The latest edition of IFIP, the ICT newsletter based in India, includes a range of interesting-looking articles, including social entrepreneurship and ICT in Nigeria. Also, the work Miles Berry and I did to find out how youngsters use technology when not at school. Available free of charge.
Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Dorothy Burt is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Dorothy Burt
Application type: Korero Pt England - KPE, Podcast
Age range: 9-11 years
Description of project
Students from Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand podcast short reviews of New Zealand children's books. They aim to let their global audience know a little about life in NZ. KPE is available on iTunes and on their blog, http://kpetv.blogspot.com
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Any time,Anywhere,Forms of literacy,Creativity
URL: http://www.ptengland.school.nz/index.php?family=1,871,11746
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Projects in Using and Teaching ICT, Web 2.0 BBC NEWS | Education | Danish pupils use web in exams
A lot of good stuff comes out of Denmark as far as education is concerned, and I think this raises the stakes a bit. In a nutshell, this exam allows students to use the internet to help them answer the questions. The questions are not about finding facts, but validation of search engine results and such like. As Stephen Heppell says, students use computers in their education, and then as soon as they walk through the examination room door they have to leave all that behind and write their answers. I'd go further: research has shown that setting tests which involve a different mode of answering from the mode of learning leads to poorer performance. In other words, if students have covered a course mainly through using technology, they should be required to use the technology for the examination. Similarly with paper-based learning.
Social Isolation and New Technology | Pew Internet & American Life Project
I wonder if (a) this is also true of the UK and (b) if so, what would Baroness Greenfield make of it? The summary suggests that the increase in the use of the internet and mobile phones does NOT lead to social isolation, but instead: "is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network – their strong and weak ties – internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks."
Parents' evenings, ICT open days, local conferences, "away days". As a leader of educational ICT you are bound to have to organise such an event at some stage in your career. What can you do in order to ensure that it is successful? Here are 12 top tips.
At the risk of stating the obvious, every event should have at least one objective. Friendly get-togethers that are amiable but also aimless simply waste people's time. But even if they are not a waste of time, they may look as if they will be, and that will deter people from attending.
In my experience the most successful events have a limited number of objectives, no more than four or half-a-dozen. Having a relatively small number of aims means that the event is kept focused.
OK, there never is a right time, because there is always something going on. So perhaps this should have been expressed as "choose the least bad time of year"! try to avoid obviously difficult times such as the very beginning of term, or examination time. But equally, the slack times, such as in the last week of term, can also be difficult. Often, teachers are too tired by then to want to attend something where they need to be creative, or they are involved in activities such as museum visits.
See 21 Ideas for an ICT or Technology Co-ordinators' Day for some ideas that you can adapt for different types of event.
People tend to be very busy these days, and so their diaries get full. If you are planning to bring in an external speaker, this is especially relevant. So book the event as far ahead as possible.
I can never understand it when I receive invitations for conferences with a week's notice. Since the event had obviously been planned some time ago, why didn't the organisers tell me about it ages ago? How can you maximise the likelihood of someone attending if you don't tell them about it until the last minute?
I do not mean send them spam. Sending them a reminder a week or two before the conference is fine -- it's when it's the first notification that I think it's unreasonable.
Not your reasons, but theirs: what will they get out of it, and why is that better than what they'd have gained by not attending the event? For example, how will attending help them address the new curriculum, a particular course, Every Child Matters or No Child Left Behind? If it's an event aimed at parents, how will attending benefit them and their child?
If you can get funding, perhaps you could send each attendee away with a freebie of some kind, something useful to them -- such as a CD full of resources.
People often judge the success of an event by the quality of the food they are given. Pay attention to this.
The other thing that people judge by is how easy it is to get to, and the parking. If possible, it's a good idea to arrange for some parking spaces or parking permits to be available, if this is a relevant consideration.
This won't be appropriate or easy for all types of event, but sometimes creating a website or blog can generate and maintain interest. Before the event, it can help to generate ideas and anticipation, whilst after the event it can help to keep the discussions going, and keep the event itself alive in people's minds.
Can you think of anything else that can help to make an event successful? If so, do tell -- make a comment in the area below.
Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Nancy Raff is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Nancy Raff
Application type: Planetfesto, Photography,Social bookmarking,Social networking,writing
Age range: 7-18+
Description of project
We're creating a virtual ribbon of 6 pieces with a photo showing why a student loves the earth and a statement of why they love it and what they will do to protect it. Many schools have joined this project and people from 59 countries. Spans all grades.
