This morning I noted in my Google+ stream a comment that Mac OS X Lion is launching tomorrow (US time).
I thought perhaps I should make sure my backup was current before the new OS was released. This got me thinking about what I would lose if I upgraded and something went wrong. This then got me thinking about the “tools” I use in my everyday online life.

I realised that I wouldn’t lose much. I do weekly backups so anything created since the previous backup would be lost (hence a great reason to backup before you do a major update/upgrade).

However, one of the big reasons I wouldn’t lose much is my use of dropbox. I have a paid account with them which means I have 50+GB of space in the cloud where my stuff resides. I have a default ‘documents folder’ in the dropbox so anything I create using computer based software is automatically saved there; I use it to save all my bits and pieces for school – I have several years of resources there; all my IWB files are in the dropbox; in short anything that’s a document of any kind is in my dropbox. I have alias icons on my desktop so I can drop various other files/items into specific folders too.

The other big reason I wouldn’t lose much is cloud computing. It’s interesting to hear people starting to use the term and ask me things like “have you heard about the new big thing called cloud computing?” when I’ve been cloud computing for years now.

Google docs is the ultimate (for me) form of cloud computing. Within docs you can create documents, spreadsheets, drawings, forms,  and presentations. All of these can be embedded into websites for others to view (or kept private just for you or shared with a few other people).

I also like the collaborative ability in docs – an example would be the notes I took last Friday at a teacher only day with James Nottingham – I then shared the notes with friends of mine who I knew were attending various workshops with him while he’s here in New Zealand. They are adding to my notes and we will end up with a great set of notes – far better than if we had handwritten them into our notebooks (paper or electronic).

Here in NZ we have a government funded Mahara distro called MyPortfolio – I’m beginning to aggregate my professional content together – I’m able to import existing content through rss feeds which is very helpful. Once again this content is all online which makes it a lot more safe than if it was just on my computer. (Imagine losing your CV!)

As I type this up in a Google Doc I’m also doing a bunch of other various jobs around the house – I can just walk away knowing my work is saved – I can even come back to it on another device if I so wish. Even with my iPhone on the run. Who wouldn’t like this tech? (The last 2 sentences were indeed typed on the iPhone!)

Other tools I use are Blogger and wikispaces. These are just the tools I use for me – I have other cloud tools that I use with my classroom – but that’s another story!

My essential tool summary – aka what I couldn’t live without

1. Dropbox – http://www.dropbox.com
2. Google docs – http://docs.google.com
3. Wikispaces – http://wikispaces.com
4. Blogger – http://www.blogger.com
5. MyPortfolio – http://myportfolio.school.nz/

James Nottingham

• Many schools are about proving rather than learning
• Gardner quote – teachers obsessed with categorizing kids
• What is a holiday?

Links
http://www.jamesnottingham.co.uk/blog/learning-pit
http://www.challenginglearning.com/
http://p4c.com/
http://www.youtube.com/jabulani4

The Learning Challenge

• The Learning Pit
  • Taking kids from a point where they are clear about what they know and down into the pit where they are confused (So what?)
  • http://www.jamesnottingham.co.uk/blog/learning-pit
  • http://www.challenginglearning.com/
  • Aim is to get the kids to use more thinking skills
•  Curling parents/teachers – sweeping in front of the kids to make it easier for the kids (While we need to do some guiding I think we sometimes do too much for the sake of order & harmony in the classroom!)
• Learning intentions – process driven rather than content driven (key to helping kids learn how to learn)
• Job of teacher not to teach but to help kids learn how to learn
• If teachers tell them/guide them through all the steps the students become dependent rather than independent
• Create a learning journey – big LI/SC that we’re working towards (might be content based) but then the intermediate LI/SC could therefore be process driven
• Generate/create the best learning opportunities for our kids
• Questions for kids
  • What is learning about?
  • What are learners like?
  • What was it like when you learned how to …?
•  ASK model
• attitudes
• skills
• knowledge

• Get the kids to clarify what exactly learning is all about
• • Derron Brown – youtube – don’t kill the kitten : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceaaSsnTiKc
    • Show a kid something with a button and they’ll press it; show a adult something with a button they’ll ask what it does (cf DK)
  • What would an outstanding learner look like/be like?
    • Then create learning intentions (NO reference to content)
    • Today is about exercising our curiosity by using the most searching questions about …
  • Should we measure teaching or learning?
  • You get what you focus on or measure

How can we fit this in without being constricted by National Standards?

