School 2.0 in SA

The year 2009 is fast approaching its end and most young people are
pondering on what to do in 2010. For those who are thinking of tertiary education I suggest that you have a look at bursaries offered on the following sites:

• www.sasolbursaries.com
• www.absa.co.za
• www.hcifoundation.co.za
• www.funzalushaka.doe.gov.za (for teacher training)

There are also opportunities for new graduates. All major banks offer
graduate development programmes. For the Training Outside Public
Practice (TOPP) offered by Liberty Life you may contact
vikashi.chetty@liberty.co.za . The revenue service is looking to take in 200 BCom graduates in 2010. For more on this you may contact graduates@sars.gov.za

If you know of any other opportunities for our matrics leaving school at the end of this year, please add it as a comment.

Good luck- the future awaits!!

(Thanx @ceanlia for sending me this)

I have decided to facilitate a blogging workshop online for all my local South African friends, collegues and teachers. Here is my blurp.

Blogging is easy, effortless (I lie of course) and fun! So whether you want to create a vibrant space for your school to show the real spirit of learning, or whether you want to post homework for parents to keep track of what their kids are supposed to be doing, or if you want to be a reflective teacher so that we can learn from you, or if you just want to create a showcase for your organisation, or claim your personal voice in the blogosphere, then this FREE ONLINE un-workshop is for you!

My context will be rooted in the educational aspects of blogging, but we will also look at personal and organisational blogging. We will not be looking at blogging for profit, but if anyone wants to bring that in, you’re welcome! And it will all happen ONLINE in Learnwithmaggie, so no need to scramble around, just fit it into your busy schedule!

The focus of this unworkshop will therefore be the nitty-gritty of blogging from a beginners point of view and will be aimed at providing you with the skills and motivation to set up, maintain and enhance your blog. You will choose a blogging platform, set up your blog and post a blog every two days for 4 weeks. (Don’t worry you can cut and paste from your ideas/object folder). You will also be required to speed read at least 2 blogs of the people on your pathway and leave comments in order to support each other!

Start date: 10 November 2008 – 6 December 2008

Where We will use my Learnwithmaggie network as our learning springboard!

Content:

• Why do we need to blog- creating an ideas folder
• Reading and commenting on blogs
• Choosing a blogging platform (The difference between wordpress, edublogs, blogger, iblog…)
• Registering for a blog
• Creating your first blogpost
• Customizing your blog
• Embedding videos,slideshows,pictures
• Inserting widgets
• Staying up to date with blogs
• Blogging safety
• Blog maintenance

To register, please complete the registration commitment form Then please proceed to the blogging group where we will work from

I am so glad to report that instead of me nagging teachers to start blogging, I have been getting a lot of requests to run a blogging workshop. So I have decided to run all my essential teacher toolkit tools as learning pathways /un-workshops online (We are all gatvol of workshops- if you want me to do a F2F workshop, book me for next year). This just means that I will be featuring a tool at a time in a focused and step by step way, taking everybody through the steps collaboratively and with community support (hopefully). This will all happen online using my learnwithmaggie community as our base, this school 2.0 blog, our SASchools wiki and the featured tools. Hopefully there will be some off you that will volunteer to facilitate a pathway with your featured tool (eg run a un-workshop where-ever)

Motivation:

The problem with all the new wonderful tools are, that we do not have time to really get to grips with them. This in turn leads to an inability to successfully use the tools for teaching and learning. We will only know if a tool is going to be effective in our classrooms if we first use it ourselves in an engaged way! I also find that teachers sometimes choose the wrong/right tool for the wrong/right purpose or place too much emphasis on the tool that the teaching and learning get lost (I am also very guilty here I am afraid). Hopefully the online nature of these learning pathways/un-workshops will also give us the opportunity to support one another as we walk along our learning pathway, as well as allow us to get on top of the tool (:-) in our own time, on our own terms, in our own space/place, wherever that may be! These un-workshops will also give me a chance to pilot my DoE learning objects and to get feedback in order for me to adapt, edit and improve them! To really make a tool your own you have to use it regularly for at least 3-4 weeks. So that is what we will do! Over a 4 week period we will register for the tool, explore its use, collaborate using the tool and support one another’s use of the tool through commenting, discussion and collaboration. I am hoping to get especially South African teachers on board….

Essential toolkit

It is actually very difficult for me to decide on my favourite tools. So I am going to highlight some of the tools (from me and Bronwyn’s connected teacher’s toolkit workshop in e\merge 2008) that I absolutely love and feel should form the essential arsenal of any teacher hoping to empower themself and their learners for life in the 21st century! (Will add and subtract). Please vote for what you would like to be un-workshopped below!

