Quick and Dirty Video Responses

This is the end post, which has focused on delivering IST in Year 9 : Topic : Databases

If you check out my bloglines, you will find all the work done by my year 9 class during a 10 week period in this topic. The purpose is to show how I’ve implemented Classroom2.0 for students and hope that it might give others an idea of how Classroom 2.0 can enhance the classroom.

The topic, Databases I have previously found a little dull (and so did students), so this term I have attempted to rethink what databases are to kids and how they interact with them to gain knowledge or to function in the world around them.

Below is an example of the last task required of the students.

This is a video response to a Social and Ethical issue in database use in out society. I posed to students a proposal that DNA should be used to determine who is allowed to study academic subjects in school, and who should be set aside. All student behaviors, failure and general performance should be continually monitored and information fed back to the beginning of learning, to ensure that the ‘bad apples’ are weeded out.

This is one of the responses made. This is filmed using an iMac with iSight. The student brief was to work on a speech that they would give to the government to comment on the proposal.

As I end the second term of Classroom 2.0, I feel confident that students are now well able to spend class time talking and learning about … and that they are well able to produce this kind of ‘tech’ work in short time at lunch, recess or after school.

So if you are a teacher who is spending hours in class trying to get students to ‘make’, then Classroom 2.0 methods are worth looking at. It is very hard IMO to get a hole class to follow (puppy dog) you from the start of a project to the end when teaching ’skills’.

SL NSWLearnscope Meet#3

A massive thanks to Jo, Sean and crew for todays meet in the Gong. The time, thought and effort that went into it was M A S S I V E. Despite a few little wi-fi issues (anyone who says wi-fi for large scale implementation is a good idea has rocks in their head), there were some pretty inspiring comments and discussion in and out of world as to what could be done with SL in education.

Not so much why. Those that ask why are the next generation of those who asked ‘why have the internet’ in the early 90s. SL smells like the future, it has the hallmarks of a new frontier and so if you don’t get in now … better go install wi-fi.

Heres Sean’s keynote – sorry for the chop up edit, it was a iSight flick and the sound is a bit crappy, but its pure gold.

More on this day to come …

My first virtal classroom

There are a few ways to learn how to do things in Second Life. Trial and error, reading another users blog (how to) or take a class. I’ve been doing the first two.

I took a class, mainly to see how the tutor did it. I am getting more interesting in LSL which is Linden Scripting Langage.

Once you’ve wandered around SL, made a few objects in the sandbox, then you will want to add some scripts to the objects – scripts allow interaction. They animate, calculate and automate virtal life.

For example, if you rez a door object, then you are going to want it to open with an animation when it is touched. You might want to make the door only open to people on a list. To do that you need to write a script.

LSL is event driven scripts, similar to java, C or action script. As the programming and development workplace that some of our students may work in will be concerned with event driven languages. In school right now we tend to limit ourselves to Visual Basic and Logo in IST or even SDD. We tend not to explore Event Driven.

I like Scrath from MIT as a good introduction to the concepts of programming … but I also see value in LSL. Lets face it, event driven worlds are what we are building – from Flash and Java Games to online applications. LSL is a nice ‘written’ way of moving from the concepts to basic scripting languages.

Because the scripts work ‘in world’, students can design anything they like to do pretty much anything they like.

Learning HTML to me is a little pointless, as it is not a ’skill’ that is valued in Industry as a special skill. You can do it in a Blog, power up Front Page or Dreamweaver faster. It is not a complex language and most students can cut HTML once they’ve grasped the idea of ‘nested tags’ – then its just a matter of learning more vocab.

Most websites use javascript to do the cool stuff, so with LSL, they can do the same learning but in a far richer environment.

Next up … a report on the class I took, from a teaching and learning perspective. Gotta go, it’s time to build a quick seat and take my place in the class.

Learnscope Classroom 2.0 Review

Thanks to everyone at the year’s final Learnscope Meet today. Once again I learned plenty of new things, especially how to be  creative with Google Earth. This is the presentation I gave, which is intended to summarise the teaching and learning that has developed over the last couple of terms. I hope that it aids others who are maybe thinking about the upgrade – and gives support to those teachers out there who are beginning to change the ‘norm’ teaching model. Big thanks to Pat, Melinda and Judy at the CEO for giving me the opportunity …

Term 3 Reflection Time

As term 3 comes to a close, and we have our final Learnscope meeting, I’ve started reflecting on the journey.

Firstly I’ve decided that if you know where to look, theres a Web2.0 tool to do just about anything you want, and in that, a tool that facilitates just about anything you want – or students need. The way to look for these is from your peers outward. I kind of see each of the people I’ve connected with (or aligned myself with) as a a little whirlpool, each sucking in information and experience. I now look at the whirlpools first. Before I looked at Google.

I’ve found that my class (appear) to enjoy themselves, so classroom management has become a matter of trying to help everyone out and not having to make sure people are doing the right thing. This has lead to me being able to get to know more of the students and give me time to try and give them more individual support (the stuff of Uni theory, but in a distruptive classroom, hard to do). So our 5 hours a fortnight have flown by this term.

