this is a cool wee thing to know:

When you???ve got a window open - be it Firefox, TextMate, etc, etc - there???s a title to that window at the top, and if it???s a file, there???s an icon positioned to the left of it. A nice trick in OS X is that you can drag that icon to the Finder to create an alias, or by holding down the OPTION key, you can make a copy of that file someplace as well.

Also, if you hold the COMMAND key (Apple key if you???re new ???round here) when clicking on that icon (or any part of the title in that bar) it???ll show you the path in which that file resides. So for instance, lately I???ve been going through some Ruby tutorials. The folder structures are many and a few levels deep. As I???m a relative n00b to this, the folder structures lose me quickly, so being able to CMD click on the title/icon at the top of the window and quickly see where I???m at is a huge help.

source:

This is a comment I left on David Warlicks blog today. The quote comes from a speaker he was listening to here.

“Teachers would be employed by the state, not by the district. They would be hired, however, by the school. NO more local financing of education. Only by the state. ???There is no way that the U.S. will have a world class education as long as the wealthiest can congregate the best resources. (near quote)???
- As a principal in New Zealand where this is the system (with 4 million people we are only a state in the US) we could not go back to any system where we do not employ our own teachers at the school level. The most powerful cultural change agent we have is our employment decisions. What could be worse than getting things moving with ICT’s, Web2.0 or whatever and then be given someone who can’t find the on button on their laptop!!??

We don’t realise how lucky we are really - this seems to be such a revelation to them in the States. While it can have pitfalls appointing staff I would HATE being sent teachers from an education authority!!

this is another one for the “sad but true” file:

???Over the past two decades, children have lost 12 hours of free time a week,??? Elkind writes in ???The Power of Play.??? This includes ???eight hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities.??? This time has been supplanted by organized and more sedentary activities. ???The time children spend in organized sports has doubled, and the number of minutes children devote to a passive spectator activity ?? not including television ?? has gone from 30 minutes to more than three hours a week,??? Elkind continues. Even schools contribute to this scarcity of playtime: Some have eliminated recess in favor of more time in the classroom.

source

At the end of last term Jane and I did a wine appreciation course at Munslows Wine shop here in Dunedin. Heaps of fun and we learned a lot about all sorts of different wines. A great opportunity to try wines we wouldn’t usually get a chance to sample - or even know about in some cases. There is all sorts of stuff written about wine and some of it is pretentious rubbish.
Today I have been reading and catching up a bit on my Bloglines. Reading through some of the rhetoric about Web2.0 I am reminded of the writing about wine … There are huge debates in the blogosphere about whether Web2.0 exists; whether blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc are new or just old stuff repackaged; how many ‘literacies’ there are and which are more important ….. the list goes on.

Isn’t the key question - what makes a difference for learning? For learners and learning at all levels…?? What will help us understand and do things better? It should not be about ego and people simply scoring semantic points from each other via blogs or other mediums.

For me I am looking for writing to challenge my thinking. People who make a compelling and rational argument based on fact not just opinion. Can come up with something new, or at least recombine ideas in new ways. Ideas that are practical and not simply immersed in theory.

Discussions about Web2.0 and ICT’s in particular should be no different…

It seems to me some of the key things around the use of the Web and Web2.0 in education are:
* the value of the tools to learning (kids, teachers, principals, everyone in schools)
* identifying the key professional learning that has the largest impact on children’s learning. The Best Evidence Synthesis (Alton Lee - in print) will show an effect size of 0.91 for teacher professional development on outcomes for kids. This is HUGE!
* what WORKS?! What really makes the difference? NOT the tricks and the gimics …. the really important stuff.
* the theory and intellectual are important only where they inform practice - not simply as an end in themselves. We need to know what good practice is and have a basis for asserting it is good practice other than simply gut instinct. But we should not spend our whole time measuring, and then thrashing the data.
* choosing the best tools, whether new or old, basic or complex, for the job.

Our challenge is to identify what the key components of successful practice with ICT’s actually are. What things make the biggest difference? We can spend a lot of time tinkering and making changes that take a lot of effort and time but make little difference overall to childrens learning. Doing things differently but not necessarily any better.

