Failed again ...

Its been that sort of week really on and off. Some real highs - meeting people with passion and enthusiasm for what they are doing and how it affects young people. And some real lows - not running enough and listening to people who want to move forward but are constrained by the institutionalisation of their current positions.

And ... this blog failed to make the shortlist in the Computer Weekly Public Sector IT Blog awards. Ewan made it and so did Ian (Usher) ... oh well perhaps next time ... :-)

I wonder who will come out on top ?

I wait with bated breath ...

On 3rd July at the Improving Today, Excelling Tomorrow conference being staged in Birmingham by ICT for Education magazine , Jim Knight will let us all know what the Government is thinking of next with regard to its ICT Strategy for education.

I am told, via Merlin John's blog that the presentation will: ... focus on "driving up standards in the use of ICT, learning lessons from past mistakes and identifying excellent practice to help schools further embed technology into the way they work".

Excited ... you bet ... can't wait to see whether we are going to open up and move on or .....

PS

2nd July ... can't find any mention of what was said if anything ...sorry ... if you find anything please let me know

PPS

3 rd July ... Still can't find any find out what Jim said ...

Defining the edublogger

What is the definition of an edublogger?

An international all-day "meetup" of educational bloggers and those using collaborative technologies will take place on Saturday, June 28th, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio just before the start of NECC. All are invited--whether you yourself blog, are just an educational blog reader, or even just want to hang out with an interesting group of people. The event is free, and you can indicate that you are coming (and see who else will be there) here at the Edubloggercon wiki. This event is based on the idea of an "unconference", and is being organized by the participants in real time here on the wiki. It's maybe better referred to as a "collaborative conference." Through the generosity of ISTE, we have access all that day to rooms at the Convention Center and there will be free wi-fi: beyond that is up to you. So come and help us plan a fun and stimulating experience. It should be great!

Minds meeting minds ... it will be great to trawl the participant's' blogs for outcomes and patch those in to the editorial statement of Annika Small (ex Futurelab CE) where she asks: 'What have you changed your mind about and why?'

You can get a flavour of the event by watching the video. Ewan was there !!

No 'ifs' .. but some 'buts'

Ray Tolley happened upon the poem below on a NZ site ... it was in the appendix to Andy Walker's investigation into personalised learning experiences for students and opens up a whole set of contradictions for me.

The Things We Steal From Children

By Dr John Edwards

If I am always the one to think of where to go next.
If where we go is always the decision of the curriculum or my curiosity and not theirs,
If motivation is mine,
If I always decide on the topic to be studied, the title of the story, the problem to be worked on,
If I am always the one who has reviewed their work and decided what they need,
How will they ever know how to begin?

If I am the one who is always monitoring progress.
If I set the pace of all working discussions,
If I always look ahead, foresee problems and endeavour to eliminate them,
If I swoop in and save them from cognitive conflict,
If I never allow them to feel and use the energy from confusion and frustration,
If things are always broken into short working periods,
If myself and others are allowed to break into their concentration,
If bells and I are always in control of the pace and flow of work,
How will they learn to continue their own work?

If all the marking and editing is done by me,
If the selection of which work is to be published or evaluated is made by me,
If what is valued and valuable is always decided by external sources or by me,
If there is no forum to discuss what delights them in their task, what is working,
what is not working, what they plan to do about it,
If they have not learned a language of self-assessment,
If ways of communicating their work are always controlled by me,
If our assessments are mainly summative rather then formative,
If they do not plan their way forward to further action,
How will they find ownership, direction and delight in what they do?

If I speak of individuals but present learning as if they are all the same,
If I am never seen to reflect and reflection time is never provided,
If we never speak together about reflection and thinking and never develop a vocabulary for such discussion,
If we do not take opportunities to think about our thinking,
If I constantly set them exercises that do not intellectually challenge them,
If I set up learning environments that interfere with them learning from their own actions,
If I give them recipes to follow,
If I only expect the one right conclusion,
If I signify that there are always right and wrong answers,
If I never let them persevere with something
really difficult which they cannot master,
If I make all work serious work and discourage playfulness,
If there is no time to explore,
If I lock them into adult time constraints too early,
How will they get to know themselves as a thinker?

If they never get to help anyone else,
If we force them to always work and play with children of the same age,
If I do not teach them the skills of working co-operatively,
If collaboration can be seen as cheating,
If all classroom activities are based on competitiveness,
If everything is seen to be for marks,
How will they learn to work with others?

