Jan 15 2008

OLPC/XO – Dr Tech’s Review Pt 1

Well it arrived, and it works. But is all the hype or the degradation of this laptop worth the amount of posts and print that have been published? Is there not a grey area in the middle as often it has seemed the XO laptop has polarised views either against or for the programme that it is only one part of.

My immediate and probably everyone’s first reaction is ‘blimey it is small’ but considering I tend to opt for laptops of the 17″ screen size variety is probably not a very good comparison. As many other reviewers have pointed out the feel of the XO laptop is pleasing almost rough and dimply compared to the slickness and metallic of so many laptops around. BUT can you get into it without being told….hmm…only one out of five people managed it. Weirdly it makes sense however straight after the first time you do open up the laptop see the screen, and realise the consummate skill that has led to a design which is robust and will obviously stand up to the dusty surrounds it was meant for. Trust me after living in Cairo for three years, changing laptop fans and cleaning keyboards was a nightmare.

Once booted, you are met with the Sugar interface and cover for the Linux OS under the hood. I have been lucky enough to try the emulator for this and can say that it again does take a bit of getting used too, but the premise almost Expose like is a good one whereby moving your mouse to the edge of the screen will bring up icons that move onto or off of the screen. The buttons to link to the different main areas of neighbourhood and so on, are an excellent and quick way to navigate around the environment. This laptop is though very difficult to review, as you can come up with many niggles, including that the mouse movement with pad can be very niggly and lead to a sometimes tetchy navigation experience..however remember it will eventually only be 100$.

I love the way that you connect to nodes, the internet through a visual interface and it it is that easy as to choose a wi-fi point (or other node of the mesh, although no other XO’s around Egham I think :(~) Connecting to my wireless connection at home was a breeze but at school a major problem was trying to connect through to the proxy server. And yes with firefox if you do goto about:config you should be able to change the proxy but for some reason I am unable to modify this setting whatever I try. Any help would be much appreciated.

I was very much taken with photographs of the way the XO can be turned into a simple ebook reader, and the manipulation and design of both the screen into position and the way you can with one button click and change the direction the screen is being read is ingenious. As is when you pop in your USB with said PDF, go to the activities page and then with a click are able to read the PDF. BUT is that all that I have done, well I have to admit time has not allowed me to play with any of the inbuilt tools and I will leave that to a helpful student this Friday to review those for me. Although I could not help but install DOOM and have a go...and yes it works if a little slowly.

So initial impressions are very good, as long as you fully understand the principles that this is not a laptop built for the western market to play with, not even for geeks like myself, but as a tool for third world children to use and enjoy for many hours. With a few updates and improvements it should enable these children to have their first adventures into the world of communication and computing and who knows where that can lead them.

Part Two Coming Soon – hopefully with a review from a younger student…

By drtech • Delicious Links, Digital Divide, Technology • Comments Off on OLPC/XO – Dr Tech’s Review Pt 1

Jan 13 2008

Changing the Name…

Changing the name …yes it is about time that this weblog changed from Constructictism to Construct ICT. Why? Well its obvious the  name Constructictism cannot be spoken by anyone…so Construct ICT it is which still alludes to the ideas of Constructivism in some way…

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on Changing the Name…

Jan 13 2008

BETT – back from Egypt its time to hit the wonderful Education Tech Show

Well believe it or not this was my first time at BETT, the main British Education and Technology show. The show for a first timer, was as large and ostentatious as others had suggested and at points it is astounding how the use of Technology within Education is so big business. I know that may sound a little naive but after quite a few years away from the UK International Schools with limited budgets it does make you wonder how often the amount spent on Technology does result in better learning and teaching within the classroom. Below is simply a small list of some items that I cam across and thought were either useful or interesting:-

