QR Codes in education

Interested in an introduction to QR Codes for education?

This slideshare presentation by Marielle Lange provides both an introduction to QR codes eg definition, creation, tips and and some ideas that educators can use to get those creative juices flowing.

QR codes in education

View more presentations from Marielle Lange

Moodle Cool Course competition extended

The Moodle Cool Course competition has been extended into the new year.
The new closing date is 19 January 2010.

"The purpose of the Cool Course Competition is to encourage people to donate great Moodle demo courses for our Moodle demo site and to start building our demo community hub for Moodle 2.0."
(Helen Foster)

Check out the existing entries on the site.

Social Media and Learning2.0

The use of Social Media, so popular for social networking, is expanding into business, government and education worlds. Many companies are beginning to embrace the use of new social networking / media tools for promotion, marketing, engagement and interaction with clients and staff development but approaches and guidelines vary. These reports and resources outline a few examples.

Many educators see the potential of social media / web2.0 for teaching and learning and their own professional learning but access is often restricted in schools and filtering is an issue, as discussed in many blog posts.

As use of social media becomes more widespread in the community, learning2.0 research reports are of interest, including 'Learning 2.0: The Impact of Web 2.0 Innovations on Education and Training in Europe' - Final Report (2009) - European Commission Joint Research Centre. This 'describes how the emergence of new technologies can foster development of innovative practices.' It provides pointers for new directions and opportunities using new tools and new approaches in teaching and learning.

The Australian Government Gov2 taskforce is about to release a report, 'Engage -- Getting on with Government 2.0', which is expected to outline how the use of new social media technologies can help to make public sector services more efficient and to better meet the needs of the community.

Image by woodleywonderworks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/73645804@N00/3328850666

Telstra (Australia) has come up with a new staff training guide for social media, the 3Rs of social engagement, for their 40,000 employees, as outlined in a recent post on Mashable. The '3Rs' are identified as responsibility, respect & representation. This online training package includes a comic style flip book with media clips.

The 'Ten Commandments of Social Media' by Robb Clarke aims to provide an easy to read personal guide to operating in an ethical manner, to not only 'make you a better person' but to also ensure a 'more appreciative' bunch of followers. Again, ethics are highlighted.

Social media, eg Twitter, is a vital component of developing and nurturing an educator's professional learning network (PLN) in a connected world and for lifelong learning in the digital age.

Highlighting Social Media courseware

If you are interested in free social media courseware with Creative Commons licensing, then check out Laurel Papworth's offering "COURSEWARE: social media and PR Crisis Communication."

Laurel is @silkcharm on Twitter with a very handy 8,770 (and rapidly rising) followers (June 8, 2009). Her blog reveals a top blogger, social media strategist, writer, keynote speaker and workshop facilitator on online communities and social networks and Twitter highlights a 'World of Warcraft' addict.

Laurel has generously started sharing her courseware under a 'Creative Commons Attribute and Non Derivative' license.

She is using the services of Scribd and publish on demand service, Lulu, to share with the wider community. Visit Laurel's storefront on Lulu for hardcopy (purchase) or free download options.

"Scribd offers a YouTube style embed, Lulu offers both hardcopy and a free download service."

COURSEWARE: Social Media PR Crisis Communication

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Marketing Business & Law tips help

Example of embedding above.
If you have an interest in the potential and use of social media, in a variety of contexts take the time to check out Laurel's courseware, visit Laurel's blog and add comments/suggestions or check her Lulu storefront.
And follow @silkcharm on Twitter and add to the global discourse via this phenomenal example of social media . I have!

Thanks, Laurel.

Social Networking

The phenomenal growth of social networking in recent years, and more recently, the massive interest in, and uptake of, real-time applications in social media eg. Twitter, are contributing to new trends in lifelong learning, business, marketing, entertainment and more.

This Slideshare presentation, 'Integrating Social Networking & Web 2.0 Applications into e-Learning ', by Rob Gibson provides an overview of a range of social networking & social media applications and examples of potential use in an educational context. A good starting point for increasing awareness and for educators considering the role of new tools, web applications and strategies in an e-learning environment.

Social Networking

View more OpenOffice presentations from rgibson.

Scratch Day on the Limestone Coast

Scratch is a programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab. Middle school students can design, create and share interactive stories, games, colourful animations and other projects. The Scratch website, highlighting its 'imagine, program, share' vision, currently hosts 425809 projects (total 10,791,782 scripts, 3,329,676 sprites and 65,827 contributors).

Scratch is designed to

"help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively".

World Scratch Day (09) was celebrated on May 16. The 'Limestone Coast Scratchers' from the south east of South Australia joined in this highly successful event.

(It) "was ... an opportunity for students who would benefit from an event that would extend them in their Higher Order Thinking skills and who had the capacity to take their learning back to their respective school and teach their peers."

This Limestone Coast regional event, with 13 teams of Year 6/7s, was hosted by Grant High School (South Australia) and was one of over 100 global events for World Scratch Day. Feedback suggests it was an outstanding success which augurs well for a successful repeat event in 2010.

Read the Scratch Day 09 Report wiki for a comprehensive picture of the aims, program (including activities links), mentor support, outcomes and feedback.

Congratulations to all!

21st century: Challenges, change and trends

This Slideshare presentation, 'Challenges, change and trends', by Derek Wenmoth was the Keynote presentation to the NZ Adult Literacy Practitioners Association (ALPA). It came to my attention, courtesy of my Twitter network.