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Any time,Anywhere,Ownership,Forms of literacy,Collaboration,Creativity
URL: http://www.planetfesto.org
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Projects in Using and Teaching ICT, Web 2.0 
Image via Wikipedia
Remember Maddie McCann? The police in the UK are appealing to anyone who knows what may have happened to her to get in touch, and are asking bloggers and others to spread the word. Here is the video, and a link to the website. Please consider posting this information on your own blog.
Link: Police website for Maddie
Plea to spread Madeleine message (news.bbc.co.uk)
A Minute for Maddie, Maddie McCann in News & views According to an article I read recently (http://daneblogger.com/bloggers-disclose-reviews/), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revised its guidelines, and has determined that bloggers who review products, receive payment for it, and then fail to make a disclosure about it, face a fine of up to $11,000.
There are a few sticking points here, specifically:
1. How will they enforce it on overseas bloggers?
2. What's the position of someone who reviews products on their blog, on behalf of a magazine or website? Every time I've reviewed a product for a magazine or website, I've been allowed to keep it, except for hardware. That hasn't influenced my review, and it's just normal for that to happen anyway. Do they count such software and books as 'gifts'?
3. As above, but when it's on your own behalf. Whenever I review software, or a website that is subscription-based and fee-paying, I usually insist on having access to the real thing. I cannot in all honesty review the free, trial version, and then on that basis recommend the paid-for version. For all I know, once the 30 day free trial period is over, everything goes haywire. By the same token, it would be unfair on the company for me to dissuade readers from buying it on the basis of my experience with a trial version.
If you don't think this is the right way of looking at it, and that trial versions are OK to review, consider this: would you think it acceptable for me to recommend, or not recommend, a book on the basis of having read a few pages on Amazon by clicking the 'look inside the book' link?
4. Do the same rules apply to journalists?
5. If you write a blog about films or theatre, are you supposed to declare that you were given a press pass to see the production? It should be obvious to anyone with common sense that that is probably what you've done, especially if you write several reviews a week.
Notwithstanding those questions, I think it's a good thing for the FTC to insist on bloggers (and other writers) being 'clean' in this respect because I for one am pretty sick and tired of constantly having to declare that I am not on someone's payroll. It's very tedious, when writing a positive review of a product, to have to say, "By the way, I'm not being paid to say this."
I have to say, on the whole I try to resist the temptation to write something like that because I know I'm honest and have integrity, and if someone else doubts it, I think that's their problem. (I'd be interested to hear what you think of that way of looking at things.)
I think there is actually nothing wrong in paid to write a review, as long as it is agreed that the fact of payment, and the content of the review, have no relation with each other. As that is impossible to prove, I think it better to avoid that situation altogether, unless there is a disconnect between you and the article under review. For example, if a magazine, or a website specialising in product reviews, pays you to write reviews regardless of what the product is, or what you say about it, that's fine. At least, that seems fine to me. It's probably not fine from the FTC's point of view.
If you're a blogger, how can you act in a way that is not only above board, but seen to be so? I would recommend the following:
If you are asked to publicise an event in return for a free ticket to attend, that places you in a very difficult position, potentially. Try saying this:
Send me the details of your conference. If it is (a) about the subject I write about and (b) looks like it will be of interest to, and benefit, my readers, I will probably give it a plug on my blog. If you then choose to send me a free ticket, that's up to you, but I will plug it, or not, regardless of your intentions in that regard.
The important point here, in fact, is that it's the 'seller' who creates the potential problem, albeit inadvertently.
How should you respond if you receive emails from companies or their PR agents asking you to publish details of their latest offering? They may even offer to write an article for you, including case studies.
I suggest the following. Firstly, check whether their product or service is something you would actually wish to publicise. Use this rubric, or something like it:
1. Is it to do with, or involve, the subject I write about?
2. If 'yes', is it likely to be of interest to my readers and RSS or newsletter subscribers?
3. If 'yes', is it OK, ie above board, and useful (ie not a solution seeking a problem)?
Assuming those criteria are met successfully, why not tell the company that it has three options:
1. They can send you the product for you to review. The review may be good or bad, as your obligation, in my opinion, is to your readers, not to the company. It's a risk they take.
2. If they don't like the sound of that, inform them that they can place an advertisement. Tell them that it will be clearly signposted as an ad, and that they have to agree that their ad will meet the Advertising Standards Code in the country in which the blog is published (disclaimer: everything in this article, including this, is my understanding of the situation, but I'm not a lawyer so don't take my word for it!).
3. Alternatively, suggest that they write an article or case study, which will be clearly labelled as a sponsored article (ie advertorial), and for which they will pay you.
In the case of book reviews, if you know the author, declare that to be the case, especially if you end up recommending the book. In the UK, the ICT (educational technology) scene is tight-knit enough for it to be reasonably likely that you will know, or at least have had dealings with, an author of, or contributor to, a book. I think it's sensible to make that clear if it happens to be the case. (See, for example, my review of Information & Communication Technology: Inside the Black Box http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1292.php.)
