Superpower

"Twenty years ago, a quiet British engineer was on the cusp of changing the world.  Tim Berners-Lee was ironing out the wrinkles in a project that would become the "world wide web." As he readily admits, no-one could have predicted its significance."
Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC global news, 8th March 2010, Superpower blog

As the BBC Superpower Series draws to a close I'm taking a little time to reflect on the incredible experience that it has been.

Click on the image above to take you to the BBC Superpower Series which in their own words.

"Explores the extraordinary power of the internet"

This has been a phenomenal social experiment and experience.  Bloggers have interacted with other as they posted their opinions, personal stories from every corner of the world and in many different languages on The Superpower Blog. Tweeters twittered with their reviews of blogs, podcasts and videos on Superpower on Twitter. Many entries were received for the "My World" competition where entrants uploaded a 2 minute video clip with a glimpse of the world as they see it.

The winning video was "Wash, rinse and spin" by Frederico Teixeira de Sampayo from Spain.

The BBC has a phenomenal range of podcasts, they are edited superbly with extremely professional journalists who keep you engaged as they set the scene, give you a sense of actually "being there" and if needs be step in when debates between locals get a little heated.  But hey, don't take my word for it!  Download iTunes and subscribe to the BBC podcasts that you are interested in. 

They are all a little long for students to listen to in class but could be set as a homework task.  There are endless Science podcasts for different agencies, one of my favourites are the 60 second podcasts from Scientific American, they are short, sharp and to the point.  I have used them as a lesson starter or on occasions a guide to students before they are given the task of making their own podcast which they have edited using Audacity.  I'll blog about Science podcasts in more detail another day :-)

On their "World have your say" site, the BBC provides the platform for discussions that take place between people from all around the world, on topics that they want to talk about.  Some people blog, others tweet or contribute to the discussions be texting, phoning and emailing in when the programme is broadcast.

Here's a selection of the World Service podcasts, mainly documentaries that I've enjoyed listening to, they aren't all science related but general interest/social studies/business/studies/sports related.

The other internet
China patrols its cyberspace carefully. The government there closes down hundreds of websites each year and blocks access to many international websites.How do Chinese citizens get over the great firewall of China?

Internet Cafe Hobo - part 1
Nick Baker is on a mission to connect people, stories and places via internet cafe.

Internet Cafe Hobo - part 2
In Kenya and France he finds a remarkable story in Benin of a young man for whom a single search changed his life.

Internet Cafe Hobo - part 3
Nick find that internet cafes are not just a way to stay in contact with family, friends and football results.

The Crash: The bank that busted the world
What were the key moments that lead to financial meltdown, and what happened in the aftermath?  The first of a three-part series that looks closely at the turbulent events in the autumn of 2008.

The Crash: The age of risk
The second of this three-part series that examines the boom before the bust of 2008 looks at how are attitudes to risk and debt changed with disastrous consequences.

The Crash: Back from the brink
The third part of the BBC's definitive series on the banking crash tells the extraordinary story of how politicians reacted, and asks what has been learnt from the entire calamity.  Could it happen again?

Nina Robinson meets the community living in the shadow of the London 2012 Olympic games


Click on the links for archived BBC World Service broadcasts, Documentary podcasts, World have your say podcasts, Science podcasts, Outlook podcasts.

The quality of broadcasting and diverse mix of programmes from the BBC are among if not the very best in the world.  As regards creative, collaborative, learners...the BBC leads by example, now it's up to us to spread the word, get our students making more (educational!) use of social networking and using that newly found information to produce creative resources using the diverse range of multimedia tools that are available to them. 

Oh... and just for the record I have absolutely no business, personal or other connection with the BBC.

mobiles in the classroom

According to a Unicef, State of the children report, 2009 94% of teenagers in NZ own a mobile phone, according to a 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley, UK 2009 99% of teenagers in the UK have a mobile phone and in the US it is 71% of teenagers according to Pew Internet & American Life Project 2009.  The age of mobile technology has well and truly gripped us, so to speak.

