Monthly Archives: October 2011

Oct 21 2011

ECOO, Day 1

What a spectacular Day 1 for ECOO.  The organizing team really needs to be commended.  Session after session were so motivating and exciting.  At every turn, every need seemed to be anticipated and addressed for attendees.  It was also a great day of friendship renewals and an opportunity to see Twitter friends face to face for the first time.  I was going to keep a list but it became unmanageable and I just know that if I try to go from memory, I’ll forget someone and I don’t want to slight anyone.

At the end of the day, it is time to realize just how tired an aggressive schedule can make you.  Throughout the day, I took some notes of my observations from the sessions — thank you Evernote.  They appear below.  I even got the opportunity to present my own session to a nicely filled Thornhill Room.  As a presenter, you’re always so appreciative of people that would take the time to visit your session.  My presentation “Web that Works” is online here if anyone is interested.

Straight from Evernote are my notes for the sessions that I attended.  I just wish I could have attended more.

Morning Plenary Session

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson

  • Taking back the language of learning
  • what is the new model for success?
  • easy connection between passion to learn and the resources to learn it
  • many teachers in our lives
  • 5 billion people connected to web in 2012
  • teachers or predators
  • bit.ly/pV4xTb
  • plpwiki.com
  • break into a group and work on topics from the wiki
  • scott mcleod quote about connection
  • posture of a learner – learn from kids
  • linking, lurking, learning, leading 
  • Brenda and Peter have the hearts of a learner

Facebook in the Classroom

Mark Carbone

  • Junior achievement Ethics survey
  • Principals and Social Networkin Report 2010 
  • Easy to build a case for the use of social media
  • Honours the student voice
  • Student Voice – Digital Citizenship Day – students focused on learning; administrators focused on rules and regulations
  • Facebook as an instructional tool
  • conversational writing
  • sharing poetry
  • homework support groups
  • peer review of student movie trailers
  • Blog style posts
  • shared art gallery
  • discussion of global issues
  • math/science challenge questions
  • facebook groups
  • teacher fan pages for schedules, homework, test dates
  • department pages to promote new learning offerings
  • digital citizenship discussions - online safety
  • Personal Facebook site versus a Professional Facebook site
  • Consideration of personal boundaries
  • Discussion about age restriction for access to Facebook – Create a group for the class – invite a fellow teacher – let the students know the name of the group and they’re in
  • use of screen capture to grab inappropriate comments – turn alerts on so that you know when something new is posted
  • no need to have a new AUP – policies in place were acceptable for their implementation
  • create a new group for subsequent years
  • monitoring reveals over 1M hits on Facebook a day from WRDSB

Creating a Positive Digital Footprint

Diana Maliszewski
  • How much do you want to be transparent?
  • Think about the voice in the back of your head before you click post.  Where will the post end up?
  • If your account is hacked, what does that tell the hacker about you?
  • There are positive and negative things out there.
  • How do we avoid losing control of ourselves?
  • Build your own digital identity
  • Lots of discussions about why some people are open and transparent and why others prefer to be more private
  • Use of Google Search stories to build your own identity
  • Places to build an identity – Twitter, personal blogs, wikis, personal websites, official publications
  • How do you determine if something goes public or is private?  Private makes it OK for students to make mistakes?
  • OSAPAC licensed Passport to the Internet 

Over lunch, we had a structured conversation in the World Cafe 

  • How can we address ableism so we can all learn safely?
  • What kind of Learning model to move PD forward 

Freshly Minted Software

Danuta Woloszynowicz 

  • Activity identifying what OSAPAC titles that you’ve used in your classroom this year
  • Why do some titles not have teacher take home rights?
  • Focus on Pixie 3
  • This year:  Licensed 5 new titles
  • subscription renewed to 2 existing titles
  • OSAPAC sponsored PD sessions
  • tied more titles to curriculum expectations
  • surveyed the province
  • linked software titles to movie tutorials
  • provided feedback to software developers about how they can make their products better 

    Then, we closed off with a fun get together with a focus on gaming.  You haven’t played Angry Birds until you’ve played it on a SMART Board….or any of the other games that were set up around the room during the social.