For if they…
have never experienced being challenged in a safe environment,
have had all of their creative thoughts explained away,
are unaware what catches their interest and how then to have confidence in that interest,
have never followed something they are passionate about to a satisfying conclusion,
have not clarified the way they sabotage their own learning,
are afraid to seek help and do not know who or how to ask,
have not experienced overcoming their own inertia,
are paralysed by the need to know everything before writing or acting,
have never got bogged down,
have never failed,
have always played it safe,
how will they ever know who they are?

World Web 2.0 Educational Projects

Terry Freedman has collated a number of educational projects that use Web 2.0 technologies and has produced a booklet outlining these. It can be downloaded freely from here.

Also on this download page is the highly acclaimed 'Coming of Age V1' ... more than well worth a read.

This is what Terry says about the Web 2.0 Projects booklet:

The purpose of this booklet is to give you some practical ideas about the kinds of things you can do with Web 2.0 technology. Please note: this was not intended to be a compilation of projects using cutting edge applications. I simply invited teachers to share what they have been doing.
In many cases the projects were in their infancy. Also, almost all projects will need following up in some way. For example, what were the longer term benefits, or what exactly was meant by “amazing results”?
All the descriptions have been provided by the teachers themselves. I received quite a few submissions, via an online survey, but only a relative handful have been included here, for a variety of reasons:

•Some people asked for their projects not to be made public. I have respected that wish.
•Some projects were not viewable by the public. I have actually included some of these where the description was detailed enough to give the reader an idea of what was going on; otherwise, I couldn’t see the point.
•I have not used submissions where there were very few details and no website to check out.
•I have omitted repeated descriptions of similar projects, but have included the URLs referred to.

As you will see, I have arranged the projects according to the age range they address. However, I do think it may be worth your while looking through all of them. I, for example, found several ideas for podcasting in primary (elementary) schools from the projects listed in the higher age groups.
I hope you find the booklet useful, and I should be extremely grateful for any feedback you would like to give me.

Thank you.

Terry Freedman

Words of visdom from NZ

Reading my feed of the Flux blog took me to an account of how schools in New Zealand are managed and governed and how autonomous their set up seems to be.

And just for those reading who think I should have written 'wisdom' in the title and made a mistake I decided to use my new word 'visdom'. This is a 'mash-up' word implying wisdom and vision together ... perhaps it will make a dictionary somewhere !

The huge quotation that I bring here is this:

When the elephant gets on the trampoline, everybody else has to jump at the same rhythm ... so don't let the elephant get on !! (the last bit is mine)

I wonder what, if anything, our primary schools heading for their version of BSF can make of this?

The Government responds to Tanya !!

Last week the Government announced its response to the Tanya Byron Review on e-Safety. You can read the press release here or go to the full Action Plan here. Again, it is good to note that there is a version for 'young people' .

Qualification in Podcasting

Working away for a week has meant that I almost missed the bit in the Guardian about a qualification in Podcasting !

This is what the newspaper said:

The new qualification from the NCFE (formerly the Northern Council for Further Education) will allow learners to investigate the process of planning, preparing and producing a podcast.

It aims to help students understand the concepts of podcasting and to develop creative, information technology and communication skills. It will be available in centres across the UK from September 2008.

Podium Podcasting in Newham

A totally awesome day with about 40 or so ICT co-ordinators in Newham at the ITASS powerhouse - the Credon Centre - who arrived to experiment with the curriculum implications behind podcasting. They were very receptive to the ideas that underpinned the ICT and could focus on the classroom contexts while still maintaining a personal, watching brief on the kit they needed to get it all sort out.

I was first up and began with the Ninja Podcasting video followed by the wonderful Common Craft explanation of podcasting:



Then I did my bit with Podium ending up with the participation slot for the witches from Macbeth!!

I was followed by an extremely well planned an executed session by Ken Maslin of ITASS and Emma Parker, Primary Strategy Literacy Consultant who explained case study projects that they had been involved in using podcasting. They introduced us to various versions of 'The Nig Nang Nong' and how explained how motivating the whole thing about recording was for the children.

These were my favourites:





After a superb lunch Pippa Dorma, LGfl Consultant, explained the LGfL approach to podcasting and got the assembled mob to do clever things with Audacity.

A brilliant day with enthusiastic teachers ... lucky children !!

Words, words, words ...

Words just excite me. In text or in speech the way that words shape thoughts and actions have always been a joy. Calligrams, words which explain themselves by their shape, size, colour and juxtaposition have certainly inspired many poets and the idea of creating shapes and patterns with words really does appeal.

I have just come across a Web 2.0 app that takes this to a creative place that I feel is stimulating and different. It is Wordle.

