My Other Blog

There was some fascinating reading in the Age , (originally from the Washington Post), about the take up of mobile phones world wide. According to the article, the adoption of mobile phone technology….

“is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.”

The author Joel Garreau goes on to point out that mobile phone technology uptake is greatest in the developing world and that countries like Bangladesh with 98% mobile coverage has 30 million mobile phone users compared with only one million who have landlines. Garreau goes on to detail some of the changes that the use of this technology is bringing from the emancipation of market women in Nigeria to the use of mobile technology in global terrorism.

With the convergence of capabilities being built into mobile devices one wonders as to the future of the laptop especially in these third world environments. It also brings into question the future of the main players in the software market. Maybe Nokia will become the new Microsoft.

It’s interesting then to see that Adobe has now gone online as I found out via the Age and that Kiwi who loves to play with all things new and novel Allanah. This continues the trend to online or open source albeit with what may ultimately turn out to be teaser products. I had direct experience with this just the other day. For some time now I have utilised a free entry level Box.net account. Wanting to transfer a 12Mb zipped file I was faced with the 10Mb upload limit on the Box.net account. In the end it was easy to pay the US$3 for an excess upload. It does beg the question tough whether some of these products are not using these free services as loss leaders that are designed to entice you into using the product beyond our needs? (Maybe it’s the influence of the TV program on the ease of credit that is swaying my thinking).

Back to the question of mobiles and coverage it’s interesting to reflect on Sue and her upcoming holiday. But then hang on, my wife and I have a mobile account with one of the main Aussie providers 3. Now though we can actually see the nearest phone tower from our back yard in bayside Portarlington, unless we stand in the middle of the road running past our place and the wind is blowing the right way we have at best intermittent mobile service. When we do get a signal it is more than likely that the eminating tower will be located not on the local hillside but rather somewhere else across the bay. Now least I look like I’m bashing 3, our neighbour has tried the other 2 major carriers, Telstra and Optus with basically the same outcome. Hmmm.

One of the neat things about spreading the word about blogging is when your advice and suggestions are acted upon. Often after conducting a PD or similar I’ve wondered whether or how the participants will use the information we have discussed. Over the last couple of days then it’s been really neat to discover how some folks are actioning the information.

Flipping through a Twitter stream I came across reference to a post on using blogs as the vehicle for a Book Crossing type exercise. The post sounded just like an idea I trialled a few years back so I left a Comment on the blog. All the while the name of the blog author sounded oddly familiar as did the avatar image. I was quite chuffed then to find this morning an email from Helen to say that she was actually a participant in one of the PD sessions I had conducted last year when she first learnt about blogs. Neat, (and top blog too).

Having checked out Helen I decided to look in at the blogs that I assisted the seven teachers last week to set up. To be expected, we are just coming off the Easter hols, six out of seven were just as we left them last week. One teacher has however been in and begun to model it ready for next term. A little bit of a worry though, (especially given the recent blog-images problems), was that two of the test blogs still carried, (though admittedly only thumbnails), images of a student and a fellow teacher. I had stressed during the PD that images were potential problems however the teachers attention was obviously, (and understandably given the amount of information we were churning through), focussed elsewhere at the time.

Earlier on I had received an email from a colleague who has a really neat blog running for his class called The Goss. Two to three times a week one of his students is given five minutes to do a vocal presentation to the class around a teacher nominated topic. The student’s vocal is recorded and added to the blog alongside the written text. In addition students can add images to add further interest to the post. Last year I had suggested Flickr as a great place to head to. To assist I made a couple of TeacherTube videos showing how to access and credit Creative Commons images from Flickr. Unfortunately it seems Mr KT had missed the part about sourcing Creative Commons as the other day he received the following comment.

Comment:
Your article is interesting BUT you do not have my permission to use my photo. I want you to remove my photo removed immediately. Have you ever read the All Right Reserved on every page of my flickr site? Stop stealing photos. I am sure you can go out and photograph one yourself. STOP being a thief!

Mr KT has taken the pic down and now has a better understanding of Creative Commons :).

