A number of incidents and conversations at work over the past few weeks started me thinking (again) about Western Australian schools’ access to social networking sites and new Web2.0 applications. At present a number of well known networking sites - MySpace and Piczo included - are centrally blocked by the DET WA filters. Many schools apply ‘blacklists’ at a local level - teachers and students at these schools will probably find they cannot access Facebook, Bebo, Habbo Hotel and YouTube and a variety of other sites that have been deemed non-educational or too band-width hungry.
All this research indicates that young people construct social spaces as part of their ‘normal’ communications and who could blame them for feeling disconnected when they are denied this method of accessing both formal and informal information networks at school.
As an educator I believe I have a responsibility to help my students acquire the skills they will need to cope and succeed in their rapidly changing world.
I don’t want to get into a debate about central filters vs ‘roll-your-own’ blacklists vs ’smoke-what-you-like’ approaches - those sort of decisions are made by people on a much higher rung of the corporate ladder.
What is really concerning me is the impact social networking is having on our students and on us, their teachers. My experience in the classroom has convinced me that one of the most important factors influencing worthwhile interactions in the classroom is the free exchange of ideas between all participants. As educators we cannot expect our learners to do it all on our terms, we must be prepared to meet our students on their ground. I have a long-standing interest in incorporating ICTs into my classroom teaching in a meaningful manner, to benefit the teaching/learning process and I feel reasonably comfortable in most digital environments. I am quick to acknowledge that my students have been instrumental in helping me feel more at ease using newer technologies - they have been great teachers and I really appreciate their willingness to share their expertise with me and other class members. [Just in case any of you read this - Thanks You're great.]
What I would like to know is how classroom teachers (who are already under a great deal of pressure) can best be helped to develop the skills they need to take advantage of social networking sites (especially when the sites are blacklisted so they can’t even explore them?)
Last comment of a long post: (from Peter Spicer-Wensley)
This reminds me of a truism that the internet sees filters as faults and routes around them.
I need to do more thinking about these issues. Another post will follow.
I may be coming late to the party but I think who’s amung us is a very cool widget to add to your blog.
I dropped the widget into my sideabr this afternoon and can now see who’s amung my blog!
from the website…
The amung.us project was created to bring you innovative web stats. We are not traditional. Page views are too easy to count. Instead, we tell you how many users are on your website or blog at once, where they are, how many of them there has been in the past and where they come from - live!
Since 1996 the Webby Awards have celebrated achievement in the field of interactive multimedia. Website entries make up the majority of Webby Awards Winners, Nominees and Honorees.
While all the nominated sites could be used to explore the techniques of effective multimedia communication the following selection could be useful general classroom resources. Teachers are advised to preview sites to ensure the content is suitable for students in their classrooms.
Eyes on Darfur - Amnesty International’s unprecedented Eyes On Darfur project leverages the power of high-resolution satellite imagery to provide unimpeachable evidence of the atrocities being committed in Darfur - enabling action by private citizens, policy makers and international courts. Eyes On Darfur also breaks new ground in protecting human rights by allowing people around the world to literally “watch over” and protect twelve intact, but highly vulnerable, villages using commercially available satellite imagery. [Some images may not be suited to use with younger students]
Invisible Children:Displace Me - People’s Voice Winner In the spring of 2003, three young filmmakers traveled to Africa in search of a story. What started out as a filmmaking adventure transformed into much more when these boys from Southern California discovered a tragedy that disgusted and inspired them, a tragedy where children are both the weapons and the victims.After returning to the States, they created the documentary “Invisible Children: Rough Cut,” a film that exposes the tragic realities of northern Uganda’s night commuters and child soldiers.
Skills One - Webby Award Winner The Institute for Trade Skills Excellence promotes and advances learning, teaching and training in Australian trades education and elevates the status of traditional trades and trades education as a career choice.
Smithsonain Education Peoples’ Voice Winner - The gateway to Smithsonian education resources. [including lesson plans]
Design for the Other 90% Webby Award Winner - Encompassing a broad set of modern social and economic concerns, these design innovations often support responsible, sustainable economic policy.Design for the Other 90% demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world.
World Without Oil - In May 2007, over 1,800 people combined imagination with insight to create World Without Oil (WWO), a realistic simulation of the first 32 weeks of a global oil shortage chronicled in 1,500 personal blog posts, videos, images and voicemails. Via these lesson plans, high school teachers can use this collaborative grassroots simulation to engage students with questions about energy use, sustainability, the role energy plays in our economy, culture, worldview and history, and many others.
NASA Earth Observatory Peoples’ Voice Winner - The purpose of NASA’s Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth’s climate and environmental change. In particular, we hope our site is useful to public media and educators. Also nominated NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Paper Critters - an online application for creating and sharing digital paper toys.
All blogs take a time to maintain and having two to work on is sometimes too much… but today I really appreciate having access to more than one blog - it means I can test stuff and make sure it works before I muck up the (semi) official work blog. It has taken a long time to get the approprite permissions to trial blogging at work so I am keen to make sure that all goes smoothly there. I am also pleased that edublogs has decided to allow embedding of javascripts - it will make including all sorts of multimedia possible. So here is my first attempt to embed the World Vision Flash file I want to feature on the CMIS Technology Focus blog.
Note added 1/5/08: Having read Sue Waters instructions about embedding flash (Thanks Sue) I now know that I MUST embed the code and then immediately publish. This won’t be possible at work as I have to get all draft posts approved before publishing. A work around is to insert a one cell table and embed the code into the table cell. This stops the embed code breaking the blog layout when you save the draft post.
Note added 13/5/08: I have replaced the swf file with an image that links to the originating website. I am happier about this for copyright reasons… and also because it stops the autoplay function that I couldn’t get rid off
It’s so easy to pick up gems when you hang around with the right people on twitter. A passing mention by Anne Murcha in a conversation she was having with MrKp sent me off to look at Issuu. What a great little discovery. I have already registered and made this cool little guide to the website where I work. I will definitely be spending more time exploring this application - it has lots of potential. Thanks MrKp and the rest of the twitterverse.
The State Library of Western Australia has wireless access available. Although not publicly launched the service is being used by about 150 people per day. What is particularly interesting is the mix of devices being used and the range of languages being used on those devices. More details available on the SLWA blog entry.
It’s great to see libraries providing free access - while on holiday back in February I took advantage of free wifi access at the State Library of Victoria to keep in contact with family and friends.
Britannica has made free access to the full content of Britannica Online through Britannica WebShare available to registered bloggers and web publishers via widgets.
from the Britannica WebShare site…
Britannica Widgets are here, and with them you can instantly post an entire cluster of related Encyclopaedia Britannica articles on your blog or Web site. Just follow the instructions and copy and paste the several lines of code associated with each widget as html into the appropriate place on your site. Any readers who click on a link will get the entire Britannica article on the subject, even if access to the article normally requires a subscription. Really. Try it.
I’m heading over to register and try it out (check back in a couple of days - every registration request is being processed individually)
Also available from Britannica Online are a number of embeddable widgets (example below) with a promise of more to come.
On twitter during the week and then on Ewan McIntosh’s and Paul Hamilton’s blog - Animoto now offer a free and fool-proof way to create presentations. It took only a few minutes to create this one - with images I already had online in my flickr account.
This is just one more example of the great tools available to teachers. Create a free account and have some fun
You're great.]
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Pedagogy, Professional_Reading, Web 2.0 | 
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