Wiki

OLPC/XO – Review Part 2

After my initial review, I decided as a few other bloggers have done to place the XO laptop in the hands of some students to see what there views were. Some initial comments from students were from two viewpoints. Those that had seen or heard me discussing this laptop as one for third world children and so were able to see that this was not a laptop to be viewed in competition with for example a MacBook. And those that did not really understand the principles behind the laptop and so asked questions such as how big is the hard-drive, or where is the DVD drive to play movies.

The lower school IT teacher, very much a Linux Guru, loved playing with the XO however he had many reservations as to its security and features. The Firefox browser that is embedded within the OS of the laptop, does confuse and still however we tried we were unable to alter the proxy settings which is inhibiting our ability to connect to the network at school.

Hopefully as part of a review of the curriculum especially at IB level I will be able to include areas related to the Digital Divide and maybe its importance within world development today.

After some initial comments one student volunteered to review the laptop in more detail, so read his viewpoints below (note name of student has been deleted for internet saftey reasons):-

My name is (*********) and I am doing a review on the XO laptop. I am 13 years old and go to ACS Egham International School. The XO laptop was created for the poor people of Africa to be used as a communicational device for them to contact people of the World. It is also an educational device for children in 3rd world countries and schools in remote places where they have no electricity as it can run on a crank or Solar panel. It is able to run on simple Solar panels as this laptop runs on approximately 1 watt of electricity and this makes it very ‘green’ for the environment. Typical laptops use much more energy in order to run.

When I did the review on the XO laptop I found that it was easy to open the laptop and start it as the ‘On’ button is clearly marked. I found it confusing to navigate as the symbols were not as clearly marked or distinguishable as on most modern laptops. This may have been because it is different to the Windows Operating system in layout and the XO has several basic screens. The XO laptop has good WiFi communication ability as it can pick up almost all Wireless networks in my experience.

The XO laptop was designed to be very tough and robust physically as it is intended for use in dusty, hot climates where it may be dropped or damaged easily. Some of the features on this laptop are quite good as the screen can turn around whilst running and it even has a camera. The ports are protected by extra plastic. I was requested to test the Paint software and found this easy to follow and understand.

I tested opening a Pdf document and found this to be hard and complicated. Exactly the right formats were required in order to open the Pdf file for reading and use. When I created a piece of music in Tam Tam, I found it fun and inventive but confusing because I am not used to the software. I have however, previously created music on a Mac so am used to the concept of creating music if not the Tam Tam approach.

I think the ‘XO’ is a nice idea as it is a laptop available to all and for every purchase, a laptop is sent to places in Africa where communication is currently limited, ie schools etc,. The principle of distributing laptops in Africa opens up the World to the people in more remote places of the Globe. I believe the XO laptop could be a good learning aid for underprivileged children and adults.

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OLPC More Problems but Still Anticipation…

Well the new term is a coupe of days away and this weblog is now finally beginning to take shape after changing themes from my old but now quite redundant Kiwi theme to the Morning After theme by Arun. Is it any good, well yes but a little tricky to setup and I am still unsure about the Internet Explorer compatibility. Over the net month or so I will begin to add to the site to get it as feature rich as under the old theme, but mainly I hope it has simplified the reading of the content.

I am still waiting for the delivery of my OLPC or XO laptop. How did I manage to order one from the UK, well luckily through a parent I was able to order from here and when they return from Alabama in the New Year they will bring the laptop with them. It is disappointing the continuing problems and negative feelings that the OLPC program is engendering. A recent article from May Wong brings up the probably inevitable news that the Intel chip maker has split from the program. All over the web is the other news that might begin to spell the end of the XO laptop program, is from Nigeria where a keyboard manufacturer is sueing the program for supposedly reverse engineering the keyboard drivers. Is everyone forgetting this is a non for profit organisation? Anyway I hope that I will enjoy playing with the XO laptop when it arrives, and use it within my classes to discuss and widen understanding of the digital divide.

