Posted on

Scenario Learning with a Collaborative Twist

For the last few months, many of teachers at my school have been extolling the benefits of Google Docs with their students. There simply is no doubt that when we approach writing as a collaborative medium, there is a fundamental shift in the paradigm and both students and teachers are forced to rethink what we value and how we work.

As a technology leader, the question I often field is: “I can see how amazing the technology is, but what can I do with it?” While the counter-question – “how long is a piece of string?”- doesn’t work wonders for the imagination, the point is that many teachers will really struggle to think of ways of applying collaborative documents – quite apart from the rules, parameters and conditions in which it takes place.

I think that when we’re faced with daunting new technology, one possible approach that works wonders is scenario learning. This is why I’ve been exploring the value of hypothetical, imaginative and lateral thinking with my Year 7 Connected Learning class this term. I also cooked up this semi-real, semi-fictional scenario to get them thinking about the roles that historians, public relations experts, education consultants and ethicists play in important decisions where key stakeholders are required – in this case, with reference to the World Heritage arm of UNESCO:

September 11th Scenario

Ground Zero is a term that refers to the site on which the New York Twin Towers were built. On September 11, 2001, the towers were destroyed when two planes carrying passengers were hijacked and crashed into them.

Currently, there are plans afoot to build two new replacement towers, along with a multi-storey shopping complex, a local mosque and a number of other amenities. At the same time, the World Heritage Panel is considering whether or not to list the site as an important cultural heritage site. If the listing goes ahead, constraints will be placed on further development, but at this stage the nature of these constraints is unclear.

You are an expert (historian, public relations officer, education consultant or ethicist) sitting at the table for a FIVE MINUTE preliminary meeting to consider whether or not the site should be proposed for World Heritage Listing. In the event that it is accepted by the World Heritage Panel, arguments for or against further development around the site will need to be considered.

In your meeting, you may consider one or more of the following (start with one and add others if you have time):

  • should the new twin towers be built?
  • is it appropriate to build a mosque nearby?
  • is it appropriate to build a shopping complex?
  • what limits (if any) should be placed on further development?


You are to record your position as an expert in a group Google Document, which will be a TRANSCRIPT of the first five minutes of your discussion. NB – your discussion does not have to be resolved in any way at this stage. However, as you are working in groups of FOUR, your document will include experts from all of four fields we have studied this week.

As they began working, many kids struggled with how to get started: “who should write first?” “what should I say?” were among the questions asked by weaker-ability students. I encouraged kids to simply write something from the perspective of their role, irrespective of what other kids were writing or might write. In this scenario, starting with an introduction from the perspective of, say, the ethicist, students needed to simply get their main argument across into the document before reacting to the views expressed by other roles. The other key ingredient to this kind of task is imagination. “As the public relations expert, who do you know?” “As the ethicist, whose story have you heard most recently that has moved you to the point where you need to advocate on behalf of this person?” You might say that since the very core of scenario learning is the imagination of the scenario itself, imagination feeds imagination!

The results were qualitatively different to a conventional script or singly-authored piece of work, and I argue that it’s very important to discuss differences between collaborative authorship and single authorship with students. As a follow-up task, I had my groups email a published copy of their document to another group in the class. The outsiders then read the published version carefully and produced an ISVAPS on it (a scaffold that focuses on I)ssues S)peakers V)iews A)lternatives P)roblems and S)olutions). At this stage you have a whole range of learning and talking points:

  • which transcripts were resolved? which were not? why/why not?
  • who had the most unique alternative perspective on the issues
  • were there any “unexpected” issues that arose? why?
  • what have you learned about how you work in this kind of group?
  • what does this tell you about some of the problems that UNESCO needs to deal with?

At the end of the day, it’s great to see how easy this kind of learning can be with a good scenario. Hopefully it’s just a little bit closer to how things in the real world work?

Posted on

On Cloud-Computing 9…

For quite a while now, I’ve been keen to explore some of the ways that I could train teachers to move beyond the static online portal view of e-learning (the space where files are uploaded for students to later download). A long-time advocate of Web 2.0 for its emphasis on creativity, collaboration and lateral re-thinking of traditional media, I’ve tried to promote technologies that enable collaborative
writing, incorporate social networking and ‘remix’ information all in the name of learning that is fun.

At the same time, I’ve seen many a frustrated teacher give up on Web 2.0, having to juggle usernames, forgotten passwords and third-party email addresses – leaving aside the often steep learning curbs for what is, at the end of the day, just one more technology tool. This is why I’ve been interested in the idea of how enterprise cloud-computing technologies like Google Apps for education help to create scalable Web 2.0.