There I was taking a stroll through Victoria's Way in County Wicklow, Ireland a few months ago and was feeling very zen as I meandered amongst the Indian statues in Victor Langheld's Sculpture Park.  Victor or Victoria as he prefers to be known, left Dresden, Germany when he was 5, lived in India 20 years later and studied and practiced for many years before becoming a Buddist monk.  Victoria designed these remarkable sculptures and had them handcrafted in India before being shipped over to Ireland.

Much to my surprise, loe and behold, one sculpture known as the Dark night of the Soul and described as...

"This unique 14ft 6ins bronze is a copy of a 2ft stone Gandhara (roman provincial) period sculpture carved in the 1^st century AD in what is now Pakistan. It represents the future Buddha practicing severest suppression of the urge to life (and rebirth) in order to end his personal stress (Pali: dukkha). This attempt failed. He then decided to take a rational, scientific approach to the problem, eventually understanding that “Whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation.” To wit|: “Nothing lasts.” “If you attach to that which doesn’t last you’re going to get stressed out, and suffer”. So, “Detach! Back off!” and stay cool and happy." 

...is perhaps a true representation of a future Buddha with a nokia phone tucked in his robe!

For those of you teaching in and around Dublin and County Wicklow, Victoria's Way is well worth a drive and meditative stroll as you take a few deep breaths and release the stresses of day to day life, you may even bump into Victoria himself who will no doubt keep you engaged for a while with his welcoming smile and friendly words.

The general trend around the world is to ban mobile phones, however, we as teachers need to find ways in which we can embrace the use of the mobile phone in the classroom.  The mobile phone, is not longer a toy but an essential piece of communication.

"It really is taking advantage of the love affair that kids have with technology today." says Dan Domevech, executive director of the non profit American Association of School Administrators.  "The kids are much more motivated to use their cellphone in an educational manner."

These days mobile phones are the equivalent of mini computers, one can check email, browse the internet, record images, video, audio.  We should take advantage of the fact that there has been and continues to be a significant rise in the number of young people buying mobile phones as opposed to computers.

There are the usual concerns that mobiles in the classroom encourage bullying.  Personally, I don't believe that mobiles phones encourage bullying as such, but are unfortunately another avenue through with bullies can operate.  The hard fact of life is that bullying does happen and will continue to happen in the classroom as it does in many workplaces, one doesn't need a mobile phone to become a bully or a victim of one.  If anything, equipped with a mobile phone one can record, film and store evidence of a bully's cruel and cowardly words/actions and pass that information onto school managers, parents and if needs be the police.  One can also call for help from a friend, adult or counseling service with the aid of a mobile.

My students have been using their mobile phones in class for a few years now, only on odd occasions when they need to do a quick calculation or use the stopwatch for an experiment.  I'm fine with that and am clear with the expectation that it'll be put away after wards and so far that privilege hasn't been abused.  However, this year I've been trying out a few new things....recording audio, taking photos, recording video clips and will explore whatever other options are out there for the benefit of students in an educational environment.

So far this year, my Year 11's (15 years old), a high ability Chemistry class have used their phones to take photos of experiments which they have sent to their laptops via bluetooth, then edited the images using Macromedia Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop and uploaded them in sequential order to a Microsoft Powerpoint where they explained the process at each stage of the experiment.  In the future, I'll look at the option of them making a video using Microsoft Movie Maker and adding audio, that has been edited and put together using Audacity.  One of my students in that class is allergic to sulfur so when I carried out a couple of demos in the fume cupboard on sulfur (producing SO2 and observing the low mp of sulfur molecules), she gave her mobile to another student who filmed the demo and I passed the phone back to her a few mins later as she was working quietly in another room, safely away from the fumes of the sulfur.  She was really pleased not to have missed out on the class demo.