     

    Oct 21 2011

    OTR Links 10/21/2011

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    By dougpete • Posted in Links
    0
    Oct 20 2011

    How much do we really need?

    I read this article with a great deal of interest today.  

    Vodafone and Canonical Release a Webbook in South Africa

    The combination is interesting.  The hardware is based on ARM architecture and the operating system, Ubuntu, is free.  Imagine what you could do with your class, armed with that power.  Imagine just how many units could be purchased with the same amount of dollars that are spent on what you’re buying today.

    http://www.canonical.com/vodafone

    In many ways technology has got away from some of the uses that education needs.  Do we honestly and truthfully need to have every machine in a school on the high end of power and performance for the tasks that we do.  You can’t blame the vendors; they’re providing what the market thinks that consumers want.  And, perhaps for the ultimate home hacker, they can find a use for it.

    But, in an educational world where we’re talking about building conversations, making electronic projects, using the power of the internet, immersing ourselves in a world of web applications, are we bankrupting the process by not looking for alternatives that are a better fit?

    Yes, there will be times where you need a local machine or a “mother ship” to sync your portable devices (thanks, Becky and Mark) but just how much is enough?  How much empty hard drive space is wasted globally?  It’s kind of scary when you think of it.

    That’s why initiatives like Chromebooks and now this device are so intriguing to me.  There is so much available on the web; we all know that.  Configure a good browser and tie in appropriate web applications and you’re off to a good start.  What’s interesting about the Vodafone/Canonical deal is that potentially it could go even further.  You’ll need an operating system and Edubuntu (the educational branch of Ubuntu) is a great start.  In addition to the standard Ubuntu software, Edubuntu packages a very nice collection of educational software.  Check out the offerings at the Edubuntu wiki.  If you have already installed Ubuntu, you can pick and choose packages depending upon student age.

    But, do we have what it takes to stand up and say let’s give it a go?  Can we sit back and take an honest analysis and ask just how much we really need to spend to do what needs to be done?  I wonder.

    A previous posting to this blog had someone ask if I knew of a school district that had tried a switch?  I’m not aware of one.  Are you?  

    I think this is an exciting announcement and I know that I’m going to be following it with great interest.

    Oct 20 2011

    OTR Links 10/20/2011

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    By dougpete • Posted in Links
    0
    Oct 19 2011

    Managing your presence

    Back in May, I had started experimenting with SocialBro as a way to manage my Twitter account.  I used to still fire it up at least once a week to see the activity surrounding my account.  It’s interesting to do things like find out who unfollowed you or get a listing of your new friends or any of a number things.

    I don’t use that program any more.

    Instead, I now use the Google Chrome application – SocialBro!

    Yes, they’ve taken all of the goodness of the original program and stuck it right in the browser.  I really like things that work from the browser and don’t require switching to another application.  SocialBro just opens in a new tab and from there you can analyze your account.  There are a great deal of choices.

    Now, I’m absolutely the first person to admit that I’m not using this utility to its greatest possible function.  Every time that I open the application, I find something new to explore.  Some is serious; some just brings a smile.

    Like, I’m being followed by a carton of eggs…

    But, back to serious…if you’re interested in having a dashboard for your social life, install this extension into Google Chrome, click synchronize and start analyzing.  If you’ve got a classroom Twitter account, you have all kinds of data and material for analysis and inference activities.

    Oct 19 2011

    OTR Links 10/19/2011

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    By dougpete • Posted in Links
    0
    Oct 18 2011

    Upgrading

    There’s been a lot of upgrading in and around the internet this week.  You may have experienced the vacuum of bandwidth – I know that I certainly have!  Yesterday, I was on the personal upgrade route and I was so impressed with how easy it was.