Re-thinking the Word Processor

At the staff PD day that we ran last week, I looked at how teachers can get started with Google Docs, canvassing some of the possibilities for using it in the classroom and providing the tangible example of the class set of topic notes. For many teachers struggling with the concept of collaborative writing, it’s a good idea to discuss the importance of structure when setting the parameters for collaboration
on a particular document. I use the example of topic notes on a novel and asked my students to think about the headings and sub-headings that might go into the document to organize ideas effectively as new stuff gets added.

Understandably, teachers and students get quite excited by this technology!

Tackling the Big Challenge – The Online Spreadsheet

I hate to admit it, I’m a recent convert when it comes spreadsheets. For most of my life, I’ve never really thought to organize information into cells, much preferring to think and write in sentences. Perhaps most people out there agree, which also might explain why the vast majority of teachers shy away from using spreadsheets in subjects other than Maths. Still – if we stop and think about it, spreadsheets can be used to organize, process and analyze data on practically anything – the trick is just thinking about situations in which we might actually want to generate some data.

Google Docs does a good job here precisely because it shifts the whole focus away from spreadsheets by letting users generate forms which can be emailed to users, filled out and automatically populate an automatically-generated spreadsheet. Could it get much easier?! Of course, if you do know a spreadsheet trick or two, you can always impress a few friends with some simple formulae.

It was exciting to see teachers exploring this through the vehicle of the unit evaluation, a feedback tool that many schools and teachers have moonlighted with over the years. I particularly liked the
observing the collective realization that beyond creating the form and sending the email, very little work is required by teachers who want an easy and effective set of feedback on their own teaching and on a unit they have taught recently.

Posted on

When the smartphone gets a little smarter…

I guess you know you’re a real nerd when you start counting down the days towards a smartphone firmware update. While I’m no Apple fan-boy, I have been an avid iPhone user for the past year, and I find that with each new month I’m discovering new applications for my work as a teacher, blogger, traveler and musician.

Anyway – one of the most exciting technology experiences for me these past two weeks on holiday in New York has been the new bluetooth keyboard functionality of iOS version 4. Having purchased a compact bluetooth keyboard at the start of my trip, I’ve been amazed at just how many occasions the combination of this little contraption and my iPhone effectively replaces a laptop.

Sure – web browsing on a mobile phone has never been my penchant. A tiny screen really does limit what one can take in, and I definitely see the merits of light-weight tablet devices for consuming and creating web content. But it is hard to go past the basics on the iPhone – notes, email, calendars, contacts and so on. What is really exciting is that by using a bluetooth keyboard, many of these processes become so streamlined that it’s possible to park oneself on a park bench for a few minutes and quickly flick off a handful of emails to colleagues, type a page or so of a blog draft, add some addresses to existing contacts and even write a lengthier update to one’s Facebook status! Of course, this is the point where I say something cliched like “I happen to be typing this whole blog entry on my iPhone with my new bluetooth keyboard.” Well – I happen to be typing this whole blog entry on my iPhone with my new bluetooth keyboard (yes – it does text selection, cursor keys and copy-and-paste all with the same shortcuts that you know and love).

In terms of school, I see real applications for this with the so-called “dumb” terminals (where an internet-ready computing device is connected to a monitor and keyboard which may or may not be also connected to a network). As smartphones become more a part of the landscape for everyday people, it’s possible to imagine a school where device convergence means that the computer that is – among many other things – the video camera, currency converter, textbook, music library and link and connection to online learning network of teachers and students across traditional boundaries; this computer fits in the pocket so easily. At the same time, with the focus on cloud computing and device agnosticism – such a device may enhance learning but there are many others that can and will be used in its place.

Posted on

On Tipping Points and Working Collaboratively

I’m lucky to be an English teacher working in such a dynamic and vibrant time for the English language. Having obtained my English degree more than ten years ago, I’ve seen the way we read, respond and write change so much in so short a time. However, I suspect that like many of early (and now obsolete) IT degrees, my degree no longer says a whole lot about my ability to interpret the texts of the twenty-first century. Sure – it says that I’m a relatively astute reader and reasonably well-read. But is that enough to cut the mustard nowadays?

Web 2.0 – also dubbed the ‘read/write web’ – is powerful, not really because anyone can publish anything on a whim, but because the ways that we read, critique and write have all transformed, relatively speaking, overnight. Looking at texts like Wikipedia is a process that demands a completely new approach. The fact that so many teachers simply criticise websites like this as ‘unscholarly’ or ‘inaccurate’ misses the point, and says much more about their unwillingness to understand the way in which these texts are constructed, the values they represent and the potential they hold for the future. Perhaps this is why the illusive Web 3.0 is dubbed ‘the semantic web’? In the coming years, the focus will move beyond basic access to the information on the internet and much more towards how meaning is made, inferred and understood.