• Don’t concentrate on what you don’t want the kids to do – rather on what things you want them to do
• (From school in Sweden – Soderporten School, Norrkoping – high level of asylum seekers – http://www.soderporten.se/?sp=cde)
  • We are positive, enthusiastic and show joy
    • Write your aims and learning intentions as if they are happening right now
  • We celebrate each other’s differences
  • We treat each other with respect
    • Best exam results in 2010 since 1997; turned off video surveillance in 2010 because behaviour problems dissappeared

Demo Lessons

• engage with each other
• questions in each other
• identify assumptions in each other
• content driven by their questions

Why are you studying this? Because the teacher told us to!

The more we praise kids for getting the right answer the more desperate they get. It gets in the way of their learning. Praise instead for things like asking good questions …

When learning is hard it’s uncomfortable – therefore the pit. Need to change their notion of how to get out of and through the discomfort.

FOAFOY (F off and find out for yourself)

Blocking the kids normal “route” – making them find another way. Saying ‘well done’ for their correct answer stops them thinking any further about the question. The pit is not having ‘no idea’ – it’s having conflicts of ideas
Cognitive conflict is the key to ‘wobble’
(Stealing is wrong vs Robin Hood was right)

Teaching what to think vs teaching how to think.

Teaching what to think also teaches how to ignore the other side of the argument (ie Bullying is wrong & tell the teacher vs My dad says to hit them back)

kriticos ⇒ able to make judgements

When you listen to children are they making judgements or are they repeating learned reponses.

An ethos for learning

Not all of our questions answered … but all of our answers questioned!
If I question your answers it’s not because they’re wrong it makes you think more.

Reframing Questions

(My questiong from The Incredible Journey)
Is dog fighting okay? → Opinion
What is fighting? → Concept

What happens when you die? → Opinion
What is death? → Concept

Was the mouse telling lies? → Opinion
What is a lie? → Concept

Eureka ⇒ greek for “I’ve found it!” (not my teacher or my parent)

The eureka moment won’t happen unless they’ve first struggled. (Eureka the ecstasy of learning – if we are curling teachers our kids will never get the eureka moment.) The pit may start out as a puddle … becoming more challenging. The bigger the challenge the bigger the eureka.

No point to do research unless there is a question to be answered …

How to get kids into the pit

Wobblers:

• If A=B then does B=A?
  • If a friend is someone you trust then is someone you trust a friend?
• If a friend is someone I play with then are the girls in the netball team who I play with my friends?
• Not looking for a right answer – looking to block the ‘right’ answer so that they can come up with other answers
• If A = B then if it’s NOT B = NOT A?
• IF Real = See it then does Can’t see it = Not real?
• If a friend is someone I play with then if I don’t play with them does that mean they’re not my friend?
• Can anyone think of a time when your friend did not look after you?
• Ok to rehearse with kids how to do this

Colliding Concepts

• Similar/opposite concepts
• Synonym or antonym
• Because English comes from so many different sources we have a huge rich language (more synonyms and antonyms)
• Lies and make-believe

Into the pit – fact → concept
Out of the pit – combining ideas (rank them/limit them/venn diagrams) → Eureka moment!

Classroom management

• Knee to knee groups (6-7 times over an hour) (fours)
• smaller groups can’t discuss the bigger concepts so narrow it down
  • IE Truth & Opinion
    • “If I believe that the world is flat but I tell you that the world is round am I telling the truth?”