This is what they say about themselves:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

RSA Edge Lecture with Sir Ken Robinson

It would have been great to have listened to Sir Ken Robinson in person as he delivered his views on how we can make change in education happen and then make it stick so that it evolves as times and pace continue to change ( if you get my meaning)... but I was not there on 16th June to hear him.

Fortunately the MP3 of the event is available here.

Formal .V. Informal education

One of the feeds that I read avidly because it is always thought provoking and at the cutting edge of creative educational thought is the feed to Flux - the blog of FutureLab.

In continuation of the theme of what makes education education Emma Agusita writes:

There are a number of central characteristics evident in informal education practices which reveal a persuasion for socially just’ and holistic approaches:
Relinquishing control of the learning process
redefining the value of what constitutes learning
encouraging self-awareness & reflection
facilitating critical skills, freethinking & experimentation
engaging though innovation and equal access & participation

All of these factors are exciting but, at this time, the one of these that really interests me is the 'relinquishing of control' ... I am anxious that childhood should not be wasted on conventional, institutional education but should, by design not chance, be focused where the child is. By gradual progression and sympathetic mentoring learners should develop their own sense of learning and then 'buy' at the intitutions the learning that is for them.

Institutional education is still in its infancy and has not yet grasped the concept of being a 'service industry'. It fails to inform its buyers of the products it has in a way that makes them accessible. By attempting to be fair and equable it has developed a grand 'several sizes fits all' approach which is not personalisation.

We have exciting ways to go yet.

Does it all add up?

I have just finished reading the Review of Mathematics Teaching in Early Years Settings and Primary Schools by Sir Peter Williams and am left wondering if it all adds up.

Just to take some of the key points from a political standpoint:

There should be a maths specialist in every primary school in 10 years

Isn't that potentially two General Elections away? Never mind the advances in technology over that period that might/could/ought to change the shape of education, who is to say that the next Government will be of like mind? Would that we could effectively predict what skills and competences our young people will need by then. I don't suspect that it may not depend on their ability to ..play with shapes, time, capacity and numbers

The training of the maths specialists will start in 2009 so by 2019 the school down the road will have a maths specialist and two whole generations of children will have come and gone from that school without the benefit of this 'expert' help to do things that could easily (in authentic terms) be questioned as worthwhile or even necessary.

I have been unable to find out the actual figures for the training of ALL teachers in support of the old numeracy strategy and that, together with the training of co-ordinators working on the 'new framework' does add up to an awful lot of maths training over the last few years.

The review says:

All children should be competent in basic maths by the age of seven

Just about the same moment as our Continental neighbours are beginning the formal education of their young people. And what does this competence mean?

I do agree with the idea that we need to remove the negativity towards the subject. This is largely generated by a starved media who will latch onto what they consider to be a good story rather than bother to investigate the truth.

Even then I am just not sure about the context and content of the teaching. Teachers are only just beginning to get to grips with the New Framework for Maths (did you notice when it changed from numeracy to maths?). I just wonder how teachers will respond to this, some will obviously see the implications as a potential career move.

If this is the report on Maths then I wonder what Jim Rose will say in his Primary Review that moves things forward. And how does all this sit alongside the thoughts and ideas coming from FutureLab about re-imagining learning spaces and what effect will it have on the Primary phase of BSF?

So what have you changed your mind about ?

Reading the intro to Futurelab's Vision magazine had me very, very excited.

Vision Magazine 7 link here.

Annika Small (read her here on Al Upton's blog), the outgoing CE of Futurelab, championed the cause of disruption and variation - something I have been doing ( without the platform) for many years now. She begins by quoting from a question asked by the Edge Foundation (hence my title to this post): What have you changed your mind about and why?

She highlights that changes of the mind lie at the core of almost every breakthrough in science, art and thought and further comments that lasting innovation rest on a rupture with the principles of the past.

This philosophy is so close to the thoughts and outpourings that I have bored people with over many, many years I was just emotionally heartened to hear someone else expounding similarly.

It is, as she says, obligatory on our part to institute a total re-think as to the purpose and nature of education and learning. It is only by unlearning what we think we know and what has plotted the map of our current progress that we will be able to move forward.

The current FutureLab magazine has an article on building primary schools for the future and intimates at the need to utilise the £7 billion effectively. It asks, as FutureLabs project on re-imagining learning spaces for open-minded flexibility and points towards the fundamental questions such as - from Hannah Jones (special projects director leading the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme at the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) - what sort of learners would we like? and, from me, how and when and where and from whom would they wish to learn?