At the end of term one of the students at my old school where still I work one day a week came over to me to say he had a new blog to exhibit flash animations that he and a couple of fellow students were making. Of course I had to have a look. Now it’s really professionally gratifying when you see students spontaneously working with the tools you have introduced them to for their own personal growth entirely independent of schools. (Each of the students involved were in my class 2 years back when I introduced them to both Flash and blogging.)  My only concern is whether eleven year old students administering their own blogs, including the responsibility for moderating comments albeit entirely disconnected from their school, is not fraught with the potential for problems.

All of these cases bring into question whether I still carry some, if not primary, responsibility for any of these online activities? How far back does liability stretch?

Most members of the educational blogging community are now well aware of the difficulties that have befallen Al Upton and his grade in South Australia. Fellow Aussie bloggers Sue and Graham have both written very cogent posts that both provide essential background and important reflections on the situation as it has unfolded.

The fact that Al has been so diligent and upfront with the parents of his students and the authorities and yet has had these problems is of concern. As the educational blogging community is growing so rapidly, (this evening I worked with six new bloggers and tomorrow evening I work with another group), many of these new entrants begin their blogging with a minimal appreciation of the potential for problems. They often have a “knowledge” that there are dangers out there but most often they don’t have a fully developed concept of the connectedness that blogging provides. This raises the question as to whether in our zeal to promote the many positive sides of blogging we may not be giving enough attention to the need to also hasten slowly, (not that this was necessarily the problem in Al’s case).

Another aspect of this situation that warrant some thought is the effect that this concentration of well meaning support and attention might be having on Al. (I realize that even my writing this post and the 2 comments I have left on Al’s blog is contributing to what may or may not become a problem however ….) There have been numerous cases where flag bearers for causes whether they are asking for it or not, have had the pressures on them magnified because of the focus on them. Support is important but….

Though on a different topic Will Richardson ponders the risks of excessive commentary in these reflections that given the level of support for Al may also have a place in this situation. As Will says

“Can anyone really read through 130 comments? Are we getting too distracted, too connected, too participatory for our own good? Are we simply adding to the echo chamber of nodding heads, or are we doing what we need to do to move the conversation out of the blogosphere/twitterverse/ustreamland?”

As many other commentators on Al’s and other blogs have noted, innovative practice rarely if ever progresses without at least one or two hiccups on the way. The important thing probably is to not indulge in mass hand wringing over these problems. Better to look upon them as opportunities to better learn how to use and present practice as positive and desirable.

One thing that you notice when you drop out of the community for any, (especially an extended), length of time. is how much the landscape can change. Things like the beta release of pbWiki 2, the latest edublogs feature that enables you to add up to fifteen users at a time, (oh where was this just two weeks back when I and my colleagues enrolled 123 senior students with their new blog), a little further back Jo’s post about TokBox video chat , Sue’s new role as the edublogs helper via the edublogger ‘mag’ or arguably worse than that you miss out on some nice synthesis work by some ex students now in grade 5 who have set up their own blog to showcase their work with Flash animation.

You also miss out on the opportunity to ruminate on and get some assistance in solving problems. In my new role I am working with a number of schools and of course I can’t resist giving advice even when I’m not too sure myself. So it was that when I was asked about an easy way to capture student’s voices I replied that iPods were definitely not the best option.  But that was where the contribution faltered.

I had seen what looked like a simple generic MP3 player with a voice recording option in a catalogue however when I purchased it the player proved far too complicated for teachers to us, though most students could probably make it work :). Anyway the next day another catalogue arrived with a SanDisk Express 2Gb player for less than half price advertised in it. After a quick trip to town I now have an eminently suitable plug and play recorder that importantly works. So now 2 iPods, a couple of generic  mp3 players and more than a few hundred dollars later I have finally found something that is usable.

It again begs the question as to how many others have had the same or similar experiences trying to make the technology accessible in our classrooms. Whither the central authorities and departmental people? Probably spread too thinly trying to scramble to keep up themselves.

