rogerneilson

Audio recording of blog text

Ok, I am pretty close to starting a major project involving putting i-Touches into a full year group of a Primary school and seeing the results over 18 months. The i-Touch  is marvellous BUT it has two serious drawbacks. it does not have a camera and it does not have a microphone. If it did it would be pretty close to being an i-Phone without the phone (though that can be overcome with a little thinking). The camera aspect brings with it more complications than might be welcome in a Primary context but the lack of a microphone is a pain.

I am not here arguing for a studio quality sound recording facility, rather the ability to quickly capture something heard, or said to you – or, and perhaps more importantly, capture your own ideas on audio. After all we do a lot of writing and it’s actually got its limitations – and for many learners an audio might be a better way of capturing ideas.

I just took delivery of a SwitchEasy Microphone Thumbtack for an Ipod Nano or Ipod Touch. Attached is a recording made by it. You will see from the picture how it attaches. I have to say that for £10.99  I am impressed.

Amazon link

Looks like although this is a useful service its also being viewed as a spam system by a lot of Tweeters. Beware. I have just revoked access until we see how it develops. Am leaving the blog up though.

Twitter is a key part of my working world now. The very nature of it is that it is fast, it is short, it is somewhat random. It is dependent upon interactions, whether they be at a conference, in a meeting context or in response to tweets from others. So, now there is Tweetcloud. It will aggregate all your tweets over a given period, and will then ‘cloud’ them and you get a sense of some order from the randomness. An intersting opportunity to take stock and get a sense of what haa been uppermost in my thinking on my PLN since I began tweeting. Nicely it also stores them so you can do side by side comparisons over time. A good little application this.

I am really liking the ability to get ’stuff’ from others via Diigo.

Today I got a recommendation for Tagul, which is a growth out of Wordle by a programmer in Russia. The main evolution is that each piece of text is a hyperlink.

It got me thinking, using a Tagul as the main page of a presentation may enable hyperlinking in a similar way to Prezi. All I need now is a reason to try it out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses: Tennyson

Ok, what’s he on about here then?

Well I have been doing quite a lot of reflective thinking recently, culminating in some major think yesterday. I spend a  lot of time these days in the company of younger colleagues (not difficult to achieve that really at my age). There is an amazing brimming of ideas, inventiveness and opportunity out there now for those who wish to take it. There is Tom Barrett and others who pick up an idea and run with it as a collaborative exercise such as Google Maths; there is the Gunpowder Plot Tweet Stream of Chris Leach, then there is jet set superstar Ollie Bray. These are just some examples of the amazing stuff that is being done, and the real opportunities to work with colleagues who can, and do, on a daily basis make things happen and push the boundaries of accepted pedagogy.

I was very lucky when I began my teaching career to join a department that was new, a bit ‘off the wall’ and up for asking questions and trying new things. I could so easily have ended up in a reactionary fossilised place (there were plenty of them to go around). Any success I have had since then is in no small measure to the good fortune of my first placement. Others were not so lucky and were ’socialised’ into the boneyards.

Tonight, assuming work is out of the way I may well join a group of others in a flash meeting to look at new ideas, I have had my Twitter stream running all day as I worked, i have bookmarked to Diigo numerous fragments for use another time. I have marked work submitted electronically, I have reviewed collaborative documents, I have looked at new software, that may be a very different way of delivering in a classroom. Its my choice I have done much of this, its not really ‘work’ in the sense of the assembly line, or the daily grind. Its interesting, and its done in the company of amazing people, some of whom I will never meet.

So, how does this all fit with the poetry? Well, Wordsworth recognised a time when he was alive when there was suddenly so much potential, so much challenge, so much of a thrill – and he also spots that those who are young will have the most chance to seize these opportunities. There’s an echo of any decent teacher in this, we are after all projecting forward what the learners will be able to take from this ‘brave new world’. There is also the corollary, that those who are not so young have less opportunity – or do they?

Step to Ulysses, he sits being once more the King, governing his unruly people, having seen and suffered so much on his epic journey back from Troy. He is bored, he recognises he maybe has less energy. less spring in his step than the younger man he once was, but he is faced with a choice – eke out his days in boring administration, or once more jump aboard his ship and set off for more fabulous adventures.

And to jump yet again, how’s about Andrew Marvell?

Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canute_and_%C3%86lfgifu.jpg

Listening to the news this morning a major item was on the current demonstrations in Iran against the regime and its ‘election’. The full force of the state is being thrown against these demonstrations, mass sms are being sent out to warn people of the dire consequences of participating in demonstrations, the internet is being throttled back and every possible weapon is being used to defeat the ‘freedom’ of people to communicate with each other. A journalist (exiled) was describing the use of Facebook, Twitter and other systems to summon and organise the opponents of the regime.

Now lets not forget this is no game, these people are playing for high stakes. The full might of the state is not managing to stem the information exchange.

Yesterday a report from a teaching union stated that mobile phones should be regarded as ‘offensive weapons’ in school and treated in the same way as knives…….

Remember King Canute (Knut)? The guy who reckoned he was so powerful he could command the waves to go back on the seashore? There is another take on this story which is that he was so tired of people telling him how powerful he was that he said, hey if I am so powerful then I should be able to stop the tide.. failed and shut up all the fawning courtiers.

If an regime cannot stop the tide of communication – given the imperative to try and do so – then what hope do we have?

Is the whole filtering battle a forlorn hope, but one that is diverting a lot of effort and energy?

‘Danish students are to be allowed laptops and internet access in exams’

Way back I spent a limited amount of time in the Danish education system. I found loads to applaud about it.  Staff were working at the school in their late 60’s and looked younger than most of my 50 year old colleagues. The whole approach was so so humane and lacking in any pretention. They gloried in the spirit of independence they instilled in their students. The school I worked in was a through 4 – 16 school and the impact of the family idea was apparent in the interactions I observed.

So I read about this latest development and was reminded of my fondness for their approaches.

My whole career in education has been in a ‘knowledge’ economy. I did well at school because I read well, I acquired knowledge and I was able to retain it.  My revision for A Level English Literature was to memorise hundreds of key quotes to deploy in an exam quiz time fashion to pass with a good grade. Most of my teaching career has been drilling in an overt or covert way the acquisition and storage of knowledge for an exam.

Honestly, looking back, how much of the knowledge you ’swotted up on’ for exams have you ever since used, have you ever been called upon to summon?

Our culture is steeped in this worship of the knowledgeable.  Look at the popularity of quizzes, look at the awe we hold for the  person who can recall the most obtuse facts from their ’specialist subject’. Its trainspotting gone mad!

Now I can see at time when the knowledge person would have been very useful. Before the age of mass storage and retrieval having someone around who could pretty fast summon up key information must have given the ruler/tyrant/CEO (delete as appropriate) an ‘edge’.

The other day I was working with a group of students, looking at their work. As I reviewed it (electronically) I was feeding back and was able to drop into the web, pick up urls and drop them in as further research for them – each maybe having a different set of points to move onto. This took me as little time as it would have done to change from one pen to another….

We need to wake up to the fact that the knowledge is there, just waiting for us to access it. We also need to admit our super brains have not got the capacity to store and retrieve facts and compete with the web.

What the Danes are doing is not the death of the knowledge society, but perhaps its a little virus, a small cough that may become a bit more serious as it catches hold on the rest of us.

Also see: http://edcompblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/21st-century-assessment.html

At some point, and I can’t recall when, I  moved from the bookmark/favourite routine where my ’stuff’ was remembered on my computer and into the world of keeping a record of my ’stuff’ (stuff equals sites visited and worth going back to) independent of the computer. This was great, wherever I was I could pick up a site, or ‘bookmark’ it for another time and another place. for a long time I basked in this freedom, I was unchained from a single location, it was great.

I was however harvesting (extended metaphor warning) what I gathered on my travels, and whilst I would sometimes in conversation pass on a seed or two to another colleague, it mainly stayed with me.

Recently I started using Diigo and also Delicious. I particularly like the fact that I get alerts from others about ’stuff’ that might be worth looking at – so I get more seeds to sow (metaphor continues). I must confess I am a messy thinker, so my tagging is all over the place and at times I really have to cut back on the amount of similar tags. I also have not yet got to grips with the full functionality of them, nor am I coping well with working the two – both of which seem to have good features that are worth using.

In my work I am coming across an increasing number of real ‘nuggets’ (mainly due to my Twitter PLN) which I am attempting to share with colleagues.