The article examines the fundamentals of educational development and poses the thought that - the classroom itself is seen as the final stumbling block to the imagination ...

We need to re-think before it is too late and another generation moves through our institutions without access to means that should be universal. We need to think what the purpose of our systems are and to take account of student voice. We have not done this yet.

So what do we need to change our minds about and how do we move on?

Podcasting at Killhope

Yesterday was spent in the far west of County Durham, so close to Cumbria that it didn't matter, at Killhope Mining Museum. We, that is Shelley Dendy and myself, numerous members of ITSS, at least eight teachers and about 36 children plus the centre staff were there to podcast. Authentically podcast.

The theme had been set by Paul Hodgkinson and was based on the life of a 'washer boy' in the lead mine in Victorian times ... read the challenge here:Podcasting%20Challenge.pdf

What a tremendously exciting day ... more details later but you can listen to the podcasts of the day here.

3G iPhone

Just spent the last hour and a half listening to the news about the 3G iPhone from WWDC08 ... it will come in to 22 countries around the world at $199 on July 11th ... that is about £100 and it is totally amazing what they have done with it.

I want one now !!

See all of the pictures here.

JKR speaks at Harvard

I have to confess to not being a Harry Potter fan. It isn't that I don't think that the stories would be good it is just that, on the whole, I don't actually read much fiction, and, if I were to start I am not sure I would begin there.

However, I picked up from my one of my feeds (Open Education) that J K Rowling had delivered the Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

The video of her speech can be found here.

The writer of Open Education clearly makes a plea for people in such a powerful position to remember that it is the students' day and that they are there to enhance it and make sure that it is totally memorable for them and for their assembled family members. This is what was said:

Delivering a memorable graduation speech is one of education’s most difficult challenges. Somehow the orator must deliver some words of inspiration that add to the festiveness of the occasion all the while recognizing that the ceremony is about the graduates and not the speaker.

All too often, the presenter instead interferes with the ceremony, serving as a distraction to all present. Under the worst of conditions, the graduation speaker manages to actually subtract from a day devoted to the achievements of those who have completed their college studies. In fact, the tales of such negative moments are legendary.

On the other hand, a properly created and delivered speech serves as the perfect supplement for the special day. Similar to a burst of bright sunshine, a well crafted speech adds a scintillating glow to the events taking place.

Delivering such a memorable talk at Harvard University just might be the most challenging of all. Like the World Series, the speaker is on an especially distinctive stage with a multitude of observers examining every word.

For me the speech was a masterpiece beginning with disarming the audience and then opening a discussion on how failure has the potential to set people free from constraints. She argued that rock bottom could be seen as a firm foundation and that it could be built upon. She went on to talk of empathy and commented that ... well, no ... please read for yourself ... here it is far better in her words.

I was reminded, towards the end of her speech, as she said:

... written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

... of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that suggests, if you want to extrapolate the idea, that every time we look at something, or think of something, or do something we affect it. We change it.

So let's look closely at how young people learn ... so we can better understand it and help to change it ... for their futures.

Bored with your search engine? Try searchcube!

Are you fed up with just searching and looking or whatever it is you do to search the web for your answers. My friend Richard Cunningham has passed to me this gem of a creative way to search ... he explains -

... example of some of the things you can do with Sandy and thought it was very interesting, showing the possibilities of what can be achieved!
Its a search engine using Google AJAX search API's that previews the return search results in a cube using flex and the 3D engine Sandy!

I have no idea what he means but then I don't know how my computer works and I only put petrol in my car. What I do know is that this looks fun so go and have a look at searchcube.

dipity

Dipity is a lovely new little tool to share timelines. Well worth a look. You can view your timeline as a line, a flip book or a list ... it takes images as well as videos.

iTunes U

Wonderful to pick up from a number of blogs (John Connell, Martin Weller) on the move by the Open University, UCL and Trinity College, Dublin into iTunes U as reported by the BBC yesterday. The iTunes U has been available in USA for some time now so it is really good to see that it is beginning to be rolled out here. This is a sure sign that education is beginning to start from where the learners are and not always from where the institutions might wish to be. Long may it progress.

"Our students will be able to revisit materials presented to them in lectures, so they can learn anywhere and anytime," says Professor Peter Mobbs at University College London (UCL).

Neural pathways or grey matter ?

