Tony Searl

Listen to what most students are thinking and more are now saying.

Thoughts on how to pursue systemic changes in schools.

CLICK IMAGE TO READ (and avoid the dreaded WALLY)

Everyones getting into the warm fuzzies what with Crunchies and Eddies and way too much Christmas cheer me thinks, so I say jump on the band wagon and get myself a piece of it. Award fever that is.
My mush (sic) awaited, eagerly anticipated, long heralded (all lies) “Ta Muchly” Awards have been fascistitly (sic too) nominated and decided on by an esteemed selection panel of one, me.
To collect your Ta Muchly08 you simply recognise yourself on my Netvibes PLN screenshot above, give yourself a pay rise, leave a PF irreverent (or just fun knee) comment below and you’re a winner. Simple hey?
Viral it and spread the word through your channels because there is a catch.
Last blogger to comment gets the Wally Gong, the Most Disconnected Tortoose (sic again) award 2008. No one wants to be last weeks news in the esteemed eyes of the blogeratti. Comments accepted up to and including last mail on 31st December 2008 so get working boys and girls.
If you’re a friendly compassionate type of blogger you’ll tip off your friends, if not lets wait and see who will be last person in. I always did like the movie It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, now we have an Aussie equivalent in a race to claim a non existent silly prize, just for the heck of it. Lets see who is game to play. 
A happy and safe Christmas to all
and very very seriously Ta Muchly.
Now for the slightly less silly disclaimer.
The above list are the bloggers (read real, dedicated teachers & learners, not just some online chat show) who have helped me grow professionally, both willingly on a regular basis or from afar without consciously knowing it, these last 6 months.
I jumped in blindly, wildly into the great mudpit that is the semantic/read/write web2.0 world of learning last May, almost drowned a few times, got down and dirty with the fellow mud chuckers and generally had an all round blast learning new stuff.
For the great unwashed,

 credit
Today Mick P and I surveyed and observed students as part of Principal Mark’s “Personal Control and Responsibility” Teacher Professional Learning (TPL) session at our campus. It caused some reflective thinking, good.
Teachers had choices to learn and participate by either;

research ‘engagement in learning’, individually or in groups 
particpate in “Head Games” or
complete a group work activity.

Three different learning methods focused on the common aims;

explore the benefits of choice in education
share ways of providing this choice
gather ideas on Personal Control and Responsibility and what it means for teachers
provide a basis for staff welfare targets.

We choose to research the student perspective on what they do if given “free choice”. Students had been given time on computers as teachers engaged in this TPL. Students were totally engaged in what they were doing. Why?
This is what they’d selected during our 20 minute observation;

arcade games = 5 (from the simple to extremely complex)
quizella = answered collaboratively by a pair
chat rooms
motorsport news online newspaper
editing google pictures, “a mash up”
Japanese Culture and online Christmas shopping
researching personal interests eg Maitland Gaol

Only half had actually selected games, which is what you may expect all to choose. 
Others selected educational, practical or text based sites. The overiding feature was their collaboration, engagement, learning and sharing.
Many watched and spoke to others about what they were doing and followed their recommendations (”check this out”, or “that looks good, whats the address?”) 
There was chat and sharing, laughter and learning, collaboration and networking. It was certainly not just single students working in isolation at a screen. They appeared to be personally in control and engaged.
It may not be traditional classroom syllabus based learning, but lets face it most of our life long learni...

