going with google

I guess I am a believer in google.
But Why???
So what is so good about a google map, doc etc.
For me the same opportunity is consistent. Collaboration is my preferred learning style in this web environment. Creativity, added knowledge and personalisation make me feel as if I can serve some purpose.When we add and individualise a map we are adding knowledge value. As others add knowledge this increases further.

• historical events
• story telling where event move from one location to another
• all the place where you can eat, exercise, view
  
• all the places to collect, pine cones, water
  
• areas that are changing
• holiday spots measure distance
• school camp description
• becoming familiar with other people and worlds
• poems
  
• water quality sample results
• oral history map references

Here is a map I have been using to test some of the features in Googlemaps

View Larger Map

here is a link to a google earth in education page

head, shoulders, knees and toes

This post started as a quick rant on the need to consider health in learning. I have revised this to saying we need to consider how we learn: engaging with reality, rather than utopian ideals, using research alongside beliefs and past experiance.

This star gazette article talks up the importance of exercise in offering brain-related benefits such as reducing stress and improving attention.
There are some schools where exercise is making way with keeping up with requirements in other areas.
To me it reminds us that some of the most important things in education maybe quite subtle health, diet, art, music, emotional engagement ,values, learning a second language etc. I say maybe as I feel this is what we need to come to understand . My concern is that we will repond to the challenges of the future with an increasing number of checklists rather than an agreement of what is important.
Julia Aitken talks about learning to learn. So the question for me is will being healthy and involvement in music help add to engagement levels when engagement is what is wanted at the highest levels. This reminds me of the need also for downtime when new understanding is hard. For example moving from a demanding session of maths to another one in formal language may actually reduce understanding with the brain not allowed time to build pathways for this learning.

Some recent research concludes

The brain performs many functions simultaneously. Learning is enhanced by a rich environment with a variety of stimuli.

Learning engages the entire physiology. Physical development, personal comfort, and emotional state affect the ability to learn.

The search for meaning is innate. The mind's natural curiosity can be engaged by complex and meaningful challenges.

taken from a table of the implications on brain research for how we learn

Set them free

How network dependent are we?

Well we have just about signed off on the development of a wireless gateway at the school where I work. A what?
A wireless gateway is a computer networking device that routes packets from a wireless LAN to another network, typically a wired WAN. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless gateway
or off the top of my head
"A mechanism for providing wireless access to a network and controlling the traffic on it."
We are using a bluesocket solution. This will mean that all kind of devices and visitors can use our network to access the web or other resources while we remain safe in our data and internet connection.
It is funny but it strikes me that both are necessary now. An organisation needs to be able to host others on its network as life without internet becomes informationally untenable. This is coupled with people's realisation that their devices are wireless capable if only the environment in which they find themselves can provide network access.
Devices like this psp or the eeepc above or dare I say it phones. I am just continuing this post having transferred my device from an expensive ibm x60 tablet running vista (a problem with fan noise is driving me to drink) to my daughter's $500 nz eeepc. The screen size is different but the application is the same ie the web and what it connects me to.



The network the network the network.
Friends, sounds, opinions, information, differentiation, images, diversity, provocation, articulation, video, passive activity, aggregation, automation etc etc.
Outside of this there are many other applications of course but I feel the involvement of others is what makes the network the place to be.

The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies:

• thinking
• using language, symbols, and texts
• managing self
• relating to others
• participating and contributing.

All of these are network related. Now I am not saying that
network infrastructure is all there is BUT I can't see us resolving
key competencies without it. This all makes " the kids pay price for cellphones on Weblogg-ed " a sad read.
Let's ensure our organisations have wireless networks that are secure but they
must be open and able to be utilised widely. What do you think??

Current events?

I am not a great fan of current events in the classroom.

Why? Because what we generally see as a current events programme is: a teacher decides what of value has happened in the past week maybe 2. (generally looking in newspapers and on TV).
The questions that are generated at an assessment level are trivial pursuit in nature. So why do we teach this?

• The deep learning ?
• Is it Thinking or Remembering?

So people fit in with the conversations in the street the chit chat etc. or perhaps so that we have a wider understanding of the world around us?
That I feel this is selling ourselves short.
Short on where we need to be for the future we need to be articulate about.
I feel we need to lift our overall level of understanding of politics, social issues, environmental issues tetc
Instead

• Teach students reciprocal teaching
• Work in wikis or online collaborations reflecting on current issue events
• compare 2
• Order five current events in order of importance state why?
• Debate a case.
• Use graphic organisers
• Read each others blogs on current events
• RSS Feed from news sites and even add specific google news search to follow a topic
• Fight the desire to summatively assess recall
• Nonlinguistic representation
  

I looked at some of Stuff from a wiki Marzano and web2.0
worth a browse.

Junior Students What is Important?

Mark Treadwell Talked about the Juniors ie Students aged 5 to 7

At the Learning at Schools conference last week in Rotorua. He was talking about the need to remove pressure from junior classrooms for everything but language. He mentioned that science for example should have no real objective beyond say being amazed by the world around us. This could be achieved by looking at some things though a microscope (perhaps one a day for a week) The mosquito wing below is a prime example. The main message I see is to reduce and simplify moving to essential knowings and concepts rather than skills and discrete objectives. What we need to be comfortable with is what do student really need to learn at age 6? What Can they Learn?

The following are my thoughts on where Junior Schools might fit into
learning pathways.
langauge
Oral

• listening

• speaking

Visual

• viewing, graphics
  
• presenting

Written

• Reading
• Writing, txt

Operacy

• doing stuff in the playground
• exploring
• manipulating stacking
• fine motor skill development

Learning to live together.

Learning to think

Infrastructure - network

It look to me that in most cases applications are moving to the network. My colleague and friend Mark Craven was talking about his belief that cloud computing is the way to go.

"cloud computing -- where applications and files are stored on a large, centralized supercomputer or network. The end user accesses his or her files using computers that are more streamlined but less sophisticated than today's typical machines."

I see some exceptions today with the power etc not quite there for video editing, high end gaming etc. But overall I think that Mark is right. Cloud computing is simple, reduces admin over heads etc. At the school where I work email, calendaring, planning, learning, photo galleries, wikis, forums etc already happen on the web. Portfolios reporting and collaboration are happening in this space also.
This is an organisational cloud in my mind.

Assets for cloud computing

• big pipes with the network to the internet and back
• virtualisation of servers so that demand can be met
• from whole resource
• back up of data to provide high Qos and response time
• clear navigation and service understanding
• consistent interface and a central portal organised
• scalable so that new applications and client can be added

.

Infrastructure - people

Have been working on a presentation for an upcoming conference.

This has been a reflection on 8 years of work in co-ordinating ICT
in a large New Zealand primary school. Probably the hardest infrastructure get
right is people. The more time I spend with technology the further I develop
my skills and comfort. Yet there are people who are yet to go online in any significant
manner or for any significant purpose.

As technologies become more reliant, powerful and ubiquitous those not on board
seem more conspicuous by their absence.

If we consider conceptual frameworks that
may provide a learning pathway for these people what might it be.

• Logic -- Thinking
  
• Risk taking -- Discovery
  
• Questioning -- Making Meaning
  
• Recognising patterns
• Utilising others (along the line of Vygotsky's ZPD) -- Belonging

This group of concepts (competencies?) is quite similar to the core of this diagram
produced by Mark Treadwell