For those of you who’ve been reading, you’ll be aware that tomorrow I will be presenting at theSLAV conference in Melbourne. Susan Bentley, the Elibrarian whoI work with, is presenting with me. It’s a big deal for me, largely because I am charged with the task of switching on a group of teachers and teacher-librarians to the idea that adopting a Web 2.0 approach to their teaching and school library practice is a vital thing to be doing. It’s also an opportunity to be inspired once again by the words of Will Richardson and see the effect his words can have on the participants. I’ve said many times before, one of the turning points in my adoption (transformation!?) came when I attended a 5 hour workshop run by Will at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference in August last year. Hopefully we’ll see him have that same effect tomorrow.
I made a PowerPoint for the presentation and have spent a considerable amount of time putting it together. I’ve been inspired by the words of Garr Reynoldsin his presentation to Google staff and will be interested to see if his philosophy plays out for the audience I’m addressing. Susan and I presented this to our staff on Thursday and got a good reception so all should be well. The other exciting, but complicating thing, has been that I scored an invite to SlideRocket after I posted a plea on their blog when I realised they had sent out 500 invites and I didn’t get one. This is a presentation tool that allows you to do some pretty cool things with your slides and your presentations are stored online. When I imported the PowerPoint into SlideRocket I had problems with text overlays on my slides - it ’s taken me ages to figure out how to address this and I’ve still got problems with my text not transferring over when I cache the presentation. Looks like I’ll be hard at it tonight trying to sort this one out. The great thing is that you can cache your presentation to your hard drive in an offline feature they offer. I’m doing this to avoid loading problems I may have tomorrow if the bandwith is not so good. Of course, you can’t expect things to go smoothly. Ever. I’d really like to use it as it’s a great example of the new tools becoming available, and how you can get things happening for yourself in this world if you are active and ask questions. If need be I’ll just revert to the original Powerpoint - no need worrying - just gotta go with the flow!
My other charge is to ustream the presentation. I have a channel and am taking a video camera and tripod so that I can get it out to the world. Another great example of how to use these tools to best effect. You can watch it on ustream at 11.30 tomorrow here. I, of course, will be delivering the presentation so won’t be able to participate in the chat room but I hope some of you do. I’d be interested in getting some feedback so please post a comment to let me know what you thought- I’m tough, can handle criticism, so let fly! (doesn’t mean I won’t be curling up in a foetal position tomorrow night if all goes wrong - you may never hear from me again!!)
I’ll be uploading the presentation to Slideshare and will post a link to it once I’ve got the thing sorted - hope it doesn’t take all night.
Dean Groom has written a good post today in response to the Web 2.0 conference that took place this week in Sydney. Read it. He articulates well the frustration felt by many who have made the shift and are trying to convince others of the need for change. We can’t give up -we need to be the evangelists leading the flock!!
This post is dedicated to Lindsea. In a presentation I am making on Monday I’m using Lindsea as an example of the kind of learning that is possible now that the walls are down and we can reach out and make contact. She has been an inspiration to me and my students - I hope you read this Lindsea and realise the difference you have made. This is Lindsea’s favourite video on YouTube - she posted a link to it on Twitter last night. I was watching and noticing Lindsea as I always do when I see your name. Thanks.
Clay Shirky, author of ‘Here comes everybody’recently presented atWeb 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. It’s a presentation to watch and absorb and think about. So much of what he had to say resonated for me. He talked of cognitive surplus; the idea of utilising free time productively rather than masking the cognitive surplus to engage in tasks like watching television. I feel like I am using my cognitive surplus to the max right now. Television hardly factors into my day anymore - I’m much more interested in expanding my learning via this online environment.
Clay makes reference to his childhood and the countless times he watched re-runs of Gilligan’s island - he muses how this time could have been utilised differently. I can only concur. I’d have to add The Brady Bunch to the mix as well. The hours spent in childhood dedicated to re-runs was time wasting at its best.
He recounts a discussion with a TV producer about the cognitive surplas required to amass the pages;
So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? Just what are we capable of achieving, if we can channel some of that time into the generation of new ideas rather than the passive pursuit of television watching? Watch the video or read the transcript from Clay’s blog- you won’t be passively watching - your mind will be ticking over with the ideas he presents and I’ll bet he’ll be dinner conversation in quite a few households. (maybe even a few staffrooms!)