My other Year 11 class have taken photos of models that they have made of DNA replication, mitosis and meiosis (made using plastercine, straws, pipecleaners, basically anything at hand) and edited them as above to make a picture storyboard.  Because there are students in those classes who don't have bluetooth on their mobile, I usually suggest that they work in pairs or threes so lack of bluetooth isn't an issue.

I would like to make more use of the fact that a mobile phone as it is a key tool for communication amongst young people.  I'd like to explore the option of texting them any last minute plans to extra-curricular sports such as cancellation or change of time.  I have the option of using my own phone but for privacy reasons would prefer to use the school mobile.  I'll also see if there is a possibility of students texting to free polls for the purposes of surveys eg continuous and discontinuous variation amongst a class of students while studying genetics and voting eg winner in a class competition or votes for class representatives.  Free test voting is available in the UK and Australia through http://www.smspoll.net but as far as I know there isn't a similar option available in New Zealand.  However, I have used the online survey http://www.surveymonkey.com

For additional guidelines on using a mobile in the classroom Liz Kolb book "From Toys to Tools", 2007, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education)is worth a read.  Click here for excerpts from her book which is available to purchase online.

I recommend reading this article which was published in the TES (Times Education Supplement) a year ago titled "Lecturers see the benefits of mobiles in the classroom", it provides an overview of a Molenet project that was carried out in 2007 to '08 and involved 10,000 students, all the statistics reflect positive thoughts from both the students and teachers regarding use of mobiles in the classroom.

And, another detailed article in the TES in Nov '09 discussing both sides of the story, titled "Friend or Foe?"  Basically, the articles suggests that volunteer teachers who are willing to experiment with the use of mobiles in the classroom should be allowed to do so.  Ollie Bray, who is a National Advisor for Learning and Technologies in Scotland suggests in his blog that

"we teach and work with our children to use these tools safely and responsibly."

It's that easy.  Pull your phone out of your pocket, move with the times, lead by example and lets embrace the use of mobiles for educational purposes in our lessons while at the same time giving our students responsibility for their actions.

Are Apple pleased with the huge popularity of mobiles phones and in particular their iPhone, you bet they are!  Accoring to MacWorld, Aug 2009 The "iPhone is now the teacher's pet".  Some recommended top iPhone application are here

In 2008, Toni Twiss carried out a research project for the Minstry of Education.  She states in an article "Mobile phones in the classroom", Aug 2009 in the Education Review that

"It seems somewhat ironic that while schools try to find extra funding to increase student and teacher access to ICT, the tool that many students already have in their pockets is overlooked and its use actively denied through restrictive school policy."

Yes, it is a little ironic, isn't it!

Well that's enough from me, it's St Patrick's day, Beannachtai na Feile Padraig!  I'm off to slip into a green jersey and sink a few jars of Guinness in a tacky Irish pub while having some craic and listening to a load of blarney.

social networking

My deepest sympathies go to those who have been affected by the earthquake in Chile and who have lost loved ones.

This screen image above is a link to an excellent site by the US Geological Survey with up to the hour information on recent earthquakes around the world as well as a lot of additional information such as magnitude, seismogram displays, animations etc...

I woke this morning to receive a number of text messages warning of the imminent tsunami due to hit the east coast of New Zealand. A short time later sirens were sounded along the beach and helicopers could be seen flying overhead, I assume with Civil Defence personel calling out warnings to people on and near the waterfront.  Thanks to CNN news reports on Sky TV, the comprehensive radio updates on ZB FM and of course social networking via Skype, Twitter (using the hashback #tsunami), numerous RSS feeds and Facebook I was kept up to date with the devastation in Chile and possible threat of a tsunami here in NZ. 

I have been watching the movement and height of the tsunami on the east coast of NZ at Geonet where there is a graph illustrating the relative sea height, without question the Chatham Islands and East Cape appear to have been affected the most.

