OPLS blog

I have just ordered a copy of Imagine Teacher for the Nintendo DS.  According to Play.com it allows you to:

• Teach your students writing, maths, biology, geography and history
• Develop their artistic skills - music, drawing and pottery
• Help organise school events such as organising parties for your pupils’ birthdays, an end of year party, and many more
• Encourage your students so they find their true vocation
• All your students have their own personalities and favourite subjects
• Position them carefully in the classroom to prevent them from chatting and distracting other pupils
• Buy or collect new items
• Upgrade your school
• Multiplayer for up to 4 players with a single game cart.

Not sure if this is a trend that has caught on in other countries, but there has been a spate of television programmes over the past few years in the UK devoted to lists. Top 100 films, Top 100 Britons, Top 100 children’s programmes, etc, ad infinitum.

I blame Nick Hornby, of course, and his first novel, High Fidelity (1995), in which the owner of a record shop, Robert, and his two employees, Dick and Barry, create all manner of lists to help them get through the day. Memorable examples include “Top 5 musical crimes committed by Stevie Wonder in the 70s and 80s”, or “Top 5 songs about death”.

Well, I don’t blame him really, since it was a novel idea at the time and, as Heppell says, one of the true measures of creativity and ingenuity is the extent to which it is copied by others.

I doubt, though, if the compilers of this latest list I’ve come across were thinking of Nick Hornby when they created the Top 100 tools for learning - a list generated from 158 learning professionals (from education and workplace learning) who shared their top 10 tools for both their own personal learning/productivity and for creating learning.

I think the list is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly it has a browser, Firefox, in the top 2. I’m assuming, here, it is more to do with the plethora of add-ons and extensions available and the fact that it is making significant advances in terms of discoverability.

Secondly, Microsoft Word has fallen from 10th position last year to joint 22nd in 2008. With the growth of Google Docs, Zoho and wikis etc, I wouldn’t mind betting Word falls out of the top 50 completely this time next year.

Thirdly, I was struck by the number of wikis in the top 50 (wikispaces, PBwiki and WetPaint) and certainly from my own experience, I would see these moving up the list next year, with Google Sites (formerly know as JotSpot) perhaps making an appearance too.

I encourage you to look at the list when you have time. There are some good pointers and it was good to see an IB teacher as one of the contributors, namely Richard Allaway, head of Geography at the International School of Toulouse in France.  Richard has been a leading light in terms of using Web 2.0 technologies to support teaching and learning, and collaborated with Natasha Lardner and Geography Jim on this wiki development in Wikispaces (something we blogged about here).  He’s worth following.

Oh, and for those who don’t have time to look but are curious as to what came out at No.1…

…it was del.icio.us.

Towards the end of last month, I accompanied representatives from the Aga Khan Academies group on a visit to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Seattle. Our purpose - to explore possibilities for collaboration and knowledge exchange on the development of an e-learning strategy for the academies’ network.

We had a very productive day, and it was rounded off by a tour of Microsoft’s Home of the Future - a prototype of what our living spaces might look like 10 years from now. Housed in their executive briefing centre, it was conceived using the notions of discoverability, place and participation. From their website:

Place. A series of demonstrations showcase how software, services and devices can combine to deliver timely, relevant information to people based on their location, whether inside the home or nearby. One example is display technology shown in the neighborhood bus stop that provides continuous updates of route and arrival information, and is used to demonstrate how location services can automatically notify people about services near them or even when someone they know arrives at the bus stop.

Participation. Reflecting consumers’ widespread desire to more directly shape their sources of information and entertainment — through blogs, social networking Web sites, wikis and the like — the Microsoft Home features several emerging technologies designed to extend people’s self-expression. For instance, a teenager’s bedroom in the facility portrays what it would be like to have addressable wallpaper that employs organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology to display a variety of content such as artwork, video clips and Web pages.

Discovery. Technology systems throughout the Microsoft Home demonstrate innovative ways of prioritizing the huge volumes of information, media and content choices to which consumers will have access in the future. These systems can filter through myriad content sources — from thousands of TV channels, news reports, e-mail messages and electronic documents to music files, on-demand videos and blog entries — to intelligently bring people the content they care about most and at the time when they’re in the mood to enjoy it.

I enjoyed the tour, but what struck me most was the ubiquitous nature of the technology and how possibly intrusive it might become. Voice recognition was used throughout (the main computer was called Grace) and it reminded me very much of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 - A Space Odyssey.

I was intrigued, though, by the notion of watching web content virtually with a friend and having conversations in real-time via VOIP - the move towards shared reality continues unabated.

I was not allowed to take any photos or video footage, so the next best thing? I had a quick look on YouTube, once I got home, and found this:

It doesn’t cover everything, but gives you an idea of what it was like.

I often turn to Stephen Heppell when considering next steps and looking for help in making sense of this new world we’re living in. Recently I came across this. I shan’t try and paraphrase this time, but let his own words speak to you.

“Computers are everyday tools for us all, seen or unseen, but their value in learning is as tools for creativity and learning rather than as machines to “deliver” the curriculum. These tools, in our children’s hands, are forever pushing the envelope of expertise that previous technologies excluded them from: they compose, quantise and perform music before acquiring any ability to play an instrument, they shoot, edit and stream digital video before any support from media courses, they produce architectural fly-throughs of incredible buildings without any drafting or 2D skills, they make stop frame animations with their plasticine models, they edit and finesse their poetry, they explore surfaces on their visual calculators, swap ideas with scientists on-line about volcanic activity, follow webcam images of Ospreys hatching, track weather by live satellite images, control the robots they have built and generally push rapidly at the boundaries of what might be possible, indeed what was formerly possible, at any age.

