School 2.0 in SA

   Announcement | Directions  | Summary

The fact is that we are teaching the New NET generation. They can Mxit in their pockets and have virtual identities that we know nothing about…They “poke” each other on Facebook, write on each others Funwalls, and socialise online.   How do we deal with this? Will our traditional teaching methods be sufficient to prepare them for a future world? The scary thing is that we do not know HOW to use the tools that they are so familiar with.  

I unfortunately missed the Scope “tagging” webinar, due to “Real life tagging”, but am now busy working my way though the event. Isn’t it great that I can still “participate” even after the fact?!! A recording of the event can be found at: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2007-11-22.0937.M.17041726D52CD6EBF6DDE85D1FFEE8.vcr and the supporting wiki can be found at: http://wiki.lidc.sfu.ca/TaG

Jason Toal lead the webinar explaining what tags are and where they come from. Tags essentially are a way to organise information so that you can find it again. The recent trends sees users creating their own tags linked to their own preferences and realities, rather than web designers (or marketers creating keywords for search engines) to lead people to their sites. It comes down to people deciding for themselves how to categorise information so that it makes sense to them. Jason pointed out that tagging’s roots are in the real world, so it is not new:

Another important thing about tags is that it can be shared collaboratively and become a way to interact and communicate. As someone pointed out….”user-organized information is the future…”The issue of privacy was raised again and Jason remarked that we are relinquishing our privacy willingly in social networking and therefore our primary responsibility should be to educate students about the importance of privacy and the issues surrounding it. With geo-tagging and e-mail tagging we can be tagged without our permission.

Tagclouds shows us which tags are used (chosen) more often. I did not know that there are platforms that allows you to create a tagcloud from text. (see http://www.tagcrowd.com/) This could be useful to quickly see what “words” are important in a given piece of material. Tagclouds normally are made up of tags users assign to a resource, presented in a visual way, with the most popular tag “growing” bigger and standing out. Tags can also be more personal like a flickr tagcloud or more academic and technical (see del.icio.us tagcloud) With Zoomclouds, you can create a tagcloud for your website from any RSS feed.

You can learn a lot about people by the things they tag and how they tag it. Jason pointed out that there are 2 kinds of people- filers and pilers. Most people in the group seem to be pilers who file when things get unbearable. It was mentioned that the cool thing about tagging is that it is also an individual activity, which means that it meets needs of pilers and filers.

How should people tag? Tags seem to work most effectively if they are spontaneous and immediate. No right or wrong ways. Everybody will develop their own system and the more you tag the more complicated your tagging system becomes. “Peoples’ mental models of the world around them differ, and the names and associations we give to the objects in our world do as well. Language, Slang, and multiple meanings of words can cause tagsets to become ‘messy’. (ie. blog vs blogging) Plural cases are also problematic, (ie. dog, dogs)

Jason showed us some games and activities to get our students into tagging. One of them was mobtagging. This happens when groups of users freely apply and exchange labels (metadata) to online information. It allows web users to specify, index, search and share information on their own terms.  He also showed us the ESP game and Google image labeler where you can tag images in a game kind of an environment.

So to answer the question of to Tag or not to Tag….I think we should all just Tag along…and maybe we should tag our students along as well…. 

To remind you what we have planned, see our previous Blog post

Looking forward to see you all at the blogging workshop tomorrow at Brescia House. Find included the directions to Brescia House. See you all at 09h30:

• Take the N1 (towards) Roodepooort
• Take the William Nicol offramp towards town (JHB/Randburg)
• Turn right into Sloane street
• Next left into Pytchley Road and left into Brescia House
• The Car guard (Max- a very friendly chap) will direct  you where to park and tell you how to get to the media centre.

Remember to bring on flashdrive:

• Chocolate for facilitators!!! Don’t forget!
• Photos/pictures for blog
• Anything you might want to use in your blog (Video/PowerPoint slides/Pdf’s/Spreadsheets)
• Resources to share….

This is just a reminder that there will be a very good free online seminar on tonight on the topic of Tagging (I know we have been looking at topic trees- and I must say I rather feel that Tagging (as in communities of teachers creating tags) is the way the go….”Due to the relative simplicity of tagging, there are few instructions available on how to get the most out of the activity, or indeed if there are any individual benefits to tagging whatsoever. This leaves it up to each person to figure out for themselves if and how they will use tags. The presentation I will be giving this week will try to shed some light on tags in general, and how they may play a part in academic life. Some of the questions to be addressed include…·        

• What are tags?
• What are the advantages to tags?
• Where is tagging appropriate to be used?
• Where do tags fail?
• Whats all this about Tag “Clouds”?”