• Introverted thinkers → need to think before they talk (if you put them on the spot they usually will say nothing)
• start your sentences with : perhaps, maybe, i’m not exactly sure yet

• Extroverted thinkers → talk to think – will often be the person who shouts out the answer
  • teach these guys to have the conversation in their heads with themselves
  • acknowledge them non-verbally when they’ve called out (maybe with a thumbs out)

   

• Thumbs up rather than hands up (armpit sniffers)
• What are we focusing on – quiet, well managed classrooms or kids thinking?
• Larger class sizes – inner circle/out circle
  • inner circle taking  part in the discussion
  • outer circle taking notes
  • swap round
• (P) Review (James’ classroom on Friday)
  • What attitudes have helped us this week
  • What skills have we used
  • Knowledge – a quiz – kids come up with the quiz questions
    • question that others got right 1 pt for grp that created question and those that answered the question
    • question that others didn’t get right 5 pts
  • Pre-view next week
    • Context set by teacher (ie Habitat) → Spider habitats
      • What do you want to know about ….
      • Kids come up with questions
    • Maths
  • Kids would spend weekend researching
  • (James’ story about stacking Trivial pursuit so he could win on Christmas Day)
• Preparing kids for the lessons rather than making them a mystery
  • (James would send a letter home every Friday telling parents what the kids were going to be learning next week – that way the parents/grandparents could be included in the learning – Get dads onside by adding “…to give your child an advantage next week…”)

Praise

Alfred Binet – created first IQ test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Binet)

• identify which kids the curriculum does not suit (not clever/stupid)
• indication of what they’ve learned to this point

HH Goddard

• translated from French to English
• eugenics movement
• put a intelligence spin on it

Stanford IQ test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Terman) / (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford-Binet_IQ_test)

• skewed to prove that whites were superior
• linked low intelligence with crime & anti-social behaviour
• white came out top
• black came out bottom

Mediation → encouraging children to focus → focal point for a newborn baby is the distance between their eyes and mothers eyes when breastfeeding

What do we get kids to focus on (ie on the right answer or thinking for themselves)?

Number of words heard by children
616/hour ⇒ words spoken by child by the time they are 3 ⇒ 500 – welfare dependent home
1251/hour ⇒ words spoken by child by the time they are 3 ⇒ 700 – working class home
2153/hour ⇒ words spoken by child by the time they are 3 ⇒ 1100 – professional home
(1995 Hart & Risley)

As adults we use Beginners, intermediate, advanced BUT we use special needs, Average, Gifted/Bright
(OR below, at, above!)

Self-fulfilling prophecies
Pygmalion in the classroom by Rosenthal & Jacobson : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

Does our testing set kids up to come to school to learn that they are dumb? Testing doesn’t focus on learning it focuses on showing off.

Spelling testing (pre-testing and post-testing ⇒ progress score (post-test score minus pre-test score = progress score)

Plasticity of our brains (Video example of girl who had one hemisphere removed)
Just because kids arrive with certain dis-abilities do they have to stay that way?

Gardner – I wish teachers had never come across my theory because they’re all obsessed with categorising kids.

Look at what I’m strong or weak at and what I want to develop next.
Self-fulfilling prophecies – I can never be good at …
We have limited amount of hours in the day … how are we going to spend these hours with the kids …

de-motivational posters
http://www.despair.com/

Marshmallow experiment, 1972

Phrases/words that do more harm than good

• gifted (suggests a gift)
• clever
• brilliant
• bright
• top of the class
• by far the best

Carol Dweck – Mindsets

• nonverbal IQ tests
• http://carol-dweck.co.uk/
• Mueller & Dweck, 1998
• (Page 7 of handouts)

All children should hear process praise and process criticism
“Wow that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” (Intelligence praise)
“Wow that’s a really good score. You must have tried really hard.” (Process praise)

Great phrases

• You figured it out
• How extraordinary
• Great discovery
• Well worked through
• You figured it out

I’m in Wellington this weekend spending time with some friends from my PLN. On Saturday we all attended/participated in the first ever Wellington Educamp. (Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23educampwelly) Right from the start it was all about conversations whether they were 2 minute snapshots at the smackdown starter or around a table all talking about the same thing or over lunch at Maccers.

