The Parallel Divergence blog has been around for over three years now with sporadic articles being posted covering a wide range of topics, all carefully crafted with the intention of making the reader think, question and respond. I’ve enjoyed the large number of comments that most of my articles attract and I’ve learned from people who both share and completely oppose my various points of view. But recently, a reader comment was posted that grabbed me totally.

The comment was quietly added to “Which is Stronger, Manfluence or Godfluence?“, one of my popular earlier articles. Comment #62 suddenly appeared, and it was close to two years after the last comment was submitted. At 6:30 in the morning I was alerted to its arrival and as I started to read, I was taken on a wondrous journey of intrigue and awe-inspiring writing. Perhaps I was only half-awake, but this comment with its generous use of ellipses made me pause, reflect on and react to each and every carefully crafted statement. Who is this person? Was this really typed in one session as a reader’s comment on a blog article? There is not a single typographical error! Surely this is a cut & paste job? No, the almighty Google says it’s completely original, written just for my article.

Anyway, I’ve since had a lengthy email discussion on various subjects with “Mr Barry H. Browning“, which is still continuing, but I thought his original comment deserved a wider-audience, so I’ve decided to centre a new article around it, posing his unspoken question, What if God Was an Alien?  Here is Mr Browning’s comment posted in full and unedited. Please check his comment in the context of the original article at the link above, as well as the discussion that followed.

4th November 2009, and last night I stumbled upon this your blog…how cool is that? Just finished e-mailing an old friend that “checking out the Hubble pictures is one h-ll of a way to worship, and a lot more effective than the spiritual gatekeepers and spiritual-tax-collector-franchise-owning ‘Sunday morning country club directors’ can ever be.” Then I run into your blog…. Go figure.

It’s one thing….to “play” with what first seem like abstractions like “parallel universes” and “black holes” and “changes in the space-time continuum”….and it’s quite another thing…for those of us under I.Q. 160, to be able to “image”, without a little photographic help….what all that might look like….and the Hubble has done that, for me anyway….while looking at “deep space”, for example, I can just hear Carl Sagan’s voice from PBS broadcasts: “Mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….” (only he needs to juice the figures up a little, as in “bill-yuns…and-bill-yuns….and-bill-yuns…) If realizing that each of those at-first-glance “stars”, is actually a galaxy, itself containing-billions-of-stars, doesn’t give us a “Za-Zen” into a limitless….if not “primitive humanoid-bound”…sense of the Infinite…I don’t know what will…. Wow! It takes a good university to hear about Martin Buber’s “Ich-Du versus Ich-Sie”, and Rudy Otto’s “Mysterium Tremendum Et Fascinans”, much less Aquinus’s “That-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”….(I think what the Hubble stimulates in us humans even-goes-beyond-thinking….but I digress)…

…and after four years of bathing in this in academic splendor, so many years ago, of “decent and scholastically-grounded” Comparitive Religious Studies(Religionswissenschaft), and Philosophy and Psychology, (yes, this included Jung), both in the U.S., and abroad, I have yet to hear anything but a paucity of this from any so-called “Christian” pulpit in the U.S. Well….the Inquisition forced Galileo to “recant”….d’ye suppose some “fundamentalist”idiots will declare Hubble itself “a work of the Dark Side”? I can just hear-it-in-my “mind’s-ear”….”Don’t-confuse-us-with-the-facts, Barry”….

….Now…..and again, this from looking at pictures from the Hubble….how can we….doubt the possibility, given the permutations of billions of billions of stars, and the infinite number of planets that presupposes…..the Europeans of late have done a good job of “proving” from Hubble and other sources, the existence of a specific number of observed faraway planets, which is growing….

….How can we doubt the possibility of other beings?

…And if we don’t doubt this, why, why, WHY…..do we insist, that if-they-exist, they-must-be…..anthropomorphic, bifurcated….humanoids? This is one of the “bastard children” of bad theology….we aren’t aware enough of what goes on inside ourselves psychologically, to recognize a spiritual projection of ourselves on any outside phenomenon when we experience it…..300 hours of good psychological training BEFORE candidates get to go to seminary would fix this….fat chance of that…..

…We are in the process of….”having-the-doors-blown-off”….of what we experience as “real”, and this has not substantially happened in the West, give-or-take-a-few-exceptions, since the Greeks-Presocratics….(but perhaps in the East has been available conceptually ever since the Brahman-Atman Union was described in Sanskrit)….

…and in the midst of this experience…of these discoveries…..

…How are we going to handle the discovery of “intelligent life in the Universe, other-than-our-own”, when on our own Earth, we can neither collectively fathom nor accept the universality of our own encounter with the Infinite in its various and long-established permutations of the world religions, at least one of which is, as this blog’s author has informed us, is more populous in believers than Christianity, and several of which pre-date Christianity by any number of years? How can we HOPE to handle….”intelligent life”, which in all probability, WILL NOT be anthropomorphic, (but may well have the intelligence to appear to us in anthropomorphic form, to save us all from an initial heart attack), when, on earth, and in as “progressive” a country as the U.S.A., we cannot even UNDERSTAND, much less TOLERATE….other world religions…..and when within the revelatory religion of Christianity…..we have a multiplicity of sects, if not of rules, (in direct proportion, apparently, to the lack both of direct experience, and/or paucity of I.Q.)….and where we….can’t….even…..on Sunday mornings….deal with someone next to us with a slight difference in SKIN PIGMENTATION?

…I, for one, suspect that Science has taken us FAR BEYOND the hypocrisies of U.S. religious “fundamentalism”, and that we-have-been-necessarily-lied-to, about what Science and our government actually knows, from EXPERIENCE, about the Universe…..

….but for now am willing to live with Sir William of Occum’s famous Razor…..until-the-little-green-men-come-knocking-at-my-door….I don’t need to modify my life style just yet….

…..and I think this began in the late ’30s, when my mom was leaving Brown University for the weekend, and got caught up in a four hour traffic jam while traveling to East Providence, as the Mercury Theater’s War of the Worlds was being broadcast…

…I’m suspecting that it was decided then, that “we could not handle the truth”, and I must admit, having read the mass psychology studies arising out of that U.S. broadcast event….and its subsequent application in such subsequent world events as Hitler’s Blitzkreig….that they were, and perhaps still are, right…..

….but….a few fun details since then….such as…..rumors of “reverse engineering”….and….perhaps an ulterior motive behind Regan’s “Star Wars” weaponry….and certain observations made by our own and other countrys’ astronauts….and, of late, a suggested other reason for the Hubble’s soon-to-be-engaged, if-not-already-engaged, competitor….the Keppler…..

…Occum’s Razor notwithstanding…..if any of this takes us in the direction which I think it is taking us…..

….then how can the way many, if not most of us, practice Man’s Religions, handle what we next discover, (if we have not already discovered it and are-sitting-on-it)?

…I think……that Man’s Religions….are due for some massive revisions…..