Apart from waiting for the OLPC program I am anticipating introducing WIKI’s back into my classes after a long break. Last year when I used TikiWiki within a GCSE class, it was a resounding success and led to ideas that this sort of collaborative e-learning tool could be very effective and maybe even more effective than my extensive use of weblogs within the classroom. I have decided to go away from TikiWiki not due to its functionality but simply it was too erratic to control, almost lockingout all users at one stage due to a strange php error. I have recently setup MediaWiki on my server at ConstructICT but have again decided that apart from the fact that MediaWiki is much more robust it will not offer all the features that some other Web 2.0 solutions offer. So at the moment with the new ad free offers from wetpaint wiki I have opted to use this provider. There is a fabulous example of the use of Wetpaint from Shanghai American School called Wikinomics. However it is very much used as a class portal, rather than a bringing together of students to collaborate on activities. Anyway much more to come, will have to check it gets throught the school filter though?

New Webtool Development and Finally That Assignment

Things have been very busy recently, moving schools has led me to havign to revamp my web-tools for learning, and its actually been quite fun. Now there exists the following web-tools which will hopefully expand on the successes and failures I had at my last school in Cairo:-

  • Techbribe – A weblog for MYP technology, to act as a portal and publishing site for students project work in design and technology as well as IT.SplashPic
  • ITGSonline– A weblog for Information Technology in a Global Society students, who will also have permission to post their work and relevant stories related to it.
  • hURL– A trial site based on Pligg, which acts as kind of a mini DIGG site – not sure about this one as whether we can get a critical mass of students posting and voting on sites?
  • IB Egham – Moodle– Aaahhh yes a revamped Moodle, which will need a variety of new courses, when I get organised but will mostly be used for ITGS students in the first instance.
  • Wiki and Eghs– Finally managed to install MediaWiki rather than TikiWiki to my server, and although Tiki was very flexible it seems that MediaWiki is much more stable and so should be able to be used for a collaborative project in the near future, although still like Pligg thinking that maybe a Web 2.0 version would be better.

Very busy indeed, and there is still a bit of skinning and quite a few courses ot iron out in Moodle to keep me busy but hopefully all will be up and running for the 23rd of August.

As promised last post here is a link to a very large .pdf –Social Networks in Language Learning – of the final assignment document. Still waiting on the result from Leeds University, but I cannot grumble after havign a two week extension.

Is a Wiki addictive…..

The Wiki project over at CICT Wiki is gathering pace especially in its final week of implementation. It has been noticeable that the interaction with the site and wiki has developed as this content being researched and developed has become more and more organised – it almost took a time to reach a critical mass before the students started to believe in the power of what could be produced.

Now students are much more involved at home, is this another addiction like the social networking/facebook addiction that is dominating teenage lives at the moment. I can see how all Read/ Write applications and media have that pull power as you are able to see immediate changed and make a difference. However small or large that difference might be. As the article from the Washington Post suggests “Sometimes wikis don’t click. But at their best, wikis are provocative, inspiring, funny and addictive.”

It is interesting also to see with the introduction of the Clustrmap and the competitive edge that was produced through my assessment strategy, students have been peer reviewing each others work in a very natural. Over a Meatball Wiki, they discuss the idea of the reason a Wiki seems at times to be addictive to certain members of a community. That is an interesting idea as even though the CICT wiki has been controlled from afar by myself, students can see that I have very much only set broad areas of research and have never changed any of their words, presentation elements etc, but have only added comments about how they could improve their research and wiki-pages. However according to the Meatball wiki I might actually be considered a Wiki neuterer:- “But, wiki only creates addicts where the wiki is open and not strangled by overbearing bullies and self-appointed censors. When that happens, wiki becomes a wiki-addict-neuterer”. I wonder if this is the case, or within any educational environment this has to be the case within reason?
Close down happens this Thursday at 12:00p.m. and I believe that even before then what started as a little experiment is something I will take forward and use again, specifically with the new ITGS course I will be teaching. The one remaining question is how to assess and ensure students are taking in everything they are researching  and also what others are researching.