Sitting at breakfast, as you do, Kay and I got to talking about someone we knew who had written a book but neither of us could 'get to' the name. Our usual ploy at this point is to start at the beginning of the alphabet and work through saying the letters out loud and hoping for interventions that would reveal what we are thinking about. Several times through proved unsuccessful but then, out of the blue sky came to answer... just like that ... as if doors had been opened by the power of the brain to open them. This was interesting in itself but the next bit got me really thinking. The person we were searching for had a co-author and before I could ask Kay had said the name. It was as if her brain had its own personal tag cloud that finding one of the tags led to all the associated tags.

Now I appreciate that if I was a brain specialist or even a psychologist or had studied psychology or something I would have been aware of this and would not have been surprised ... but I was ... and I got to thinking and banging on about how we revere 'knowing' above understanding.

Trawling, mentally, through the TV programmes to substantiate my point I found that there were a large number of them, at a variety of levels that venerate 'knowing' ... Mastermind, The Weakest link, University Challenge, Question of Sport etc .

We then got to arguing about the change in focus in schools from 'knowing' to 'applying' ... and I was reminded of the discussion on a forum recently about a content .V. skill based curriculum and the idea of what the 'skills' would be proved to be a stopping point.

Heavy for breakfast ... a bit like an intellectual fry-up ... but the continuation was along the lines of - in society are the people at the top there because at some moment or other in their lives they spent doing the 'knowing' bit before they got to the 'applying' bit or were they just fortunate in not having to put any effort into knowing ... they just 'know'.

My son's girlfriend is sitting her university exams at the moment ... she says it is all about knowing.

So should there be lots more effort put into knowing just so that we know in case we need to?

Now, is this progressive or retrogressive thinking - am I ahead of the next wave of developments or so far behind that it isn't worth the thought?

Rant over ... hope you get the idea !

Connectivity ... and speed

The acceptance of instant connectivity whenever, wherever is becoming an issue in how we deal with people. Conversations in which friends apologise for not being able to respond quickly enough or of 'being out of reach' are becoming more and more frequent in my life and I notice that yesterday BBC News Technology ran an article on the 'great divide' (my words). A different group of 'haves' and 'have-nots' that all reading this will know about.

I am not the first, but would certainly like to be the last person, who points out that any education methodology that begins to rely on an infrastructure that is not equable can't be fair.

So what to do ? If you live in rural Scotland then conventional broadband will not come your way. But where there is a will there is a way:

The residents of Arnisdale, a remote village on the west coast of Scotland, cannot get broadband at all by conventional means. The village is nine miles from the nearest BT exchange at Glenelg - too far for a broadband connection to work.
But, in a project backed by the University of the Highlands and Islands and by the University of Edinburgh, Arnisdale is getting a wireless broadband connection from a series of masts which beam a signal from the Isle of Skye.
The project has been led by Professor Peter Buneman, an academic from Edinburgh University who lives in Arnisdale. He campaigned without success to get BT to take broadband to the village, and then decided that the community would have to find its own solution.
"I'm now getting better than 10Mbps," he said, "faster than you would get in a city."

So not a one-size-fits-all solution then.I also noticed innovation in Dundee where broadband is arriving by sewer!

Sir Ken in San Francisco

If you have not managed to pick up on this yet and have heard Sir Ken speak at the TED conference this is a must listen to event. Thanks to John Connell for the 'heads up' on this one.

Creatively Speaking: Sir Ken Robinson on the Power of the Imaginative Mind



Well worth following up with some of the comments on the Edutopia web site.

... another bus is on the way ...

Spotted (on purpose perhaps) at Computex 2008 was the GIGABYTE M912. Yet another 'small' laptop ... with a 8.9" convertable touchscreen packing an Atom processor.

Endgadget says:

Carving out the newest niche in the low cost, mini-laptop, ultra-portable, *gasp* netbook category is the Gigabyte M912. As a convertible, touch-screen mini-tablet, the M912 runs Vista or Ubuntu Linux atop Intel's Atom processor. Unfortunately, it looks like it might be hampered by a 4-cell battery showing just over 1.5 hours of battery left on a 95% charge. The 7-inch M724 apparently shares the same chassis as the M912 but is meant for classrooms-only, not consumers. Uh, right. That was the original market for all these netbook-class machines as we recall.

Just how many more can the world take ?

And ... I only just finished this posting and thought I would have a look on Gismodo to see what is new and LO and BEHOLD ... another bus came round the corner ... this time it is an Acer Aspire One -

Acer has just announced their new 8.9" Aspire One ultraportable laptop. With a starting price of just $379, configurations include an Intel Atom processor, up to 1GB of RAM and either 8GB of flash storage or an 80GB hard drive as well as a choice between Linpus Linux Lite and Windows XP. Nothing here is out of the ordinary for this new class of laptops except its competitive price and that future iterations are planned with 3G data support

I can use a slide rule ...

