Wikitree

As if there was any doubt that information is increasingly heading into the Z dimension, Wikitree has gone open source – in response to a need to grow (pun) the solution. Wikitree is a 3D-Wiki plug-in on the virtual world platform, Second Life. Its a wiki, but creates the canopy of leaves represent the information, [...]

5 Step Change Strategy

WHAT is a good teaching strategy? It’s a plan for someone else’s learning. It encompasses the presentation of materials the teacher might make, the activities and exercises they designed for the students, providing access to resources and tools needed to develop a growing understanding of the subject – and assess it. Laptops and computers are [...]

Drug of a Generation

A long time ago I somehow managed to get on TV very briefly – and not just in a crowd at a Forest game either. Some fairly lame documentary called “Thatcher’s children“. This was around the same time that baby boomers where freaking out about the post-cold war era and real fears over Beastie Boy’s [...]

Story Quest

STORY QUEST. Not only is this a brilliant idea, it represents yet another signal to the wider educational technology teaching community that virtual worlds are fast crossing over as the place to take your read/write/make classrooms. The impossible is possible, and with a clearer understanding of writing – students can experience a much more open [...]

University Students and Digital Media Study

Packing for the future

What is in the EdTech backpack? Is it a mobile phone, laptop, 3G dongle or a bag of virtual dirty tricks, magical potions and comforters – part operations, part strategy, part performance art. With hind-sight, I’d have created a persona online from the outset. I’d be Victor Gloucester.  He’d feel confident to throw dynamite-ideas into [...]

If the shoe fits #3

A fractured conversation between myself and Darcy Moore tonight over Connectivism (CCK09 Course) and participation. He published a great Australian view on his blog, where he mentions “neo-Luddites” as those unwilling to engage with digital technology and unable to form effective relationships and connections online or leverage them into their classrooms. I also read, in [...]

If the shoe fits #2

Get out from behind that desk … why do you need it anyway? No one should still be relying on search to find answers and filters to block content in today’s learning environment. Students should not be asked to troll the billions of pages online by teachers who are digitally illiterate. The internet is neither [...]

If the shoe fits #1

DUTY OF CARE, the age old topic that is rolled out whenever the conversation about changing a culture of learning starts to get a little uncomfortable – when something new might disrupt the status-quo once again floated to the top of the turd bowl this week. Private education has to comply with the same legal [...]

Reaction creates attraction

The recent debacle over Jo Kay’s SLEducation wiki has provided a wave of new discussions around Virtual Worlds in Education. It has raises discussions around the idea that Second Life is not THE virtual world for education, just one execution of it – and what if we used something else? Many of those who have [...]