Free technology for teachers and close up photography

Searching for other things, I came across Free Technology for Teachers, a source that TLs and SLs might want to drop into now and again to check out the range of resources which appear on the site. It may be useful to you in the school library or it may be a source that you might want to pass on to your teaching colleagues in the school. As the site suggests, free resources for teachers are the focus. There are tutorials dealing with aspects of technology, guides to making videos, wikis and websites, and a useful feature on creating your own personal professional learning network. Not all of this will appeal to everyone and some of the offerings may appear overly slick but if you are selective and take what you need from this resource, it could prove useful. So, bookmark and revisit, I suggest.

As the photos on this blog have shown, I have a great interest in taking close up photographs – of flowers, fish, crabs etc – as I love the detail that you can capture. Of course, I would dearly love to get more close up photos of birds and animals but, apart from kangaroos, sheep and cows, most of these won’t stay still to let me photograph them. This may of course have something to do with my Lilliputian appearance to these animals and birds, whose first suspicion is that I may want to kill them, rather than capture them on my digital SLR. Sometimes, you get lucky. The other evening, following some very unseasonably warm (but welcome) weather here in Dunbar, I got the hose out and watered the garden. I then noticed that some of the water had stayed on some of my  flowering gladioli. See the picture below for what I think is a great shot. Photography experts among you are, of course, welcome to disagree.

Drops of water on a gladiolus flower

New book and ‘The girl with…’

My new book Improving students’ web use and information literacy: a guide for teachers and teacher librarians  will be published next month by Facet Publishing. The first half of the book is directed at school staff, including teachers and TLs/SLs and covers the learning and teaching context of the school; finding and using information on the web; evaluating websites; web 2.0 in schools; and information literacy. The second half explores improving students’ use of the web; developing learning websites for student use – design and tools; developing learning websites for student use – content; and the next phase of ICT in schools. The book is designed to be a practical book for use in schools but with a sound theoretical context. Of course, books like these are never completely up to date e.g. with new aspects of web 2.0 arriving daily but my book is focuses on improving learning in schools and not just identifying the latest fad. Naturally, I recommend that you check it out. What am I saying? Just buy it!

I’ve always been a bit wary of buying books that appear to be overhyped and also appear to be being  pushed very hard by the marketing arm of a large publisher. However, having just finished Stieg Larsson’s The girl with the dragon tattoo, I have to say that the book does deserve to be widely read, as it is an excellent thriller, with unusual characters and an atmospheric setting. It’s not the greatest crime novel – there’s no agreement as to what is – but it is very intriguing, well written, carefully plotted and certainly keeps your attention. I never read two books by the same author one after another, so I’ll wait a bit before reading the 2 sequels, although I am looking forward to reading them also.

Wikis and camelia

This week, some of my students have been completing a wiki as part of their 2nd assignment for my Information Environment subject. As I’ve noted before, there is a plethora of information on the web about wikis in schools and elsewhere. A good source is Classroom 2.0 which has a large section on wikis including a useful video (from YouTube) on a plain English guide to wikis. There are also quite a few good examples of wikis, including an award-winning site Welker’s Wikinomics. You can use this site whether you are interested in the subject content or not, as it’s a very good example of what can be done with a wiki, within the school context. My students are creating wiki pathfinders for groups of students and, for most of them, this is the first wiki they have created. Almost all students have found this an exhilarating experience – once it’s done.

It’s Spring in Australia and the flowers are starting to come out in profusion. Everywhere you look there is a new splash of colour. One of my favourite flowers, not easy to grow except in a greenhouse in Scotland, are camelias. There are many different varieties and I’m not capable of identifying the one in the picture below – the after-rain camelia, I’ll call it.

After-rain camelia

Pathfinders and rain

For about 150 of my students, it’s time to look at Pathfinders as part of the TL’s role in developing learning resources in the school. Pathfinders are guides which lead students to resources. I’m not sure if I like the title ‘Pathfinder’ as it has connotations of printed lists of books for students. However, it is a recognised term and nowadays, pathfinders are usually in a digital format. Joyce Valenza argues coherently that using a wiki is an excellent vehicle for a pathfinder. My recommendations to students and to TLs is to think of a pathfinder not only as a guide to resources which have been mediated by the TL and by teachers, but also as a scaffold which will help improves tudents’ information literacy skills. Effective pathfinders give students choices, save them time searching and take them to relevant sources from which they can learn.