….I think…..that it is well past the time when we….perhaps need a “Religions Race”, to catch up with the results of the “Space Race”….

….I think…..we need a “Weltanschuuang”(World-view)…which admits not only of the existence of other of Man’s world religions, but of their discoveries and unique contributions, collectively, to-what-we-can-claim-to-know-about-ourselves…..

….and I think….it is well past the time for us to accept, much less give lip service to, one unique theology to the exclusion of all others….

…..when there is enough evidence over the centuries, that the Infinite can be experienced by humans, in a multiplicity of ways….and when….for those not “intellectually challenged”, the much overtouted and supposed “differences” between man’s religions, are more a sign of the limited outlook of some individuals….of limited vision….

….and I think…..that if we are to survive spiritually and psychologically in the universe to come, with its implied expansion of intelligent life forms and life-connections…..we need to

…..know ourselves inside more profoundly than we already do…or already accept, is more like it, because the tools to self-discovery have been around for years, and-or are available to us through a variety of introspections and processes…..

….and we need to……expand…..and this greatly…..our SOCIAL model of “what is existentially real”, so that we can HANDLE what we are about to discover, or what we have ALREADY discovered….

….and “not go mad”, as the Greek Tragedies would have instructed us…..

…..”You cannot see G-d and live”……

….We are about to test that statement……can we handle it?

….I suspect….that if what I’ve been suggesting is out there, and is currently happening for us…..

….that we flip ourselves into the category of “meta-cognition”…..(that is, “thinking-about-thinking”), and…..

….ask ourselves, what with the bill-yuns-upon-bill-yuns… of stars-and-planets….”out there”…..

….whether…..any…..

…..culture of primitive intelligence which is trying to expand, such as ours…..

….has ever….encountered….or ever will…..

….intelligence(s) of greater knowing……

….and has survived the experience…..and this, perhaps, under the guidance of the superior intelligences…..(let us, at least, hope so…)

More than any of you may have wanted to deal with on a Wednesday in 2009?

Wow.  Well the odds are, that there ARE powers greater than our own out there in the glorious magnitude of the universe. And while they may not actually be listening to our wall-of-sound prayers, they may well be planning a visit.

Thank you Mr Browning.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009: The Australian Outback visits Sydney – the nation’s largest city. It was Nature reminding Man that it cannot be taken for granted and will not be ignored.

 
Photo by NSW Maritime

Man often thinks he can do anything. Clearing jungles, re-routing rivers, building cities. But it’s nothing to crow about as we are cautioned that with just a shudder, Mother Earth is always in control. 

Imagine the power. With merely a breath, the planet can pick up five million tonnes of dust and dirt whip it into a front 800 kilometres long and drive it more than 1,100 kilometres from Central Australia to the east coast and out to the Pacific Ocean – all in less than a day. Coating anything and everything in its way, the dust storm caused havoc, stopping industry and transport and costing millions in lost productivity.

This planetary nudge was a reminder that from Dust we came and to Dust we will return. Man’s miniscule reign is just an itch in Earth’s four-billion year grandeur. All we are is Dust in the Wind.

Today I “attended” an educational technologies conference. Well sort of. I wasn’t there, but then again, I was. IWBnet’s “Leading a Digital School” conference was on at the Gold Coast in sunny Queensland and while I was unable to be a delegate at the venue, I had the next best thing. Many of the delegates who were there, were happy to instantly share their experience with the rest of the world via Twitter.

Relive the IWBnet Conference via Visible Tweets

Through wireless connections using notebooks, netbooks, iPhones and iPod Touches, educators retold quotes, shared links to resources and commented on what they were seeing and hearing – in real-time.  And these contributions are captured forever, through the consistent use of hash-tags (#iwbnet09) on each of their posts. The above Visible Tweets link will let you relive some of the  conference experience as well as gather numerous pearls delivered to you via links. This Twitter “back-channeling” virtually places you in a seat beside the other attendees. By tapping into a back-channel, you even have a voice. You can join into the discussion by using the same hash-tag; asking questions, commenting and responding.

How is this all done? Surely these conference attendees and those participating in the back-channels are our teaching-elite? No ordinary teacher could do this stuff. Why would you want to anyway? As Marc Prensky said in his keynote today, which was paraphrased and tweeted by Chris Betcher then turned into a pair of cartoons by my son:

We have a massive gulf in the mindsets of today’s educator and learner. As teachers, we have a challenge of monumental proportions facing us. The “teacher” MUST become the “expert learner”. Or else, the situation tweeted by Matthew Wells will become reality, where the students will be saying, “stop interrupting my learning with your teaching!”.

When a young Robert Zimmerman wrote about “mothers and fathers” way back in 1964, little did he know he was perfectly describing early-21st Century Teachers:

Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

Lately, we keep hearing the term “tipping point“, but it always seems to be about oil and climate change. We never seem to equate it to education. I believe we are getting very close to a tipping-point in teaching and learning as major political programs like the Digital Education Revolution start to take root. As information and communications technologies continue to become prevalent in our schools, our students will expect them to be used.

It really isn’t as hard a many teachers think to change direction, but individuals must make that step themselves. Don’t focus on the complexity of technology, focus on change. Learn how to learn. If you’re waiting for training, you’re already a lost cause.

With time quickly running out, it will be up to each and every teacher to make an important decision. Do you want to be relics, or relevant?

October 20, 2007 - Australian Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd is on the election campaign trail making a promise that made state governments, educational authorities and teachers shudder in their boots. While holding up a laptop which he referred to as “the toolbox of the 21st Century“, he promised to provide a computer to every high school student from grades 9 through 12. Then he became Prime Minister and the pressure was really on, because while he would provide the funding, the Federal Government does not control school education and would not be responsible for implementation - the individuals states would.

The original $2.3B promise quickly blew out as states realised that supplying a laptop alone is not going to be enough to deliver the Digital Education Revolution promised.  The state of New South Wales  was steadfast in its push for more funding for its share, to deliver its ambitious interpretation of Kevin Rudd’s revolution - to provide a well-configured  and quality software-laden wireless netbook to each and every year 9 to 12 student in all public high schools. This was a solution unmatched by other states, and with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (NSWDET) being the single largest educational authority in the southern hemisphere, it was always going to be a massive undertaking.

This represents almost 200,000 students plus all their teachers spread across almost 500 high schools in an area as big as France and Great Britain combined. With each high school ranging in size from less than 50 students to close to 2,000, from large cities and regional centres to outback rural communities where Internet access is scrappy at best – the intent was to provide the same user experience regardless of the situation. Technically, it was a minefield that few would even consider, let alone attempt – but the impetus was still there from the highest office in the land. This was not a time for a half-hearted commitment, there is too much public money at stake.

The planning started well and truly in early 2008 with consultation of all key stakeholders. The first things that became obvious were the numerous and varying-height hurdles that stood in the way – technical, social, cultural, ethical, security, usability, accessibility and all those 19th and 20th Century schooling paradigms that are so steadfastly refusing to allow teaching and learning to change. To address them all, a coordinated approach within the NSWDET was vital – this is not an IT project, it is not a Curriculum project and it is not a Professional Development project. This is revolutionary. It needs clear leadership, direction, focus and commitment - department-wide.

