• eXe is an easy to use desktop application
  
• With it you can build pedagogically sound education resources
  
• It allows you to export what you've created in standard packaging formats.

• eXe is an easy to use desktop application
  
• With it you can build pedagogically sound education resources
  
• It allows you to export what you've created in standard packaging formats.

I've only occasionally been confronted by someone in the educational system who doesn't accept that we need to change what we're doing in our schools and how we're doing it. Generally, there is a high level of acceptance that the world is changing, and that our students need to be prepared for it in ways that are different to the traditional ways we've done things in our educational institutions.

The problem occurs, of course, in shifting these ideas from our head (our understanding of the situation) to our hands (actually doing something about it.) Some would argue that there is a third dimension that is often missed out - the heart, from which flows our sense of passion, driven by belief and a sense of vision. In visiting a large number of schools now around NZ (and overseas), plus the experience of my own five children as students at school and university, I can only say that there is a huge degree of variability in terms of how successful we (as a profession) are in realising and responding to change.

Thus it was with interest that I read this morning of a report just released by Education Sector, a national independent nonpartisan education think tank, titled Waiting To Be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions and Reform. The report contains the findings of a survey of over 1000 teachers in the USA about their views on the teaching profession, teachers unions, and a host of reforms aimed at improving teacher quality. It examine teachers' opinions and attitudes toward teacher unions, teacher unionism, and a range of current district reforms, including those aimed specifically at improving teacher quality.

The survey itself asked specific questions about the work teachers do and about reform proposals that are currently being debated in the US. It also examines the views of new teachers and those who have been in the system for some time. And, when possible, the survey discerns trends by asking some identical questions from a 2003 national survey of K-12 public school teachers and comparing the responses.

While the context is the USA, the findings ring true for us in New Zealand as well - and are worth considering, particularly for those of us who are working in the area of challenging the existing paradigm and seeking to bring about changes at all levels from policy to practice. Some of the trends and findings that stood out for me...

• Concerns from teachers who feel 'locked in' to teaching, with no real options for doing something else if they feel they're past their prime. "Too many veteran teachers who are burned out stay because they do not want to walk away from the benefits and service time they have accrued."
  
• Well over half of the teachers surveyed (55 percent) say that in their district it is very difficult and time-consuming to remove clearly ineffective teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom
  
• A strong feeling that their experience of appraisal (teacher evaluation) was ineffective, not providing any worthwhile sort of feedback for growth or recognition of work well done, or in identifying and dealing with poor performance. Most saw this as just a formality.
  
• When responding to a question about what sort of school is best for students teachers were unanimous in talking about providing flexibility and dispensing with unnecessary rules and restrictions.
  

• making appraisals and teacher evaluations more rigorous and meaningful


• Providing financial incentives, including for teachers who work in 'tough' areas or poor performing schools
  
• De-emphasising the use of student test scores as a key measure of teacher performance and basis for financial rewards.
  
• Providing more time in the school day for teachers to carry out planning and preparation work as a way of attracting high quality people into the profession.

Yes - this report is useful as a benchmark or 'state of the play' - but for goodness sake, where is the innovative, "outside the box" thinking that will truly energise and refresh our whole approach to education - that will ensure we are educating students for their future - not our past??

In an increasingly globalised world where the ability to converse in a range of languages is becoming important, this site provides a useful resource for those wanting to learn a foreign language, but, more significantly from my point of view, it provides a useful insight into how the traditional approach to distance education may be changing - from the paradigm of teacher (expert) delivering to students (learners) to members of the community teaching and supporting each other, with the resources being developed using a collaborative wiki where all users are a part of the editing community. Certainly a long way from the days of traditional correspondence education where the resources were developed by the experts and delivered to those wanting to learn.

Thinking of the impact the iPhone may have in NZ when it is released, I was interested to read Jane's latest post regarding what is available educationally for the iPhone and iTouch at the moment. She has listed her Top Web Apps for the iPod Touch and the iPhone - which reveals a growing list of applications (including optimized sites) for the iPod Touch and the iPhone that are useful for learning, performance support or productivity purposes. There's everything here from Facebook to BBC programmes - and my favourite, an iPhone version of NetVibes - my RSS aggregator of choice.

The future's looking rosy for Mobile technologies :-) Mind you - I have to wonder when the following message was sent via a list I belong to (a serious question on an academic research list):

Can researchers point out how to stop students/pupils using hand-held devices in the classroom ? Recent THES article on texting while there's a lecturer speaking point to this being perceived as "mildly rude" - Even on a one-to-one situation nobody seems to have any problems with ring-tones, etc. Is there a pro-educator device, like the mosquito, that we can switch on to block cell phones/blackberries/iphones ?