Honest - I can ... I still have one ... a little one made of bone (I think) with a dinky little slider on it and a bit that slips in and out of the middle. I found similar ones on the 'Vintage Instruments' site.

And I can use log tables. I can remember that I even took exams in log tables to prove I could use log tables (but I never quite got the idea of why this was a good thing).

And I can use a calculator. My phone has one on it too. I remember that a guy called Ken Tyler and I did lots of work on the use of calculators way back in the mid 70s when they first came into schools and people tried like mad to ban their use (rot your brain, they said).

Now I have Google ... sometimes I think I live on the planet Google (How sad is that?) and it seems to manage my calculations for me without me worrying too much.

I used to write a lot. Holding a stylus type thing between my fingers and making strange marks on refined bits of tree ... but I am better now !! I still have an indentation on the middle finger of my right hand where the stylus thing rested as I moved it backwards and forwards across the bits of tree making marks... but I AM better now.

I now communicate. Honestly - but my wrists ache from all of this picking and poking at the plastic squares ... and I still have to look at the letters. I recently acquired a txt keyboard and that is fun but now my thumb aches a lot.Please what is next?

And the reason for all this ... a very funny cartoon ...which came off the back of a blog post from apophenia.

Brightened my day.


Attribution: Greg Williams, The Tampa Tribune.

Dell Mini Inspiron

It's back to my buses theme ... Gizmodo has just released a report of the latest mini laptop ... a Dell Inspiron ... no price yet, but it does look good...

I wonder if it is a standard pencil ? Pictures below for comparison with my Dell XPS M1210 which people think is small and dinky. The picture at the top (the red one) in the new piece of kit - the one underneath that is my current Dell machine ... check out the pencil size !





So it's wait and see ... again ...

PS

More from the BBC, and I bet there will be much, much more at the Computex show in Taiwan next week

Copyright and Creative Commons

Had a long conversation yesterday with Joe Dale about Creative Commons and Copyright after our Flash Meeting session with friends in Australia.

Today he has put up on his blog a good explanation video which I replicate here.



There is also some really good advice on his blog post about how to get the best out of Fickr ... legally.

Text2mindmap

Chris Smith has just Twhirled about a new tool for building mindmaps. It is called 'Text2mindmap' and it looks as if it good be a really nice addition to a communication 'set'.

It is a Text-to-Mind Map converter on the web. It converts your text or list of keywords to a mind map instantly.You give it a list of words and it will draw a mind map, which you can download to your computer for future use.

For the technically minded:

Text2mindmap uses an Adobe Flex 2.0 component that displays a set of items that are linked to each other. The component calculates the layout for the items using an organic-looking annealing algorithm based on the size and links of each item, and draws lines to represent the links. The component allows the user to drag and/or interact with individual items.

I have been using Visual Thesaurus and Visuwords for a while now but the ability that Text2Mindmap has to allow me to produce my own word lists for association will add to my tool set.

Onwards and upwards or just onwards ...?

Brian Smith emailed round the Naace advisory group earlier today after he had been experimenting with Twitter and had commented on all the new things he had discovered.

Looking down the email I came across the URL to a YouTube video that he posted in Feb 2008 about how culture fails to keep up with technology and how early adoption is pretty well always about replication. In terms of the video we have now, in some way, invented the 'rivets and welds' of Web 2.0 but in doing so have opened up a great number of other avenues as to what can now be done ... and this is beginning to stretch the rules that have always applied to publication.



Harry Lessig in his TED talk How creativity is being strangled by the law begins to address this issue. But it is a similar issue to the one concerning the job market for your people. In the next decade many will be doing jobs that don't exist yet ... we and they will need to adapt to the changes as they com along ... not simply try to replicate solutions as we always did.

Playing has stalled ... the long school year should end

Okay this is not what the report said. It actually said:

Long school holidays should be abolished to prevent children falling behind in class, a report has said. The Institute for Public Policy Research said studies suggested pupils lose some of their reading abilities because the summer break is too long.

My take on this is that the Institute might well have missed the point of being a child ... it is not to progress on the contuinued institutional step ladder of inferred educational achievement but rather to enjoy living, to play in the buttercups and to run with friends in the open air. Reading is wonderful and if schools can create in the children the excitement and joy that comes from its mastery what better time than during the 'long summer holidays' to curl up in a private spot and to experience the wonder that is reading.

