Always learning

Teaching two streams of classes - humanities and IT class is quite different. One is teaching skills (keyboarding, programs etc) and the other much more using skills to support learning of curricular content. What is evident is the transfer from one class to other - cross grade, and over time. In the IT class the students learn to make movie clips and focus on Excel or Word to feature in their clip. One year/class later in the mainstream classes they transfer the knowledge to the geography terms to collaboratively form an on line resource for Geo Terms.
That's just one small example but what it does is allow so much more shared and peer supported learning. Students can focus on the content and not the application. I'm lucky to work in a very competent IT team and as I follow in their wake I am able to consolidate what I do know and constantly incorporate new ideas to support learning.
Reflecting - I know it is a combination of what this course forces me to do and what I find useful and applicable. I'm simply on a journey of absorption and adaptation of IT skills.

Preparing for Mass Collaboration

Students collaborate willingly on a daily basis. They are on line more outside school hours, than they are in school. They collaborate on Facebook, My Space, mail, HI Five, You Tube, MSN, Skype, Genie, World of Warcraft, and Counterstrike. Their social interactions – hopefully positive in nature set much of the groundwork for collaboration with the easy to and fro with their ‘friends’.

“In the economy of things you are identified by want you own – your
Land, house,car. In the economy of ideas that the web is creating,
you are what you share – who you are linked to, who you network
with, and which ideas, pictures, video, links or comments you share.
The biggest change the web will bring about is allowing us to share
with one another in new ways and particularly to share ideas. That matters because the more ideas are shared the more they breed,
mutate and multiply, and that process is ultimately the source of our creativity, innovation and well-being.”
(We Think Leabeater. Charles P. 6)


Students need to be taught that collaborative communities do have creators and leaders, but the format is not the same as they may have traditionally been aware of. As collaborators they need to be taught to create and answer interesting conversations, and be open to adaptation. Basically good people skills translated into an elearning situation. These develop over time and creations such as Web Quests can be very effective steps in that direction by directing learning with multimedia - combining individual and collaborative efforts and shared ownership. People create for many reasons – grades, recognitions, altruism – but whatever the motivation mass collaboration can bring changes we have yet to imagine.

SUPERWEB

The power of the web lies in its exponential growth in terms of access, knowledge, ease of use, and our growing reliance on it . It has power to transform lives in positive and negative ways. It is far more powerful than the radio, or the television ever was in their time as leading communication models.

The web connects for social and business reasons. Information sharing beyond anything imagined by most users. Barriers of knowledge and information are crumbling. It impacts learning of all – and connects learners not in the same room, nor country. A collective learning model is emerging. It allows innovation and mass production. It draws people into political issues, and influences presidential elections. If we don’t like the world we live in, we can join or create a virtual world.

In the classroom it allows us to communicate with other classrooms sturying similar topis, to take virtual tours
The impact on our daily lives continues to grow and at times the ability to totally disconnect takes a monumental effort. That living in the moment with the people or place you are physically with is threatened many times by our electronic world. It has the potential to be an invasion in our lives. Will the web allow us to be more in control of our lives… or less?

It seems there will be nothing the web cannot reach and so we must be discerning.

ON LINE SAFETY? You? Me? Whose responsibility?

If it takes an entire village to raise a child when you are physically with them, so where does it begin and end in a virtual world?

If it is shared technology, it is shared responsibility by all– always. Shared by parents who purchase the technology for their children, shared by schools who supply the technology, and shared by the people who use the technology. It is constant and current. Acceptable Use Policies(AUP)outline clearly what is acceptable behaviour across the board, and from that safety can be addressed.

What to post – and what not to post on line.? NetSafe – a New Zealand organization outlines many common safety broaches committed by teenagers such as home addresses, posting sensitive pictures, negative comments, first and last names next to e mail addresses and identifying photographs. It also teaches how to adjust settings for optimum privacy on social networking pages such as Facebook.

All users need to be aware of the life of anything sent, or posted on the internet. It needs to be taught explicitly and embedded in practice. In parenting – consequences for the inappropriate use that will almost certainly happen, need to be in place.

Currently a cyber bullying case at a school in Sydney has made headlines for the way information was removed from networking sites and manipulated into defamatory information.

“Several teenagers at an elite Sydney girls school are coming to terms with the full magnitude of their public betrayal via the internet. Where to begin? One has had her genitalia discussed in anatomical detail. Another has had her face likened to a koala's. A third has learnt that her circle of friends is not friendly at all: "She thinks she's best friends with lots of people but they actually hate her."
Two year 9 girls at Ascham, who thought they could casually destroy or trash the reputations of other girls in order to advance their own social standing, have left the school in disgrace. So at least some natural justice has been handed out. Thirty-one Ascham girls have been named and dissected in a posting on the social networking site MySpace… “

Ascham Fallout – Sydney Morning Herald. May 2, 2009


Sadly most people do not learn lessons until it directly impacts them even when (ironically) Ascham was one of the first schools in Australia to be involved in responsible internet behaviour.