I wonder who will read this post, maybe no-one immediately but just in case someone somewhere still has their aggregator pointed this way I can tell you that this is probably one of the trickier posts that I have written since I have been blogging.

If you check back on the Recent Posts list you will see that it has been almost six months since I last posted. Prior to that I had been quite a regular little poster. I was also quite chuffed to check the stats and see that I had built up a reasonable level of readership. Six months ago though I managed to slip the gate and the posts dried up almost overnight.

It wasn’t like I didn’t want to post; things just got very busy. It wasn’t like I had given up on blogging; blogs and other things Web 2.0 are still a big part of my work. It wasn’t like I didn’t have things to share, thoughts to explore, ideas to try to explain, feedback to seek; it’s just that I got out of the habit. Worse than that though I also neglected the feeds from other bloggers that I had so carefully assembled.

After a couple of weeks of missed routine the blogging behaviours became supplanted by other activities so that it sort of became a little embarrassing contemplating that my blog was idle yet others continued to grow and flourish. Yes, I have checked back on my RSS feeds list every now and then in this past six months, (though admittedly not as assiduously as in the past). I have also often thought throughout the days that have past that “I should post about that…..” though until now I haven’t committed. I’ve also composed this post numerous times over, (often somewhere between 2-4AM in those sleepless hours). Alas though the keyboard was not next to the bed, (probably just as well my wife might suggest).

It does have me thinking though whether blogging can wear off. Is it going to be “faddist” for many nascent bloggers including our students? Are we going to commit the same ‘error’ with blogging etc that we have done with so many otherwise great educational initiatives/approaches, that is turn them into orthodoxies or universal panaceas that we insist on our students being involved in. Worse still if in prescribing and dictating the manner and format that we wish the students to use we extinguish the vital spark that can make blogging an enervating experience.

Hmmmm maybe I did need the rest, maybe I was captive of a self imposed orthodoxy that said I had to post each day? Only time will tell and maybe I will find time to post tomorrow

Oh in case you were wondering, some of the reasons for all this neglect include, moving house to a great new location across the road from the beach, deciding to cash in my role as a classroom teacher and heading into the role of educational consultancy, trying to finish off a book that a colleague and I have been writing, plus the usual little indulgences along the way.

A quick update……. It seems like it hasn’t just been me that has taken the blog hiatus, checking the feeds I find that Paul has also had his attention otherwise diverted.  Doesn’t make me feel quite as bad :).

Reading Chris‘ recent celebratory post related to reaching the tipping point I was prompted to check out where I was on the tipping point scale, (I wonder who else had a quick check of their stats after reading Chris’ article?).

It was interesting then when Emily came to check about a ping back that had appeared on her blog, to check out her post/comment ratio. It was very heartening and indicative of a mature attitude to the internet that Emily wanted to know what “a ping” meant and I was pleased to assure her that the pingback was actually a big compliment to her blogging.

Checking her stat though I was aghast to find out that Emily was already well past the tipping point with 24 posts attracting 42 comments. Checking her Clustrmap revealed that she has attracted some 818 visits in the two months her blog has been active. These are pretty impressive stats and indicative of a site chock full of information. I was even more impressed to find that one of her commentators was a dietitian delivering some advice on her expressed desire to also work in this area.

Oh my ratio is close to the tipping point 216 posts vs 209 comments, damn and I’ve moved the point again :). Please feel free to tip me over.

Did you know that 25 years ago, at 11:44am on September 19, 1982 Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman posted the first recorded instance of the smiley emoticon to an online electronic bulletin, during a discussion about the limits of online humour and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly. You might like to check out the original message at CMU site along with some reflection from Scott Fahlman himself.

In another serendipitous moment only today I was excitedly approached by Doug to see if I had read his latest page. Apologizing for not having done so I loaded Doug’s Page to find it full of smiley’s, albeit modernised versions. This got me thinking a little on how generations even in this computer age still, (though with increasing speed), adopt, adapt and then discard the markers of the time. Taken in this context, 25 years is quite the best reason for celebration for the ubiquitous little smile.