The report goes on:

If we are serious about continuing to improve outcomes for all children, we need long-term reform that better gears our school system around the needs of children and young people.

'Improve outcomes for all children' ... Wainwright, the celebrated fell walker and writer, often said (and I paraphrase here), 'When climbing a fell, always take time to pause and look back the way you have come. The eyes will be delighted.' It looks to me that the report writers have failed to do that ... in their urgency to get to the top and to move ' outcomes' forwards they have forgotten the purpose of the climb!

Teachmeet North East London

On 19th May I attended the excellent Teachmeet hosted by Anthony Evans and fronted by Ewan McIntosh ( and organised in the background by David Noble)... from a distance. I, and about 16 others, I think that was the count, witnessed the event via a Flashmeeting. This is the second time I have 'been' to a Teachmeet in this way and I have to say it is getting slicker. After a small tech blip at the start the sound was excellent and the video of the participants wasnot bad at all . Video of the screen was, however, not good but this did not detract from the fact that I was able to get the idea of all of the presentations. You can follow the our comments here.

The presentations came fast and, as usual, were interesting and current. It is great to be able to get up-to-date with what people are doing out in the 'education field/jungle'.

I really need to find out about txttools and I need to have a good look at the 'WhatWorksWell' site.

At the 'four' way breakout those of us on Flashmeeting were a little bit left out for a while ... I found time for a drink ... and it was a pity that there was no time in the process to 'bring us in' or comment that we were 'there' (although I could have missed this when I went out to get a drink)

Watching the Teachmeet itself I felt that the techy bits sometimes ruined the flow ... could be a good idea to have one laptop set up and everyone has to use that and only uses a URL as their visual ... this, I think, would help the flow. The downside of that slickness would be that there would not be as much time for chat around the tables ! Perhaps more people should just stand up and speak rather than relying on visuals ... it is just something we have come to expect (?)

All-in-all an excellent evening well spent ... much information to sift through. When is the next one ?

Many thanks to Anthony for the arranging.

PS

The people on the Flashmeeting felt dis-included in the prize draw so we arranged our own virtual one :-)... I did not win :-( ... but Lisa did write a 'poem' about me !!

Don't say I didn't tell you ... is it a book or is it a ???

Another bus has just come round the corner and it could be awesome if it arrives at the bus stop ...




It is the OLPC 2.0: A Striking eBook and a Step In the Right Direction read the blurb or be amazed and watch the video ...

Language maketh man ...

I do apologise to William of Wykeham (1324 - 1404)and the Motto of Winchester College and New College, Oxford for usurping the motto but it just seemed right or this two part post.

I have recently taken delivery of a cre8txt keyboard being promoted by that exceptional man Russell Prue as I am very interested in the speed that some young people seem to be able to communicate with their mobile phones and felt that such a device could well be one way into reluctant writers.

I have only just begun to get to grips with the USB device and find, at present, that the cable to the laptop rather gets in the way of the small light keypad. I have spoken to Russell about this and await the bluetooth or wireless versions which I understand are 'on the drawing board'.

The functionality is just as it says on the web site and it performs well with the predictive text writer. I miss the auto predictive text that my mobile gives me but this could just be that I am not used to the way the software works yet.

The idea is right and it will develop ... but will it catch on. It would be wonderful if I could use my mobile phone as the keypad to synch with my laptop/desktop and a piece of software that converted my txt to 'real'.

This fits in really well with a report out from Professor David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University, where he states of texting that: ... such condensed messages enhance and enrich language skills.

He goes on the say: ... texting had had a bad press, and it was merely another way to use language ... The panic about texting and its effects on language is totally misplaced. It adds a new dimension, enriches language, gives you a new option. Any reading and writing was good for literacy ...

PS

Following my feeds led me to this in the Christian Science Monitor ...( thanks to Will Richardson for the link)... the title should be enough to get you reading - Turn teen texting toward better writing. Teachers who co-opt Web tools for class have the best of both worlds.

And secondly ... while driving home from Swindon last evening across the wonderful Cotswolds listening to Radio 4 news I chanced on an article about simplifying spelling. The argument was that the way we spell may words is just fairly ridiculous and we should simplify the whole thing ... language evolves like this and it would not be a problem to begin to remove the redundant 'silent consonants'.

The debate has been going on for a while now ... the BBC running it just last year. What makes it current is that I understand the Germany has already been through this and so has Spain and the BBC PM programme chose to report on it ...it is possible to read what the BBC PM listeners thought of the idea here.

I never thought that the way we spell many common words was sensible and it seems that there is just the possibility that a combination of txting and simplifying may stir up the evolution. I wonder when the tipping point will be reached?