…. This is all happening at 8 o’ clock (22 November) our time in Elluminate. It might be a good idea to set up your computer before the session and go through the previous live session to see how things work. .The previous live session can be found at: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/internal/launch/play.jnlp?psid=2007-11-13.1036.M.17041726D52CD6EBF6DDE85D1FFEE8.vcr but I have also made a summary at http://maggiev.edublogs.org/2007/11/19/social-media-in-education-live-presentation/Just some background from some of the discussions about tagging (keywording): (the whole discussion can be found at http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1029

Some comments about tagging: 

“Tagging also seems to be the ONLY way I can stay on top of information”

“Tagging has become a language, a way to identify people – look at someone’s tags in del.icio.us, GMail and other tools and you can tell a lot about them, and not just what they like by what they tag. Rather, by reading the actual tag and not what was tagged, you can get an insight into what they are thinking, their language skills, idiosyncrasies, and other characteristics. It’s almost more interesting to read the tags themselves than the sites or messages that were tagged. Do they use just a single tag or do the use multiple tags that are cross-referenced in some way – do they build “clouds” of tags around a subject? All of these give insight into the person. A very cool thing.”

“For educators however, I will suggest another angle, that tagging offers a means for your students to take part in the classification process themselves, and that through the tagging of online resources, they can begin to create their own mental model around a particular domain or topic. ”

“I am currently involved in teaching both at the K-12 and occasionally at the university level, and I agree that tagging is a great way to get the kind of higher order think that I, as a teacher, hope to encourage. All sorts of metacognitive processes take place during tagging and that kind of thinking about thinking is what makes students into learners. Just observing other people’s tags sometimes starts great new lines of creative thought. I’m a big advocate of involving students in creating and tagging online content”.

I am having so much fun with tagging. I find myself “trailing” the gurus in my field of interest and this has become a learning experience all in its own. For instance, I add the gurus or colleagues that i know are as passionate about education/technology as me, to my network, and they do the same for me. We then post good bookmarks to one another or I create a rss feed to their tags which keeps me up to date effortlessly. I find that instead of Googling something, I first go and check what my gurus have tagged “for me” and it is ALWAYS more relevant than anything that Google can dish up for me! And it comes with their own personalised descriptions…

This live session forms part of the 3-week Social Media in Education seminar. No registration required. No fee. Just show up!

To go into the Elluminate room and participate (or lurk):
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=727&password=M.F05A7C5A7AEB2BD674D498FF4D595D

   

Ps  I keep my tags at http://del.icio.us/maggiev 

Welcome teachers of Crawford Pretoria School. Today we will:

• Say hallo to our future learners,
• Change the way we think about learning
• Define what web 2.0 is and how it will result in school 2.0
• Explore the differences between web 2.0 and web 1.0
• Slideshare (what to do with those powerpoints…)
• Play with some cool web 2.0 tools
• Become lifelong learners and dynamic teachers (if we are not already!)
• Start our web 2.0 learning and sharing journey……

Workshop content may include….but it is up 2 u….

• Del.icio.us (Tag collaboratively)
• Flickr (create an online photo album)
• Social Networking platforms: (Facebook | Ning )
• Voicethreads (create a picture voice scrapbook)
• Make a cartoon
• Help create a mindmap
• Create a Youtube video and upload it
• Slideshare
• Ectolearning (Virtual learning environment)
• Mobile learning and Mxit

 This morning I had a very inspirational learning moment(s). I quickly hopped on my laptop to check my e-mail when one of the teachers from the Champions-4-ICT community “popped up” in my chat window. We started chatting about Moodle and Joomla and I remembered another one of the teachers asking me about Moodle. As she happened to be checking her e-mail as well and was online, I added her to the conversation and we all then shared a learning/sharing moment of collaborative learning! which made me realise that the future is about informal learning opportunities. (see chat: chat-moodle.txt)

During the discussion we realised that we did not have all the answers and varying degrees of expertise, but concluded that we will figure it out together! And then, while we were chatting, I found that I have just received an e-mail advising me that a slideshow has been posted to my slideshare space. The slideshow was about how Moodle can jumpstart learning. Now how is that for “on demand” learning?

