Interesting article from ReadWriteWeb about the release of Google Flu Trends that highlights the usefulness of aggregating information from search queries - in this case, relating to influenza. The idea is simple - by tracking search queries relating to influenza (eg queries about symptoms, cures, treatment etc), the team at Google.org (Google’s non-profit arm) they discovered that - after cross-referencing that data against information from the Center for Disease Control - they had the ability to predict flu outbreaks by monitoring search patterns. And the advantage of doing this…? Traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly, making their flu estimates available each day, and thus providing an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza. The ReadWriteWeb article has a cool animated graph that illustrates this point.

Second day at the Multi literacies working group - immersed in thinking about what it means to be literate (or becoming literate) in the 21st century, and the relationship of all this thinking with the use digital technologies.

In the midst of all this thinking I received an email from Fiona at College@home who let me know about her recent post titled 100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner. Fiona and her colleagues have organised their list using the VAK framework, with the various online tools classified in sub categories within each. It’s a great resource and very usefully organised - and quite timely in terms of the topics of discussion where I am currently.

Thanks to Fiona and friends for providing this useful resource - lots of familiar web tools here, along with some I haven’t heard of before!

A novel idea from e-instruction in the US, an online competition that asks students and teachers to collaboration on a nationwide Google Maps mashup by posting their vision of the role of technology in education in 250 words of less to a specially set up website. The incentives mean that I can imagine there’ll be no shortage of people submitting their ideas. While this is blatantly an advertising stunt (presumably to publicise the amalgamation of e-instruction and interwrite learning), the simplicity of the task and the use of Google Maps to represent the answers means that it will be interesting to revisit this site in a month’s time to read what has been submitted for a sample of the “vox pop” on what teachers say are the benefits of a technology-empowered classroom.

Unfortunately for NZ schools the contest is only available to schools in the US, however an email from the organisers advises me that there will be one opened up to NZ and Australia as well later in the year.

For the full press release follow the link below:

Read the rest of this entry »

The uptake of web-based tools and applications in the Web2.0 world prompts a question in my mind from time to time - “where is all the information stored, and who has access to it?”

I thought about this again when I read Sue Water’s latest post in which she has published the results of a Twitter poll she conducted by asking her Twitter followers to name their favourite 3 Web2.0 applications (apart from Twitter, del.icio.us and Frirefox.)

I’m very interested to note the extent to which Google applications emerged in the favourites list from her poll. I’m a big fan and user of many of these myself, but recently have become aware of of Google’s reputation of being “hostile” towards users privacy.

This was brought home to me further recently a recent article in the Globe and Mail titled Patriot Act Haunts Google which highlights that the Google on-line services (Docs, Sites etc) are subject to the “USA Patriot” Act (in fact an acronym that stands for ” Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) which could make the use of the sites they consider (a) a threat to academic freedom, or (b) in breach of Canada’s privacy laws - depending on what data is put there.

Certainly food for thought, I suspect we’ll see more debate on this emerging in the next few months.

Jane Hart has recently published her list of the Top 100 tools For Learning for 2008. Jane’s list is compiled from the contributions of 155 learning professionals (from both education and workplace learning) who shared their Top 10 Tools for Learning both for their own personal learning/ productivity and for creating learning solutions for others. You can search the individual top ten lists that were contributed also.

The list ranks the top 100, comparing their 2008 rank with where they came in for 2007. No huge surprises at the top of the table, with del.icio.us and Firefox swapping positions this year at 1 and 2, and as expected the top positions are sprinkled with blog and wiki applications, search tools, and various communications tools such as skype for instance. Interesting to note that Twitter has risen to 17= from 43rd last year, showing how rapidly a relative newcomer to the social networking world can rise in popularity.

It’s when you get down the list a bit that there are some interesting applications that appear - for instance, Voicethread, an application for creating collaborative slideshows appears at 24=, PageFlakes at 31 and SecondLife at 41 - none of which appeared in the top 100 last year.

As you work down the list there are a number of applications that I’m not familiar with, many of which do things that other applications I already use do - all of which goes to demonstrate what a rapidly developing field the world of web2.0 and online education is.