(It was great working with Fiona on the smackdown!)

After the event 6 of us headed back to our motel where the conversations continued. We talked, laughed, shared stories, laughed some more for several hours before heading out for dinner and more conversation.

The six of us have got together before on a number of occasions over the last 3-4 years but always around conferences where you snatch bits of time often around breakfast to catch up. How fantastic then this has been – just to be able to site around and talk with no pressing timetable to cut us off. It was the same at Educamp – we didn’t have to stop a conversation just because it was the end of a session or time for the next session.

I loved the informality of the day, meeting new people, seeing people from my area attending (woo hoo), and being inspired by others. I was amazed at the Year 5 student (same age as mine) with stunning abilities in Scratch. And I was so inspired by the account of Shakespeare on Twitter from a high school teacher (who I discovered I had multiple degrees of separation from) that left me wanting to do something similiar with my students.

Thanks to all the workers on the day (the Wellington based people) and to all who came – we had a great time.

I’m really NOT obsessed at all with apple products – just because I’ve got so many of them doesn’t make me obsessed … or does it?

Absent from this picture is the iPad, iTouch and iPhone.

This is just a catch-up of happenings in our classroom & school.

We had a special visitor to our class for 10 days – Rohi. Rohi has her own blog and is on an intrepid journey around New Zealand visiting a number of schools on the way. Here is a slide show of her time with us.

Rohi and Room 12 @ RBS on PhotoPeach

eLearning classrooms tend to use a lot of technology at different times. Here’s a slide show of some of the tech at use in Room 12.

Technology in our Classroom on PhotoPeach

And here’s a snapshot of life @ RBS – just a mixture of things.

Life @ School on PhotoPeach

I’ve had an iPad for a week or so and the kids are very enamored of it. Today I found a new thing that I could do thanks to a blog post that one of my PLN tweeted about (thanks Wes).

The blog post talked about how to mirror your laptop onto your iPad and then, using some specific software, turn it into an interactive whiteboard.

The display software costs $$$ to buy for your iPad but seems to be free for the Macbook. It was easy enough to install and run. Then I wondered. Would it still work if I closed the Ink2Go software and ran my IWB (ActivInspire) software on it’s own.

Sure enough it worked very nicely indeed. In the picture below you see:
Top Left: my initial desktop mirrored;
Top Right: writing on the iPad;
Bottom Left: drawing on the iPad;
Bottom Right: both screens mirrored.

How it could be used in the classroom? Well – I can see it being used quite nicely during maths time – I teach my small groups using the IWB – each group has it’s own flipchart which we use to record all figuring out – the iPad could be used by a student to show how they’ve worked a problem out. Now I might not use it as much as others (thanks to my awesome IWB) but this is a nice way to give IWB ability to those who have a data projector but no IWB.

Time will tell.

I should mention that the mirroring gives the iPad user full control over the laptop including all menu control.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. This is a screenshot of the NZ Geonet quake drum in McQueen’s Valley.

This image represents ONE day’s recordings from the quake drum closest to Christchurch. Here’s the explanation of what you’re seeing:

The timestamp shown at the top right of the seismograph drum shown below is the time when this image was last refreshed. Each horizontal line (or trace) represents 30 minutes, each vertical line is spaced 1 minute apart; 24 hours of recording are displayed in total. The most recent signal is drawn at the bottom right hand corner of the drum. Then read the traces from right to left, bottom to top, to get from the most recent to the oldest signals. The trace will appear red if the signals are very large; this means they have been clipped to stop them overwriting too much of the surrounding image. The scale auto-adjusts to give the clearest view of the bigger earthquakes when the ambient conditions are noisy due to bad weather, frequent small earthquakes or nearby human activity.