Before this solution can work educationally, it MUST work technically. If it doesn’t work technically, it won’t work at all. It must be fast, reliable and effective. If it can’t do that, teachers will abandon it for their comfortable old shoes in an instant. 1:1 laptop programs are nothing new. Schools and school systems around the world have taken them up since  the late 90s. Few succeed. Fewer are sustainable in the long term. This had to be different or it too would suffer the same fate. It would end up being less a revolution and more an unnecessary, expensive detour.

The Netbook – 2008 was the year of the Netbook. This reasonably-powered sub-notebook brought two important educational aspects to the table – it was small enough for students to carry around and it was affordable. In the end, Lenovo were contracted to supply over 250,000 of their souped-up s10e Ideapads to the NSWDET over four years.

The Operating System – When the plan was first mooted, everyone assumed one of the many flavours of Linux would be the chosen OS, probably Ubuntu – but everyone was surprised when NSWDET opted for Microsoft’s newest and at the time incomplete Windows 7 RC for the first netbook rollout to teachers in June 2009. Microsoft was clearly crowing when the decision was made, especially since NSWDET chose to totally bypass its ailing Vista platform, sticking with XP. So happy were Microsoft, they gave every support NSWDET needed to ensure the fledgling OS was ready and capable to take on the Revolution and  provided the final release of Windows 7 to NSWDET more than two months before its worldwide release. In addition to Windows 7, NSW DET has also contracted Microsoft to supply the Office 2007 suite and Student software, while Adobe is supplying its Web Standard package with Dreamweaver, Flash, Captivate, Acrobat, Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. A slew of other educational freeware apps is also included.

The Wireless – Untethered links are essential to allow students to freely roam around the school, but stay connected. 802.11G simply did not cut it. 54MBit/s (theoretical) per access point was nowhere near the bandwidth needed to cater for class sizes up to 30. Though still not ratified as a standard, 802.11N was selected because of its bandwidth and range. But NSWDET did not skimp on access points – they would install one in every single classroom and learning space throughout each school. Theoretically providing 300Mbit/s each, the intention is to ensure that each netbook in a class is guaranteed a minimum 2MBit/s link to the school’s network. In practise, with 30 students in a class, that limit should be closer to 5.  Of course, these are no ordinary Wireless Access Points – this is a managed wireless solution using an Aruba controller to provide load-balancing, free-roaming, WPA2+PSK security and monitoring of the air. The IBM-supplied Aruba solution offers a central management point that is critical for providing effective and reliable wireless connections to, in many cases, several hundred netbooks simultaneously. Furthermore, this solution is totally scalable – well beyond the needs of any school in NSW.

The ceiling-mounted Aruba 802.11N WAP with Power over Ethernet

The Aruba Wireless Controller and HP Layer 3 Head-end Switch

The Parallel Network – With close to 500 high schools and no previous concrete standard for local area network cabling, NSWDET quickly discovered that existing school networks ranged from simple teacher-strung cables around rooms to high-tech, gigabit-standard structured cabling solutions with all possible permutations in between. Installing a brand new well-designed wireless solution and bolting it onto these existing school networks was never going to be workable nor supportable. The radical decision to leave the existing school network in situ and build the wireless on a parallel network using fibre backbones meant duplicating cabinets in each building, but also meant that the wireless network was predictable, supportable and provided no impact on the school’s existing local area network.

The wireless campus distributor on left, the school’s campus distributor on right. Two separate networks with a single gateway out of the school, all managed by the HP head-end switch on the left.

The Distributed Infrastructure Platform Server – The “DIP” server installed in each high school provides read-only Active-Directory authentication for students and staff as well as DHCP services and local mirrored data storage for each user. NSWDET’s directory contains some 1.5 million user accounts covering school and TAFE students, teachers and State and Regional Office staff. All users have authenticated internet access with varying levels of filters based on grade for students and user level for staff. The 45 terabytes of Internet traffic (as at July 2009) that comes into NSWDET every month and is distributed to close to 3,000 sites across the state, demands reliable network infrastructure. The selected wireless solution complements the existing NSWDET Wide Area Network nicely.

The IBM DIP Server and UPS

Resource Management Utility – How do you manage 250,000 laptops, their serial numbers, who they are allocated to, what happens to them when they are damaged or fail, or when they are stolen or lost? RMU is an amazing product which links the NSWDET active directory with a powerful asset management database and Absolute Software’s Computrace laptop security solution. As soon as a brand new Lenovo is received in a school, RMU knows about it. When it is turned on and configured, RMU automatically updates its status. When a student authenticates for the first time, that laptop becomes theirs – no-one else can authenticate to it and use it and RMU allocates it to them. If the student reports it stolen, the laptop’s status in RMU is changed to lost/stolen and as soon as anyone tries to use it and connect to the internet, Computrace will kick into action, killing it. And Computrace’s self-healing ability will ensure it continues to lock-out the laptop, even if the hard drive is reimaged or even replaced.

Technically, the New South Wales Department of Education and Training’s interpretation of Kevin Rudd’s bold plan is cutting edge. As of this writing, Year 9 students at the first four high schools have received their laptops, along with 30% of all high school teachers in the state. Technically, this solution will work, providing a robust and manageable 1:1 digital learning platform for 200,000 high school students in one single education system. It begs the question – Is this technically the best 1:1 rollout anywhere in the world?  New South Wales Public Education – Take a bow.

Teachers and Students – the ball’s in your court. Let’s take this excellent Digital base and mount the best Education Revolution we can!

The initial rollout of Laptop Computers as part of the New South Wales Digital Education Revolution is pretty clear-cut when it comes to students – ALL year 9 students will get one this year.  But when it comes to teachers, the T1 rollout sees high schools receiving enough to cover only one-third of their staff. This begs the question, which teachers should get a T1 Laptop?

Now I don’t run a school and I’m not even a teacher, but here’s what I’d do with the laptops and how I’d decide which teachers get them.

1. Allocate ALL but two or three to specific teachers (i.e. exclusive individual use, NOT shared).  The two or three are the only ones shared. If you allocate most of your laptops to be shared then you are wasting a major opportunity because part-time or infrequent access is not the way to develop skills in any of your staff.
2. At least one laptop per faculty, but depends on how many you get and staffing numbers. All departments in your school must understand they have a part to play from day one.
3. As principal, I would email all my staff (I wouldn’t tell them I was emailing though), requesting expressions of interest for exclusive use of a laptop:
           – How would you use it?
           – What would you hope to achieve?
           – How will you commit to sharing what you’ve learned?
4. I would judge each application on merit as well as how long it took to get back via email/follow-up.  I would want keen existing-ICT users only to apply. There is little point giving a T1 laptop to a beginner.  Sure, they might slowly develop their own skills, but they’ll offer little to the rest of their colleagues.  We need educational-technologists to blaze the trail for everyone else to follow.