Students are achieving more than I’ve experienced before in the same topic area. By giving them access to tools that give them fast-rewards, they grasp concepts quicker, so my once lengthy powerpoints have become 10-15 minute briefings (and I use Keynote as it’s way better). So I’ve got more time to create better resources – using Web.20 tools.

I can give them a paper test, and measure the learning. I can see their levels of effort through their blogs and journals. I can see who is putting in the hard yards, and so can they. They can compare and reflect on old and new ways of doing things. They now seek out ‘a better way’ for themselves, and now they are showing me new stuff.

If we take Blooms model, we ripping through the lower order stuff and spending far more time on higher order stuff. They are very creative and enthusiastic on the whole, and several students have become defacto-IT staff this term helping out in plenty of other areas. I am sure that many senior assessment tasks in 2007 have my year 9 crowd to thank. The seniors see the 9s as being very switched on, which is great.

We have cut down the lead in time to projects, and in the case of this term, we ditched the formal 3 week assessment task in favour of a short test and prac, as we (Karyn and myself) can see the work through their blogs and see how they apply this through their use of Web2.0 applications such as Wufoo and Zoho Creator. This leaves us time to add value to IST, rather than lumber to the end of term hoping 75% of the students have managed to grasp the outcomes.

Perhaps the most rewarding was a short comment by a student. He thanked me (rare) as he had just got full marks for a website he had created in Science. It looked great (WordPress/Flicr et al), was filled with multimedia and he had obviously had far more time to investigate the subject rather than battle his way through learning HTML and the terrible code written by Front Page.

He and others, have migrated the IST theory and tools to other KLAs. Great! This means that other teachers are faced with dealing with technology they are pushing back to the teachers. Grass roots activism.

They have abandoned Office as a primary method of production. They are investigating solutions rather than Google-ing them. I have got better at asking questions that they can’t Google perhaps.

Term 4 – a new step forward. It’s time to let them apply their new found skills and autonomy to solve a bigger problem. We start the topic of ‘Websites and the Internet’, which seems a little passe. So rather than pre-teach > issue assignment > re-teach as they do it (why do we end up re-covering what we have already done?) and then mark, I’m going to launch (yuk sounds American) the project on Day 1 and run for 5 weeks.

I’ve installed Scratch (the MIT game/app tool) and Google Sketch on some 50 PCs. Its important to use tools that students can have at home – remember if it needs buying, then its probably dying.

They are going to create a ‘virtual arcade’ and publish it using a website. So they will need to research games, cabinets (Mame!) and figure out as a group how to make games and include them into a graphical arcade. So theres a lot in there – multimedia – programming – languages – html, ICT history – graphics. I hope something for everyone.

In the second half of the term … and this is ‘out there’ I want to get them onto TSL (come on Pat, wheres my island?) and work as a group to construct a TSL virtual arcade, based on their designs and graphics using SURLs to get to their Scratch Games.

I know I’m supposed to being doing HTML 101 and Front Page … but do I think I should … no … HTML is just a convenient language to use, if the BOS was serious, we’d be teaching XML. Will they meet the outcomes – sure they will – in about an hour! if I was to compare ‘end product’ between Teaching 1.0 and Teaching 2.0.

So there’s the 10 week objective – to have 28 kids build a TSL video arcade with about a dozen Scratch applications and chill out zone. If the CEO won’t play, then I’ll just rent the space myself … guess it’s like giving out stickers in Primary …

Look forward to it …

Lastly I’d like to thank the staff at PMHS who have been doing well above and beyond this term in terms of IT. The level of student participation (especially English) is highly visible. I’ve seen so much innovation and enthusiasm this term that it is very rewarding. It’s a little chaotic – well it’s not – but to those who are still holding out in Teach 1.0 it looks like chaos – but the student population is busy with MacBooks, iMacs, Web2.0, Blogging, Podding and YouTubing … so Im quite happy to sit and watch at this point.

As the Bloodhound gang said ‘The roof is on fire” … but theres learning and innovation going on … stucture will come later.

PBL – Web2.0

I’ve given my VET class a project to the end of term. A hybrid PBL/Web2.0 briefing.

“Given that the majority of businesses use some form of ‘network’, then IT VET students need to show potential employers that they know what one is and how to make one” … if you can’t do that then you’re not much use!

So rather than do the usual thing, I now have 2 groups of students working on a video presentation to demonstrate that they can indeed meet the challenge.

I started with a board-driven lesson (which freaked them out as I rarely use a board). They blurted out all kinds of jargon that they associated with networks, most of it was way off target. The idea was to identify what they knew (or rather thought they knew) and what they need to learn. Much of what they knew – they agreed – was a little dubious.

Then I’ve given them a PBL worksheet  They were horrified at the prospect of writing and it was 13 pages! – A 13 page project report – was I mad? – in fact if you download it, you see it’s just boxes and easy to fill out.

What became clear was that they are not used to such long documents and had little idea what to do with it. Reading from page 1 to 13 seemed a tedious prospect. But after much moaning, they have finally settled down to do the task until the end of term.

The only problem to me is that I can’t ’see’ what they are up to. So I’ve knocked up a set of PBL worksheets – based on the paper sheets I gave them. It’s a mash-up. I think that this system will allow some ’structure’ and online accountability.

As the project grows (or dies), I’ll share what is happening – figured it was about time I did more VET Learnscope stuff … so here it is.