    No, it wasn’t the upgrade that I’d been anxiously waiting for.  I already did that and the lockups continue although out of fairness, I haven’t seen as many of them but they’re still there.

    The upgrade that I’m talking about this time around was to Ubuntu.  Release 11.10 is out and I’m checking to see what’s new with this release.  I had used 11.04 previously.  If you’re at all curious, there are many ways that you can get your feet wet with Ubuntu.

    There are lots of options.  You should at least give it a shot sometime.  Understand what FLOSS is all about.

    Upgrades to Ubuntu always amaze me.  Maybe it’s because my needs are meager.  Maybe it’s because most of what I’m doing these days is in a browser.  It’s just so easy.  I make a backup of any local documents that I might need and then do a complete clean install from the downloaded package.  There are a couple of regular favourites that I install above and beyond that but I’m off and running.  It comes with your productivity suite and so much more as part of the install.  Any other system and you’re looking for the original CD-ROMs or searching your favourite sites to download the latest.

    In my case, I have a Netbook that’s pure Ubuntu and a Windows 7 computer that dual boots.  The installation is quite quick and efficient.  There were some things about 11.04 that I was hoping would be fixed/enhanced and I wasn’t disappointed.

    First, the trackpad on my Netbook has never worked completely well with any operating system.  Maybe I’m picking or maybe there was just something just a little screwy with my little Dell.  But, no longer.  The trackpad now work just as well and as responsively as any that I’ve ever used.  I’m amazed at how that Mini 10v flies with Ubuntu.  There were no problems installing and getting things up and running there.

    So, I turned my attention to the Vaio where it would be a dual-boot system with Windows.  Here, backups are a little more crucial because it’s a full desktop replacement unit and, quite frankly, where I do most of my production work.  Previously, I had used Wubi just for the ease but this time around, I decided to make a full-time commitment with the dual-boot.  Partitioning the hard drive which is always a nervous experience, but I was able to pull that off as well as the installation while watching football.  You can’t beat that!  Windows complained a bit and wanted to run an integrity check of the drive so I let it have its way.  Now that I’m up and running, I have run into a problem.  The hardware screen resolution is 1600×900 but that requires proprietary drivers.  I ran into this situation with 11.04 and was able to resolve it.  Alas, not so lucky in the first 24 hours this time around.  I’m stuck at a measly 1280×720.  My Netbook is mocking me.  But, everything else is humming along just fine so far.

    I’m really impressed with the enhancements to the Unity interface.  Even the application launcher seems much smoother and easier to work with.  I must admit that I wasn’t a fan when it came out but it grows on you and now it’s just the way that you do business in this environment.  The Dash is neat.  Quick and easy access to anything that’s not in the launcher is the order of the day.  And, if you don’t have it on your computer, the Dash will recommend what you need to download!  I figured that I’d do a screenshot of the desktop for inclusion in this post…then realized that I need to resize it.  It’s time to get The Gimp.  And, here’s the image!

    So much that I do is on the web.  Ubuntu One is right there in the Launcher.  This is great – it was cloud storage before cloud storage became cool.  The browser that comes with Ubuntu is Firefox. Certainly, this is a great browser and I use it interchangeably with Chrome.  Next, it was off to get a copy of Chromium so that I could feel at home!  I have my Chrome browser on my other computers nicely decked out with extensions and it’s always like magic when you turn on the sync feature and watch as the browser knows what I need, downloads and puts them in place.  All, unattended.

    Wow, that was a full evening of work.  It’s 14-6 for the Jets and we’re approaching half-time.  Time to call it a night and watch Chris Berman!  This upgrade went very well.  No lockups here.  I’m a happy camper, and of course, all of this software happiness comes at no charge.

    Oct 18 2011

    OTR Links 10/18/2011

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    By dougpete • Posted in Links
    1