  • Mindstorms the NXT Generation – However much I wonder at the losing bits and pieces scenario of Mindstorms and therefore its longevity within a school environment Lego’s new range looks a giant step up from the yellow bricks before. The amount of sensors and the ability to build and create relatively quickly the basic robot, along with drag and drop software which enables immediate results but also lends itself to a wide variety of much more complex tasks suggests that this might be a much better learning tool and one which could link in well with a Design and Technology robotics project.
  • Gigajam – One that impressed due to the company being a much smaller player inthe BETT arena. Also there was very little music based tutorial software out there that professes the idea of facilitation to learn rather than the teacher as content provider and centre. Worth checking out, especially if your school wishes to improve the equality of access to individual music tuition but students cannot afford the prices of real tutors.
  • StudyWiz, Kaleidos, Blackboard/WebCT , Serco MIS and other MIS/ Learning Platforms definitely seems the buzzwords at this BETT. This is such a large issue to even begin to discuss I will chat about this in a second blog post in the coming week, to see whether these all consuming platforms are the way forward.
  • Activote Promethean if Learning Platforms were the main buzzwords seems the technology item that has proliferated the most, with many companies offering active voting systems that link in with Interactive Whiteboard quizzes and tests. Myself and fellow teacher James had similar thoughts that maybe this would just be a gimic but after testing the system we were addicted and could see how this would work within a classroom. The setup of quizzes seemed very easy and would enable any teacher to construct quizzes within a matter of minutes. So maybe worth investing in a set or two.
  • Terry Freedman and Miles Berry Personalised Learning -over the rush of a day with so much to see it was difficult to fit in any of the seminars available. However I did manage to pop into Terry and Miles’s seminar on Personalised Learning. Unfortunately the seminar had been pre-booked and so there was only standing room. I managed to watch the introduction by Miles Berry which set out some interesting ideas. You can watch the seminar as a Google Video over at Terry Freedman’s site, note he does mention my studies into using NING as a social network for language learning. So pop along and have a look.
  • Tablet PC’s Asus eeeePC, as many reviews are raving about this new laptop it was interesting to see one and have a little play. My fellow conspirator at the event James is an avid Linux user so he was pleased to see that a version of Linux is the operating system running on these laptops.Being all open source software is fabulous and this would be a great portable computer for students, after seeing so many students this year without their laptops for often many weeks due to problems with screens breaking, due to general damage I can see how such a small durable laptop would solve some of these problems.
  • Weather Stations for Datalogging – I have always thought that this would be a good idea, and passed by a stall selling these contraptions. You can see from Barming Primary School how such a system could be used in lower school, but I am sure the data-logging and statistics produced would come invaluable across many areas of the curriculum throughout a school.

By drtech • Education Theory, Technology • Comments Off on BETT – back from Egypt its time to hit the wonderful Education Tech Show

Jan 13 2008

Delicious links for 2008-01-13

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Jan 9 2008

Delicious links for 2008-01-09

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2008-01-09

Jan 7 2008

Nicholas Negroponte Fights Back…

Nicholas Negroponte Fights Back… Just check Negroponte’s retort to INTEL’s pulling out of the OLPC – who do you believe?

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on Nicholas Negroponte Fights Back…

Jan 5 2008

An Apology for Adsense

An Apology for Adsense – This is nothing more that a trial, if you have never tried something how can you criticise……..

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on An Apology for Adsense

Jan 5 2008

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?

By drtech • Delicious Links, Education Theory, Wiki • Comments Off on OLPC More Problems but Still Anticipation…

Jan 4 2008

Well almost done it…

The IE problems after much messing have seemed to go away…apart from weirdly on one browser on one laptop…….but lets not worry about that….tommorrow back to the business of education finally and hopefully a new post of the ideas behind an all consuming Ultranet system for a school…

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on Well almost done it…

Jan 3 2008

Almost all is done…

Well a slight exaggeration I would say, and IE is still driving me crazy. But now images up and working, and I am growing to like the new style….might actually write a proper post next…

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on Almost all is done…

Jan 3 2008

Development Note…

Well as always changing over themes can be more tricky than it seems – hopefully will manage to fix the IE break at some point apart from that at least this thing is up and running…