Problems arise -

1. Do colleagues ever look at what I cast in their direction? Or do seeds fall on…… (fill in the rest yourself and give yourself a mark for cleverness)
2. If I publish this within some bounded network – be it a school, a VLE, a social network, its still in a silo – so the seeds won’t grow as well as they could and add to the developments of the whole community.
3. If I truly broadcast the seeds, then can I be accused of working outside of my remit? I have heard of colleagues elsewhere who are clearly told anything done on the ‘firm’s time’ is owned by the firm and is not for public consumption.
4. How do i ’share’ the seeds to make this as easy for others as possible?

Now all I am is a purveyor of goods, I seldom create new ideas, I pass on things I come across. In a web 1 world this passing on was limited by the technology. In the web 2 and web 3 world these limits do not exist – our issues are how we change our mindset and our habits to gather the richness that is out there, and play our part in bringing the harvest in.

Post occasioned by discussions on Twitter about the use of communal bookmarking for schools and VLEs.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsallaboutmich

About to be released to the Apps store, Stalqer. Unlike Tweetie 2 which I have blogged about already, this app will locate you whether you want to be located or not. well there is supposedly some setting that stops this, but essentially you are going to be visible to anyone on your social network. Now the details of the app can be read by anyone who follows the link, its the principle behind it that intrigues me.

On the one hand its a cracking way of meeting up with people in an  area socially – if they are in your network no need for loads of phone calls, or synchronizing watches etc. The technology  has massive safety implications – as a parent I could know exactly where my son/daughter was, could track their return home, could be aware of where they were if I had to go and pick them up.

In the same way though do we want to be always know where we are, do we relish the thought of being able to be ‘incommunicado’? At work my door is often open, but there are times when i need a bit of quiet time, a chance to think, a chance just to get things done – essentially do we care about being always available?

From a teaching point of view, the use of on line portfolios, the emails, the updates are becoming inescapable. is this as clearly cut an advantage, or is there a downside to it all?

Partly this was spurred on simply by a recommendation by Pdonaghy of Bitstrips so I wanted to have a go. Partly I was also following up some thinking after reading Doug Bagleshaw’s comments about planning. It was also cos we went to Cambridge on Saturday and most of the above happened in that trip. we set out to have a good day – that was our intention (objective?) but the plan went completely wrong – as they do so often. Not saying don’t plan, but am saying don’t expect it to happen!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/114704813

Forgive a ramble down the pastways, the pathways of  youth.

Brought up on a large council estate, non school days were out of the door as soon as fed, roam the streets, visit the local woods (reportedly haunted and inhabited by a fierce cannibal gang), hide in coal bunkers, establish secret gang hideout in neighbour’s freshly dug leek trench. Sit and play with newly sprayed tar, etc etc. Eventually go home when hunger gets the better of me, or when called in because its time for bed. Wet, dirty, sleeve used as handkerchief……

I survived, I am still here, and my past, tinted over with rosy spectacles yet is gritty and fun and a touch ‘edgy’ in terms of what we were able to get up to.

At present I am tackling, along with loads of other stuff, the issue of ’safeguarding’. Its forcing some significant changes in the way we operate at work, its closing down options and its altering the relationships we can have with some people.  Some of these adjustments I am ok with, some I find quite painful to have to put into practice. There is a cost to them – they are altering the dynamic of the environment we work in. I am doing it because that’s the world we now live in.

Maybe its a state of mind that you get into when you get to a ‘certain age’ but I am increasingly having thoughts that ‘I don’t like this world’.

My own children had their ‘rites of passage’ as they grew up, not the blood and nasty stuff that often mark theses rites in tribal cultures beloved of anthropologists, but still markers in the growth towards their adulthood and their ability to ‘look after themselves’. Their first trip to ‘town’ by themselves, their first day spent on holiday on a Greek island while we went on a boat trip…. I could go on  and on and on, but won’t. You get the picture I am sure.

The key is they were given opportunities, they had to take some risks, its how we grow.

Has the balance got to the stage where we are wrapping the kids up in cotton wool so much we are disabling them? We are stunting their ability to grow and take chances and experience  the ‘near misses’.

As a long time colleague remarked today, soon teachers won’t be allowed in the same room as the kids – and no, he wasn’t talking about the marvels of virtual teaching!