The good, the bad and the ****

The title was just to catch attention ... I am reporting here on the excellent and the, frankly, stupid ...

The excellent first. I have been following the 'Cool Cat Blog' for some time now and am often amazed by the insightful nature of the comments there on students' work. A particular statement caught my eye today reported from the Horizon Project 2008:

"A teacher should, as Don Tapscott said, no longer be a transmitter of information, but a regulator of educational settings. Our teacher Mrs. Vicki could stand in from of the class room all day and lecture us on exactly what to do and how to do it. We would ace tests and learn a lot . . . for a while… However by next year about 65% of what we learned will be irrelevant due to technology changes and development. Instead, she gives us projects to complete that pose challenges to us that can repeat themselves. Such as giving us a project to make a video by using a program we are unfamiliar with. Though we may not ever make another video, it is inevitable that we face the challenge of having to use an unfamiliar program, ergo, we will be prepared to deal with this for the rest of our lives.

So in conclusion, the role of a teacher is now: to regulate the educational environment; to introduce students to the realm of ambiguities; and to no longer evaluate our overall knowledge, but our constructive, creative, and adaptive capabilities."

I just love the last paragraph. If this teacher has taught her students this then my optimism for the future is reset ! The idea of teachers introducing students to a realm of ambiguities is awesome and I want to hear more about it.

...... and now the frankly stupid .... and it has to STOP ...

Drew Burrett is a teacher and GLOW mentor from Argyll and Bute and his frustration boiled over:


Super School, Super Speed & Web(non)Sense

How Brilliant is Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope?

I’d love to be able to answer that question, but unfortunately my home PC is under spec’ed to do it justice - graphics card not up to the job of rendering the terabytes of images.

Nor is my school machine - lovely MacPCBookWinProXP - able to do it justice, simply because Websense will not allow it access to the internet.

I was quite excited by the announcement of the release of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope, as I hoped it’d make for some interesting ‘find out for yourself’ collaborative Web 2.0 work for the kids as part of our up coming ‘Space’ topic.

Alas, Websense feels it is unsafe to allow such programs (and Google Earth, Stellarium etc) to be used in the education of children. This piece of software is slowly crushing my enthusiasm for incorporating ICT into my teaching.

[I had to laugh when I saw Websense’s corporate website - where they are selling themselves as ‘Integrated Security for the Web 2.0 world]

Andrew Brown made an interesting observation on his blog regarding filtering -

I wish there were some trust in the professionalism of teachers, rather than a blanket ban on everything until its proven to be’safe’. In the meantime, I’m thinking of abandoning any attempt at using ICT and going back to chalk.

Asus Eee PC ... the story continues ...

Picking through my feeds today I notice on Joe Dale's blog a news feature from The Telegraph about a 'grown-up' version of the original ... you could call it Asus 2 ! The video is of the Gadget Inspectors (!!) It now has a 9" screen and runs ... wait for it ... WINDOWS !! ... and the 'new' price £329 ( I am sure I heard that right) ... now for £277.55 I can buy an HP 530 - Celeron M 520 1.6 GHz - 15.4" TFT and I suspect many other full laptops.

From the original £169 version the price has now doubled and the claim is 3hr battery life. Now I have an original and if I get 1hr with the WIFI on I think that is good.

I am not doubting the powerful kit ... and I do like mine ... but at twice the price i think I might think ...

The Byron Review ... getting going

Yesterday the Department for Children, Schools and Families announced that:
Kevin Brennan and Vernon Coaker today announced the UK Council for Child Internet Safety will launch in September 2008, six months ahead of the recommended timescale set out by Dr Tanya Byron in her report ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’.

Notice this is a UK Council ... not a European one or a World one but a UK one ... frankly I am surprised that it is not English!

So now soon we will have CEOPS and UKCCIS ... the timetables is:

• Inviting stakeholders to join the Council – 14 May
• Cross Department Action Plan - end of June 2008
• Launch of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety – September 2008
• First Child Internet Safety Summit hosted by the Prime Minister - spring 2009

It is difficult to be positive when the realisation that it will take until this time next year for anything to actually happen at the 'highest' level ... I wonder when the good ideas will get to the ground floor?
By then I suspect we will have all moved on a long, long way...

Is Microsoft out Googling Google ?

I really do have to tell about Microsoft's World Wide Telescope. I have downloaded it and am doing my best to compare its functions with Google Sky.

Both are very, very clever and both are very, very FREE ...

I am not able to give a breakdown of their functions because my s