By doing it this way instead of just randomly handing them out, I would avoid complaints of favouritism, seniority or any other non-merit based process.  All teachers would have the same opportunity to apply for a laptop, and getting one in the T1 round is clearly seen is a privilege that comes with expectations that:

1. You would commit to developing your own skills with the laptop
2. You would develop educational programs to use with the laptops in class
3. You would share what you’ve discovered.

If you can’t guarantee these three things from the teachers you hand them out to, then you shouldn’t be handing a T1 Laptop out to them.

What do you think? How is your school handling T1? Will it work?

Late last year I attended my son’s high school graduation where speech after speech espoused the knowledge and skills that the Class of 2008 have gained over their thirteen years of schooling. As the students prepared for the next phase of their lives, it was heartening to hear that they all had been instilled with the fundamentals of lifelong learning. I wish.

Image by Tragicomedio

So what is “Lifelong Learning” anyway? According to some, it’s:

“the idea that learning can and does occur beyond the formal structure of an educational institution and occurs throughout one’s lifetime.”

OK, that’s a pretty broad statement and is interpreted by some teachers as “life experience” or “work experience“.  Experience is what counts according to many teachers. Even promotions within the teaching faculty are based more often than not on experience or “seniority”.

Unfortunately in the 21st Century, “experience” alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Knowledge learned over many years or even decades of practise is great for perpetuating past practises, but does nothing for promoting change. And it does little to assist with the implementation of new technologies in an ever-changing world.

I prefer the definition of Lifelong Learning as:

“The concept of continuous personal development through personal (self-actualized) learning.”

Lifelong Learning is a personal thing.  It’s individuals taking responsibility for their own learning and development beyond the formal education of their youth. Lifelong Learning is not the responsibility of employers. The world is changing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In a world that more and more operates on efficiency through understaffing, our daily grind leaves little room for individuals to indulge in their own continuing education.  Clearly, Lifelong Learning is NOT a 9 to 5 job.

[this article was written on Sunday at 5:07pm]

I’m not sure I quite remember when and how it started. He was just another boy in my class. But it seemed that everything he did just grated on me. No, I don’t want to listen to your music. Hell, that’s a stupid haircut. Put your hand down and shutup for god’s sake. I’m gonna say something to him.

image by Jeff Weston

That felt sooo good. Someone had to tell him and I’m glad it was me. He just stood there gobsmacked as I walked away. He thinks he’s so smart, but I showed him. My friends thought it was hilarious when I told them. “You can’t stop now!”, they said. “That bastard deserves it!”. “I’ve got his phone number from that time he sent me a text about his stupid homework assignment.”

It was only three little words. They weren’t even particularly well-chosen. Everyone was coming up with ideas for the next message. And the next. And the next. All sent from different phones. It was sweet. We could clearly see his face squirm everytime his phone beeped.

“What can we do next?”
“Let’s call him from the payphone.”
“We can take his picture. Make a Facebook for him.”
“Why don’t we do an I.M.-bombardment?”
“Does anyone know his MSN password?”
“Yeah, it’s ‘creedfan’.“
“What the?? He’s going down!”

I remember he didn’t come to school again for a few days. It was so peaceful. But then “Little Miss Try-Hard” decided to get in my way. I love my phone. I love I.M. I love my friends.

 - Of course, there are two-sides to every story. The U.K. Department of Children, Schools and Families tells the other side in this excellent video:

Cyberbullying: Laugh at it and you’re part of it.  Let’s all fight it together.

EVERY School Term for the past ten years, in conjunction with my team, I have been running Information Days for school ICT Coordinators. Over 250 teachers representing over 200 public schools consistently come to find out the latest information relating to ICT in school education in our little part of the world. Now while I’m usually the one passing the latest news onto them, I often like to ask them what their point of view is – that is, being a school educator that uses ICT in the classroom, or in other words, being a minority within the teaching faculty.  Here’s what some of them have told me.

“My students tell me I’m their most-favourite teacher!”

Well that’s a good start. You incorporate the gadgets. You let the students use fun stuff that the other teachers seem to avoid. Of course you’d be popular.

“I have to spend a lot of my own time learning how to do this, but it’s really worth it!”

Technology changes very rapidly. When we started our ICT Info Days, it was all about installing applications and transferring files. Now it’s blogs, wikis and personal learning networks.

“Why is it my responsibility to show other teachers how to do this when I had to do it myself?”

I stopped to think about this. It’s a good point. But in the end, I decided it was a selfish point of view. Is school teaching a case of “every man or woman for themselves“? I certainly hope not. Especially not in high school where each student has multiple teachers. ICT-innovators are trailblazers. They need to forge the path for other teachers to follow. They need their fellow teachers to follow them. But not everyone can be Marco Polo. Consider yourself your school’s own Marco Polo. An adventurer discovering new worlds for the benefit of future travellers.

“It’s plainly obvious that when using technology my students are engaged and performing.”

There is definitely an attraction by students to information and communications technologies. 

“Continuity is the biggest problem I see for the students that leave my class at the end of the year.”

It almost begs the question, “why do this extra work at all?“. If you’re operating as an island when the most of the rest of the school is a technology desert, are you really helping? If your year 5 class is buzzing with effective interactive ICT activities, how will your students feel when they go to year 6 where the only time the computer gets turned on is when a student finishes their cloze passages stencil early so they can “play“?

“If I leave the school, it will probably be the case that the ICT programs I run will cease.”

This is one of the biggest tragedies that come out of working alone. While the teacher will probably leave (often with a promotion) to continue her ICT program elsewhere, the school they left goes right back to square one. We need a way to identify, package, promote, share and develop effective ICT teaching practices – not to keep them as one teacher’s secret weapon.

So, what do you think?

I had a little nap after work, and when I awoke, I found myself covered in rashers. On the news they showed up the phone number for the Swine Flu information line, so I rang them up to get some advice. Problem was I couldn’t make out a word they were saying. All I heard was crackling.

So these rashers were starting to really bother me, and I decided I’d better go to the chemist to get some oinkment. When the chemist asked me how I got the rashers, I told him, but he said my tale was a curly one and that I was telling porkies. But I persisted and it quickly became obvious that I was starting to boar him, so I left. It was then I realised that the flu hadn’t affected my urges because the policewoman that I passed as I left the shop was a Babe!

On my way home, I swore I could smell truffles, so I investigated a little in a mud hole. Fortunately this flu is not making me sweat. After some digging around I started to feel a little gilt, especially when the Rabbi walked past and totally avoided me. It was clearly time to sacrifice my goal to find the truffles as I didn’t want anyone to think I was being greedy. I mean it’s not fair to hog them all for myself. On the way back home, on the ground I found a pen and had a sudden feeling that I was already at home, when I wasn’t. Well, not really.

