out – reminds me a lot of the SimCity projects that I used to run with kids at school – dividing into groups to see who could create the most successful city, and using the experience to discuss issues such as taxes, transport, recreation, governance etc – and coming to understand the issues involved in designing and maintaining a city.

ElectroCity is very similar, although its focus is on teaching about about energy, sustainability and environmental management in New Zealand. I worked my way through the very well constructed tutorial an can see real potential in this being used as a virtual learning experience in the classroom.

There’s a resource area for teachers, a very helpful FAQ area, and some pretty impressive prizes being offered in two categories, one for schools and one for public contributions.

The game is designed to be played online – but something I found to be of interest is that there is an option to download a limited version of the game that runs on any computer and doesn’t need internet access, with two versions available, one for MacOSX and one for WindowsXP. (I haven’t had the chance to try these yet, so can’t vouch for what they’re like).

If I was back in a class again I’d certainly be looking at this as a useful learning resource – some notes from the website explain why:

ElectroCity is not a win or lose game. There are lots of different ways to play and you can set your class specific objectives. For example, if you wish to try a green approach, a win might be considered any city with 50,000 people and an A rating in the environment category. Or you might focus on economics and get the kids to go for the most money.

ElectroCity is designed to be flexible, so you can use it as you wish. A whole module that deals with energy, the environment, tourism and growth could be centred around the game, mixing formal lessons with fun interactive game play. You could return to the game again and again over several weeks and compare how the kids played at the beginning with how they play at the end, putting their new knowledge into practical use and getting the kids to assess what they’ve learnt to help them make better decisions in the game.

I’ve been reflecting a bit on my experiences here in Malaysia this morning – particularly in terms of what it has meant for me in terms of working away from my home and family for extended periods of time, and have realised just important a number of the technologies that I now take for granted are to me.

For instance, on my computer my Skype and iChat windows automatically open when my computer is switched on, thus I have to make a conscious decision NOT to work with them running rather than the other way around. This provides me with a “virtual presence” whenever I am online, and the ability to see which of my friends and colleagues are online. There’s seldom been a time when I’ve opened my computer during my time here that I haven’t been “interrupted” by someone wanting to connect for a variety of reasons – from friends simply inquiring how things are going through to colleagues with specific questions etc. This has allowed me to remain connected to and involved in the range of things I have on my programme back in NZ.

In our project here in Malaysia, we have used these same tools to provide synchronous opportunities for teachers and students in Malaysia to connect with peers in New Zealand, and it has been interesting to see how these first time users have adapted and adopted these new technologies very quickly – such that I now have an ever growing list of names on my contact list!

Another thing I’ve come to rely on is the ability to simply open my computer up wherever I am and be able to connect to the internet – whether by wireless (which is being implemented in a big way here in Perak) or by plugging into a cable in a school or hotel room. This relative ‘portablility’ allows me to remain connected and involved regardless of my physical location.

The combination then of the communications software that provides me with this sense of presence, the laptop I carry and the wireless access that allows for portability, and the fact that I can so easily personalise these tools provides me with an increasing sense of what a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is and can be.

It was of interest to read this morning news that Sony and British Telecom have joined forces to integrate the PSP with BT Broadband’s video and voice softphone VoIP software, meaning that calls will be free, with the customer only having to pay for the BT broadband subscription! This will certainly introduce a more mobile connectivity tool into the mix, and must certainly be a sign of things to come as we become more mobile!

Having survived the excitement of the KPEC project celebration day in Ipoh on Monday (see previous entry) we were asked to participate with a stand at the annual Teachers Day in Ipoh on Thursday. An illustrious event attended by 4,500 teachers from across the state of Perak, the Teachers Day provides an occasion to celebrate the things that are good about teachers and teaching in the schools here – and provides the opportunity for the State officials to bestow honours on a select group of teachers who have contributed in significant ways to the profession. Teachers Day is taken very seriously over here, as this report and this blog illustrate.

It was a privilege to be a part of this event – and to see the way in which both students and peers participated in giving special recognition to the six or so teachers singled out for this year’s awards. The announcement of each recipient was preceded by the showing of specially prepared video clip that protrayed the significance of that particular teacher’s achievements – all very inspiring.

The experience left me reflecting on just how much more we all could do to focus on the good, the effective and the inspirational efforts of teachers in our schools!

Of course, the KPEC stand received a lot of attention – featuring in pride of place near the entrance to the whole event – and providing the Chief Minister with the opportunity to use skype to video conference with a teacher in New Zealand (as did some of the students who were there).

This brings to an end the pilot programme we have been running in Perak over the past three months. I’ll be spending most of next week in Kuala Lumpur with other members of the iNZed group, talking with Malaysian Ministry of Education officials about ways in which the programme may be extended and rolled out to other schools.

I’ve been back in Malaysia this week, assisting with the final phase of the KPEC pilot that we’ve been running in the state of Perak. Monday saw the “celebration day” which where teachers and students from the five participating schools set up booths to demonstrate what they have been doing over the past three months.