[slideshare id=169934&doc=jump-start-dynamic-learning-with-moodle-1195302250504897-2&w=425]

Some of the ideas from this slideshow also provided me with the connection of why web 2.0 is such a great vehicle for dynamic learning. And it made me realise what sharing can do. A domino effect of learning…

Scope: Week 1 Summary 

As I have been lurking in quite a few of the Scope seminars, I found my way around quite easy. I firstly went to check out their wiki (see links), added myself to the Frappr Map (I had to join first: www.frappr.com ) and then went to leave an introduction on the voice widget from Voicethread (www.voicethread.com) I had trouble getting my voiceclip to record and it also did  not want to upload my picture (maybe I should try a younger picture?). I then went to add my blog to the collection of other scope bloggers and got stuck into reading some of the discussions. 

It started off with the normal introductions and I found myself in the global village with fellow learners all over the globe…and if you peruse the global workshop map (http://www.frappr.com/?a=constellation_map&mapid=137440135642) you will see that the world is indeed flat and we are all connected 

The first week is dealing with the theme of the social media landscape in education. A real-time presentation was done in Illuminate on Tuesday, I missed it but it can be viewed (which will give you some kind of idea of how powerful this platform is for live presentations) at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2007-11-13.1036.M.17041726D52CD6EBF6DDE85D1FFEE8.vcr .  

Paul facilitated a very informative discussion with Tia Carr-Williams and  Truls Henriksen looking at what exactly is social media, how we are using it as well as the needs and challenges of social media for educators and their students. Tia introduced “Big questions” which I think is a great place to start for us here in our country as well: 

1. What are the implications of social media (SM) for educators? For learners?
2. How will SM change the learner experience?
3. What are the pro’s of using SM in education?
4. What are the cons of using SM in education?
5. What effect will social SM on learning environments?
6. How will educators have to adapt to use SM in their learning environments (classrooms)?
7. What are the responsibilities of educators using SM?
8. What are the responsibilities of learners using SM?
9. How will the use of SM change the educator- learner paradigm?

Truls (from Ecto) pointed out that students are using all these new SM tools and are developing new skills and competencies outside of the normal school environment. He said that schools are putting a lot of energy into policing  the use of SM during school time (in
South Africa most schools are actually banning it!) and that the need for a safe environment for learners and teachers to interact in, lead to the creation of Ecto (www.ectolearning.com), a free learning environment.  Ecto, according to one of the participants, can be used “to teach, to track student work, to manage staff, to enlist high school students in a national literary magazine from around the country, to manage staff, and to communicate on consulting projects, using both the forum and the content sections. Some are using Ecto to support project based learning. Truls explained that Ecto creates a personal learning environment where you can create your own  account which then provides you with a dashboard from where you can organise your learning experience. It allows students to be “enablers” and content developers. It uses pages that have “mash-up” capabilities, allowing it to bring in content from sources like YouTube, Flickr etc as well as feeds, which then gets combined in a “content wrapper” with tagging, rating and timestamp capabilities. It also provides for grade books and rubrics. Sounds wonderful, will go and check it out and give feedback….. 

The group also looked at what tools are being used and it seemed that most people who were part of the discussion are engaging in most of the SM platforms, with a few actively using it in their classrooms/learning environment. A few of the tools, uses and thoughts were:·        

• SM is great for distance learning ·        
• Wiki’s can be used for project development·        
• SM fits in constructivist, reflective learning environments ·        
• The “tone” of SM provides for a less formal, community building kind of environment where connections can be made on different levels·         .
• Skype can be used to bring people together in real time to get them to converge.
• Some are looking at using social media for marketing and student enrolment activities as well as alumni engagement, recruitment etc.·        
• Some use SM to gather websites in order to filter information for their learners and manage the internet·        
• Some  of the younger learners are already making use of their own SM platforms, so do we use their platforms (like Facebook etc) or should we create our own. What is the role of the institution in social media? ·        
• Social software gives teachers back creative control ·        
• Safety and firewalls?? Apparently this will be dealt with in detail in week 3.·  
• Schools must be part of the process so that we can  make it a safer place by educating the kids·        
• Your material can be anywhere on the web and by RSS and other means you can pull it together in an online portfolio·        
• The issue surrounding WebCT came up: Once an e-portfolio is zipped up in WebCT it is lost to the learner which is why learners don’t buy into this.