Recommended elevation if there is a risk of a tsunami is 25 meters above sea level.  While picking up reports on the earthquake in Chile and the tsunami's in Hawaii, I made sure to be above 25 meters with the aid of this superb program called Memory Map navigation software.

Memory map is an absolute must for all Geography teachers, outdoor ed instructors and teachers involved in taking students hiking in the outdoors because of their involvement with programs such as the Duke of Edinburgh program aka The Duke of Edinburgh's Hillary Award.

Let me run you through it....

From the list of maps of both the North and South islands of New Zealand I have zoomed in on the Hauraki Gulf, the harbour that surrounds Auckland City aka "The City of Sails."

 

and zooming in on the stunning cone shaped Rangitoto island which is a dormant volcano.  I have clicked the elevation profile which provides a clear visual image of the elevation along the route that I have selected from the wharf to summit.

  

A route card can be printed showing estimated speed settings can be adjusted to allow for the ability of the group taking this track and as a result estimated time to complete the journey is calculated by the program.  Compass bearing, latitude and longitude are shown, a GPS can also be used with the program.

 

 and there's more...the map can be viewed in 3D, played, rotated etc

 

I have found Memory Map to be incredibly useful as a resource to prepare students for trips to the outdoors so that they can prepared themselves mentally as to the actual gradient of the walk/run/cycle ahead of them.  The estimated timing are very useful for parents or contact persons back at base to have. No doubt Geography teachers can think of 101 uses for this program in their classrooms.

A considerable number of animations and resources regarding earthquakes and tsunami's have been brought to people's attention as a result of the recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.  Click here at some of the animations I've saved (not all are referenced to their original source) and see my delicious pages for specific url's.

As of 15:00 EST (GMT & 12 hours) the tsunami warning is still in place on the east coast of New Zealand but has been downgraded to advisory.  Civil Defence New Zealand advise those in coastal areas to:

1. Stay off beaches
2. Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities)
3. Do not go sightseeing
4. Share this information with family, neighbours and friends
5. Listen to the radio and/or TV for updates
6. Follow instructions of your local Civil Defence authorities.

The death toll in Chile currently stands at 214, up to 2 million people have been affected.  At 8.8 on the Richter scale this earthquake is claimed to be the largest every recorded and the first since 1964 to result in a Pacific wide tsunami alert.

Because of social networking, the sharing of resources and information via the internet students learning has become and will continue to be creative, collaborative and lifelong.

Thanks to the power of social networking the death toll is Chile and around the Pacific was far less than it could have been.

moodling

Can you believe it, we're heading into week 4 already!  That dynamo has well and truly ground itself back into action and we are almost up to full speed on the treadmill.  Do you think that teachers do a good impression of a one man band with our repertoire of innovative ideas and a range of tools to implement them?

So...my plans for the year ahead...in no particular order, more moodling, making full use of students mobile phones in class, thus turning a blind eye to the "thou shalt not use one's mobile phone is class" rule (ah well, rules are made to be broken anyway!), social networking with schools from overseas via Skype, loads of podcast, cartoon strip, video creating (by my students, not me!) and then uploading their creative resources to Mahara to be accessed by other students in our class. It's going to be a busy year for my lot.

Today I'll start with...

The school that I am working in (along with another 30,000 or so others around the globe) uses moodle as its platform for the school intranet. I'm planning on continuing to upload my teaching resources such as powerpoints, word docs, animations, video clips etc for my students to view and download if they so wish (nothing strange or unusual there, most schools seem to use their intranet in that manner) but I would like to use moodle in a more collaborative manner and interactive manner.

One means in which to do that is with the forums so that students can discuss scientific issues relevant to our lessons such as "according to MRS C GREN is fire a living thing?". (MRS C GREN is a mnemonic for the charachteristics of living things).  I'll also get them thinking on their prior knowledge at the beginning of a topic with forums titled "what do I know about light", "what would I like to know about plants?" etc.. They can discuss and debate issues online such as "Is nuclear power the fuel for the future", "What are the effects of global warming" etc...

