I’ve been meaning to post on this presentation Ewan McIntosh gave recently at the Tipperary Institute’s Education futures event, and now have time.
It’s an exposition of the power of social networking and how pervasive it is for many 21st century students. Given the audience, the time available to him, and the message he wanted to get across, it says a lot about what people are doing on Facebook and the like, but it’s a little light on the pedagogical relevance (he does more of that here). It’s worth a look and listen, though, and the challenge Ewan has for us to learn why students want ‘go to these places’ is an important one.
A colleague (thanks Tim) recently alerted me to an interesting wiki Mike Shaw has created for the IB’s Learner Profile. Mike has linked the profile’s attributes with a series of ICT challenges for teacher professional development, eg risk-takers and the use of mobile phones in the classroom.
I particularly liked the links Mike has made with online translators and the attribute: Communicators. Not as straight forward as it sounds.
Take a look here when you have time and try some of the challenges for yourself.
Good work, Mike. Well done.
Barbara Stefanics, an ITGS teacher at Vienna International School, recently alerted me to a project her students are involved in with a number of their peers from Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia (US) and the Qatar Academy.
It’s called Digiteen and is a collaborative wiki project looking at Digital citizenship, which they define as “knowing how to behave appropriately and responsibly with regard to technology use”.
It involves approximately 50 students, who have contributed new media resources and their own thoughts around 9 topics identified by Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey in their book, Digital Citizenship in Schools.
The students have collected together some great material and I encourage you to have a look some time and let them know what you think. I particularly like the Guidelines for Teens section at the bottom of each page.
If you’re reading this, Barbara, please pass on my congratulations to the students and colleagues for such an excellent initiative. I have a couple of related questions for you though. I was looking to see what the students thought of the Creative Commons movement, but couldn’t find any reference to it (unless I overlooked it, for which I apologise). But, what do you all think about Creative Commons and its tools for licensing intellectual property and their derivatives? Do you think the tools help digital citizens become more responsible in their use/sharing/remixing of content published by others? Is it something you would consider using yourselves in a blog or wiki for example? I’d love to know what you think.
On 18 April 2008, the IB celebrated its fortieth anniversary in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. On this occasion, the annual Peterson Lecture was delivered by His Highness the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, and the founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN).
His Highness the Aga Khan spoke on “Global Education and the Developing World”, a topic of great relevance to the IB itself and also to IB schools and teachers.
We invite IB teachers to watch the Peterson Lecture and to comment on some of the big questions that it poses to educators worldwide - at a time when the IB looks back on 40 years of international education, and considers new challenges for the future.
A video of the speech, with the ability to comment, can be found here (please feel free to circulate to colleagues):
“Global education and the developing world” - His Highness the Aga Khan