Now that I am back in Wagga Wagga for a few weeks, the subject of rain comes up. In the UK, we get plenty of rain so no-one talks about it, unless you are in Glasgow and it’s rained for 3 days in a row. In Dunbar, where I live, it rains but not to the extent it does in the West. In rural Australia, there has been a drought of various severity for about 10 years now. So when it rains in Wagga Wagga , people discuss it at length. You overhear conversations – “How much did you get?” “What, 18 mils, we only got 11″. While the fields are green at the moment, with summer approaching, more rain is needed. Rain is also a collection of poems by Don Paterson and you can listen to him talking about different aspects of rain in a Guardian Podcast - excellent listening. Of course, there is Elizabeth Regina (whom Mrs Malaprop might refer to as the Queer Old Dean) who is apparently  good at serving tea. Thus the expression “She never reigns but she pours”.

Wikipedia and off to ER (no emergency!)

In yesterday’s Guardian, there was an article on Wikipedia. Very timely, as my students are discussing the same topic this week. The article  states that Wikipedia is about to have 3 million articles in a short period of time. It also states that the growth of Wikipedia is slowing and may have come to an end. Research from the USA is cited which shows that Wikipedia is no longer the  open door for contributors that it used to be. The article also cites 2 camps in Wikipedia, the Deletionists who want to see more editorial control of the content of the encyclopedia, and the Inclusionists, who argue that more is better, even if it is of poorer quality. The likelihood, the article argues, is that the Deletionists will win, and if they do,  the article asks, will a newcomer emerge and bring us a new, and inclusionist, version of Wikipedia?

Tomorrow (Saturday 15 August) is the start of the new football season. Don’t call it soccer, please. So for me and my mates, it’s off to ER i.e. to Easter Road, home of the world famous and mighty Hibernian Football Club in Edinburgh. Now, at the moment, the Edinburgh International Festival is on and high culture vultures abound. Thousands also attend the more well known Fringe Festival in which hundreds of acts perform drama, music and other arts in a range of venues. However, Easter Road tomorrow will be the real theatre of dreams (I hope) where the drama will be Shakespearean and the crowd will cheer on a first day victory for us. Aye, well, that’s the theory. History tell us ….

Wikis and chimneys

This morning, I was doing some editing on material for my students and, adding to the section on wikis, I came across a website with a host of examples of educational wikis. Educational wikis  contains a range of examples of how teachers and TLs in schools are using wikis. There’s an impressive school library wiki  designed by Jennifer Garcia; a French language wiki  for middle school teachers and students; and an art wiki with lots of photographs, graphics and interesting ideas.  I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating, the value of a wiki is related to the imagination of TLs, teachers and students. Wikis are mostly local, personal and meaningful to a particular school community but the rest of us can also learn much from these wikis.

One of my visitors from Australia commented that you don’t see many chimneys in Australia, at least not many examples of rows of chimneys. In the UK, newer houses often have chimneys but these are often decorative. In older houses, such as those in the picture below of a row of houses just up the road from me here in Dunbar, a number of chimneys were included. This was because (and this may be an obvious statement) these houses were heated by a number of fires in different room in the house – no gas central heating in the late 19th century.  If you really want to see some unusual chimneys, then either visit Hampton Court when you are in London or check out the “barley sugar” chimneys on the website.

Chimneys in Dunbar

Wikis and marking

Interesting conversation with my co-researcher and primary school TL (thanks Stephanie) about wikis and how they are used in schools. One the one hand, wikis can be seen to be used very well, to stimulate learning and encourage cooperation amongst students; to enable students to create knowledge; and to involve students in a range of literacies e.g. as in the Futurelab Report. On the other hand – and this comes from anecdotal evidence as most of the material on wikis tends to stress the positive only – wikis are being used in ways which may, in fact, restrict cooperative working amongst students. This is where students are given tasks to complete and to only contribute individual comments on or ideas on to the wikis. This is usually a case of technology being used for its own sake, as in “This is new for the class and makes them use ICT, so they will be motivated”. Well, maybe not for very long. Wikis and other educational ICT tools are best used as an addition, and not a substitute, for student centred learning, which includes group working and discussion – face to face.

