WWW-a World Wide Wonder-teaching and learning.

In my work with schools who are managing the 1-to-1 devices teachers have asked for help and advice regarding students communicating via MSN with each other at home.
I beleive we have to be very proactive in offering support and advice to parents yet in most cases we are limited in what we can do to prevent issues such as this.
Superclubs Plus is a great alternative to social networking for younger kids and is educative in the message they provide.

However it is not the only solution and must be coupled with other strategies.
At schools with a lot more control, teachers can do the obvious like block MSN or other chat sites.
But we obviously have less control as a school and a teacher in what happens in the home environment. This is where the parents and of course students need to be educated and made aware of the pitfalls of any social networking or chat sites such as MSN. Although MSN is the common one there are many, many others so if we are being realistic we cannot hope to stop children going on chat sites such as this. It is in their nature to socialise and this obviously offers a new and fun way to do so out of school hours.
The problem of course is that it is too easy to become nasty and cruel especially when you are sitting in a room on your own or even in a shared space in the family home. Just with the click of a mouse you can send incredibly damaging comments to others without thinking of the consequences to the receiver and the sender.
So…. what to do? Blocking is not the only answer and absolutely cannot be relied upon to solve issues such as this. Kids are savvy enough to find an alternative.
I believe that we must educate and inform parents and kids about what is acceptable and not acceptable behaviour when online. If the behaviour deteriorates to an extent that others are being hurt by comments and lies then there must be consequences ranging from warnings to periods of time without the technology. Some of the restorative practices processes would be appropriate here. Robyn Treyvaud has written and created some excellent resources which outline in a very comprehensive way the things that schools and parents should be aware of.
Here are a few links that you can start with that will help teachers come up with some strategies to support and advice parents and teachers.

Robyn’s site is http://www.cybersafeworld.com/
There is a very good CD on Robyn’s site that you can purchase for the school.

The following link is also very comprehensive and also has brochures that you can download and redistribute to parents. http://www.cybersmartkids.com.au/

I always thought that like all dedicated educators I worked very hard. Going over and above the call of duty to do my very best for the students and teachers that I worked with over the years. Fast forward to 6 months into my new job as Regional Netbook Project Manager and I have never worked as hard in my life. I love the work but wish that I had 30 hours in the day so that I could get all the things done that have to be done and that I want to get done.
One thing that has seriously suffered has been my blogging journey. It seems that out of the things that I thought would be ongoing in this job, blogging is the one that has been the most difficult and disappointing for me. Why aren’t I blogging? I really don’t have time to do it and am always pushed for time, so why not accept that it is something too hard at this point.
But why not? Blogging is about reflection, pondering, asking the hard questions. Then commenting, sharing, conversing, asking more questions. So when done well, isn’t blogging one of the important things that should be nutured and maintained?
So intellectually and morally (in an educational sense), for me, I want to continue. But how?
I think at the moment what I will try to do is to set a target of trying to post short comments, that post ideas of note, examples of great work or thoughts, connections to other great ideas. It’s as much as I can do. But it will keep me in touch and connected in a very important way. Hope I can manage it.

Life has taken me into a whole new direction. In my working world I have started a new job as a Project Manager with the 1-to-1 netbook trial with the Department of Education and in my personal world I have moved house after 25 years in the one place and in the last couple of months travelled overseas for work and pleasure. It has been such a whirlwind and so overwhelming that something had to be temporarily given up and sadly it was my blog.
It’s funny though, cause I was still writing the blog but in my head but just not on the blog. I even twittered in my head rather than actually did it. Weird hey? But I guess it tells me that the way I work and even think has fundamentally changed over the past few years.
But now it’s time to get back on the horse.
Why? Because this new work that I am doing, working with and supporting Grade 6 and Grade 5 teachers and students as well as others in their schools needs to be documented. What better way to do it than by picking up from where I left off but taking a right hand turn and focusing on ways that I can support the teachers and students who are participating in our trial.
There are enormous challenges that our teachers are facing not only in getting an understanding of the software and the technical issues that are bound to arise as netbooks become a fundamental part of the way students learn and teachers teach.

I have been exploring more about 21st Century skills as I set up a new project for our students that has been funded by the Innovation Next Practice Division with DEECD. My project will involve students exploring their roles and responsibilities as global citizens. Through the use of a ning and a wiki I hope to help students to understand how we all have a responsibility to be aware and respond to global issues. I also want them to understand the role the internet plays in this scenario and that we can’t use distance and time as excuses for not being involved.
My research led me to a brilliant site called The Partnership For 21st Century Skills that advocates embedding 21st Century skills into education. This is the type of site you revisit again and again and I will be using it as a catalyst for many a conversation with my students. I also found a really powerful video on this site that discusses the One Child Per Laptop (OLPC) project which aims to revolutionise the access for the poorest kids in the world by providing them with a robust, cheap, low powered laptop to use in their education. Although mighty impressive and an amazing project, what really struck me was this associated video of Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child that gives a very short explanation about the vision of OCPC. What struck me was that Professor Negroponte talks not about the laptops themselves but about what sort of thinking and creating he envisions that the children would do as a result of having access to this technology. It reminded me of why we need to be constantly asking ourselves why we have our students work with technology and what we want them to think, do, know and understand as a result.
I plan to show this video to the teachers here at Wedderburn in the hope that it generates some discussion about what, why and how we use information technology in our classrooms.

Sometimes I delay writing in this blog because I want to spend time thinking and reflecting before I write. But the upshot of that I that I don’t write as often as I should. So in the interests of getting something posted that might be of use to someone else, here is a little activity that I did with Grade 3/4 students using Wordle. They loved it and the teachers thought it was pretty cool too.
This is how we did it.