By drtech • Asides • Comments Off on Development Note…

Dec 13 2007

Overhaul, Terry Freedman and the return of Yacapaca…

Well it seems it is the season, of beginning to think about how your weblog is functioning and yes this one is very tired. After updating all of my students weblogs for the new school, which all look reasonably snappy at this moment in time I have neglected this weblogs look. This was my very first experiment in weblogging and yes the text is way to small, and the styling all adds up to too much style over content. So over the next few weeks expect a change as I update what is happening, and the overall theme of this WordPress weblog

Hopefully it will be a little more user friendly and easy to read, and should hopefully kick start my new year and my Masters critical study. Terry Freedman over as his weblog seems to thinking along the same lines, and fingers crossed if I manage to finish my article related to Social Networking you should be able to read it over as his blog.

The year is ending up with me remembering how many useful tools and applications there are out there. It often seems that if you are a teacher who loves the use of Technology and all things new, that suddenly you look back and remember you have forgotten in your haste to use some of the better tools out there. As a informal chat with a MFL teacher led to suggest, sometimes you get snowed under with the latest modern technologies within education and forget those that work – it must be noted that she was wanting to throw out the iPOD and is annoying habits and bring back the dependable tape recorder. In many ways I sympathise especially as such a supposed superior mp3 player does not allow you to delete songs from itself but insists that you connect to a computer to delete the songs – how archaic shall I say. Although that is an Apple gripe I must say that Leopard with VMware is turning into quite a joy to use – is it true once you have turned to a Mac you never go back…lol.

Of the tools that I have remembered the wonderful Yacapaca quiz and survey tool, I have realised is an excellent and easy to use tool ready for action in a few minutes. There are no users on the site with IB related courses, so I will be making my own up over the next few months. BUT it is one to recheck if you have not used it before.

By drtech • Social Networks, WordPress • Comments Off on Overhaul, Terry Freedman and the return of Yacapaca…

Dec 12 2007

Delicious links for 2007-12-12

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-12-12

Dec 8 2007

Social Networking in Education is beginning to Boom?

So is Social Networking finally catching on within secondary schools as a valid means of communication and collaboration between students? Probably not, but there is definitely many more projects that seems to be underway even if most of the writing and research is about what might happen rather than actual what is practically happening.

EdublogThe Edublog Awards has now began to include a section related to the Best Educational Use of A Social Networking Service, although of the five nominees none are actually using as a learning tool with students. I do not mean that remark to denigrate the work and the innovation of using the NING social networking tool as a way to bring teachers together to share resources but it almost seems like yet more missed opportunities.

However it is interesting to see that the Kingswear Primary School is trying to bring both teachers, students and parents together along with the fact that obviously NING is the application tool of choice due to its flexibility and ease of setup. It seems that NING has also made the decision to allow any network created within their application that is educationally based to go advert free.

But you ask, what of my recent endeavours to begin the use of social networking as a teaching and learning tool at my recent school. Well after the usual time to convince and get the filters turned off for such a website, I have found that after technical resistance follows teacher resistance. As usual a teachers’ role is often so busy that the idea of using a new fangled social networking tool that might take away from what is happening, a particular subjects coverage, is a shall we say a very adventurous one. Ideas of continuing in using a social network as a L2 support tool, seem to be disappearing although an idea has come up to support the IB Theory of Knowledge element of the course through a social network? Might be an interesting idea as the ToK element of the IB can often leave students cold, and it is all about conversation and being able to critical think their ways around particular issues? An idea anyway, to play around with.

So is social networking beginning to take route and boom within secondary schools well obviously no – and even if as said above there does seem to be significant moves towards beginning to use and discuss their use. While the educational world is still more concerned and probably rightly with the dangers of social networking it will not be able to embrace such a technology.