In my very small way, I’ve been gently pushing my school towards understanding the collaborative power of Web 2.0 through Google Docs as part of Google Apps Education Edition. We seem to have come a long way, too.

On Monday I ran a staff inservice on the potential of teacher-student shared documents to streamline study processes through the example of collaborative class topic notes. The following day, my English Coordinator launched full-force into using Google Docs with her Standard English class and became an instant convert. Less than two days later, she was teaching the rest of the English Department all about it and in my free periods before lunch, I had a steady stream of teachers coming to ask me how to edit tables, publish links, check revision histories and change text formatting.

Such lessons are probably still beyond me for the time being. Other teachers who take an idea, run with it and transform it into something their own will add immeasurable value to any basic explanation or demonstration I offer. They are my real teachers, and from whom I still have a lot to learn.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYPjJK6LZdM]

Posted on

Thoughts on Google Earth in the Classroom

Google EarthSince Google took over the Earth project from Keyhole, inc. several years back, I’ve been interested in how this technology can be more effectively used in the classroom. Google themselves have done a decent job of this in their Google for Educators pages, pooling information from teachers all around the world in a literally global piece of technology (excuse the pun – I had to!)

Despite making fairly extensive use of overlays such as Ancient Rome 3D and 360 Cities, I’ve struggled with planning lessons which consistently build higher-order thinking. Much of the time, students fly different places pan around and easily get off-task very quickly! It can be a real headache when trying to re-enforce the purpose of the lesson and the specific activities which need to be done.

With some help from my Connected Learning colleagues this week, however, I seem to have finally understood the kinds of ways in which Google Earth can be used to really challenge students to think. Specifically, I’ve approached using this technology in relation to:

  1. immersive learning in which students simulate an actual experience movement in time and space
  2. contextual learning – where students understand space relationally
  3. strategic thinking – using points on maps to formulate strategies to real problems
  4. broadening awareness – using the discovery ‘moment’ as the basis of key learning points

This term in a thematic unit entitled Expressions of the Human Spirit, our students use Google Earth to travel from the Waling Wall to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, retracing the steps of Jesus Christ and exploring the relationship between old and new. Later in the term, they also develop guided tours of key Roman architecture and build geographic skills at the same time. The biggest learning curb is my own – not being a trained Geography teacher, I’m learning on the job (again, with the help of some very gifted colleagues).

What an exciting time to be able to experience what is perhaps the next best thing to being in a place you’ve never visited!

Posted on

Thoughts on One-to-One Laptops in Schools

My school is in the exciting (and somewhat daunting) position of now investigating possible ways of achieving a learning environment in which every child has their own laptop for daily use. The desire to move towards this particular model is highlighted by the current National Secondary Schools Computer Fund and by the proposed pilot for completion of some School Certificate subjects (and eventually HSC subjects), with specific recourse to using computers in examinations.

Certainly, exams that need to be typed are a good reason to start looking in this direction, right? We think that a one-to-one environment would definitely be a suitable goal within the next few years (and our school is not the oozing-cash-private-variety where such a goal has long been a reality!)

At the same time, I have a number of real misgivings about current approaches taken by other schools – where the computer fund is solely or largely used to directly provide a computer to year 9 students. You could summarise these misgivings as follows:

  1. Current 1:1 ratio calculations occur on the basis of including existing desktop and laptop machines (up to four years old), as well as recently-purchased laptops.
  2. Many schools have designated these for general school use. This designation recognises the need for students in all years to have reasonable access to new technology.
  3. The model of directly providing students with laptops may not be sustainable given these calculations.
  4. It is also unclear as to whether the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund may continue over the long-term. If it is not continued at any time, this would unduly disadvantage any students who have not received a computer as part of the grant.
  5. Giving laptops unconditionally to students may not ensure accountability and a sense of responsible ownership in relation to the care and use of the machine.

In light of these issues, I’ve now argued for a while that the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund grant is, for many schools, best spent in the continued designation of machines for general school use and KLA-specific use, and that access to the machines is most equitable when they are stored and maintained in the school concerned.