There are 4 different types of forum...
1) single simple discussion, in which the entire forum is on one page, the first post, usually initiated by the teacher sits at the top of page.  This option is good for short highly focused discussions.
2) standard forum anyone can start a new topic.
3) each person posts one discussion, everyone can create one discussion and reply to all.
4) Q and A forum. teacher creates the forum and students reply, however a student cannot see anyone's else's post until they have posted a reply, 

Students usually enjoy attempting the Hot Potatoes quizzes as a part of their learning and on completion challenge themselves with multiple attempts in order to improve their overall score. One of the many fabulous things about the moodle program is that it will grade the quizzes (saving you time!) and also provide an indication of how long it took the student to complete it and how many attempts were taken, thus providing very useful statistics for you.

Hot Potatoes is free to download from here http://hotpot.uvic.ca/#downloads

It is a program that enables educators (and students) to create interactive quizzes.  The five different types are multiple-choice, matching, cloze (gap-fill), crossword and short-answer. It is also possible to add images, videos and animations which many teachers find useful. Click here for info on how to make and upload a Hot Potatoes quiz.

Glossaries are another useful too, students can be given editing rights to define a subject specific word within a glossary or add a new word to which other students can define. This can be useful as an exercise to create a glossary from newspaper articles, subject specific terminology or websites about current affairs in Science etc... As a bit of an add-on I have put a random access glossary in the side-bar so that every so often a word and its definition flash up in the sidebar.  I quite like random photos to show up in the sidebar and have simply added photos with their description to a glossary and then selected random access in the sidebar.
In this ego-centric world of myspace, twitter, facebook and hey, particularly blogging! :-) students love to see photos of themselves, which can be uploaded to moodle using the slideshow option.  This could easily be used to take photos of students doing experiment work such as dissections, titrations, indicators tests etc... the list goes on!  See below an image from my extra-curricular surfing moodle page where I have inserted an image in a label, as well as set up a glossary of photos with the random access glossary in the sidebar and the actual slideshow of photos is further down the moodle page (not visible on this screen capture)

According to Using moodle 2nd edition, Jason Cole and Helen Foster 2008 http://issuu.com/iusher/docs/usingmoodle2 "More than 30,000 educational institutions around the world currently use moodle to deliver online courses and to supplement traditional face to face courses."
Moodle is open source software for collaborative learning, it is free to download and use, see here http://.moodle.org for more information and a community of educators who are more than willing to help and offer suggestions on its use in the classroom.  Once you're logged onto the moodle site have a read of this article "The good teacher", a wee anecdote as to how an innovative "pretty good teacher" became a "very good teacher" with the aid of another teacher and the moodle program.

Moodle is a superb program, I am hooked, a "Born Again Moodler" if you will, however a word of warning, a good tool such as moodle as only as good as the teacher that uses it, in order to ensure and rich and positive learning experience I would suggest that you take the time to read William H. Rice's excellent book titled "Moodle teaching techniques", which does exactly what it says on the cover.  It is a valuable resource, which many ideas and focuses on best practices for constructing learning solutions.

He states the moodle philosophy is based on the constructivist approach, which follows 4 main principles, which are that

1) students acquire new knowledge as they interact with their environment, your course activities and other students

2) Students learn more when they construct learning experiences for others.  You might be familiar with the “learning pyramid”, see below

NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, 300 N. Lee Street, Suite 300, Alexandria, VA 22314.

3) when students become part of a culture, they are constantly learning

4) some students try to remain objective and factual, some try to accept more subjective views, and other try to integrate both approaches.  Constructed behaviour is when a student can choose whichever approach is more appropriate"

If you are interested on reading more about learning styles, please see my previous blog dated 14th Feb 2010, if not... then I urge you to check out Michael Fisher's DigiGogy blog and wiki with his visual representation of the new version of Bloom's taxonomy.