It was a magical day, attended by more than 100 invited guests, including officials from the State Department of Education. We saw demonstations of all sorts of ICT use, including powerpoint and website collections of photographs and stories from field trips and classroom investigations, through to podcasts, blogs and video conferencing activities.

The picture above shows Dato’ Dr. Zambry, the Minister of Education for Perak State who, after visiting each of the booths and interacting with the teachers and students, settled himself for a few moments to enjoy a Skype video chat with Paul Rodley of Christ’s College in Christchurch, NZ. Some of Paul’s students had earlier participated in an exchange of research findings with a class in a local secondary school in Matang.

Time4Online is an online conference for educators, posing the question “How can we prepare students for the 21st Century?”, aiming to explore examples of collaborative online learning and the application of Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and learning.

Presenters include educators and students from NZ and overseas (including Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, international guest and keynote speaker at the recent TUANZ tour of New Zealand).

I’m pleased to be associated with this conference, and will be presenting a session titled “Educators as Professional Learners” in which we’ll be discussing the need for educators to be reflective and life-long learners, engaging in professional discourse etc. – and how technology, in particular, Web2.0 technologies, can create opportunities for this to happen.

I’ve prepared this introductory slide-show that I’ve uploaded to SlideShare:

A pre-conference preview available now at http://www.time4online.org.nz.

Last year sometime I wrote about an application from called Alice which I considered to be a useful way of introducing students to the object oriented games development environment. This morning I came across Scratch, from MIT which provides a similar sort of “drag and drop” creative environment – with some extra features that really appeal to me. The website explains:

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

There’s a useful introductory video available on the site that provides a pretty good overview of how it works:

I accessed the free download and managed to get some animations up and running fairly quickly. For those keen to develop further, there are several tutorials available, plus loads of examples of projects created by others that you can view and unpack to see how they’ve created them.

The developers say that Scratch has been develped with educators in mind, and provide loads of information and resources on their education page to help you understand this.

It’s remarkably easy to set up your own account, and create an online space to be able to upload your animations etc into your own gallery for sharing with others. I’d be interested in seeing examples of Scratch being used by students!

CORE has recently moved premises, and in making such a move one is confronted with decisions about all the “stuff” that one accumulates over time, and the things we can do without etc. Also, the new premises offer something that the old ones didn’t – a shower, which means that biking to work is now more appealing as I have the option of freshening up after an energetic ride. All of this brings me to the subject of sustainability, and ideas about the carbon footprint – another issue for CORE as we do so much travel as a part of our job.

Which brings me to this nifty online carbon footprint calculator for kids from a group called ZeroFootPrint, described on their website as a not-for-profit that combines the best financial engineering, environmental engineering, social networking tools and business intelligence to create products and services that help large corporations, organizations and individuals significantly reduce their environmental footprint.

Their KidsCalculator is a fun way of engaging with the very serious issues associated with the way we are consuming the earth’s resources:

First launched at the Kitchener-Waterloo Children???s Museum, and available on the web at www.zerofootprintkids.com, our interactive calculator is a free educational tool, offered to teachers, organizations, and families who want to teach their kids that the choices we all make are important not only today, but for many years down the road, and not only for us, but for people and ecosystems around the world.

I’ve worked my way through the questionnaire and looked at the responses it gives (unfortunately NZ isn’t one of the countries listed yet) – but there’s plenty of scope I can imagine for using this in creative ways across the curriculum.

The 2007 Web2.0 Awards were announced just a couple of days ago, and there are heaps of Web2.0 applications to look at and consider – all conveniently sorted under 41 categories.

If you’re interested to see what sorts of social software is out there, a browse through the list of winners is worth a browse. A few of the categories that caught my eye included:

• Collaborative Writing and Word Processing – not surprisingly, Google Docs came out tops here. But consider the increasing functionality of these applications – perhaps at last we are seeing a viable alternative alternative to our traditional productivity software>

• Communication – some interesting tools here providing the ability to conduct synchronous communications.
• Podcast Services – great to see Pod-o-matic, one of my favourites, on the list – but with several others in this category it is an indication of the increasing popularity of podcasting.
• Hosted Wikis – another of my favourites, WetPaint, heads this category – but some strong contenders right behind it.
• Web Development and Design – I haven’t yet begun to explore any of these sorts of applications, preferring instead to use my old faithful Dreamweaver, but the products in this category have piqued my interest!

Of interest is a Kiwi connection, with Jan Copland being the person who assembled this year’s list!

Here’s something worth taking a look at, a project with huge implications for education, in which scientists are creating a massive web site, called the Encyclopedia of Life. The web site aims to contain information about all of Earth’s 1.8 million known species, with the information available online to everyone free of charge, and users of the site can adjust its pages so they see information relevant for students or for research scientists. The project is described as follows on the site:

Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.