I am encouraged to see that eXe has risen from 72nd place last year to 52=. Thanks to Jane for publishing her list again this year!

BTW - if the applications on Jane’s list aren’t enough for you, check out the list of applications in the OpenSocialDirectory - that should keep you buys for a few rainy weekends to come

In the past I’ve blogged about various innovations in the area of search tools, including Quintura,, the semantic search engine which I’ve embedded in my blog. SearchMe is an exciting new player in the visual search engine world which uses a highly graphical interface to present search results - in a style that looks remarkably like how the album covers are portrayed in my iTunes library when I go hunting for an album to play.

The video introduction above explains how SearchMe shows search results as big pictures of the actual web pages. And it offers more than simply providing results for the search term you enter. Besides the initial inquiry in visual search, there is also a feature called category suggest, which helps you refine your search, and another called list view, which provides short summaries of the content of each page - a little like the conventional search engines you’re used to. The video below provides even more explanation of these features and how they work.

This is yet more evidence of how the graphics are going to feature more in the way we interact with our screens in the future. I’ve had a bit of a play around with this and think it’s pretty cool - i could get very used to this! And there’s more in the development pipeline according to the developers!

Sorry - but I just don’t buy it.
Jane pointed me to Chitch.at, described as an educational network where teachers can share real course content, make free class pages, and develop interactive online assignments. Here’s a video which explains more about it.

Now the concept of a ‘lightweight’, flexible way to create, post and share course content sounds appealing - but the underlying design points to a pedagogy that I have problems with. Notice the section that begins… “The Web is great - in theory!”, and goes on to argue that while online environments such as blogs and wikis capture our (and our students’) imaginations, they are difficult to ‘teach’ because we can’t easily assign tasks, collect submissions or effectively grade student work etc. In other words (their words) these social web applications don’t “fit” the traditional classroom.

All of this sounds like a great justification for why we might want an online environment like Chitch.at- but hang on… if these applications are (as they claim) so good at developing critical thinking, engaging student interest and creating a sense of wonder etc, shouldn’t this suggest that we ought to be looking to change the nature of the “traditional classroom”??

The focus here is entirely on a pedagogy of setting tasks for students to complete - presumably tasks that essentially invite students to “guess what’s in the teacher’s head” since the implication is that there’s a specific response on which they’re then graded! A clear case of the pedagogy of assessment driving the pedagogy of instruction.

In 1915 John Dewey wrote in his “Constructivist Pedagogy” that effective learning occurs when…

• Student autonomy and initiative accepted and encouraged

• Teacher asks open-ended questions and allows wait time for responses
• Higher level thinking is encouraged
• Students engage in dialogue with teacher and each other
• Students engaged in experiences that challenge hypotheses
• Class uses raw data primary sources, physical and interactive materials
• Knowledge and ideas emerge only from a situation in which learners have to draw them out of experiences that have meaning and importance to them

In my experience these are exactly the sorts of learning experiences that many of these emerging social web applications enable and encourage. Have we really not learned anything in the past 90-odd years??

My Twitterific has been running hot in the past few minutes as news about Jabiz Raisdana, otherwise known as Intrepid Teacher, spreads through the blogosphere. The story is a fascinating commentary on the times we live in. Raisdana, a teacher of 8th grade English and humanities classes has been sacked by his school after a member of the community took objection to some material he had posted on his personal blog. Raisdana explains in his latest post:

Due to a lapse in my judgment regarding material posted on my personal blog, my school has asked me to resign. I want you, as the readers of this blog, to know that I am agreeing to this decision without reservation, and I understand the steps taken by the school to protect its reputation.

Now I don’t want to explore the ins and outs of why this happened in this post - what I am fascinated by is the post that Raisdana made to his students in his class blog and, more significantly, the feedback and comments he received from his students and other teachers. Raisdana is obviously active in the online world - he has several blogs operating, has accounts with skype, twitter etc and contributes to online photo collections etc. More significantly, it would appear that he has been successful in using these tools within his classroom teaching, using them to engage his students in powerful learning experiences. The following examples of comments from his students in response to his Good-bye post illustrate the impact of this…

• Language arts was our favorite class. It was really the only class we had to really think.