After last weekends Federal COAG ICT largesse, its reassuring embattled Premier Rees has wasted no time in calling for new DET NSW technology supply tenders.
As part of the Federal edrev, DET NSW have on their wish list the lure of a sub $500 “compact learning devices (CLD’s)” for all 197,000 Year 9 to 12 students and more importantly wireless connectivity for 571 DET schools to be installed by February 2010. Tick, good. Very.
Guess the other 1500 DET sites, mainly primary schools, with students K to 8 don’t yet qualify for CLD’s or wireless connectivity and will fall further behind other systems, for a while longer. Cross, very. Maybe DET Primary Schools should just apply for an XO ala OLPC. Seems about how valued they are by DET NSW, currently.
The $1245 per student increase is also welcome news and may indicate Rudd is genuine in his bid for transparency in his new style of federalism. Lets hope so because Australians were promised a new approach to the passe blame game during the last election campaign.
Hopefully this rapid tender announcement reflects a state government committed to delivering the long promised technology improvements for Public Education students in NSW. I agree with Simon Job who also hopes Netbook specs don’t fill the tender, but Alex Serpo over at ZDNet believes the new CLD’s will be linux OS on netbooks to meet the $500 tender. (edit 12/12/08 or have a look here for yet more opinions)
 
Maybe we’d just be better off with these, or similiar. 
Celebratory restraint me thinks, until we see the actual laptop specs and roll out begin, the wireless functionality and most importantly the vital TPL to support teachers. Will teachers as learners receive one? I wonder?
Almost makes me want to celebrate and yell “Yippee-kay-yea”, almost. But Hans has still not left the building. John McClane has work to do yet.
picture credit: DoctorWho’s at flickr
Authored by Tony Searl. Hosted by Edublogs.
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Pleased to read in todays ZDNet feed that Federal Ministers Stephen Conroy and Lindsay Tanner have dipped their toes into the blogosphere. Not all are happy however and their first somewhat awkward blog does reek of ‘try hardness’.
If I was more optimistic about their efforts, I would say it is heartening indeed that ‘good cop’ Tanner’s welcome post says;
instead of simply copying overseas models we are keen to gather as much evidence as we possibly can about how Australians want to engage online.
Gathering evidence is one thing but listening and learning from the feedback will be a whole new government ballpark.
Lets hope governments aren’t dishing up ’same old same old’ rhetoric in slightly new clothes, the voices are strong, and on the clean feed issue, universally opposed.
We are also genuine about wanting to use online consultation to improve government-citizen relationships around public policy. We want real outcomes from online consultation…
The potential “new openess” and permanent digital record of online democracy will be interesting to watch unfold. A pity the government currently has a heavy handed approach, draconian springs readily to mind.
In its first 3 days Tanner’s welcome post garnered 289 comments, the vast majority, if not all, strongly opposed the clean feed proposal.
Please add your voice or sign GetUp’s petition below if this issue also concerns you.
Bring on the Julia Gillard Education blog and I’m sure the informed edublogosphere will welcome the ripple effect with their constructive feedback. 
Learners and systems starting from flat fields, often LDC’s, are not hindered by centuries of factory education models, many did not have one.  These systems are not burdened by the baggage of history or “thats how we always did it” attitudes or meaningless “one size little boxes tests scores are king” mantras to hold them back. They do not have to have the seemingly circuit...

I blogged about edmodo, an educational microblogging app, a few months ago and thought we’d assess it as a learning tool during 4th term. Our class have been using edmodo for about 10 weeks now and my senior Modern History students are warming to it as they discover its increasing usefulness. 
The hand out/in area is especially beneficial as student work can be reviewed prior to final submission and the ability to either ask and respond to individual questions or private group questions is great. In this way we can either see what the whole class are thinking or contributing or we can send specific messages to selected recipients.
The fact it is also password protected when you invite participants means it is just your group who access the relevant information so student security is not an issue.
The students believe edmodo will be of considerable benefit to them as they prepare for the 2009 HSC, so we have classified edmodo as “keeper app with merit”, not a “chuck it outer”.
The only drawback so far is DET NSW have classified edmodo as “evil”, so access is blocked at school. The students all use it at home, or in their breaks using mlearning, so this is luckily not an issue. (except in DET blocking it at school and the message this conveys about some attitudes towards useful 21st century learning applications)
 
Edmodo.com - Microblogging for Education
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: free communcation)

Authored by Tony Searl. Hosted by Edublogs.
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Machininima and Second Life are just Future Education. Right?

No, wrong, they are Now Education.

Find out more about the new sharing, creative commons.