Back at home, I thought I’d better research this a bit. Jumped on the internet to find my email inbox full of messages. Unfortunately, it was all spam. Then I found an advice website by Mia Farrow. What an unfortunate name with this nasty virus going around. Anyway, fortunately I discovered the answer to all my problems. An oinkment made from salt, honey and maple syrup coated all over me and left on for a few weeks and I’ll be cured!

Date Log: January 2009. Still waiting for the revolution.

Australia’s Digital Education Revolution is coming. Even before it started, it was identified that the $1.2 billion promised was not going to be enough, so now with the injection of a further $807 million, Educational Authorities across the country are investigating hardware options including laptops and wireless connectivity. But Dr Alan Kay is still not convinced that this will be the revolution our children need.

So who is Dr Alan Kay, and what would he know anyway? Well, apart from being directly involved with many of the milestones of Information and Communications Technology, including the development of the graphical user interface and mouse at Xerox PARC and defining the conceptual basics for laptop and tablet computers and E-books, Kay is a forward-thinking educationalist.

He has been anticipating an “Education Revolution” for over a decade now and way back in 2003 Kay was interviewed by Scholastic and related many of reasons why the Revolution has been delayed.  Sadly, most of those reasons are still with us today.  And we are still waiting.

When asked why he believes that the computer revolution hasn’t happened yet, Kay replied:

“Most schools define computer literacy as being able to operate Microsoft Office and maybe do a little web design. They’re missing the point. That’s like saying, “If you know which end of a book to hold up, and you know how to turn to Chapter Three, then you’re literate.”

Literature is first and foremost about having ideas important enough to discuss and write down in some form. So you have to ask, “What is the literature that is best written down on a computer?”

In this new age of the social web, the literature our students write needs to have an audience – to read, to appraise, to respond and to discuss. Rote learning and regurgitation  does nothing to promote the critical thinking that is essential in an ICT-based world.

When asked about the return value of the $40 billion spent on ICT in U.S. schools, Kay said:

“It’s a chicken and the egg thing. What’s happened is probably a successful egg—but with no chicken yet in sight. I can go into virtually any school that has computers and see children who are happily using them, as well as see teachers who are happy that the kids are using them. Parents are happy, principals are happy, and school boards are happy. But if you know anything about computing or about math and science, you can see that very little of importance is going on there. “

Of one-to-one computing in our schools?:

“I think the big problem is that schools have very few ideas about what to do with the computers once the kids have them. It’s basically just tokenism, and schools just won’t face up to what the actual problems of education are, whether you have technology or not.

You can put a piano in every classroom, but that won’t give you a developed music culture, because the music culture is embodied in people.  The important thing here is that the music is not in the piano. And knowledge and edification is not in the computer. The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

Educators have to face up to what 21st-century education needs to be about, and start thinking about solving that problem long before they bring the computer on the scene.”

Yet here we are in 2009, six whole years have passed since this interview and we are about to introduce hundreds of thousands of laptops into schools - the instruments are arriving before we have the musicians who can play them.

Fidel Castro once said, “A Revolution is a struggle between the past and the future”. His fellow revolutionist, Che Guevara said, “The Revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall”.

It appears that our apple has already rotted but is still hanging on due to the overwhelming force of apathy. Still, the Revolution is coming.

For a few years now, Personal Response Systems (PRS) and Student Response Systems (SRS) have been making major inroads into classrooms and lecture halls, particularly in Universities and Colleges.  These “clicker” systems literally put engagement, motivation, participation and instant feedback into the palm of each student’s hand.

In most classrooms today, the teacher asks a question and usually one person will reply with the answer. If it’s right, the answer is accepted and the lesson continues – regardless of whether the rest of the class agrees with or understands why the given answer was correct.  In a “clicker” classroom, the teacher displays the question she would like to ask and offers four multiple choice answers.  EVERY student then offers their answer by pressing a button on their clicker and seconds later, a bar chart appears on the screen with the results of everyone’s personal understanding.

Was the correct answer the most selected by the whole class? If not, it’s clear that the teacher has some more explaining to do. Even if it was the most selected, did any students answer incorrectly?  Instantly we have the opportunity to question further and reinforce the subject matter in all students. The power of participation with instant feedback cannot be underestimated. There are so many educational advantages when using audience response systems. Just take a look here.

Many K-12 teachers and schools are seriously contemplating spending many hundreds or even thousands of dollars on hand-held “clicker” devices from one of the thirty or so different companies that are producing them. While features like battery life, robustness and ease of use are important, the best aspect of most clicker solutions is the software and how it deals with the responses and reports back the results to the teacher or presenter. With so many players in the game, it’s not going to be easy to determine which way to head.

Then when you think you are ready, you jump in and buy a kit of 30 or so clickers to “share” between classes. Then you realize that when these devices are shared, they need to be registered for each user, each session!  This takes up valuable lesson time and makes using the clickers a lot more cumbersome than they really should be. Why do you think it is that most colleges and universities that use clickers force the students to buy their own? While that’s reasonable for a college student, it’s not really for a K-12 student and it certainly isn’t for ICT Training participants.

Then one of the biggest problems is that taking on a student response solution often requires some changes in teaching practice. It can be an expensive choice buying a hand-held clicker solution only to find it’s not getting used as effectively or as often as one would hope. We’ve all seen that happen to ICT purchases in the past.

There is no question that clickers can be valuable and effective teaching and learning resource. Unfortunately though, as already mentioned, their up-front cost  puts them out of reach of most K-12 schools that already spend most of their ICT budgets on computers, networking and ongoing maintenance of their existing computer facilities.  But many schools are fortunate enough to have a computer lab and some even have one-to-one laptop programs. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to use the existing computers in front of each student to get them to operate like a clicker does?

That’s exactly what Student Response Network is. A quick, reliable and effective clicker solution that anyone can operate. No IT specialists required. Up and running in seconds. Integrating ICT into teaching and learning the easy way.  For almost no cost, your school or training centre can get all the advantages of a traditional clicker solution to test, to evaluate, to train your staff. There’s little or no risk and Student Response Network can still be a stepping stone to the more expensive hand-held solutions when your staff are really ready for it.

Don’t risk making a dud purchase. Try Student Response Network and see if this type of technology is right for you.  Oh. By the way… Did I mention I developed it? 

That’s what I’ve been doing lately instead of writing more articles here at Parallel Divergence. So I thought I’d share with you my latest hobby project. It’s called Stu’s Double Jeopardy! version 3.1 – and as usual, it’s completely free for anyone who wants it.

For a free product, it’s actually quite impressive and it’s already been downloaded over 27,000 times. So what is it?

Stu’s Double Jeopardy (for Windows) borrows from the lasting legacy of the popular TV gameshow, Jeopardy! to make an exciting, interactive and educational computer-based gameshow available to everybody. It can be used in so many different situations – in schools and colleges, at conferences, trivia nights and parties. But the main use is expected to be in classrooms.

As Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) and data projectors become more widely used in schools, there is a need for motivating, interactive and educational software to complement them. Many of the IWB titles available involve working with one student while everybody else looks on. That’s where Stu’s Double Jeopardy is different. Firstly it’s all about teamwork – Jeopardy can be played by up to 6 teams!

So, once you’ve split your class up into the desired number of teams, it’s time to select a Jeopardy Quiz to play. This is where real interactivity starts and why my Jeopardy website is so important. With Stu’s Double Jeopardy, you can quickly and very easily create your own quiz files. Now I’m hoping that everybody that creates a Jeopardy quiz file will be happy to share it – making the site grow into a huge repository of Jeopardy quizzes covering every subject under the Sun and beyond. There’s already a good range of quizzes available for download, provided by people from all over the world.

You keep score automatically by pressing [tick] or [cross] against each team as they answer the questions. Play on through the board to reveal hidden “Daily Doubles” where the team in control can wager any or all of their score on the outcome of the next question. Then it’s through to the showdown – Final Jeopardy. Everything you know and love about the TV show, Jeopardy! is in Stu’s Double Jeopardy! But then there’s the real power of this program – The Question Editor.

With the Question Editor, Teachers can create question files. Students can create question files. One class can create a question file for another class to use. Build question files that cover every Key Learning Area and topic. Make the creation of question files a whole class activity! Every student can contribute questions individually, or groups can contribute a whole category of questions. Use the games for topic review. Use the games as a reward. Share your question files via the Stu’s Double Jeopardy website. Download shared question files from the Jeopardy website. It’s a great group activity that can be used over and over throughout each year.

To better explain the program before you go and grab your free copy, I’ve put together a short video to explain it a little better.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to see a full-screen high definition version of the video in your browser, click here.

Do you think this would work well in a classrom?

NOT LONG after Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party was whisked into power in Australia after 12 years of conservative government, there were immediate and obvious differences that appeared. Rudd took no traditional “honeymoon” period, instead preferring to get straight to work on delivering his pre-election promises. One of these being the $1.2 billion “Digital Education Revolution“.

During the election campaign, Mr Rudd was seen holding up a notebook PC, calling it “the Toolbox of the 21st Century“, then announcing that if elected, he would provide every Year 9 to 12 student in the country a computer. Now with victory secured, work has actually started with the first round of funding to be delivered in July to allow for these computers to be ordered - catching most education authorities and independent schools by surprise. With the equivalent of $1,000 provided per computer, per student, this represents a massive increase in ICT funding in school education.

As soon as the announcement was made, schools and each State started to think of the ACTUAL costs of providing a computer to each of these students. Aging power supplies in schools, inadequate networks, furniture, accommodation, storage, security - the list goes on and on – each item with its own price tag. Increasingly, schools started to realise that desktop PCs were out of the question, and even full-size laptops were disregarded due to the impending damage to our children’s spines. So it appears that a form of sub-notebook – possibly specially designed for Australian school needs will be required. Thanks to the global influence of the “$100 OLPC Laptop“, several companies including Asus, HP, Dell and Intel have produced sub-notebooks, all less than US$500 and all in the running for a slice of Australia’s Digital Education Revolution. The change leftover can then be used to buy all the sundry essentials that will be needed to make these notebooks work in a school setting.

But in a country with six State and two Territory governments that each look after school education in their own way, plus the various religious and independent school systems, there is little hope that Mr Rudd’s plan can produce the desired SINGLE revolution. There is every chance that there will be EIGHT different solutions adopted across the country with the funding distributed to the states.

It’s obvious that Australia’s Digital Education Revolution(s) has massive potential for changing the face of education as we’ve known it for the past 50 or so years. But it also has the potential to be the biggest, most-expensive flop ever undertaken by any education system in the world. Providing every student in years 9-12 their own notebook PC with wireless (filtered) Internet access at school alone represents a huge shift in direction for public education in particular.  Picture this:

Twenty-five Year 10 students arrive Period 1 to their Maths lesson on Monday morning. They each take out their nice, shiny new, fully-charged notebook and open it up. Student expectations are high. The teacher stands there holding his piece of chalk…

The problem is not sourcing or delivering the Notebooks. The problem is not the required wireless access, nor the Internet bandwidth, nor the battery life, nor the software and not even the warranty or on-site support nor the ongoing reimaging needs. All of these minor concerns can be overcome. From a pure ICT perspective, the job is not difficult – it just needs money, and it seems there’s plenty of that.

The real problems are not technical problems at all – they are all social problems.

Teachers are conditioned (and expected) to deliver the syllabus. A syllabus designed to fit into a rigid structure with an inflexible examination process that is the key measurement benchmark. We teach facts and we expect our students to regurgitate facts under exam conditions – and that hasn’t changed since… well… ever.  On the other hand, ICTs extend horizons. They introduce new concepts. They promote critical and free thinking. They extend students by expanding opportunities for creative output, shared learning experiences, outside and global communication. Human Interactivity through technology.

If they deliver a notebook to every year 9-12 student WITHOUT completely revamping the curriculum and syallabi, they risk ICT anarchy. To my way of thinking, you cannot allow the hardware and the technical solution to be delivered WITHOUT the education framework authorities seriously taking into account the enormous influx of ICTs that are coming soon and for them to change current educational expectations. If they try to “shoehorn” the new Notebooks solution into the existing curriculum by simply “implementing a professional development program around the use of the laptops in classrooms“,  then they are NOT being serious about a “Digital Education Revolution“.

Across the world we’ve seen the impact of ICTs in school education over the past decade or so, since the introduction of Internet access and the ongoing smaller computer rollout programs. Over this time, enormous amounts of money have been spent often for little or no educational change. If we did a cost-benefit analysis of computer rollouts and scrutinized classroom internet usage over the years, we’d be hard pressed to justify this expenditure.

The real problem, as I see it, is the use of ICTs in school education has always been and still is – in 2008 - an opt-in resource. For 10 years, educational authorities have been tinkering around the edges and walking on eggshells around teachers when it comes to integrating ICTs into the education of our students. That is because the already-full and concrete curriculum tells teachers that they “could” use ICTs as an “add-on”. But the world has changed incredibly in just the last 20 years. You only need to glance at what our teenagers are doing using ICTs, independently of school, to see that many of our young produce more “work” and display more creative and critical thinking on a daily basis at home than they would in a whole day of set lessons at school. This is not just a problem in Australia - it’s worldwide.

To borrow from Mr Rudd’s campaign-speak, we are at a fork in the road. We can choose to keep pouring more ICT money into the bottomless-pit of our 1950s education systems in the hope that a few more teachers might become beacons for the masses to (optionally) follow, or we can really and seriously start to shape a new, modern, underpinning education system for the 21st century. Both of these options will appear to voters that we are doing something positive – but only one actually will be. In the term “Digital Education Revolution”, of the two adjectives, I believe “digital” should hold 10% weight, while “education” should hold 90%. To me, the Digital Education Revolution is NOT an ICT project – and whilstever educational authorities see it as one, it is destined for failure.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very optimistic and excited by the potential for this Revolution to change the face and future of a whole nation, but unless unprepared eyes from all education authorites are opened and unless the will for true education revolution is there, we’ll continue to do a lot of ICT work for little gain.  Feel free to discuss in the comments. 