CICT Tikiwiki Experiment showing some interesting attutudes from students…

Interesting as the student groups that had been set up to follow their different research areas were initially, well for a period of 5 minutes reluctant to the news that they were changing area of study. But within ten minutes once they knew the tikiwiki history said all about what individual contributions they were making – they had no real problems with the sharing and collaborative ideals.

In fact they took with relish the idea that they could edit and check the work of others. The most interesting aspect was that the first time I could really see that they were thinking about plagiarism. Obviously because it is on the net very quickly they could copy and search for clocks of text and find if items were plagiarised. Students were quick to catch fellow students out, and this was a definite learning exercise and probably the first time they had seen first hand that they could be caught out! After quite a few problems this year with plagiarism issues related to project work. Maybe more Wiki projects might be the answer?

The other interesting thing is that now I have added one of those wonderful Clustrmaps the students are seeing for themselves that others are going to look at their site. I would need to add further analytic software to see where…but that will have to wait till next time.
Unfortunately the downside is the use if Tikiwiki which has quite a few teething problems, well my installation anyway. So that now we can not rollback except manually, or delete any pictures or users. Oops…

TikiWiki Adventure Continues….

Well I knew it might be a little difficult and strange for my GCSE students to be using a wiki called CICT Wiki to produce collaborative work. BUT little did I realise how hard it would be to even get them to realise the value of being part of such a project. As I had expected after a whole year of doing individual GCSE projects always in a very competitive way, the notion or working together in small teams, helping a larger team to produce something seems utterly crazy to them.

I also realised how poor the students understanding is of plagiarism. Discussing the ideas of referencing and quoting information, has taken a great deal of time and continual reminding. Wiki syntax and the lack of a WYSIWYG editor has made this a little more difficult. But mostly the students do not really understand intellectual property rights because they are really not taught about these important issues anywhere in the curriculum.

Maybe Wiki’s and Blog’s maybe are not the right tool for collaborative work, was an inital thought? And an interesting article by Teemu suggests that maybe they are not. Blogs have a ‘me myself and I’ feel, while Wikis look at producing an artifact rather than actually discussing in a team about particular issues or problems. Definitely when it comes to ways of getting the students to think and discuss with each other, the TikiWiki they are using does not facilitate this. Although discussion does go on in the classroom itself. So maybe Teemu is right. Specifically in the fact that in trying to continually express that the Wiki they are producing is a public document, it is showing the limitations that a Wiki does not have an easy comment system which would show to students that ‘the others’ out there are listening and maybe even reading.

I chose to use Tikiwiki mainly due to me being able to host it on my server, and its immediacy of use and ability to look like a MediaWiki and of course Wikipedia. This has worked in one way, as I am able to demonstrate how a Wikipedia article is laid out and works. How referencing is needed, how the history works. And then lead this into the students knowledge and Wiki building. However I wonder if a hosted option such as WetPaint or WikiSpaces? would have been an easier option. Especially as TikiWiki’s forums and users are not nearly as active as say Moodle’s. Which has led to some weird problems including a login issue in which you now have to always click a remember me box to login? Anybosy out there that can help?
Hopefully next time, I will be able to comment on some of the work brought together so far by the students. Will it be productive, I am still waiting to see….

Wiki Troubles and “Star Teachers Grade Less”

Well although the Wiki is underway I can see problems on the horizon. After almost a whole year of competitive solo projects for their GCSE how can students suddenly manage to swap over to collaborative work? Beyond this the GCSE projects are marked to strict criteria which from day one I make open and use continuously to grade their projects with targets of how to improve their work. With this mentality drummed into my GCSE ICT students, how are they going to be motivated to produce not only collaborative work but work that is not going to be marked or to put it into the American term ‘GRADED’ in the same way. If at all, as the work will naturally be assessed by its public availablity?