As you all know, at the moment there is a free “webinar” going on at Scope about the
implications of the use of social media for educators and learners.  (see http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/view.php?id=668)

For those who are too busy to attend (end of year marking….) I will try to do a weeekly summary of the seminar discussions that are floating around. At the moment I am just desperately trying to catch up myself…

We are having a F2F community blogging workshop on the 28th from 10 o’clock to 4 o’clock at Brecia House in Bryanston, Johannesburg, to get us all into the ‘Blogging thing”. You will have to ask your principal to release you, but I have done a flyer that you can present to your principal/ management. (overview-of-workshop.doc) This is Professional Development in its purest form and it is free! (Bring a chocolate for me and Jill)  If you can only join us in the afternoon, please feel free to do so (if there will be space…). We will also do the normal “sharing of resources” so please bring all your tests, worksheets, creations…. with you on a flash drive. I will ask Jill to organise someone to make disks of all the combined resources for us (and of course we will upload it to the community) or I will bribe my son to come and do it for us…You can also bring photos and stuff to use on your blog.

You will have to let me know if you are coming as ITschools (http://www.itschools.co.za/) have graciously agreed to sponsor the catering and of course there are limited spaces available in the computer room. So just leave a message below (click on comment)

Both Wilna & Sandra will be there as well to share with us their trails and tribulations in creating their ML learning blogs. I am planning to create a ML lesson on a blog using a Petrol price spam e-mail (current context) (please Alwyn- help me out here- he has done a lot with it!!!) and create web 2.0 resources around that to show you how you can extend your blog for teaching and learning.

I would like everybody to create their blog (just the sign in bit) BEFORE the workshop so that we can focus on the “How to use it for learning and teaching bit”  and the dollying -up of the blog during the workshop. I have created a BLOW by BLOW slideshow to help you get it up and running. Just download the powerpoint from here:

http://www.slideshare.net/maggiev/setting-up-a-blog-edublogger/ and follow it closely…..feel free to phone me (0835566962) if you are stuck (seeing that we are not yet part of the NET generation and still like to resort to old technologies!)
[slideshare id=163606&doc=setting-up-a-blog-edublogger-1194891617968098-5&w=425]

I would like to thank Jill at Brecia for making their centre available to us and doing the running on that end and of course ITschools for being a shining example of curriculum integration.

And please I only want brave teachers there, willing to wing it!!! And teachers who are willing to share…

Maggie 2.0

Ps this workshop will be both for my ICT-4-Champions teacher group and my Maths lit group teachers. It will sommer also be our Xmas end of year party as well!!!

I have been playing with quite a few new tools this week. And, for the family who are reading this, no, relax, I am referring to Web 2.0 tools. My virtual candy shop of gadgets, widgets and playable platforms knows no boundaries and while I am assuring everyone that I am testing and evaluating it all to see how I can use it for teaching and learning, I am actually having a tremendous amount of fun in the process!! I can get carried away (don’t I always) but I am only going to highlight 2 web 2.0 tools… One of the cool new web 2.0 tools (I should be come a rapper) is a cartoon maker platform called Toondoon. Here you can create your own cartoon effortlessly and your only constraints are your imagination, creativity and lack of sense of humour. You can drag and drop characters and create “callouts” (that is what we call the dialogue boxes) in record time. I would imagine even little-lies could cope with the user friendly interface. It also has the mandatory Web 2.0 characteristics of being able to share it with friends and family, tagging it, commenting and building up a network of cartoons and discussions. It also provides the code for inserting it into your blog or website. For teaching and learning it could be a magnificent tool. Learners can create their own cartoons and can then invite comment on the symbolism behind the cartoon…. Cool. Click here, to see a good sized version and feel free to leave comments (if you understand the cartoon…)

I have discovered a great tool for organizing my thoughts – if that is remotely possible, hey? Anycase, it a mindmapping platform, very web 2.0, that allows you to create elaborate mindmaps by just clicking and moving stuff around. Amazingly easy to create and what is even more appealing to me is that you can collaborate with your friends colleagues, learners in creating a mindmap. Just think, I can now invite everybody to help me organise my thoughts- the perfect tool. You can find it at Bubbl.us.