Humans compute very differently to computers. Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom are not terms often attributed to computers. The closest descriptors in the computer world are Data, Processors and Recursion. They’re just not the same.

A human could quickly look at a photograph and immediately identify all the elements in it - a man, a woman, a park bench, a tree, a child on a bicycle, grass, a pathway and a cloudy sky. But who could be bothered teaching a machine these elements that even a child can easily identify? How long would it take to type in all those words and point out each of the elements in just one photo? Then even if you did teach the machine everything about one photograph, would the computer be able to identify the same elements in another photo taken from a different angle?

What about words? A computer may have data that labels milk and cola as liquid foods, but it wouldn’t know that milk goes with cereal, but cola doesn’t (usually). The human ability to recognize and recall experiences allows a person to make appropriate decisions. But how can these skills be imparted on a computer? The amount of data entry required would be astronomical. The cost of the required data entry operators would be prohibitive and the staff burnout would be disheartening.

That’s where Games With A Purpose (GWAP) comes in. If there’s no money for the staff required to teach the machine, you need volunteers. But volunteers come and go and usually represent a miniscule proportion of society. This was the challenge facing Carnegie Mellon University. How can we get ordinary Internet users from around the world to teach the machine? And how can we be sure they are teaching the machine accurately? Who will quality control that amount of teaching?

I will. You will. We will. And we’ll do it because it’s great fun, motivational and promotes thinking skills. Teaching the machine is a by-product as far as the players are concerned. I’ve been playing it for two days now and have amassed over 100,000 points.  What for? Who knows, but it’s really enjoyable. Five different games to choose from and you can come back whenever you like to carry on your score.

Quality control? You play in real-time with another unidentified, uncontactable person and the machine is watching. In the game Verbosity (my favorite), one person (the narrator) receives an input word and using pre-supplied template sentences must accurately describe that word sufficiently well so that the second player can guess it correctly. Only English words can be used. Multiple players agreeing on terminologies and contexts ensure accuracy. The game is quick at only four minutes and each player takes turns being the narrator.

In Tag a Tune, each player listens to music and using words, describes the music they are listening to. Fast, slow, baroque, violins, techno, opera, rock. Based on the descriptions they see from their unseen partner, they each must decide whether they are listening to the same or a different piece of music. All the while, the machine is learning that this MP3 file has these attributes - provided to it and cross-checked by multiple human game players!

Of course, you won’t think you’re actually “working for Carnegie Mellon University” because you’re enjoying it so much.  And one of the first things you’ll discover is that most of the people you are chosen to play with must be complete idiots!  It could never be you who is the idiot. GWAP is tackling a complex problem in a very innovative and effective way. So instead of firing up that next game of Solitaire, why not try a Game With a Purpose?

If you’re still listening, I’ll assume you’re still interested in creating a class blog at your school. In part one, we concentrated on WHY teachers and schools should be blogging. In part two, we looked at WHAT had to be done to ensure student privacy and security. Now, in this third instalment of the class blogging series, we’ll look more closely at the HOW TO get started process.

If you are just one teacher that wants to do this at your school, I can STRONGLY recommend that you don’t do this alone. Make sure you recruit another teacher to also setup a class blog for their class and that way, you can work together – bouncing off ideas and working through issues together. Then when you do work it out, it’s much easier to spread across the whole school from a base of two classes rather than a base of just one.

The first thing you’ll need before you even go anywhere near a blogging service is a username and a title for your class blog. The username needs to be one word (no spaces) and should relate somehow to your preferred blog title. Finding these names is a great classroom activity that can involve all students and get them enthused about the class blog from the onset.

While “Class 5J” might be the name of your class, it’s not a great name for a class blog. For a start, there’s probably a lot of “Class 5Js” around the world. “Room 14″ also isn’t a great name as it shows little imagination. Instead of these obvious (and boring) identifiers, why not turn your class into a blogging team with an appropriate TEAM name suggested by and democratically agreed to by the students? Your students probably have a lot more imagination than I do, but a class at a waterside school might call themselves “The Splashtastics” or a Gifted and Talented class might call their blog “Smarticles”. You should probably come up with three different names, just in case your preferred name has already been taken at your preferred blog service. Ultimately, it’s probably best not to divulge your school name in your blog. It’s fine enough to say which city or town you are in and focus more on the “team” than on the school.

Now while the students are being busy thinking about a username and a blog title, the teachers can consider which (of the many freely available) blog-hosting services you’ll use – oh yes, and a password for your blog. People don’t seem to take passwords seriously, so I invite you to read this article - by the end of it, you’ll be thinking about changing all of your passwords using that method.

As for blog-hosting services, I’d suggest you don’t try to host it yourself on a server in your own school, for a start, the setup can be complicated and you’ll probably end up restricting your audience to the people within the school only. When there are so many good, free services available offering great features, it makes little sense to try and reinvent the wheel.

The obvious starting point is EduBlogs.org - they currently host over 100,000 blogs created by schools, teachers, librarians, lecturers, school administrators and individual students. For the cost of zero dollars, you get 100MB of space per blog with no ads and the ability to upload images, photos and videos – but if you start getting into videos, expect that 100MB to disappear pretty quickly. Fortunately, for US$25 per annum, you can upgrade your available space to 1GB. If you want to really splurge, starting at US$500 per annum, you can get 50 linked blogs for your students, each with unlimited space. More details here.

Another option is PodBean.com which promotes itself as a platform for hosting podcasts and vodcasts (videos), but is really a blog-host. Their free service also offers 100MB of space with a 1GB upgrade for US$24 per annum.

Interestingly, both of these services are actually based on the WordPress blogging engine, so they look pretty much identical to each other. And speaking of WordPress, we can’t forget WordPress.com – where this blog is hosted. Why did I choose WordPress.com? At last count, almost 3 million blogs are hosted here. For the basic FREE price, you get 3GB of disk space with unlimited bandwidth. The limitation here though is that you cannot upload videos and podcasts without paying for a space upgrade. For US$20 per annum, they’ll give you an extra 5GB of space with the audio/video restriction removed. Plus, being hosted by the makers of WordPress means you get all the latest updates to their blogging engine as soon as they are developed.

There are several other free hosting providers, but I don’t believe they can compete effectively on features and price. If $20 per annum is not a concern, I can highly recommend WordPress.com. If you want to do it for free, go for EduBlogs.org. If you want your students to individually blog, definitely go for the EduBlogs Campus product.

So after setting up your class blog, how would a school pay for the upgraded hosting service?  Basically, a teacher should pay for it with their credit card, print off the receipt and then get reimbursed by the school. That’s by far the easiest way.