I don't know about the legal aspects of these suggestions, but they just seem to me to be eminently sensible. I think it's a great shame that, by implication of the FTC's ruling, some bloggers have been ill-advised enough to receive payment to write positive things about a product without declaring their (conflict of) interest.
What do you think of such matters?
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FTC Ruling, blogging honesty in News & views Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Nicole Luongo is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Nicole Luongo
Application type: Podcasting in the Elementary Reading Classroom, Podcast,Blog
Age range: 5-7 years
Description of project
Pre-service students at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, NJ learn how to use podcasting in their future K-5 classrooms. They will use Podomatic to read stories, which will be shared with parents and other students via a blog on Blogger.
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Any time,Anywhere,Ownership,Forms of literacy,Collaboration,Creativity
URL: http://professorluongo.blogspot.com/
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Projects in Using and Teaching ICT, Web 2.0 Does part of your job involve planning and running professional development days for the ICT Co-ordinators (known as Technology Co-ordinators in some parts of the world) in your area? If so, you may find these twenty activity suggestions useful.
The activities are not mutually exclusive. The idea of this list is to use a pick-‘n’-mix approach to selecting a few activities that you could run in a single day.
A separate article to be published on Thursday morning will look in more detail at making the day a success, but for now there is one important thing to bear in mind: vary the nature of the activities in terms of what attendees will be doing. I have attended conferences where the only “activity” consisted of listening to a presenter, with the occasional 5 minute break for a table discussion. That sort of menu is ultimately not very useful for people, as they struggle to maintain their concentration after several hours of doing very little. Make your conference different.
ie someone who is an expert in a particular area, such as assessing students’ attainment in ICT, or government requirements.
It’s a bonus if the speaker is prepared to run a break-out session or workshop to follow on from their main talk.
It can be very useful to get someone in who can get people fired up. However, a lot of one-day conference organisers make the mistake of getting in two such speakers. That is too much: people like to be inspired, but then they also want to know how to translate their new-found enthusiasm in their lesson tomorrow morning.
Schools may be thinking about buying a particular product, or a particular type of product. Getting in someone to give a demonstration, especially if it would be difficult for a school to evaluate it on its own (such as a VLE) can be quite useful.
However, if the aim of the exercise is to decide as a whole group which product to buy for all schools, you will probably need to go through a more formal process in which would-be suppliers are invited to demonstrate their wares.
If schools have recently been given or have recently purchased a particular product, a training session may be quite useful. You may wish to organise a couple of parallel sessions, so that people can choose whether to go to the basic or the advanced “course”.
If there are quite a few attendees, some of whom may not need any training session, give a couple of further choices for them.
Nobody in school has enough time to do things like write their ICT Strategy. You could provide them with an opportunity to do so, in a situation in which they will have access to your and their colleagues’ expertise and experience, and access to all the official documentation they need.
As above, but for an e-Safety Strategy.
Watch a video, and then discuss with others what were the good points and what the not-so-good points about the lesson (or extract from the lesson). You may want the group to focus on a particular aspect of the lesson. In fact, you might ask different groups to look at different aspects.
Obviously, you should get the video clips from a source that is in the public domain, or make sure you have the teachers’ permission to use it.
There are actors’ companies who visit schools and other organisations for educational purposes. If there are particular issues that need to be addressed, especially where relationships and choices are concerned, they will work with you to devise a semi-improvised scenario that brings out the points you want to address.
Disseminate the relevant inspection framework, and a case study (anonymised or made up) and invite participants to “inspect” the school or department. What lessons can they learn to apply to their own situation?
As for an inspector, but perhaps a lighter touch, less formal or focusing on specific aspects of a school’s ICT provision.
Disseminate examples of students’ work (anonymised), along with Level descriptions of the set of standards you go by, and ask participants to assess the students’ attainment, and come to an agreement with each other about it.
Disseminate some statistics pertaining to ICT attainment for one or two anonymised schools. Which students have shown the greatest attainment and improvement? Which are the areas that need to be addressed?
Disseminate a case study of a situation in which several things are going wrong, and invite participants to identify the issues and suggest solutions. I used this approach to address problems being experienced in several of the schools represented at the event, and the outcome was very useful to all concerned.
As already stated, people lack time in school. If you have 20 participants, and they get into pairs and create 10 resources by the end of the day (or the morning), everyone will have an extra ten resources they can use straight away, or which they can customise.
Invite participants to take turns sharing good ideas with each other, or resources they’ve discovered, or things they have tried out in their own classroom.
Bring in vendors to display their wares around the room or hall. Invite participants to provide examples of work they’ve been doing. Then allow time in the day for people to wander around looking talking.
