Jul 20 2007

Athens IB Conference and the Assignment

Well the usual weblog post apology will come forth – yes it has been a while but if you excuse me moving country, moving school, finishing (YES I DID!) the assignment, buying a car and finally going to the IB conference on ITGS – Information Technology in a Global Society has all taken its toll not to mention time.

The assignment ended well, with a thorough analysis of how the Social Network – The French Connection worked within a MFL secondary school environment. The conclusions were not all positive but indicate that their is a future for the use of social networks within schools under certain conditions. Over the next few posts are will place extracts of the paper, along with a link to its entirety in .PDF format.

The IB conference in Athens was very interesting mainly for being able to meet so many IT teachers in the one environment. The course itself was run by Gordon Mathewmann from the International School of Vienna. Gordon was an excellent course guide, able to fend off the many criticisms about the course and other areas while maintaining a sense of humour! Over four days the course was outlined with many practical examples of ideas for teaching and learning. The ITGS course is from first glance an interesting one which focuses on ethical and social issues as well as the technical and applications side. It seems as if there have been many changes and many more to come, but considering it is the ONLY ICT based course apart from a hardcore programming course it seems as if it will suit my conversational facilitation style. I am the moment setting up new weblogs to focus as the background the ITGS and MYP Technology courses and feel free to have a look as they are setup.

My new school starts on the 9th of August so expect more posts and research information to start coming again soon……I promise.

By drtech • Assignment, Social Networks • Comments Off on Athens IB Conference and the Assignment

Jun 13 2007

FC Ning Results are in – What can I make of them?

Was the French Connection a success? Well more of a flawed success looking from both teachers and students points of view. I guess the possibilities of using a social network in a way which would aid teaching and learning but also in the students ‘eyes’ be fun is more complex than it first seems. Beyond this from my point of view the network had to aid students understanding of Web 2.0 technologies and there possible use for learning as well as fun and communication.

Below are a list of recommendations from teachers, students and myself as to how to improve the social network for MFL use:-

  • Time – Three weeks was not enough from questionnaires it seems a year or more would work much better, maybe throughout a course at GCSE or Diploma?
  • Participants – Must involve as many groups of students as possible within the school, so that those groups then become part of a larger network.
  • Age of Students – Vocabulary at Yr 9 was probably not enough for students to be able to converse to any great depth, Yr 10 (15 years old) and above is probably the ideal age.
  • Outside Experts – The more expert French speakers the better, especially if there were some native speakers from outside of education.
  • Cross School Exchange – The Social Network would work best if students are getting to know each other, and so an exchange program would be a great idea. Maybe between El Alsson and ACS-Egham next year – who knows?
  • Teachers – Need greater training in the complexities of a social network. Their was confusion between Forum, Blog and Comment posts and why they were different.
  • Objectives and Blending – The use of the network needs to blend with objectives within the curriculum, rather than be an addition. Vocabulary of site and menus needs support.
  • Technology Needs – The MFL department needs a number of internet enabled computers within their classrooms, this would then open this system to their students and themselves and enable them to integrate it into class time as well as home time.
  • Simplicity -The environment is quite complex, and many students found it hard to understand. More evidence we are not teaching a complete cohort of ‘digital natives’. This impeded on the use of the network and may need training or simplifying.
  • Multimedia and Video – All students need to be videoing and podcasting, the new tool will improve this greatly……

Well that is all I can think of for now….below is the usual mind-map I have produced for the outline of my assignment. Yes it is complex and will take a time to download the graphic but maybe worth a look -Mindmap NING (SECOND warning this is large and takes a long time to load….but…)

Also I have uploaded the results from the student questionnaires (anonymous) for you to view, as their are some interesting conclusions. It’s a PDF so you will need acrobat reader to view. Enjoy.

I will be publishing excerpts from the assignment soon, along with sending a summary assignment to the wonderful Miranda.net community.

NING Spreadsheet

By drtech • Assignment, Language Learning • Comments Off on FC Ning Results are in – What can I make of them?

Jun 13 2007

Delicious links for 2007-06-13

  • Apple – Safari 3 Public Beta
    Can this beat Firefox and Opera, it says so in fact its over 2 times as fast as Opera…..why not check it out! WARNING – I have tried this version out and it does not work. The menus disappear and do not show? Add to this some pretty heavy virus vulnerabilities….hmm maybe leave this a while?
    (tags: browser Applications Firefox Mac Opera)
  • Sputtr.
    Better, more flexible and efficient than Google alone, try yet another Search Engine with a twist………
    (tags: searchengine search google web2.0)

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-06-13

Jun 9 2007

NING Project drawing to a close…

WhichSocialWell I am now bringing together a variety of results and observations from the use of NING to produce the French Connection Social Network. It is interesting how other students not even linked with the project are now asking for invitations. However to some extent the conversation has died which is to be expected with a niche social network that is not being led by anyone – and so the initial premise of its use has not been fulfilled.
It is interesting the spread of Facebook, to almost total domination within the school  andMemberofNetwork has led me to wonder whether trying to use another network or ‘yet another network’ would in a longer term be doomed to failure as students obviously gravitate to the network that has most friends within it. Although maybe if different schools had been involved  the ‘pull’ characteristics of the FC Network might have been more. It also must be clarified that through the initial questionnaire 24% of students are not a member of any social network. And so my reliance on the students knowledge of social networks and how they work, might have been a little too much of a jump for some students. It was notable that a great deal suggested the site was too complicated, and most only used the most basic of features.
Homework?