At the same time, schools need to explore ways that an environment where students own and bring laptops to school for daily use might be achieved over the long term. To this end, I’ve been interested in netbooks (and similar low-cost, light-weight laptops) viable options for students to purchase, and it is reasonable to expect that this technology could complement the current technology infrastructure in the school concerned. The specific advantages of complementing currently existing technology with student-owned netbooks can be summarised as follows:

  1. Netbooks are light-weight and have sufficient battery power to last extended periods.
  2. They are also very low-cost when compared with other machines.
  3. Recent software developments (for example, Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Windows 7 Starter Edition) recognise the need to develop light-weight operating systems that boot quickly and enable basic productivity and internet use.
  4. By using netbooks for basic functionality (for example, typing essays, managing spreadsheets and internet research), existing technology can then be maximised for the type of use that requires higher powered machines (such as when editing videos, recording music or manipulating images).

Perhaps many schools need to consider models through which the bulk purchase of netbooks might be negotiated to the benefit of interested parents and students. Possible parameters in which such purchases might be made could include any of the following:

  1. Partially-subsidised machines, where parents and the college co-contribute to the machine’s purchase, either as a one-off cost or in instalments.
  2. The negotiation of three or five-year warranties to ensure that repairs are possible and will be low-cost in nature.
  3. Site licenses of favourable operating systems and/or basic productivity software.
  4. Assistance with developing adequate technical support.
  5. Well-negotiated arrangements for purchases from reputable and reliable suppliers.

What are your experiences in advising on the purchase of machines in your school as part of moves towards one-to-one computing? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Posted on

Integrating School Data with Student Email Addresses

Very few tech-related experiences come close to the nerdy thrill of cracking that spreadsheet formula that’s been puzzling you all week. On Thursday afternoon, I managed a small feat that will streamline communications in my school: synchronising school data with student email addresses to create shared contact groups using Mac Numbers, Google Apps Education Edition, Moodle and Shared Contacts (an app from a German company by the name of Floreysoft).

For some years now, it’s been puzzling me that while students have email addresses and schools have plenty of student data, never the twain have been able to automatically meet. How convenient would it be for teachers if the classes that are created in schools’ databases could then translate into shared contact groups to enable teachers to easily subscribe to their own student class lists! Ah, but the simple things in life so often elude us, do they not?

What’s made this all-too-difficult in the past has been our school system’s use of antiquated email software by a company named Editure, which did not allow for a shared directory, searchable addresses, let alone groups that could be created. The result of this was that while students did use their email addresses to contact their immediate friends, staff were unable to find an address easily, much less create a list of addresses.

Companies like Google have – for at least the last eight years – brought sophisticated ways of searching email archives and directories. With the flexibility of importing and exporting CSVs, all that is required is a spreadsheet program that can create the lists required.

Enter Mac Numbers and a few simple steps.

  1. From my school’s student management system (a horribly clunky and much out-dated MS Access-based program with the misleading title of ‘General Access’) I manage to export a student list with core classes and homerooms, which becomes the ‘General Access’ sheet like so:
  2. From Moodle, I manage to export a list of student names and Google Apps email addresses – let’s call it the ‘Moodle and Email Addresses’ sheet:
  3. Using the CONCATENATE formula, I string first and last names together on both sheets, to make unique search strings.
  4. I then create a third sheet – call it ‘The Works.’ It reads the names, classes and homerooms directly from the General Access sheet and will do the work of cross-referencing these against the Moodle data, to give us a list with all the fields we want – in this case, names, classes, homerooms and email addresses. I also CONCATENATE names on this sheet in a separate column.
  5. The LOOKUP formula then searches both the Moodle and General Access sheets to match the concatenated names and produce the Google-style CSV for creating the shared contacts groups.
  6. Having made a sheet with all the data, the ‘Reorganise’ tool in Mac Numbers lets us display only the email addresses for, say, the 8.3 class or the Mackillop homeroom. Hiding lets us display whichever rows and columns we need for whichever purpose. Hooray!

At this point I feel about as nerdy as a guy in a lab coat pouring fluorescent green liquid into a test tube. Well, not quite – but close.

If anyone is interested in this mock-up copy of the Mac Numbers spreadsheet, drop me an email or comment and I’ll pass it on.  After all, who wouldn’t give their right arm for Celine Dion’s class, homeroom AND email address?!

Posted on

Google Apps: On Scalable Web 2.0

Colleagues often tell me that what makes me a credible and helpful technology mentor is the sheer number of hours I spend in the classroom. Although teachers can be a cynical lot, I tend to agree that when corporate technology experts step into schools to trial something new, they often miss the mark simply because they fail to understand what it is like teaching a six-period day. Teachers can and will baulk at new technology because it means extra work. The challenge is in convincing them that the work will pay off, both for them professionally and for their students’ learning. My relative success is in making sure of this payoff for myself before I suggest something to colleagues.