These two phases of education often do not know what the other one does. Getting them in the same room to discuss what they’ve been up to can be quite revelatory.
If some schools are in partnership with a neighbouring school, or for a particular project, make time available in which they can have a meeting to progress some issues.
As above, but involving schools in a cluster, which may be geographically-based or based on a different criterion, such as participation in a government-funded project.
An ICT Co-ordinators’ Day is a good opportunity to thrash out issues such as the local area’s internet safety policy, or other issues of general local interest.
This works best with a relatively small number of people, but can be very useful. For example, I once arranged a visit to a major software and hardware supplier. They gave us a tour, showed us products in development, a training session on an existing product and a nice lunch!
One day conferences do not need to be boring, or follow the same old tired format of a couple of keynote presenters and a workshop. Be imaginative!
If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comments section below.
I've got a ton of great new content coming up on this website over the next week. Each morning there is a checklist sort of article planned, and every afternoon there is a focus on a Web 2.0 project submitted for inclusion in the second edition of the Web 2.0 projects book I'm compiling. (Incidentally, please see this article for an important update about that.)
I have also been working on the next issue of Computers in Classrooms. This will feature a report on the recent Handheld Learning Conference, a guest article by Neil Howie on Adobe's Creative Suite 4, an article about why you need an elevator speech, and several reviews, including the following books:
What I also intend doing is putting up a page on this website where people can buy the books I review, from Amazon. (Please bear in mind that by purchasing a book in this manner, you will be helping to keep a whole family out of the debtors' prison. Mind you, I have not exactly given a resounding recommendation to one of the books listed above, so perhaps I should defer my desert island retirement plans for now.)
There may be more (hopefully, will be more), but I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver than the converse of that!
I am pleased that there has been quite a lot of interest in this new website, and as you may have noticed I am working like crazy to get new content up here. In fact, at the moment I am posting at the rate of at least two articles a day. I'm always interested in hearing from potential contributors to the newsletter and website, and guest-bloggers and reciprocating that on other people's blogs. If that is of interest to you, then please get in touch, using one of the myriad options on the Contact Us page.
Enough of this persiflage! There's another (hopefully useful) article coming in around 6.5 hours' time, containing a whole load of ideas for an ICT Co-ordinators' (sometimes known as Technology Co-ordinators) day. Yes, it's true: they do not have to consist of a load of boring people reading out their PowerPoint slides!
Do subscribe to the RSS feed if you don't want to miss it! In fact, why not subscribe even if you do want to miss it? After all, you don't have to read it, and there'll be another one at 16:30 anyway, and you won't want to miss that!
website news in Computers in Classrooms, News & views Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Jennifer Wagner is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Jennifer Wagner
Application type: Jenuinetech.com, Wiki,Presentation
Age range: PreK - 6th
Description of project
Jenuinetech.com hosts a variety of projects throughout the year. Most projects provide creative ways of teaching math, language, history, art, and science in your classroom. Projects usually run between 2 and 4 weeks.
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Motivation,Participation,Any time,Anywhere,Forms of literacy,Collaboration,Creativity
URL: http://www.jenuinetech.com
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Projects in Using and Teaching ICT, Web 2.0 Diigo is a social bookmark service. A social bookmark service is like the Favorites in Internet Explorer, or Bookmarks in other web browsers, like Firefox. However, instead of saving a URL to your computer, you save it on the internet.
This has a number of advantages:
Firstly, you're less likely to lose all your bookmarks in the event of a hard drive meltdown: you just move on to a different computer.
Secondly, you don't have the hassle of trying to remember which URLs you saved on which computer.
Thirdly, a corollary to the above is that you don't have the annoying situation of finding yourself at work wishing you could remember the URL you saved on your home computer, or vice versa.
Fourthly, and this is where the 'social' comes in, by saving your bookmarks on the web, suitably tagged, other people will be able to see your bookmarks on a particular topic, and you will be able to see theirs. This makes for a very rich experience, and helps you to expand your horizons. It's basically a very practical demonstration of the old adage: Many hands make light work.
Think of how you might use that with your colleagues, or with your students.
Diigo is one of several social bookmarking applications that are available, and I like it for the following reasons.
But as I think you'll agree, the educational possibilities of using the various (non-private) facilities of Diigo are vast.
Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant
Thanks to Peggy George of Classroom 2.0 Live for drawing my attention to their latest show, on the subject of the new features in Diigo.
You may also be interested in the fact that Karl Fisch is conducting a survey on how people are using Diigo in education. Why not contribute, and look out for Karl's report on it (by subscribing to his blog's RSS feed).
Diigo, social networking in Using and Teaching ICT, Web 2.0