Thanks to Dean Shareskifor pointing me to Clay’s blog via Twitter.
The State Library of Victoria has recently released Ergo, a site designed to assist students with skills needed for research, essay writing and study skills. This is what they say on their front page;
When it comes to assignments and exams, it’s good to know how to make your work stand out from the crowd. That’s where ergo can help. This practical guide to research, essay writing and studying shows you how to find resources, write great essays and prepare for exams. It also has a huge range of original documents and images you can use. ergo helps you make your work the best it can be.
There are some wonderful resources for students studying bushrangers, exploration, Aboriginal, women’s and worker’s rights as well as colonial Melbourne. I’m going to find the essay writing and study skills information very handy with my classes. Great to see our State Library connecting with students and teachers in such a useful way. Well worth bookmarking.
Susan Bentleyis the eLibrarian at the school I work at. It’s great having her on staff - in her role she is responsible for maintaining our Library’s online presence. I first heard the word Web 2.0 from Susan I think, so I have a lot to thank her for as I now bask in this Web 2.0 world!
Susan has been busy this year creating Wikis for classroom use. We used to create pathfinders to support curriculum - these were static pages with links to web pages and items available in our Library, but no-one could add to the page other than Susan. Now we’ve moved these pathfinders over to Wikis and have been introducing them to staff and students. Two of the best working Wikis operate at Yr 11 for Legal Studies and Literature. In these Wikis students have a page each within the Wiki and use this to post responses and upload interesting links or videos they find. I introduced the Wiki to an International studies class last week and received a wonderful reaction from one of the sudents. I could see her eyes widening as she realised the possibilities of this as a tool for learning. She came to see me the next day for some advice on how to link to her page from the home page. She had uploaded numerous YouTube videos about Rwanda and wanted to be able to share her knowledge with her peers. It was exciting to see her enthusiasm - a great reminder to me as to why these are such enabling tools that should be utilised for learning. She’d even gone home to show her Mother what was now possible. This is girl headed off to Uni next year now armed with a powerful realisation of how to use Web 2.0 for collaboration.
Susan is presenting with me next week and has uploaded a presentation to Slideshare about how to create a Wiki using PB wiki - she has lots of good ideas so take a look.
Last week I posted about Garr Reynoldsand his presentation to Google staff about how to deliver an effective presentation. Well, I think I’ve figured out why it is we sit through countless presentations that are full of bullet points and text.
IT’S A DAMN SIGHT EASIER TO DO THAT THAN TO TRY AND SOURCE APPROPRIATE IMAGES AND KEEP DETAIL SO THAT YOU CAN ACCURATELY PROVIDE BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAIL ABOUT WHERE YOU GOT YOUR INFORMATION!!!
There. Got that one off my chest. Now it’s time to think some more and immerse myself in the world of flickr and morguefile, as I try to find images that are going to live in the memory of the kind souls (please be kind!) who are going to attend my presentation next Monday.
Wish me luck. At the rate I’m going I well may see the sun rise!
End of another working week - I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like this is going to be one loooong term! A laugh at the end of the week is necessary, and the latest effort from improveverywhereprovides just that. This time their mission is food court musical- improveverywhere agents are in a food court and break out in song much to the bemusement of unsuspecting diners. It’s very much like the work of the guys from The Chasers and their ‘Life is a musical’efforts. I’m wondering if the improveverywhere crew have seen some of their work.
I’m having problems with WordPress tonight and can’t embed the video from YouTube - very frustrating. Trust me - follow the link and you’re guaranteed a chuckle.
I teach a class called Connections on a Thursday afternoon. It’s a one lesson a week proposition and teachers offer instruction in something they have an interest in. I’m offering blogging as an option and twenty six students have lined up to take the class. They can’t wait to get started on creating their own blogs, but I’m using the first few sessions to get them used to apps like flickr and delicious.