COPYCAT SOCIETY

Photo Beware of copyrights, etc. by Spushnik


Interpretation? Ethics? Ownership? Copyright ???? “Imitation is the highest form of flattery?”

Having read and re-read the copyright laws of Thailand, the image of a sieve stays in my mind. Sometimes things may flow through almost unseen, and other times not. The escalating number of prosecutions is tantamount to the global pressure exerted perhaps. Or it could simply be a response to the exponential growth of postings on the web. I am unsure that I actually know anyone who has not lived in this country and purchased a 90 baht dvd without losing sleep and so it seems to me that unless we are blatantly flaunting ‘the law’ and that the biggest impacting factor is our own integrity. Do we value that someone else has the creative edge, has made the effort, and put in the time enough so we acknowledge and indeed acknowledge them as creator. And be willing to pay for it? It worked for when they bypassed record companies – they made the most money ever from sales.

“Do as I say – not as I do” is a saying I heard years ago and seems to be quite fitting for most benders of copyright rules. Academically I’ve always cited in essays, presentations etc – well the lesson I learned the hard way at university has stayed with me. Do I consider fair use? Is work transformative? When working with students I’ve taught the acknowledging of others’ work through citing or referencing. It has to be said that I still have a ways to go myself despite taking al the pics from Creative Commons and pointing the praise the photographers way. Small steps in this grey world seem to work.

Not for the Pirate Bay crew though –one of the world’s top websites for illegal filesharing - they have received jail terms for promoting others to infringe upon copyright laws though the site is still in operation. Read on if interested… http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/04/18/1240008818154.html


Meantime I am reading We Think by Charles Leadbeater (and 257 other people). He put his book on line as a work in progress. He was told repeatedly the book would not sell – people would steal his ideas. He needed to copyright it etc etc. He didn’t – and it has sold. In his foreword Leadbeater says “We are living through a great levelling brought on by the power of the web. What we make of it is still thankfully up to us.” The focus of his book is not copyright – apart from how it was created -but it has made me think – if the personal computer is indeed replaced with more controllable gadgets such a the iPhone – what will it to do the progress of innovation of the web due to the control Apple exerts over it and indeed Leadbeater sees the Apple iphone as a “seductively dangerous little tool” due to the constraints. Still reading …

The New Private…

It would seem that the point of most communications on the net involve sharing. So another conundrum indeed. We want to share information and social tidbits, but we do expect privacy for many transactions on line. We would hope that personal e mail and bank transactions remain private and secure, But is this realistic?

To allay parental concern, many of the internet sharing that occurs within ISB – is in the form of an intranet such as Panthernet. Of course anything within that system could be copied and pasted, attributed to whomsoever’s name is attached – and that is out there also.


Of interest is our Digital Shadow which incorporates all the information generated by a user at any given time.

“Your shadow includes things like images of you on a surveillance camera, your bank records, your retail and airline purchase records, your telephone records, your medical database entries, copies of hospital scans, information about your web searches, general backup data, information about credit card purchases, etc.”

("The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe." EMC)

This shadow is larger than what is created by the person and the implications for the security of this are enormous. I did not start generating a footprint until I was in my 20’s so imagine the size of one generated by those beginning as they begin school. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_tool_calculates_your_digital_footprint.php

Privacy? Who knows honestly – when images of us outside our homes and in the streets can be uploaded by satellites without our knowledge , anything is possible…

DIGITAL TATTOO

tattoo_750 by clocker

In the perfect world Digital Footprints would perhaps be little like a walk along the foreshore, some footprints staying a while, and some washed away. As this is not the case, internet users of any age need to be made aware of the permanency of digital word and image, and their expansive reach. Digital Tattoo seems a more fitting image as the possiblility of being stung by it or attempting to erase something once posted, would be about as successful, and perhaps as painful in the interim.

A digital footprint is a record of our activity in places such as Facebook or My Space, e mails sent and received, photos and blogs etc. We send these presuming they are only going to be seen by the people we have selected, but not so. Links spread the word – both good and bad. Having noted that – it’s here -the internet is the major form of communication now for many people and so responsible use is the key.

Childrens’ mistakes would likely be small, teenagers a potential cacophony of inappropriate postings and comments as they stretch and grow, and often feel invincible. They keyboard giving a sense of distance in terms of connectivity. As educators, teaching and modelling responsible and respectful use explicitly is important. Ultimately though students spend much of their time out of school on their social pages, so it is also the responsibility of the parents who purchase the computers to ensure their children are using technology appropriately. Footprints will differ digitally, as everything else about individuals does. So will the need to monitor and direct.

Silvia Tolisano clearly spoke of the positives for learning and is what educators are doing – using technology to learn in an every expanding environment.