It seems to me the big value of Web2.0 tools for professional learning is to expand our collective understanding of what makes classrooms better - again NOT just different, BETTER.
The same goes for classroom programmes. And I would argue, even more so. Web 2.0 tools and ICT’s can be huge distractions to a quality programme if not used/integrated well. Simple things can take ages and time can be ‘wasted’ on things that have little value in challenging children’s thinking, extending it or making it ‘better’.

Use of ICT’s are not, of themselves, indicators of quality programmes! It is what happens with them and as a result of them that makes the difference. The thinking, the collaboration, the sharing, the challenging of thinking, ……..

Hope this makes sense …. What do you think?

I took delivery today of my new Dell 20″ widescreen monitor - despite the fact the Dell tracking site says it is not in NZ yet. I really hope nothing goes wrong with it as I have NO faith that I will be able to find a real person who has the ability to understand and then deal with me to get it sorted.
anywayyyy …..
Niiiiiccceeee …. to have a monitor that will run two A4 pages at full size side-by-side in Word. With mail running on my mac and “spirited away” hiding the rest it is a very cool setup. Geeky but cool

from “stuff” website:

Telecom is terminating its popular School Connection programme, which allows residential customers to “sponsor” a favourite school or pre-school and boost their spending on technology.

Telecom chief operating officer Kevin Kenrick said by 2008 Telecom would have been involved with the sponsorship programme for 15 years and the original objectives of the programme would have been “well and truly” met.

To date, the programme had raised $120 million from the monthly spend of Telecom residential customers, helping their nominated schools keep up-to-date with technology.

Customers earn points based on their monthly Telecom bill. The points are passed on to the nominated school, which can then spend them on computers, printers and cameras, broadband services, professional development courses, or simply pay for a phone line.

“The objectives of the programme were focused on assisting schools into the online age ??? and thousands of schools across the country are now using broadband, video-conferencing, and digital learning tools as a result of School Connection,” Mr Kenrick said.

Telecom had been talking to potential new sponsors about taking on the programme, but no agreement had been reached, he said.

New points could continue to be collected until January 31, with schools and pre-schools given until July 31 next year to spend their accrued points.

The company would shift its sponsorship focus to the Telecom Community Connections programme, which provided support to many major New Zealand charities and not-for-profit organisations, Mr Kenrick said.

watch this space I suppose…

Have you heard??

Next Season on Survivor (Rewritten by G. Lovegrove)
Have you heard about the next planned “Survivor” show?

Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in a primary school classroom for 6 weeks. Each business person will be provided with a copy of the school curriculum, and a class of 28 students.

Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three will be labelled with severe behaviour problems.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organise, or create materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, conduct assessments, complete report forms, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent interviews. They must also supervise morning tea and lunchtime breaks and monitor the entrance foyer.

In addition, they will complete drills for fire, earthquakes, tornados, and shooting attacks. They must attend workshops, (100 hours), staff meetings, union meetings, and attend curriculum development meetings.

They must also tutor those students who are behind and strive to get their 2 non-English speaking children proficient in English. If they are sick or having a bad day they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, maths, science, technology and social studies into the programme. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times.

The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary they will not be able to afford it anyway. There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch (raw vegetables and water) will be limited to 20 minutes. On days when they do not have playground duty, the business people will be permitted to use the staff toilets as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class.

They will be provided with two days per term of Classroom Release Time, during which time they must maintain all individual assessment checks, running records, numeracy tests and keep all health and attendance records up to date.

If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials at this time. The business people must continually advance their education on their own time and pay for this advanced training themselves. This can be accomplished by moonlighting at a second job or marrying someone with money.

The winner will be allowed to return to his or her job.

Pass this to any friends who think teaching is easy.

from the latest NZPF email ….

…. a quiz just for fun!
link to site

77%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² -

thanks Rachel

A comment from Rachel Boyd on my post yesterday prompted the thought ….

Remember that in aggregators like Bloglines you can share and see what other people are reading and looking at. On the right hand side of this blog is a section called “Spaces and Places” and one of the links in there is “My Bloglines”.
If you click on the link it will take you to a list of all the blogs that I subscribe to…

In my presentation for the Time4Online Conference (linked in an earlier post) I talked about this and other features of aggregators. I find some of the most interesting things I come across in this way - just browsing through other people links or commenters.