Today one of the students showed me something she has been using at home. It’s called scrapblogand it allows you to combine photos, videos, audio and text to create a multimedia scrapbook. I’ve been playing around with it and it’s a lot of fun. And just because it’s fun doesn’t mean that it can’t have some educational merit! I was thinking how you could have your students create a scrapbook reflecting a character from a text they are reading - they would show their understanding of the character through the theme selected, pictures and extras inserted into the pages they create. Worth a look at for both school and home projects.
I love it when students choose to share their finds with you. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching - sharing knowledge is very rewarding and when it’s reciprocal it’s even moreso.
Last year I visited China with another teacher and 16 fantastic students from my school. I’ve just found out recently that I will be returning to do the same trip in late October/ November. The trip was run byWorld Expeditions and was pretty arduous - I never knew there were that many stone steps in China. They were everywhere; from the rice terrace fields, to Mt. Huoshan to the Great Wall. The experience was life changing - China is a truly wonderful place with lovely people. Negotiating deals in the markets was one of my favourite pursuits - if you did it with a smile and a bit of a laugh you seemed to be able to strike some pretty good bargains (at least I thought so anyway!!)
I managed to lose not one but two cameras while I was over there; one on a sleeper train and one at the Summer Palace - no such thing as lost property when you visit places like the Summer Palace. Imagine this scenario: you happen to leave a camera that belongs to your fellow teacher hanging on a hook in a toilet (because you thought it would be a better place than the floor!) You leave the toilet block and walk away. Ten minutes have passed and you see a tranquil scene that you think is a great photo opportunity. You reach for camera and realise it is not there. Remember hook in toilet. Run, yes, run, back to toilet but camera is gone. Return to fellow teacher and report bad news. On return to Australia visit camera store and purchase new camera for fellow teacher rather than risk prospect of never being spoken to again!!
Thanks goodness fellow teacher took photos and sent them to me - a very good camera woman too I might add! This is one of my favourite pictures from the Yangshou region; the Karst mountains are hauntingly beautiful - I look forward very much to retuning there later in the year. And of course, you couldn’t be there for 18 days without visiting the Great Wall. Truly a wondrous sight.
I love YouTube. I love the way it enables the everyman to generate content and connect with an audience. Just look at the remarkable things that can happen when a YouTube video goes viral. ‘Did you know?’ is a classic example. There’s unassuming Karl Fischcreating a PowerPoint presentation for a staff meeting and what happens - his slides are uploaded to YouTube in a video with music and are watched approx. 4 million times or so. Amazing.
My students know the power of YouTube. Last year we set our Yr 8 students the task of creating a trailer (like something you’d see at the movies) for a novel they’d read as a literature circle study. One group read ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe’ and created a great videothat they uploaded to YouTube. They’ve had 347 views and love checking their stats. YouTube gives our students an authentic audience - they’re looking to attract an audience rather than just present work for the one person -the teacher. That’s pretty empowering stuff.
The students I teach love it when we begin a class with a video from YouTube. I love the ‘hook’ effect they have; because a large number of them are less than five minutes they are the great way to begin a lesson. Students are focused and they often prompt wonderful class discussion. Yesterday I visited Coburg Senior Secondary College to look at their learning spaces and curriculum offerings. A Year 10 class I observed watched this videoto evoke some reaction to the issue of climate change;
They were hooked watching this - no doubt - and it prompted interesting discussion. There weren’t any bandwith problems at Coburg so the streaming from YouTube was pretty much instantaneous. Not so where I teach. It’s a 1:1 wireless environment but streaming from YouTube is a drawn out process. If you want to watch a YouTube video you need to load it prior to the class and have it ready to replay. One option is to use a a video conversion site like Keepvid to cache the video from YouTube for use in class. This way you have guaranteed success with one catch- it goes against the copyright laws of this country.
I’m wondering about the future of copyright and what may happen now that user generated content is really taking off. Will we see a backlash against copyright regulations? Will we see users post their content and stipulate that it can be used and reformatted so that educators can employ it in classrooms to convey important messages? Will more people use creative commons licencesto allow their work to be used easily in educational settings? Will the copyright council be able to stem the flow of infringements to the law as more and more educators realise the potential benefits of YouTube to provide useful content for classroom instruction?