Web 2.0 is a classic case-in-point. There are incredible gains to be made when incorporating some – or a full range – of web-based tools, services and applications into the curriculum. As a teacher, I cope with this well. I find it easy to set up a class list of Wikispaces accounts, manage threaded discussions, share media and facilitate collaborative reading and writing.

The problem is that what one teacher does in one classroom is all-too-often difficult to replicate and scale up across other classes, year groups or whole schools. Keeping track of user names and passwords for Blogger pages or Gliffy accounts is time-consuming – even the most able technology-minded teacher tears hair out when students lose (or can’t/won’t remember) basic details. Other teachers who struggle with the technology may simply avoid it altogether or pay lip service.

My reflection on Web 2.0 is that it needs to be taken in slow, measurable and scalable steps. Scalability is the main reason why I’ve decided to go with Google Apps Education Edition – which gives administrative control to domain owners to create email and apps accounts for an entire education institution. This gives us a starting point for all students in the school to be able to log in and access some of the best Web 2.0 collaborative tools available. Most importantly, we create and control the accounts – which provides security and a consistent experience. When teachers are ready to try online collaboration, the accounts are ready and students know how to use them.

For anyone who doesn’t know about Google Apps Education Edition, you might find the following video of interest:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRYRbPCHTck]

Posted on

Moodle and Google – on Libre and Gratis

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by my executive to give a “State of the Union” address to teachers on the successes of my Moodle/Apps@CCC project – the integration of Moodle courseware with Google Apps Education Edition. I was asked particularly to focus on where we were at as a school engaging in e-learning and what some of the future possibilities and potential might be.

It’s no real secret that some of our teachers are doing a fine job of adopting this new technology in a relatively short amount of time and on their own steam. I run afternoon sessions and sessions during school time on everything ranging from the basics of setting up a course page to moving towards co-constructivist learning with a broad range of modes and learning opportunities. Session after session, I see dedicated teachers wanting to know more and do more with technology, to build an online learning community of over a thousand switched-on critical thinkers and learners.

At the same time, many teachers struggle with the concept of e-learning – perhaps understandably so. For them, it simply involves uploading a bunch of Word documents to an online repository somewhere and leaving it at that. Problem is, while it’s a decent first step, the jury’s out on whether that’s really going to make a real difference in the long term. For some, this is the only step – and teachers here need to be challenged to think outside the square.

Seizing my opportunity, I prepared a talk on the nature of open/closed, libre/gratis (check out the Wikipedia page on this) and free vs free. On the one hand, one can appreciate Moodle – a fully open-source, free (as in libre, or speech) and grass-roots initiative. On the other hand, it’s also possible to appreciate Google Apps Education Edition – a relatively closed service, but nonetheless powerful and free (as in gratis, or beer). While the distinction to some might be academic, I really argue that we should always recognise where the Web 2.0 tools we use stand in relation to the questions – some of them ethical, others organisational – posed by the open/closed and libre/gratis paradigms.

Perhaps I’m dealing with two issues here – after all, what’s possibility and potential in relation to open and closed, and what does free beer have to do with it?! In the end, the way I see it is this: we’ve managed to source and use two of the best pieces of scalable software for e-learning-based education, both of which don’t cost us a cent. The possibilities and potential are endless – but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to think critically about how we approach them. After all, who really needs another bunch of Word documents?

Here’s the keynote of the presentation (check it out at slideshare.net to see accompanying notes):

[slideshare id=3382612&doc=presentation-100309205836-phpapp01]

Posted on

Searching for a Web 2.0 Learning Framework

I just finished reading an inspiring article by my old Macquarie lecturer John Hedburg and two of his colleagues, Matt Bower and Andreas Kuswara. “Conceptualising Web 2.0 enabled learning designs” documents some of the seminal work being done by academics who take the time not only to research, but to see, first hand, Web 2.0 in action in the classroom.

The article suggests that critical use of Web 2.0 moves well away from the traditional transmissive model of teaching towards co-constructive learning, which takes constructivism as a basis and builds on it through collaboration, re-defined roles and asynchronous learning. Their argument which follows on from this is that co-constructivism places “responsibility for production on groups of learners so that they can benefit from both the peer-assisted elements of dialogic pedagogies as well as the productive component of constructionist pedagogies.”

Ultimately – and unfortunately – the academe remains ethereal and perceptually irrelevant for teachers who fail to take the time to connect research with practice. For the rest of us, however, the value of a rigerous, theoretical framework in which to analyse and evaluate the power and potential of Web 2.0 is another important steppingstone  on the journey.