Click on topic for more info, (to register and for a more detailed breakdown of the un-workshop)
(Note: all pathways are at beginner level, but if you would like to act as a mentor, we will love you forever, please register)

• Talking/chatting (Mxit/Skype/GTalk) (we will juse this for realtime support)
• Blogging (edublogs/wordpress/blogger) (Publishing yourself) (Start 10th November)
  Registration now open……
• Micro-blogging (twitter) (Bestest way to network!)
• Social Bookmarking (Delicious and Diigo) (Share resources)
• Social Networking (Facebook / NING) (Collaboration and learning communities)
• Wikis (Pbwiki/Wetpaint/Wikispaces) (Collaboration and learning communities
• Photo sharing (Flickr and Picasa) (Media literacy and creativity)
• Presentation sharing (Slideshare) (Media literacy and creativity)
• Aggregation (Netvibes/igoogle) (Collecting and staying on top of all your favourite resource updates)
• Mindmapping (Bubbl.us)
• Googledocs (Collaboration and document creation)
• Videocasting and tools (Media literacy and creativity)
• Podcasting (Media literacy and creativity)
• Thutong.org.za (our educational portal learn how to upload and use!)
• Web 2.0-atise a lesson (bring and sing) (Bring a lesson and lets see which tool will put it alight!)

Once you have registered, you will receive a link to an online contract of commitment where you will undertake to

• “Stick it out” for the duration of the chosen learning pathway
• Support each other through comments and discussion
• Reflect on your learning pathway by posting a blog entry (or linking an entry) in this community

Dates:
Check list above for start of pathway, but feel free to jump in any time (you might have to work on your own though- post a request for a learning buddy)

Why you should do this?
To get with the programme, become a lifelong learner, prepare your learners for the 21st century and fit it all into your everyday teaching load……What can I say…let’s dream on….

Cost: free
Please bear in mind that I am working 24/7 developing learning objects for my dayjob at the DoE. So I will be just as busy as all of you teachers , so I will, like you, fit this in between having no time and having no time….So no excuses…..

What do we do about cellphones in a school context? Do we ban it or embrace it as an educational tool?

The tendency in our country (and pretty much world wide) is to ban the use of cellphones in schools. They complain about the disruptive ringing of phones in their classes, learners using their phones to share test answers as well as learners distributing compromising photos and videos of fellow learners (and even teachers) . We know that we are dealing with a new generation of “thumb tribe” learners who can Mxit in their pockets while listening to lessons (Mmmm….)

Then there is the personal safety concern of learners being mugged outside of schools for their cellphones. Media coverage of learners being kidnapped after giving out personal information as well as more recent “slut-lists” making the round on Mxit, implores us to take the general use of cellphones (in or out of schools) more seriously.

There are definitely educational advantages to allowing cellphones in and out of the classroom. The learners have a ready calculator and encyclopedia in their hands. They can get help with their maths from Dr Maths on Mxit, Mlearner or MyMobi. How about getting the learners to video science experiments or summarise Shakespeare using Mxit? Maybe if we keep them busy with educational experiences on their cellphones, we will actaully manage to keep their attention?

Then there is also the advantage for parents to keep in touch with their children using cellphones. I am also glad to see that nmore and more schools are using SMS technologies to advise parents of school functions and their children being absent from school.  So to say that the tool is all bad, is just not giving the whole picture and we need to work towards finding a middle ground between learning and abuse of the tool.

My feeling is (as with the rest of the new technologies doing the rounds) to be pro-active. Isn’t it our job as educators to educate our learners about safe use practices? Can we do this if we ourselves are not informed?  So the first step is for us to use the tools. We need to get connected to Mxit, use it critically before we ban it outright.

So let’s get the debate going, voice our fears and more importantly start using the tools ourselves so that we can be informed, prepared and educated! We have created a wiki page for educators on this very topic, see http://saschools.wetpaint.com/page/Cellphone+use

Some articles to get the discussion going:

I know that the Thutong portal team has been working hard to give us a more school 2.0 kind of interface with blogs, forums and learning spaces. So now we need to give them some feedback on the things that are not working (yet). I always get very irritated with people moaning about free resources but not willing to put in the time to help the developers to create a better experience. So, let us give feedback about the little bugs in the system so that we can have a better repository of resources!!!

See www.thutong.org.za

Just post problems here…I will nag the developers to fix it (and those who know me know that is what I do best )