The students from the initial questionnaire really did seem to be interested in combining the two. That is a ‘fun’ social network and an academic /educational element to this. There are many recent articles discussing this idea especially with the ubiquitous Facebook, including the recent blog post suggesting:- ‘Facebook: A ‘School’ in the future? In reality though through observation many students could not see the educational value of conversing in French? Maybe this was down to the way the Social Network was presented by myself and probably more so by the MFL teachers as a bit of fun. When actually if objectives and aims had been set, the conversation could have been directed further into ways in which it was transparently useful to the students.

Next post will feature my usual mad mind-map with references….and some more thoughts and conclusions especially about the ‘small pieces loosely joined’ debate and how I think the FC network was beginning to do this well.

By drtech • Assignment, Delicious Links • Comments Off on NING Project drawing to a close…

Jun 9 2007

Delicious links for 2007-06-09

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-06-09

Jun 6 2007

Delicious links for 2007-06-06

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-06-06

May 29 2007

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.

By drtech • Delicious Links, Wiki • Comments Off on Is a Wiki addictive…..

May 24 2007

Delicious links for 2007-05-24

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-05-24

May 23 2007

NING – Conversation beginning to happen…

conv2

Well conversation is beginning to happen on the French Connection El Alsson Network. The teachers in the French department were at first surprised with the fact that every time the students added or discussed something within the social network related to them they were emailed to show this.

conv3One French teacher explained how she had realised that it was important that they were answering and being involved with the French discussion in a very active way. But also showed concern at how much time this might actually take especially with limited access at school for her department with ICT.

conv2

The other obvious and interesting feature is the difficulty not only with access but trying to fit such a radical and different way of teaching and learning within a very traditional classroom environment. Simply it does not fit! However the initiative shows some interesting signs that given more time and it could be a success. Starting the initiative for the final two weeks of school limits the time to develop such a community and also eats in to time that the French department are concerned should be set aside for revision for final examinations.

Of great success is the videos that although take time and energy to setup, are giving the students valuable practice to see how they speak and pronounce their French. More to follow as the initiative continues next week. Drop in to see the videos which are public here (note the social network is private for obvious safety reasons.)

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on NING – Conversation beginning to happen…

May 20 2007

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…

By drtech • Wiki • Comments Off on CICT Tikiwiki Experiment showing some interesting attutudes from students…

May 15 2007

Busy end to the year…..Wikis And Ning…

Well both initiatives are in full swing and instead of winding down at the end of term, I seem to be winding up.

NING – MFL Social Network

Well the invites have been sent, the two French teachers Saida and Hamadi have joined and the trickle of students joining has begun. The initial questionnaire shows a great deal of enthusiasm and knowledge for Social Networks. But whether this will translate to being used in a learning situation is another thing. It might be a similar situation to when I have used a blog with lower school KS3 students, once they started to use it in school and in the class then it was very unusual to use it at home.

Although the interesting thing with the French Connection NING is the immediate interactivity that it brings. As soon as the students enter they have to upload a photo as an avatar and then answer a series of questions in French. The level of answer is up to them.

It was interesting to see that almost all now have an ADSL connection of at least 512kb, so any worries about the heaviness of the site in terms of photos and videos should not be a problem. More to come although it seems with only two weeks of term left that the project might be a little stilted – however we shall see.

TIKIWIKI – CICT 

The wiki is beginning to roll…and by that I mean as I have found out of the last few years using any new web tool takes a great deal of time to build the right impetus and get students used to such a different way of learning.

Students are understanding now that they have to collaborate and in one way at least realise they can separate areas of research onto different pages. The interesting point however is when I ask all groups to swop sections in which they are studying about, and then continue on that study. As it is obvious the competitive element of the project has led them to be possessive about their wiki pages? Again we shall see….more news soon.

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Busy end to the year…..Wikis And Ning…

May 8 2007

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….

By drtech • Education Theory, Wiki • Comments Off on TikiWiki Adventure Continues….

May 2 2007

Digg, Censorship and User Created Content

Well yes I am writing about what everyone else is writing about. The recent takeover of the social news site DIGG buy all its users. What is a social news site you ask. Well simply one, where anyone can submit a story from the web that they consider interesting. Then others who visit the site if they like the story can give it a vote – or digg. The stories with the most votes go to the top of the homepage.

So what was the problem. Well someone out there – a very clever person by the way. Has already managed to crack the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection on High Definition DVD’s. Yes the DRM that they said was unbreakable. The Hexadecimal key, was then pushed up as a story to the top of the page. The Digg owners tried to take the story down, but the USERS of the site have more power and continued to Digg and Post the story until Kevin Rose backed down and said he would not censor the story anymore especially as it is something that is against DRM -which most agree is an arcane way to try and control digital rights. In fact the owners were aunable to censor to keep up with the users, and so REALLY HAD TO BACK DOWN. 50,000 diggs in a few hours is impossible to stop. So will the owner of DIGG lose 60 Million overnight?

And yes their is now a song on Youtube? So what does this mean. And how I suppose you ask does this affect education. Well beyond anything it shows that the power of users, and their ability to act together for a cause that is almost agreed virtually. Secondly how quickly a piece of information now spreads, so that within hours millions of people can be activated and informed and pro-active. Surely those ideas need to be discussed with students and realised. If they are what could be achieved….more to follow….

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Digg, Censorship and User Created Content

Apr 28 2007

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……

By drtech • Education Theory, Wiki • Comments Off on Wiki Troubles and “Star Teachers Grade Less”

Apr 26 2007

Delicious links for 2007-04-26

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-04-26

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