I tried to count the spikes – too many; then I tried to count the ones with red – I think there’s 23 of them!

Kia Kaha Christchurch.

Life has to go on as normal – or as near to normal as possible in a country where there has been a national disaster declared!

On Friday at school we had a ‘teachers-only’ open mic session to encourage kids to take part in the fortnightly sessions.  The theory being that if teachers are willing to get up on stage and do something new that will encourage the kids to as well. Here’s my contribution:

In times of disaster stories of random acts of kindness and bravery emerge from the rubble (literally in the case of Tuesday’s earthquake in Christchurch).

Here’s my story about kindness.

We found out yesterday that my Aunty Lee was living in central Christchurch and not further out away from quake damage. We had some anxious hours of waiting – more for Emma who was at home fielding calls from my sister in Hastings – she didn’t want to text me at school so waited till I got home. When I was able to get back in contact with my sister the news was good – Aunty Lee and Colin had been located. Here’s where the random act of kindness comes in.

Aunty Lee’s sister Val and my sister Barb tried every thing they could think of to try and locate Aunty Lee – Red Cross etc. In the end, and in desperation, Val phoned their local radio station (they live in Hastings, North Island) and poured out her plight. A guy phoned up and said he was on his way down to Christchurch and would personally go to Aunty Lee & Colin’s place to see if they were ok. A couple of hours later (must have been the first thing he did on arrival) he used his cell phone so Aunty Lee and Val could talk to each other. They are safe, unhurt, terrified – too scared to move. They’re actually living inside the cordoned area so not sure if they will be evacuated or not.

I don’t know who the guy was – not sure if Val even got his name – but whoever he is he has our family’s thanks.

(We still have family members unaccounted for – my ex-brother-in-law Joe Dunning is still to check in. We’re assuming that it’s because he can’t not because he’s missing/dead.) Updated to say that Joe turned up – typical bloke – knew he was ok and didn’t think others would be looking for him! On a sad note I discovered last week that an old friend died in the CTV building – RIP Wally.

I’ve never been one to only do one thing at a time or in moderation. Therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise to note that I have a number of blogs (I’m not going to mention exactly how many!).

One of the things I’ve been doing with my iPhone is playing around with photo apps. There are a number I like but one that took my fancy is called Instagram – and it’s great because you can post your photo (suitably filtered) to a number of sites including Tumblr and Posterous – for me it’s been a way to ‘backup’ some of my images.

After reading a news  email from Posterous today I thought I’d check some different features out.

I’d already discovered the photo gallery – perfect if you have a bunch of photos you want to display on the same subject (this is an example: http://dragonsinger57.posterous.com/butterfly). Posterous has made it easy to do this by enabling you to email the photos as attachments – whatever you put as the subject line becomes the title (here’s an example of emailed gallery: http://dragonsinger57.posterous.com/disney-memories).

There are also a couple of iPhone apps – PicPosterous which allows you to upload pictures; and Posterous which allows you to upload text, pictures and video. I’ve tested both of these and they worked very well. One thing I’m always worried about is the quality of the speech but it seems to be just fine (see this video: http://dragonsinger57.posterous.com/testing-the-video-function).

The last thing that I’ve tested is the podcast function – this might be the thing that sells it for others. Very simple. I recorded a message using Voice Memo on the iPhone. Then I emailed it to Posterous. Within a minute it was up and ready to listen to – only a short recording – but I’m very impressed. (http://dragonsinger57.posterous.com/podcast-testing)

The sheer ease of this podcasting makes it ideal for a classroom setting. Last year my podcasting was cumbersome and I ended up not doing a lot of it. This year – with posterous – i think it will be a lot easier.

Another feature I haven’t tested but am interested in (Clair/Kirsten/Anyone?) is the group feature – from what I understand you can create a site that is a group site – and once again I think that could be handy for a classroom setting where you have teachers and classrooms wanting to collaborate.