To start off our activity we are going to brainstorm all the words we can think of that remind us of the Olympics. I am going to write them into a word document and show in on the Interactive whiteboard as the students are brainstorming. Once we have lots of words we are going to save the document into a shared folder on the server so that everyone in the class can open it up and save it as their own.

Once everyone has the document in front of them they are each going to copy and duplicate words that are related to the country they are studying and add them to their Olympics brainstorm list

Then we are going to do something really cool with it. Everyone is going to use Wordle to create their own word clouds that shows the way they have changed words to reflect their country. The more times they duplicate their countries words, the more their words will increase in size.

Then we are going to use Ifranview to grab a screen print of it, resize it and then upload it to this blog.

We hope you enjoy the wordles.

To see more check out our burnersblog and our Grade 3/4 wiki.

Well after another exciting day of Phelps breaking all sorts of records, the Aussie girls winning the 4x 100 medley gold relay and Romania’s 38 year old Constantina Tomescu winning the womens marathon, here are the Love it or hate Olympics Day in a Sentences for this week

Janet and her Grade 6 students from Ballarat said
“Ozzies love your magnificent participation in competitive games, actively modelling excellent sportsmanship.”

Daniel Drury said
It was nice to view the men’s cycling on Sunday. Great scenery with reasonable visibility. All the competitors did a fantastic job in that environment.

From Blogger in the middle earth,
Today I have a headache,
my eyeballs hurt a bit,
for all the things I did at the TV where I sit -
so if you wish to speak with me
the only thing I bid
is drop your voice a wee,
and keep it simple stupid.

Kathryn Greenhill wrote
Is money being spent on circuses when worldwide people need bread, so ignored it.

From Lucy
It’s the athletes with the golden hearts, not necessarily the gold medals that I love most about the Olympics.

Matthew said
As I return to work Monday at two new schools I’m hoping for at least a bronze in filing, desk setting up, and meeting people.

From dkzody
I am cheering for Michael Phelp’s mom. No one ever gives credit to the parents of these amazing athletes, and you know they have made major sacrifices for their kid to get to this point.

Hayley wrote
Hi Mrs Baird, my name is Hayley and I am 7 years old and this is my sentence: The Olympics are important to me because I know that athletes are kind and caring and show great sportsmanship and they are qualities that I want to have too!!!

Amy Pyle shared a sentence and a picture

Hiking bluff and river trails, admiring the scenery and enjoying the beautiful weather was capped each night watching the Olympics back at the lodge.

Bonnie K said
I am glued to my TV screen as Michael Phelps swims for gold after gold, making it look second nature. I can imagine what he and the young athletes have given up for this chance; what passion and dedication! In my reality, this week has been filled with stimulating work with teachers and computers and finished with a great new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Christina Barcelona. Thumbs up!

Murcha wrote
My sons have finally arrived in Beijing for the Olympic games, after a trans-Siberian train ride from Russia, where on route they were in Mongolia when Mongolia won their first ever gold medal and they witnessed the celebrations, the sheer sense of pride and bonding of a country and its citizens, that the Olympic games can bring.

And finally my sentence for the week
Why does it take the Olympics for us to knock down walls between countries, cheer for our own athletes and barrack for the underdog?

This semester I have decided to try something completely different with Year 9/10 IT elective class. I want my students to consider how their world is influenced and is changing due to the internet and in particular Web 2.

Using curriculum framing questions as our guide, I have posed the questions

How is our world changing? as our essential question.
Then as our unit questions I have asked
How does the internet influence our lives?
Why do so many people now share their lives on the internet?
How do people share on the internet?
How can we ensure that our online safety and reputation is not compromised or damaged?
and as our content questions I have asked the students to answer
What does the term Web2.0 refer to?
What are data mashups?
What are blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networks, video sharing sites?
What is an online profile?
What is cybersafety and cyberbullying?

While they are exploring these answers they will be using web2 tools such as a wiki to share their resources, their own blog to reflect on their own and each other’s learning, a ning to communication and collaborate with each other and many other online tools to demonstrate their learning.
It’s only early days and this is a journey that we will all be undertaking together.

I have already enlisted a class from a neighbouring school who will be joining us this week and we would love others to join us. So if you have a class of 14, 15, 16 year olds who are interested in joining us on a journey of discovery please email me or comment to this post and I will send you an invite to our ning and our wiki. As teachers we can also collaborate in the projects and activities that we will have students undertake.

Wiki http://web2teen.wikispaces.com/

Ning http://web2teen.ning.com/ Because this is a ning for Year 9/10 students at this stage I have made the settings private so you will need to email or ask via the comments on this post to ask for an invitation.

Twitter once again has come to the fore (well it’s not really Twitter it’s the people who use it) with a connection to a great idea created by 6 very innovative teachers. In this Whiteboard challenge they call themselves the Task Masters. A great name. Meet Jess , Danny, Ben, Lauren, Chris and Tom. Check them all out here.
What they have come up with is a challenge for those who have interactive whiteboards in their classroom. Each week you take up a challenge created by one of the task masters and then write about it in a blog post on the wiki. Check out Danny’s challenge number 2 which is whiteboard cloning. They are encouraging you to write, video, podcast, draw, show your learning in pretty much any way you can.
It doesn’t matter which whiteboard you have in your school or classroom. It’s about the teaching and learning that can be achieved with it.
So why not sign up. Make a commitment to spend a few minutes a week for the next few weeks, have some fun and learn lots more.
I am.