The following is an outline of how I used moodle with one of my Year 9 (aged 14years) Science classes last year, it was for a unit on Forensic Science that was written by one of my colleagues.  I adapted the unit to include a range of ICT tools for students to create resources.  Firstly, they had to crack the code (enrolment key) to get onto the moodle page.  The undeciphered code had been dropped by a witness to the crime on paper with invisible ink (glow in the dark nail polish) which showed up using a UV light. I made an intro video using Microsoft Movie Maker and converted it to a shockwave file using the free Quick Media Converter program.  I uploaded the shockwave video file to moodle, making sure that it was in not in a secondary folder, then add a resources --> insert a label, clicked this symbol on the top right called toggle HTML source

 

and inserted the following HTML code (please note, you need to know absolutely nothing about HTML code to do this, don't be afraid :-) give it a go, you cannot break moodle!

The end result was a intro video that played automatically as soon as the students logged onto the Crime Scene Investigation webpage on moodle.

The students were put into mixed ability groups and decided on roles as forensic scientists, advanced forensic scientists, journalists and discussed ideas with students from other groups using the jigsaw model, wherein they would divide into specialist groups, research and discuss ideas together and come back into their initial groups.  This ensure that collaborative learning is taking place within differentiated groups.  The students used GPS's to make their way to the makeshift crime scene and viewed the crime scene while wearing hair nets, shoe covers, lab coats, gloves and taken some photographs of the crimescene the used files save on moodle to help them with research on what forensic tests to carry out.

 

On the current version of the moodle program it isn't possible for students to click on images to view word docs etc within the files, in my case they were given access the files.  I have been told that an updated version of moodle will allow this.

Next, the more able students, known as the Advanced Forensic scientists read the following info and clicked on the hyperlinks to access more info on the experiments to carry out.  I inserted a gif animation on the right hand side of the page which was a model of rotating DNA model.

Finally, the journalists were instructed to update the public with their findings as they tried to solve the crime, they had to produce

1) a podcast (eg. radio updates, using the free audio editing program Audacity) click here for a pdf that I wrote for my students on how to use Audacity

2) a newspaper article (with images edited using Macromedia Fireworks) click here for a pdf on how to use Macromedia Fireworks

3) two videos, one without sound and one with (using Microsoft Movie Maker), again click here for a pdf on how to use Microsoft Movie Maker.

Word docs and videos were uploaded to moodle to help the students with producing their podcasts, newspaper articles and videos.

All in all, the Forensic Science unit lasted 12 lessons, it was very successful.  The students worked brilliantly together as they set their own pace and decided on the tasks that needed to be carried out then concluded who it was that carried out the crime.  The enjoyed the tasks at hand, students learn best when feeling positive about themselves and their learning environment and they produced superb creative resources.

and finally (at long last I hear you say!), a little humour from Mr Peter Giddens, who writes the irreverant, tongue in cheek, humorous Weekly ROT (Representing ordinary teachers) in The Education Weekly.

"Happy New Year. This year I’ll eat more green vegetables and less red meat and less chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and chocolate cheesecake. I’ll drink less beer and less red wine and more chilled cucumber juice.
I’ll do more vigorous exercise, like walking briskly to work. I’ll take up a sport – golf perhaps, swimming, or maybe surfing. I’ll smile more. I’ll be kind, maybe even sympathetic, to ERO people.
This year I’ll go to bed earlier and I’ll read more fiction. (The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark – as gripping as it was delicious.) I’ll be more tolerant of others’ differences and I’ll be more patient. I’ll accept silliness and laugh it to one side. I’ll not watch the TV news.
I’ll construct detailed schemes of work, or curriculum maps or unit plans and reflect on lessons and make notes for improvements. I’ll work with colleagues to develop cross-curricular units and I’ll stay late after school to help with an on-stage extravaganza. I’ll develop dynamic and stimulating lesson materials that combine PowerPoint with Web2.0 and twitter....cont"