I’ve been marking all day and before anyone thinks that this is a plea for sympathy or is preparing metaphorical violins, let me say that I accept that marking part of what I do and provides very good feedback to students – whether that feedback is positive or negative, or both. Marking tends to be a mixture of exhilaration, where some students excel and take their learning further than the subject requires; satisfaction, where most students have learned from your teaching, have stayed on task and produced worthwhile (if improvable) work; frustration, where some students produce a mixture of the incisive and the plain banal, but lack consistency (e.g. they appear to have read one part of the advice but ignored other parts); and downright annoyance, where a very small minority of students appear to have ignored the speicfication, the marksheet, the advice on the forum, and the podcast. The trick with marking is always to end on a high note i.e. the last assignment you mark should always be a good one. However, it’s like cycling – you don’t always finish feeling good, no matter what you’ve done earlier.

Barriers to Web 2.0 and divers

From eSchool News, an article on barriers to Web 2.0 in USA schools. If you are in Australia, Canada or the UK, the barriers outlined in this report will be familiar and to some of you, depressingly familiar. The report notes that there is a still a wide gap between how  our school students engage with Web 2.0 outside the school and how they engage with it while at school. Key barriers were concerns about student safety e.g. where most district administrators thought that social networking could be used well in teaching and learning, most still banned the use of most social networking sites in their schools. Other barriers included a lack of teacher training, lack of technology support in schools and school/district policy. On a more positive note, the survey found that use of multimedia resources accessed via Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, had increased. The latter point may be very good news for teacher librarians promoting wider use of resources via wikis.

On Easter weekend, my wife and I went down to St Abb’s Head  where the guillemots arrived in huge numbers at the nature reserve - they cling to the side of the rockface and from a distance you could mistake them for oyster shells stuck to the rocks. Another set of returning visitors are the divers who flock to this site because of the quality of the diving in the clear waters around the village. The divers must be dedicated people as it seems that the proportion of time spend actually diving is wildly disproportionate to the time spend preparing and lugging heavy cylinders along the harbourside to the boats. The diving suits do provide some amusement and possibilities of headless divers – see picture below.

Diving suit at St Abbs

Differentiation + technology and blue skies

From the ever interesting and reliable eSchool News, an interesting report from a webinar  (sic) which discussed aspects of using ICT to enhance differentiation in schools and that this can be applied in “gifted, traditional and special education”. The authors argue that students will learn  better if they are taught in ways that suit their own learning styles and abilities. Some of the applications such as I-Search, WebQuests and wikis will be familiar to teacher librarians across the world and some of the approaches to differentiation are not new. However, this is an interesting article and some of the ideas could be passed on within your school.

Here in Dunbar (known as Sunny Dunbar) we get a lot of clear days with blue skies, even if the temperature is only 2 degrees at 11am. I have always maintained however, that in the UK, we don’t get the “big sky” that you get in Australia and in particular in rural Australia, where the sky seems to go on forever. Maybe it’s just psychological in that you think you can see more sky in less built up regions. One good effect of blue skies is that, walking along the harbour at the weekend and spotting a fishing boat coming in, I could see the lovely reflection of the castle, the lifeboat, the fishing boat and the sky. See below.

Blue skies and Dunbar harbour

Wikidot, Web 2.0 and John Updike

I’m alerted (Thanks Julie) to a new (to me that is) wiki creation site – Wikidot  This looks like a standard wiki creation site but it does appear to have some advantages when you click on the Education category and are promised – for free – unlimited number of members, 5GB for file uploads and SSL security. This would mean that you could upload videos, podcasts and photographs with room to spare as this is something that is often lacking in other wiki creation sites. There is also the possibility of setting up a forum on the site which would be useful in a school situation. As with most wiki sites, there are aspects for which you will have to pay but this looks like an excellent opportunity for TLs to be very creative in producing learning resources for their students – as ever, time is needed.

One of my all time favourite authors, John Updike has died. There have been many obituaries  in the newspapers in recent days, acknowledging Updike as not only one of the most prolific writers of the last 40 years but also one of the best. Updike excelled in his portrayal of small town USA in books such as Couples and the novels featuring Rabbit Armstrong. Updike is perhaps my favourite short story writer and I must get out my copy of Museums and Women and read it again. No writer is perfect of course and Updike’s work was criticised as sometimes being too narrowly focused on white affluent people but his best work is amongst the best writing you will ever read.