LinkBlip ur Yakkle - chat, VoIP, file and screen sharing

The following Yakkle link makes use of LinkBlip. It sends me an email when someone clicks on it. If that is a problem for you then use the full URL link at the bottom. I am thinking that LinkBlip might be a method that I could use to test the effectiveness of the communication of the resources I share with staff at my school.

Yakkle is a tool that allows you to chat, make VoIP calls, send files and receive, and has a built in screen sharing facility. Its free. I wonder how many people we can simultaneously communicate with or is it 1:1. The FAQ states that it integrates with Google Chat and Jabber. This seems to be worth a look.

http://www.yakkle.com/whatsyakkle.html

Upping the anti

The Linux.conf.au started today in Melbourne. The Education Mini.conf had two presenters that were to deliver via Second Life. Leigh Blackall from Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand and myself from Grant High School in Mount Gambier, South Australia. There were three different Second Life Venues to be used and the presenters at the live venue in Melbourne were going to present at the venue simultaneously with Second Life. DNS issues in Melbourne meant that the Second Life participants and the Melbourne venue could not come together.

Image 1 - My avatar is in the foreground of the image as I waited to hear news of what was happening in Melbourne.

Bugger. The good side is that I met a bunch of people, got a lot of experience in playing within second life and Leigh got to present to the group that dropped in via this virtual medium. The people at the venue in Melbourne would not have got this, bugger for them.

I've been thinking about Leigh's presentation which was about institutional change, largely from the top down. He talked about changing the way that the institution dealt with IP so that the rules facilitated openness and collaboration. He is encouraging teachers to have a strong online presence which was helpful for credibility, collaboration and improving the institutions Google ranking and public profile. He is looking for a mass of about 15% of the staff initially to be active and believes that when this is achieved that there will be significant changes to the organisation that follow. In the mean time there are communication issues within the institution. He stated that the changes where prohibitive to many teachers - too much of a shift.

My presentation ended up going ahead. Melbourne could hear me, I couldn't hear them. Janet did a great job of text chat which gave some feedback to me as I was speaking amongst all of the ums and r's. I imagine podcasting and radio broadcasting to create the same feelings. It is very difficult to speak when there is so little feedback.

My presentation was aimed at tackling this issue of creating more openness with the students and so bottom up. Providing collaborative infrastructure and support for students to use gives power to the students to learn despite the methods used by their teachers. I have seen on numerous occasions that where students are using tools or showing preference to work in certain ways then teachers want to take notice and optimise on it because they can see the opportunity for better learning. This is upping the anti and might even work better in conjunction with Leigh's plans.

Good on the organisers of the education.miniConf for giving this method of delivery a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and while everything did not work I personally gained a lot. I found that I need practise talking to an imaginary audience if I do more of this.

In the second image my avatar, Wati Voss is presenting to the audience in Melbourne via Hazelbyte Hax.

Lindy McKeon Masterclass

Lindy McKeown Masterclass - 12/9/2007
Lindy provided a two hour presentation that has got me re-thinking the potential for 3D worlds in education. This comes at a time where I feel I have my head around Web2.0 and comfortably use bits and pieces as i need in my work.

She suggests that I need to learn how to operate in a 3D world like Second Life so that when the time comes to use this technology in class I am comfortable with it.

I gained two immediate and useful ideas that could be fun, educationally relevant and achievable.

1. Google sketchup plugin for Google Earth - I went to the 3D Warehouse where people have contributed Sketchup Drawings for use with Google Earth and there are quite a lot of Adelaide but non for Mount Gambier. Making a contributing drawings of buildings in our town, historical buildings, facilities and so forth would be a great venture for students to undertake. (Side Note - I noticed that I also had blue dots all over the place in Google Earth that I could click on to see pictures taken at that location. Again what a cool thing to be doing.)
2. Lindy pointed to a demo of Photosynth on TED talks. The video lasts for 7 minutes and it is a must see. The scenario could be in the near future - I take my photos and upload them to the likes of Flickr. They are now available for everyone to see but also for machines to include my photo with the others taken of the same thing, from different angles and so on. This amalgamation allows a much richer view of the object where my photo provided my starting point to this view. How cool. Creating a photo gallery of our town would be another great student team project.

The AliveX3D open source project is worth keeping an eye on.

The main objective of AliveX3D is to apply the open source and Web 2.0 ethos to future e-Learning applications. Through the use of the rich internet application, the AliveX3D Scene Editor, both students and academics will be able to collaborate on the creation of 3D environments which will be interoperable with other applications complying with the X3D standard.

Finally a quote from Albert Einstein that she started with
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research would it?". I've got some researching to do.

Take charge of your learning with Web 2.0

Terrance Online is this post points to a great 20 minute video from Stephen Downes about making use of Web 2.0 tools to take charge of your own learning.

Who it is pitched at is a bit confusing. It is pitched at teachers in some areas and then at students in others.

A couple of quick things that stick for me

1. Don't try to remember stuff. Focus on having quality information flows. IF you have these quality sources then you are likely to be hit with similiar concepts and information in a variety of ways and from a variety of angles that you end up retaining the important things anyway
2. Filter ruthlessly. A lot of stuff coming through in my subscriptions to email lists and RSS feeds gets a quick glance. Sometimes it doesn't even get a glance except for the subject line. Sometimes, down the track I discover that there is a sort of thread happening, a buzz. I can use the search facilities to go back to these posts that I skimmed and get the detail if I choose.
3. Shun traditional classes. Just in time learning is the go. How do I resolve this for myself as a teacher? In my last post I pointed to a Community Studies syllabus and how this helped create a useful learning environment where a traditional syllabus statement in Information Technology did not. It still appears to be a traditional class. With schools the way that they are it is difficult to conceive how I might be able to go much further than this.
   

We don't want your money!

Got a problem, buy a solution. Simple. Next problem please. See, I'm good at solving problems.

The more important a goal is the more money you pour into it. Right?

How do we teach children to read? We spend time with them and listen to them read. The children that have supportive parents learn quicker and better by and large. So by investing care, interest and enthusiasm, not money, great outcomes are achieved.

Can the same result be achieved by resourcing someone else to do the listening? Well yes, to some extent but you also forfeit your influence in many others areas. Schools are doing this all of the time where parents are not able to provide support to their children.

So how does an industry attract youth to their profession? Advertising? Speak to them? Lecture them? It is really simple and it is based upon the same idea as listening to them read. Not literally but follow the principle - be supportive, invest your time and care, be part of their lives, develop relationships.

That's what I would like to see come out of an IT Student online community

I think it's a win for everyone involved.

MELTing away

I've touched down after another great MELT conference (Middle Years Engagement and Learning Team) in Penola this last weekend. Well done to the organising team.

I presented a workshop that was really a presentation on making the best of wikipedia, some free online mind mapping tools and finally using del.icio.us. I forgot to show the video relaing to delicious. Participants were asked on registration what they would like to be the focus and so the above order was resolved from that. Session notes for the presentation are on my wiki.

I would not have documented this here if were not for a couple of events over the last few minutes.

One of the MELT organisers posted a note on the forum about staying in touch and continuing the debate and learning. Very nice, I liked that, but I wondered how successful this ongoing discussion via an online forum was going to be.

I was also cruising TeacherTube and came across the following video.




I thought it would be cool if we were to also encourage conference participants to tag relevant things on del.icio.us, blogger, flickr ..... with 'MELT07' or something like that. Oh crap, then I woke up. A great weekend.