Little of this was easily achieved in the school classroom ten years ago although the many projects emanating from Ultralab over that decade offered clear enough indicators of what might be possible. The challenge here is to criterion referencing. So often the cry of the teacher “that work is better than my degree exhibition piece!” reflects a substantial step change in both the age at which a creative act can be enjoyed and the quality of the tools supporting that creativity.”

So, if you want some guidance on what we might do as educators to evaluate some of this, have a look at what he has to say here.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a smart video goggle system that records everything the wearer looks at, recognizes and assigns names to objects that appear in the video, and creates an easily searchable database of the recorded footage.

It can function as a memory aid for the elderly, or search through hours of video footage to find particular images. Wonderful possibilities for the classroom too.

You can find the original article here.

Although “best of…” posts tend to appear reasonably frequently, the good ones are worth their weight in gold. Here are a couple of blog posts summarising the best Web 2.0 applications of 2007, in so far as they relate to teaching and learning, and as proposed by Larry Ferlazzo and Silvia Tolisano:

Larry Ferlazzo’s best Web 2.0 applications for 2007

Langwitches best web 2.0 applications for elementary school

You are, of course, free to agree or disagree.

Please note that these were shared via the Classroom 2.0 network on Ning.

At a recent dinner with a number of workshop leaders for IB psychology, we discussed the issue of mobile technologies in the classroom and the decision being taken by many schools and districts around the world to ban them. It was quite a vigorous debate (as you can imagine in such company), but a real eye-opener for me was the genuine concern around the table for things like mobile phones, iPods, PDAs etc, being used covertly and overtly in the classroom.

I’ve been reflecting since on what might be driving that concern and suggest the following:

• There is a concern that, if the student is listening to his iPod then he’s not necessarily listening to the teacher or his classmates
• There is a real or perceived threat to academic honesty
• The teacher is apprehensive at best, frightened at worst, by the fact that his students know more about mobile technologies than he does.

Josh Allen, writing in ISTE’s most recent Learning and Leading with Technology, even goes so far as to say, “Nothing that you can do on a cell phone will inspire students as they make their way in the world.” He suggests that investment in laptops would be a far better use of our very limited resources, arguing that, “any monies a school spent on phones and [their accompanying] plans would be much better served with any number of other technologies.”

I do not agree. Although there is a very real concern among teachers that they are being overtaken, perhaps overwhelmed, by these emerging technologies, I do not believe the right course of action is to ban them from the classroom. Equally, I do not agree with the sentiment that phone technologies have no educational use or application. You only need to look on Flickr - of students taking photos with their phones during a field trip, sending them to a class Flickr account and then creating and editing a digital slideshow later - for a myriad of examples.

Liz Kolb, writing in the same Learning and Leading with Technology article, states that “a basic cell phone has the ability to be the students’ Swiss Army knife of technology.” And I think she’s right. They can record audio and video, be digital cameras (with increasingly very high levels of resolution), act as video conferencing devices and blog editing tools, used as assistive technologies in special needs education, and can even been employed for formal assessment purposes (see the Ultralab example summarised by Stephen Heppell).

So, is it not a question of temperance and balance, rather than banning? And furthermore, are we not, as educators, compelled to embrace these technologies rather than ignore them and hope they’ll go away? Because, as we embark upon another year, I wonder if the real issue, and therefore concern for educators, is the fact that these technologies are changing the very nature of teaching and learning, and that we’re just not ready.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about Samorost and Samorost 2 - fantasy, Flash-based games by Amanita.

The discussion has centred on how the games have been used in creative writing classes in primary schools and the dramatic impact they have had on improving student outcomes in this area.

One teacher has blogged about her experiences with it and you can see a summary of her principal entries below:

• Setting the scene: stating the initial issues, eg “Descriptions of any sort seem quite hard for my students to write – they consist of basic details of what can be seen, without any emotional connection to either character or setting.”
• Initial reactions from students: “When you activate certain objects or certain people you have to think how it will affect your surroundings.” Martin. “When we worked as a team we did well. Everyone thought it was exciting so they all wanted a turn.” Timothy
• Student responses and outputs: setting the scene and putting themselves in the character’s shoes
• Six Thinking Hats and Samorost: The teacher used de Bono’s six Thinking Hats to help structure her reflections and evaluation of the experience.
• Final reflections: a wonderful final reflection post, looking back on why it went so well. Read the comments too - they help frame the post.

If this isn’t a great example of a teacher’s e-portfolio, I don’t know what is.

Clare recently alerted me to this screen sharing application: Yuuguu.

Great for collaboration and demonstration - although it does involve a download.

Just when we thought we wouldn’t need to download anything ever again.

Another resource that teachers may find useful is Ustream - a live broadcasting tool which, according to its blurb, “is a platform that provides live interactive video for everyone. Anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can use Ustream to broadcast to a global audience.”

We will certainly look at its potential for professional development, but if any of you are using it with your students, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks, Paul, for passing this on.