• I will continue posting on my blog regularly. You won’t be able to read my posts, but they will be inspired by you.
• Now the blog is like one of my life. I love to write on that.
• I just wanted you to know that I enjoyed every second of Humanities..and that’s basically because you were there teaching us. It was new, fun and at the same time..educational.
• You made Language Arts class more fun, and more interesting. We didnt sit there and read text books, or memorize vocabulary… you taught us about life.
• I know I’m the quiet kid who never says much, and thats just the way I am right now. But, you’ve got me thinking. You have us all thinking. We won’t forget you, Mr. Raisdana.
• When I first saw you I thought that you were some loony computer guy that was inspired about how cool programs are on the computer, but now I look at you as a man who didn’t care about grades but on how we could succeed throughout life, a man who encourages growing awareness on all the world, someone who knows that everyone is ignorant including himself but tries his very best to find out more, a person that strives for cooperation, not competition, and last but not least a man that knows exactly who he wants to influence people.
• I can’t believe this. Just as we were getting the feel of our blogs, the whole thing came to a screeching halt….You are one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, and I will always remember you. I’ve learned more in the one semester you taught me than I ever have before. I appreciate everything. A lot. Thanks again, and I’m going to miss you a lot.
• I’m proud to have been your student and I always boast about how good a teacher you were.

These are just a few of the comments - it’s worth a read of them all! Seems to me that we could do with a few more Jabiz Raisdanas in our classrooms. In my job I am constantly seeking to encourage and enthuse teachers to do exactly what this young man has been doing - let’s hope this story helps inspire others as they read the testimony of the students, and not (as I fear it may) be used by the naysayers as evidence of the perils of getting involved in the online world!

As Raisdana notes in his personal blog, there are many lessons to be learned here about things such as online identities, teachers as role models, institutionalized education, etc. I’m sure they’ll all get a good airing in future blog entries - but lets for the moment savour those comments from the students, and consider what they have to tell us about the efforts of a passionate and dedicated teacher who incorporates the use of online technologies in a way that is enriching and empowering!

I’ve blogged a few times in the past about Quintura and Quintura for Kids - and have been privileged to be a part of the beta testing programme of this exciting new search engine.

Today I received notification from Yakov and his team announcing the release of their Quintura for site search. As you’ll note, I’ve added this feature to the left hand menu of my blog site. It’s easy to do for any web site - simply visit the Quintura site, click on the “embed” button and copy and the paste the generated code into the appropriate place on your website. I had to do a little playing around to make it fit the menu on my blog - some sorting to do with the sizing of the column and a stray div command, but it works now - wahoo!

Thanks to Jacov and his team for this brilliant product - making search so visual appeals very much to the way I like to go hunting for things.

The blogosphere is active with people making comments on the release of the the fifth editon of this annual Horizon Report which is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, and having now read it myself, I thought I’d add my penny’s worth (before its official release at at Educause in San Antonio tomorrow).

It’s a very timely read, as in the coming week I’m going to be speaking to a number of staff gatherings at schools preparing themselves before the onslaught of students the week after. The contents of this report provide useful food for thought at a time of year when we are thinking aspirationally, and are not bogged down in assessment activities and other deadlines that often become the focus of our energies.

Like the previous reports, this one analyzes the MetaTrends of the last 5 years, and outlines the major emerging technologies for college level education in the next 5 years including user-generated video content, collaboration webs, mobile broadband and data mashups. While the focus is on tertiary (college) settings, the discussion around these trends and what they mean for learners and for the education institutions applies just as much to the school sector, particularly as some of the trends (Collective Intelligence and Social Operating Systems) are seen as 4-5 years out still.

In addition to these technology trends, the report also identifies and discusses key trends affecting the areas of teaching, learning, and creative expression. This year four such trends are identified:

• The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking–combined with collective intelligence and mass amateurization–is gradually but inexorably changing the practice of scholarship.

• The way we work, collaborate, and communicate is evolving as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases.
• Access to–and portability of–content is increasing as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced
• The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to widen.

There is some excellent discussion on each of these trends in the report - well worth a read!