You can now see the problems before me? The recent post by an anonymous author (interesting to decide why this author is still anonymous?) on the blog ‘Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn’. The post is very well written and argues that too much grading around tests and criteria can maybe inhibit learning. And instead greater emphasis should be placed simply on effort. I suppose most teachers would say that obviously if all students put in maximum effort they would achieve their maximum grade and so would be achieving to their full potential? So why look at specific tests, rather than as suggested focus on effort. Obvious really, and something I have always said often occurs anyway within KS3 Level testing where students who show effort and work ‘hard’ achieve to the highest levels. Those that do not are still down on Level 3?

Interesting arguments, and maybe something that could be used in the students Wiki project. However Egyptian students and as importantly Parents are so grades smitten, that would this work. Unless maybe effort was broken down into its constituent factors including teamwork, leadership and going the extra mile?

Along with this we have the technical problem of Wiki-Syntax which is easy to master, but students are now so used to WYSIWYG menus for whatever they are creating that this might provide a further  limitation. Well that is enough Wiki talk for now, although you should if you have time check out the ideas of mixing Blogs and Wikis together in Blikis (Yes more geek talk!)SurveyLogo

The Ning assignment, social networking and MFL is gathering a little steam. Decided to use the SurveyAtSchool website and tool, to gather information on students understanding of Social Networking to see how many students are comfortable and use a social network as much as anything so that I can see how much initial effort will need to be put into the MFL classes training in what a social network is and how to use it?

More to follow……

Tikiwiki rather than NING….and even PLIGG

LogoIndexedThe names of all these applications is laughable to say the least, but also gives such a ‘technodrooler’ as myself that wonderful feeling that I should never feel – of confusing others. BUT I shall stop now, but just recently as well as my social networking within MFL teaching exploits I have begun my first real attempt at using a Wiki within my teaching.

I decided on using the open source TikiWiki having first seen it used by Dennis Daniels – who really uses it as a full blown CMS and resource repository. However after initially looking at MediaWiki, it became apparent that this was going to be a little difficult to install and upload. What finally made me swoop to choose TikiWiki was the fact that their is a downloadable theme that looks exactly like MediaWiki and the ubiquitous Wikipedia’s theme.

The students did not particularly take kindly to Jimmy Wales’s TED talk, which maybe was a little in-depth but when some of the ideas he was demonstrating were then shown on Wikipedia itself the students suddenly got it! I was amazed to find how few knew how Wikipedia worked and most had never even looked at the history function. So when I showed them the EABIS school page and then the history behind it, along with my ‘pretend vandalism’ – the students began to understand how clever but also how amazing that only volunteers could make an encyclopedia that moderated itself.

How this will translate to a closed community of the class and producing a wiki aimed at understanding loosely the GCSE section of their course entitled ‘ICT in Society’ remains to be seen. I will be giving them specific roles not only in different research areas but also based on the Wiki Patterns idea that different contributors and editors to a Wiki fulfill different roles under titles like Gnome, Troll and Champion. The obvious leader in the school Wiki pack has been the Flat Classroom Wiki by students at the International School of Dhaka. Recently they have also begun a new project based on the Horizon yearly project predicting what will be happening within Education and Technology in the next 1 to 5 years. This is a fabulous and thoughtful read in itself. So the new wiki should be very interesting. I will hopefully report back to you both about my experiences and what I can see as the Horizon projects experiences. Most importantly what learning is coming from using such a technology.
On top of this I have rediscovered another tool that I will not play with until maybe my new school. Pligg (demo) is basically an open source version of Digg, and so as such rather than use a site like delicious to publish and collaborate with your bookmarks you could have such a site working for a school establishment with students and teachers voting and commenting on suggested good sites. Good idea -well one only in its genesis at the moment. So it is time to get back to social networking site NING – not much development but found this wonderful article that I am still digesting by Danah Boyd –‘Incantations for Muggles’.(If nothing else it gets me away from my technodrool?)