Among the things I've seen are some tremendous examples of using the Bluescreen capability within Keynote with five year olds - all with a focus on the development of literacy skills through story telling etc. There were also some great examples of stop-motion video making, working with graphics within word processing packages, and some excellent science-based activities using small cameras with LEDs and macro capabilities.

The things that impress me most about this conference are the very things that I believe are so essential to powerful professional learning, including:

• teachers sharing ideas and experiences with other teachers
  
• plenty of opportunity for reflection and discussion
  
• lots of deliberate hands-on, direct experience
  
• examples of practical activities with direct classroom application, but linked to theory and pedagogical understandings
  
• a very welcoming and stimulating environment where teachers are valued and given recognition for the great things they are doing

I've been playing around some more with the XO computer that Jim has loaned me (having trouble getting it away from my son who likes to explore the e-Toys application!). One aspect that I'm intrigued by is the fact that it converts to an e-Book reader (see video from YouTube above in which Steve Cisler, a veteran librarian, interviews the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle about the e-book potential of the OLPC XO laptop. What doesn't come through in the video is the quality of the screen resolution of the XO which means the e-Book content is very readable.

In thinking about the potential of e-Books I've also been looking at what is available - and the list seems to have grown considerably since I last had a look around (around the time I blogged about the Kindle). Here are just a few...

• A Australian list of free e-books, that includes some New Zealand collections
  
• Books-Online - a collection of over 32,000 completely free online books - searchable by title, author etc
  
• The Open Directory Project - with a large list of links to further e-book collections
  
• Project Gutenberg - reputedly the Internet's oldest producer of FREE electronic books (eBooks or eTexts).
  
• Great books index - An Index to Online Great Books in English Translation
  
• UK Directory of free online books

The thing that impressed me the most was how easily the XO could identify and 'map' the various wireless access points it found in any particular location in a visual 'mesh' network neighbourhood. I simply located our home wireless access point on the mesh, clicked on it and entered the password and "hey presto" - I was connected to the internet! The other thing that had me really impressed was something that isn't a part of the regular install of and XO - Jim has managed to install a copy of eXe on his XO and get it working! Now that's impressive.

Like all good things, however, this comes to an end - I've had to give it back as Jim travels back to Gisborne tomorrow.

Librarians, teachers and parents have told us how hard it is for students to understand web searching. Boolify makes it easier to for students to understand their web search by illustrating the logic of their search, and by showing them how each change to their search instantly changes their results.

It's simple, immediate and is easy and flexible to use with your class, no matter the subject matter.

Search results are presented through Google's "Safe Search STRICT" technology, so we're confident that the results your students receive are safe.

The site is well laid out, with a very easy to follow online manual provided, and a forum area that you can go in and read other people's questions and tips etc. this is much more than a simply drawing tool as it allows you to create images as bitmaps or vector images, and to create animations that can be exported as Flash files or Quicktime movies.

Lots to explore and discover with this "work in progress" - try it yourself. I must confess, I think I'd find it easier to interact with if I had a tablet to use - I'm off to find one now...

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:

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.

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 :-)

I feel very humbled and very privileged to be selected as a part of this group, each of whose stories on the site make for inspirational reading! In my case I've been credited for a lot that has actually been achieved by my colleagues in CORE, so I see this as a collective recognition - thanks Edutopia.

My family and I participated in the very successful Earth Hour in Christchurch on Saturday evening - despite meaning that I missed watching the Blues vs Bulls game live on TV :-) We spent an enjoyable hour as a family playing Scrabble by the light of two candles. It was my kids who were particularly keen for us to do this, having been exposed to advertising about the event at school and in the media, so while we played Scrabble, we also discussed in detail the significance of the Earth Hour event. I'm a fan of Social Action outcomes in terms of what we do in education - even if they take the form of demonstrators or symbolic events such as Earth Hour - hey, 12.8% saving in the city's electricity use for one hour has to provide some indication of what can be achieved on a longer term basis.

Back to the Scrabble game and the focus on vocabulary and word meaning - made me interested when I came across an online vocabulary building activity called Free Rice. The site has two goals; 1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free, and 2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. For each word you get right the site sponsors will donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger.

This is a great activity site - with 55 levels and the ability to select the level you start at and remember this for another occasion. You even have the ability to listen to the word before selecting its meaning from a list of four options. And of course, using the site provides a great opportunity to highlight the issues of world hunger and what can be done about it.