By drtech • Critical Study, Delicious Links, Featured, Social Networks • Comments Off on Social Networking in Education is beginning to Boom?

Nov 27 2007

The MAC arriveth…Digalo and E-Facilitation…

Well a big cardboard box popped through the school letterbox today with a shiny new mac inside it. So the revolution has continued although my first step was to use BootCamp to install Windows XP on the Mac as well – it felt a little rebellious in a sad geeky way. As I am sure I have said before there are pluses and minuses to both systems, but when you mix them together if you are not careful if it can get into a right mess. Although maybe that will teach me, to so early set up BootCamp and then Vmware and then start altering the boot setup until I could not boot in either Windows or OSX. Lol….well you live and learn.

Eventually with a bit of Linux on board it should be the perfect setup, although after one failed try have put the idea of Ubuntu on my Mac on hold for the time being. I must say however that Leopard has won me over to some degree with its ease of use; their are still the old niggles including the lack of a maximize window and that media player wise the Mac suffers dreadfully in comparison to XP’s surfeit of media players with every codec known to man.

Over at the Thinking Stick Jeff, has created a really interesting series of articles on the issue of school wide information systems, that do it all from assessment, reporting, course management, parent involvement, teachers websites and weblogs and much more. The article is interesting as ACS-Egham is about to begin a review to incorporate a school wide system called Ultranet. Ultranet being a new word in my vocabulary but generally meaning that the Intranet and external websites are connected in one whole management system, so as not to duplicate information and to give access to wll stakeholders in the system. A search on the word shows up a few Ultranets the most interesting being in New Zealand. I think these developments will be extremely interesting as I am almost pessimistic that all that a total system do is restrict the users and different stakeholders too much and so ends up not being used, along with the fact that it is often management centred rather learning/student centred. This could be a route I take for my Critical study, especially as setting up Social Networking for the language department is going to take a long period of time due to issues of time within departments for such initiatives and developments.

Finally in this rare round up the web facilitation course at Exeter University is beginning to take shape, however discussion are often stilted within WebCT although maybe my inability to follow threaded discussions is to blame. The introduction of a guest lecturer is interesting – Professor Robin Mason of the Open University. Some interesting discussions have begun, and the ideas about whether online learning communities can be as effective in a face-to-face classroom environment as much as a distance learning environment is an interesting one. As I have mentioned if I remember correctly I have been using multi author weblogs (with students as the authors) in an IT IB course, which works effectively as the discussion through both posts and comments is often different and adds to the discussion held in class. Also the course is meant to focus on global issues, and finally we have begun to find that other students from IT IB courses around the world are looking into our weblog and we are now looking into theirs. Students are now beginning to get the idea of what is all about, and love the idea that typing into google will come up with their article or discussion, or embedded slideshow…etc

The issue of assessment raised in the paper discussed by Mason is a crucial one, as on the recent Masters distance learning I have done. It was obvious that the discussions were interesting but never assessed, and also any collaborative activities were never assessed – so as a consequence it was noticeable that most collaborative activities which take so much time and motivation soon shattered and that discussions were often used by a certain style of student while others popped by on occasion. And as said for a Masters course with adults 100% participation is not needed but for school and sixth form students it is – which can raise issues unless areas such as assessment are addressed. The comments raised about a course being problematic if their are too many messages, was interesting. Maybe is it not to do with how these messages are shown e.g. these threaded forum messages are a nightmare in WebCT (and why do they give you such a small box to see your message in as you are writing…lol) – I find it desperately hard to follow and might indicate why my messages often seem a little incoherent.

My final thought is in agreement about the “the value of building up working relationship” within a distance based learning environment rather than trying to mix everyone around. A facilitator’s role to judge this is crucial as otherwise a student who maybe is contributing well through knowledge of his co-students can end up back at the start of Gilly Salmon’s model…

By drtech • Assignment, Delicious Links, Egham, ExeterUniversity, Featured • Comments Off on The MAC arriveth…Digalo and E-Facilitation…

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