People being creative really amazes me, as I believe that I am the least creative person in the world. Those who follow this blog are aware that I am a podcast tragic and one that I regularly look forward to is The EdTech Crew. Last week they were lucky enough to have Eric Rosenbaum who works on some exciting projects at MIT. I was truly amazed at his work. If you haven’t already listened to the latest podcast, make sure that you do. Here is a YouTube clip of one of his latest ideas:
I recently became excited to become part of a project involving Shane Roberts, Adrian Greig and various other educators from around Queensland. The project involves the use of the iPod nano (does it need a capital N?), web conferencing using Elluminate and the Nike Sensor that you put into your shoes and it tracks the distance that you run, time etc. To be honest, I own an iPhone and have never really used a nano before. I knew what it was, but never really played with one. Why in gods name would I want one if I had the cream of Steve Jobs crop (in the PIp period: Pre iPad): The iPhone. Well I am glad that I have been proven totally wrong! This device has so much functionality and I am really looking forward to exploring it with the people involved within the project. The sensor gear will allow us to share data and compare results between groups of kids in various setting doing really life activities. I believe that this will help students understand mathematical concepts within real world experiences.
On the last day of last term, we took the nanos for our first trial. Traditionally at my school, our cross country is held on the last day of term 2. My class (year 7) runs a course that is supposed to be approximately 1.3km. Teachers are located at various stations around the school (called Checkpoint Charlies) and students ‘bust their guts’ to feel the internal pride at completing this gruelling experience. My station was located no where near the finishing line. I was out in the middle of the school somewhere. After strapping the kids up with all of the gear, I took off to my station with one of my non runnning studnets (eg she was to lazy to run and volunteered for this job) who used the video function on the nano to record students running and she did a fantastic job. She also interviewed some competitors using the voice memo function. But the fun was just beginning. When I returned to finishing area, I had one of my students come up to me and say “Mr Proud, my nano worked well but something went wrong. It says that I only ran 0.9km.” My reply was “Don’t worry – something must have gone wrong.” All of a sudden I was inundated with 4 other students telling me the same thing about the course distance. Our course was actually 400m shorter than what it was supposed to be. One of my more outgoing students stated “Don’t worry Mr Proud, I have already told the PE teacher about it and we will correct it for next year!”
So in summary, the iPod nano has a distinctive place within the classroom environment. Whilst I don’t ever think that it will have its own conference like the recent awesome one held in Victoria or have the hype that the greatest thing since sliced bread according to some (the iPad) the distinct advantage that it has over those two devices is its video function and its ability to record voice. Some of my more creative students are looking to create their own music to share with the class (and that will be a later blog post) and we are going to interact and share our information with other students within a project room.
Does anybody else have any thoughts on these outstanding devices? I am really looking forward to embedding their use within all key learning areas. I know the kids are as well. Really keen to hear other peoples points of view about their possible uses or how they have used them – apart from telling the PE teacher about the course corrections he needs to make for next year!
Recently (as in the past 6 months or so) I have become more aware of the power of Twitter in regards to back channeling at conferences. For those people who aren’t aware of what back chaneling is, my basic definition is people who are ‘live’ at an event providing countless tweets to us poor souls who are unable to attend. These tweets provide non attenders with a feeling of actually being at the events and having an understanding of what is going on. When used in conjuction with tools such as UStream, non attenders can virtually be experiencing the same learning opportunities as the people at the conferences. But the key question is – Is it the same?
The reason that I thought that I would write this blog post is due to the fact that over the past couple of days, my Tweetdeck (which I love using and it is painful that it isn’t running well at the moment) has been straining under the number of # tag columns that I have been putting in it. #Slide2Learn, #QSITE2010, #ISTE10 have joined my usual #eqelearn and #masterchef columns in providing me with so much content that it isn’t fun. The #ISTE10 stream was actually out of control. So many links were passing by me at a rapid rate. I think that I added around 10 new blogs to my iGoogle (see my previous entry about my excitement) and activated my Diigo account and put it to work to bookmark some great content that I will use with my class this term. I also joined the Slide2Learn Ning, QSITE Ning and ISTE Ning. It really has been a busy couple of days!
But getting back to my key question – is it the same. By the sounds of it, some attendees at ISTE10 actually didn’t go into key note addresses (and their has been a lot of thoughts about the opening key note and its lovely PowerPoint presentation) and sat outside and tweeted it up. I have to question this. If you could not get into the venue (eg it was sold out) that is one thing but I still would rather be there. I know last year that I missed out on the first day of eLearning Innovation Expo due to the fact that I had to attend 5 days of compulsory literacy training. I was only able to attend the second day. I loved the tweet stream from the first day, but nothing actually beat being there. I am really looking forward to this years eLearning Innovation Expo and am super excited that I am going to be actually meeting some of my PLN in person. I love how the tweet stream from these conferences ‘adds value’ to content being provided by discussing points of view and providing links but I think that I would prefer to actually be there.
In summary, back channeling has revolutionized the way that content is provided at conferences and feedback for presenters. If it is adding value, I think that it really is fantastic. But I think that it is an easy decision – if you can be there, nothing would be better.
(Quick note: sorry for the length of time between posts – I know that my fans have missed me. I have been super slack and won’t let it happen again)
Around 12 months ago, I found out about a thing that changed the way that I interact with the internet and find resources. That was just a little thing called Twitter. Under the advice of an educator that I have never meet (Mr Robbo) I signed up for this thing and jumped aboard the PLN train. I have a bit of an addictive personality (as outlined in a previous post about my podcasting addiction) and started to become amazed at how easy it was to find out about new things from educators all around the world.
Whilst I still believe in the power of the PLN, recently I have been thinking about revisiting an old friend and its name is iGoogle. In my BT world (before Twitter) I used to live and die by my iGoogle feeds. I remember with excitement reading a post from Sue Waters at the Edubloger about this exciting thing called RSS and how it would bring content to your rather than you having to open each website individually and hope to god that you haven’t wasted your time. I was amazed by this and really thought that it was amazing. I added so many things to my feeds, it was ridicioulus. I have the usual feeds about sport, school etc but I also added stuff about Harry Potter (which is really sad for a 34 year old grown man)
But then Twitter hit and I started to become amazed by how much information was passing by my finger tips every day. I thought ‘Who cares about RSS when I have Twitter?’ I lost track of my feeds and they just sat there. I actually deleted a whole bunch because I arrogantly thought that Twitter would do the trick for me and I wouldn’t need it anymore.
But recently I have been thinking about my feeds and due to Twitter, I am constantly adding new people to my PLN and they are posting links to their blogs. I really want to go and revisit some of their old work and it is fantastic. But what happens if I loose something in the ‘Tweet Stream’? I had a revelation in my head (it doesn’t happen often but when it does it is quite profound) and decided that if I liked their thoughts, I would add their feed to my iGoogle. It has been an empowering decision and I am glad that I have made it. I actually now have so many blogs from following # tags on Twitter (and a blog will come out about that soon) that I had to ‘sub categorise’ my ‘School Stuff’ tab into smaller sections.
I am glad that I have found you again iGoogle – I will never leave you out in the cold again!