Derek provides a compelling case for re-shaping new curriculum in the 21st century to encompass new technologies/tools and new literacies for current and future generations .
This keynote, tailored for his audience, has a focus on

"the potential for ICTs to be used to enable better learning for adult literacy students."

Challenges, change and trends

View more OpenOffice presentations from dwenmoth.

One slide provides an interesting comparison between communication technologies - then, now and next? with future technologies enabling pervasive, ubiquitous access and use (new media) and new literacies for the 21st century.

Derek puts out a number of challenges to educators including:

"To what extent are we prepared, as a society and as educators, for the massive changes in human capabilities that digital technologies are likely to enable in the next 13 years?
To what extent are our future visions for education based upon assumptions about humanity, society and technology that are no longer valid?"

How does this fit with the current emphasis in many countries on new/revised curriculum and increased focus on testing a narrow view of what constitutes literacy?
What will the next 13 years bring for the youngsters (born in 2008) featured in the first slide ?

What does RSS mean to you?

Kerrie Smith asks the question, 'What does RSS mean to you? Do you use it?' on her education.au blog 'You are never alone'.

Kerrie writes ....
"Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, virtual environments, and social networking tools are not going to go away. If we have any sort of online life then they are going to increasingly be part of the way that we work. And yet when I conduct face to face workshops and begin to talk about RSS, eyes glaze over, and clearly my audience largely do not know what I am referring to. "

I can relate to Kerrie's lament and have posted my comments to Kerrie's blog posting and repeat some of my response here.

Discovering the power of RSS some years ago, I have done my best to share understandings with colleagues/other educators/students with some success. I have also experienced the …’talk about RSS, eyes glaze over’… syndrome. Practical and relevant examples do help in demystifying this but there’s a big pool of internet users, including educators, unaware of the vast potential of the Read/Write (Web2.0) world.

Luckily, there are also many talented, inspiring and generous folk who are making a difference in this area through social networking, online conferences etc. RSS underpins so much in the connected, collaborative world and is now much more pervasive, tools abound and are simple to use! Understanding and using aggregation is a necessary skill to be information literate.

I have been reading recently about the Queensland Government Department of Education's introduction of an ICT Pedagogical Licence (and their 'Smart Classrooms Professional Development Framework'). These initiatives provide support for educators and 21st century learning environments in a connected Web2.0 world. A positive step!
(And fewer instances of 'eyes glazed over' in Kerrie's future workshops!)

Recommended reading (Folksonomies)

Recommended reading from the past month for anyone interested in this topic.
European Schoolnet - Insight (Observatory for new technologies and education) has released a special research report 'Folksonomies, social bookmarking and tagging: state-of-the-art' by Research Analyst, Riina Vuorikari, (May 10, 2007)

K12 Online Conference 2007

The call for proposals for this year's K12 Online Conference (following on from the highly successful, inaugural 2006 conference) is being publicised in the blogosphere. The conference will be held in October (15-19 and 22-26) 2007. (Deadline for proposals is June 18th, 2007)

Educators "interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice" should bookmark this site. Check the conference strands below.
All presentations will be available and archived under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

The conference theme is "Playing with Boundaries" and some suggested topics and opportunities to provide input can be found on the conference blog.

The Conference has been organised into 4 strands over the two weeks:
Strand A: 'Classroom 2.0' and Strand B: 'New Tools' during Week 1 and
Strand A: 'Professional Learning Networks' and Strand B: 'Obstacles to Opportunities' during Week 2.

The 2007 K12 Online Conference is not to be missed!

OLPC - deployment in Nigeria

CNet News has a news item, via a photo gallery, 'Nigerian students power up their laptops' outlining the deployment of the first of Nicholas Negroponte's 'Hundred Dollar Laptop' One Laptop per Child (OLPC) education program in Africa and the Middle East. The XO Children's Machines were introduced to the students and teachers at the two room, 150 student school close to the Nigerian capital, Abuja. In addition to the laptops, OLPC has 'installed a satellite dish, power generator and modem to give the school electricity and Internet connectivity'.

The photo gallery captures the first stages of the changes in the learning journey of these young Nigerian students, with opportunities to construct their own learning, collaborate and communicate in the connected world beyond the physical space of their crowded classroom. Contrast the images of the drawing of a computer on the classroom wall, pre-OLPC, with the experimentation and wonder as they begin to customise their new learning tools.

Image Gallery for Education

The E2BN Image Gallery is one part of the E2BN Digital Media Assets Resource Library which is an evolving resource for educators.
This resource is provided by Digital Media Assets with the aim of providing resources which 'can enrich teaching and learning, engaging students and providing opportunities for the creative use of ICT in lessons.'

The Image Gallery provides a range of good quality photos, organised by categories. Albums can be viewed as a slideshow and registered users can upload (and annotate) photos to albums. The site refers to a moderation component with 'some submissions subject to approval by E2BN Gallery Administrators.'

The database is searchable and all photos have 'been provided freely for Educational use only. They are NOT copyright free and users should read the conditions of use.
This resource is not in the league of Flickr, which is a fabulous resource and it has many third party tools which add to its value. The Creative Commons licensing option is great! However, access to Flickr is likely to be blocked in many schools.

The E2BN Digital Media Assets Resource Library is a developing resource with the addition of a video/audio gallery and a section on creating and editing digital assets and useful links.