If you are interested in pursuing the smiley bit a little more I was interested to read the CNet news reflection on smiley’s and their future and if like Doug you are fascinated by them then you might like to peruse the complete list of Yahoo emoticons.

Oh dear, in the continuing saga that is the politicization of the issue of internet safety here in Australia, our Federal minister has been out and about spruiking using what would otherwise appear to be some very broad interpretations, (dare I say misrepresentation), of data related to online predators. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald we are being asked to believe that

“Over half of 11 to 15-year-olds surveyed who chat online are contacted by strangers.” 

Now if such statistics were to be taken at face value then we are being stricken by one of the worst plagues of predatory behaviour ever and should lead to us all questioning very deeply the efficacy of working with our students in such spaces.  Delving a little deeper though reporter, Michael Duffy, discovered that in fact the definition of stranger encompassed anyone who was “a friend of a friend” and even took in spam which though generally annoying is hardly life-threatening.  Duffy goes on to postulate that.

“…….what is going on here is an attempt to create fear by playing on parental ignorance of the internet, particularly social websites.”

All of this flies in the face of the evidence of a range of reports such as those which formed the basis for Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee discussion on Youth Online Victimisation from May 3 2007.  It makes for interesting reading or viewing as four of America’s foremost academic researchers on child online safety talk about their research and answer questions in a panel presentation. When you read of reputable studies such as

“………. the seminal work on the youth internet safety survey from 2000 and 2007 that Dr. Ybarra and Finkelhor participated in basically shows that from 2000 – well, unwanted sexual solicitations, however that’s defined, as you define it, have gone down in that time, from 2000 to the followup study in 2007. “

you are left wondering what an appalling age it must have been BI or more likely what appalling politics are at play here.  Highly reputable agencies such as NetAlert deserve much better than this.

Back from camp and finally getting over the room moves of the past few weeks, it has been time to catch up with the Passion Project blogs. Today was lab time for the first two groups of classes and a good chance to look in at a few students. As usual there were the odd surprise or two including a couple that suggested the students involved had a real appreciation of blogging and what their blog could do.

One of the students Beth asked if she could have a quiz like the redoubtable Zara had on her blog. Not quite knowing what she was asking I got her to open up Zara’s site and there on a separate page was a link to Zara’s Chatterbean Quiz. Now this was the first time that I had come across Chatterbean so I resolved to check it out from home just to see whether it was suited to our purposes. After a quick look around the site, it looks pretty harmless apart from the ads, and the suggestive nature of some of the resident quizzes. On this score I have to admit that some of the magazine quizzes that you can get are more questionable so I think that I can see my way clear to allowing other students to access the site.

We had also been noticing a lot of Comment traffic coming from the AllStars bloggers from Sydney. This was most heartening as the comments being made by our Sydney friends were very thoughtfully structured. I was again taken slightly aback to find that Emily from BPS and Nadine from the AllStars had gone beyond simply reading each others blogs but were now actively visiting and commenting on each other’s posts completely of their own volition. They had even been hooked into the 8 things meme. Neat….

Back on the slightly more concerning front though it was a little disturbing to find a number of bloggers have been including images of logos in their post. Even though they had gone to the trouble of crediting the page where the image was taken we will definitely have to have another little talk about what is copyright and what is freely available. Again the ease of the internet makes it very tricky to keep an absolutely tight reign on free spirits.

Last week was a busy week as the senior unit from school headed off to camp, (hence the lack of posts recently). Sadly on the Monday before we left for camp one of our students Aaron’s mother passed away. As a result when we left on the Wednesday for the camp it was without Aaron.

Aaron’s class have a blog and so it was that when we got back from camp we found that Aaron had written a couple of posts. Perhaps more interestingly three of his fellow students have responded to these posts with comments that reflect an empathetic understanding of Aaron’s situation. Maybe this interaction may have occurred in the classroom though given our knowledge of the boys I would suggest that perhaps not. Altogether another totally unexpected by product of blogging.

If you are interested, the posts can be found at Senior K Ramblings