In the next article in this series, we’ll look into the structure of a good blog, useful widgets and managing the blog. Until then, feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

In the article “Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging“, I discussed the reasons and benefits of blogging in the classroom, but for the blogging-novice, there are student privacy, security and policy concerns that must be considered. Assuming you took notice of the content of that first article, this one will take you through the first steps of creating a class blog and is part of a series that will clarify and develop this process for teachers and schools starting out.

Firstly, parental permission should be obtained for any student who will participate in the class blogging process. An introductory statement for parents should explain the benefits of Internet Publishing via a class blog and how it applies to 21st Century Education. Following this should be a request for permission for the child to participate in the class blog. An example consent form in MS-Word format can be downloaded here and adapted to your own needs to get you started. Explicit permission needs to cover the publishing of student work on the internet including student photos and videos. It should be made clear that students will not be identified by full name.

Secondly, the teacher needs to keep control of any and all class blogs that are created. Keeping control means keeping the blog passwords secure. Students should not be provided the password to the class blog. Remember, with that password, the blog can be edited from any internet connection point in the world. If you don’t control the password, you can’t control the class blog.

Thirdly, it’s important in a classroom situation to control the comments and feedback received at the blog. All blogs can allow for two-way communication. Students can publish their work and visitors to the blog can comment on what they see, with students then replying to those comments. When comments are open, anything submitted is instantly published and visible on the blog. For this reason, it is important that the teacher configure the blog for MODERATED comments. With moderated comments, the teacher is alerted via email whenever a comment has been posted and is asked to check then approve or delete the comment. This way, only approved comments will ever appear on the blog.

Having said this, once the blog has been created and a good set of work published to it, comments and feedback should be strongly encouraged. Ask your students to tell their parents and relatives about their class blog. Have the students proudly discuss their work and get their parents to contribute their thoughts to the blog. That way the blog becomes both a valuable education AND communication resource. Contact other schools that have class blogs and ask if you could setup reciprocal links. Have your students converse via the blog with the students from other schools. Consider joint projects that can be published to the blogs. The other school could be in the same city, in another town in your state or in another country altogether. And when you’ve found a school to work with, don’t stop there, find another one and setup a wider-linked global community.

Lastly, once you start blogging, don’t think of it as a one-off project that dies after a term. That initial blog should be a springboard to a series of blogs covering a wide range of topics, all of which are linked to the curriculum and to your school environment. Once a classroom blog proves successful in one class, work out how the concept can be extended to other classes. The classroom of the 21st Century must lead to the School of the 21st Century and ultimately to an education system for the 21st Century.

The next article in this series will look more closely at the blog-naming process and introduce you to some appropriate on-line blogging services. Why not share your experiences with classroom blogging in the comments section?

Part Three: Still Interested in a Class Blog?

MANY of our students leave school in the afternoon and go straight on-line as soon as they get home. They immediately start chatting with their friends on MSN, often holding down multiple conversations at the same time, seamlessly changing subjects and maintaining discussion threads as they swap from one chat window to the next.  Their typing speed continually improves and in just one on-line session, they might type more text than they handwrite during their lessons at school in a whole day.

When there’s a break in the discussions, they’re busy updating their MySpace, Facebook or Bebo sites to let all their friends know what their day was like and what plans they have for the week ahead.  In the wheat field of six-billion people on the planet, these individual children have a voice, a profile and a status - identified by the number of on-line “friends” they’ve accumulated.

So what part are the teacher, the school and even the parent playing in this scenario? Unfortunately, very little. The parent’s main assistance is the provision of the computer and the internet access – but what their children are using the resource for is totally beyond them – as long as it keeps them quiet. To the teachers and the school, this is something very foreign. To the student, school means having to “power-down”.

But it isn’t all rosy for the students. Issues such as cyber-bullying show that students do not use the social web as appropriately as they should - or could. Without any guidance from parents and schools, students are busy publishing without being aware of the ramifications of their publishing. And a potentially global audience is overwhelmingly underestimated by our children.

Teachers and schools have been busy shielding children and teaching them how to avoid inappropriate content on the web – when the real need is to teach them how they can publish appropriate content themselves.

But how can teachers achieve this if they don’t model it themselves? How can schools be relevant to students if the education they provide is a world apart from the one students actually live in?

Using blogs in schools is an achievable step that teachers can take that will allow them to practically demonstrate responsible publishing with students. It can be the catalyst for starting discussions about issues surrounding the social web while at the same time taking the classroom to the outside world and bringing the outside world into the classroom. Have a read of “The Trouble with Web 2.0” for more.

With a little planning, a class blog can be created to provide your students with an opportunity to globally publish their best work. The blog then becomes a motivational tool in the teacher’s kit that sits alongside more traditional teaching methods.  And of course, the blog is just the start. As well as posting writings and artworks, the class blog can host student videos, podcasts and presentations, making it a true multimedia prosumer resource.

If your school isn’t using blogs as an educational activity, what aspect of the read-write web are you using?

Part Two: Getting Started with Class Blogs
Part Three: Still Interested in a Class Blog?

The unexpected demise of famous young people due to “accidental” drug overdoses has dotted modern history. Janis Joplin, John Belushi, River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, and Heath Ledger all succumbed to an addiction that snatched away their lives when they were in their prime. While crystal-meth, crack and ecstasy are now the most “popular” of illicit drugs, Heroin still remains the pinnacle.

It’s a world that a relatively very few people choose to enter, but the social impact is often massive as relatives bear witness to the demise of someone they love; as neighborhoods endure crime waves and health systems redirect their attention to self-inflicted victims.  In 1983, a high school student who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote an insightful poem capturing the struggle of heroin addicts.

Take Me in Your Arms – by Anonymous 

So now, little man, you’ve grown tired of grass
LSD, goofballs, cocaine and hash,
and someone, pretending to be a true friend,
said, “I’ll introduce you to Miss Heroin.”

Well honey, before you start fooling with me,
just let me inform you of how it will be.

For I will seduce you and make you my slave,
I’ve sent men much stronger than you to their graves.
You think you could never become a disgrace,
and end up addicted to Poppy seed waste.

So you’ll start inhaling me one afternoon,
you’ll take me into your arms very soon.
And once I’ve entered deep down in your veins,
The craving will nearly drive you insane.

You’ll swindle your mother and just for a buck.
You’ll turn into something vile and corrupt.
You’ll mug and you’ll steal for my narcotic charm,
and feel contentment when I’m in your arms.

The day, when you realize the monster you’ve grown,
you’ll solemnly swear to leave me alone.
If you think you’ve got that mystical knack,
then sweetie, just try getting me off your back.

The vomit, the cramps, your gut tied in knots.
The jangling nerves screaming for one more shot.
The hot chills and cold sweats, withdrawal pains,
can only be saved by my little white grains.

There’s no other way, and there’s no need to look,
for deep down inside you know you are hooked.
You’ll desperately run to the pushers and then,
you’ll welcome me back to your arms once again.

And you will return just as I foretold!
I know that you’ll give me your body and soul.
You’ll give up your morals, your conscience, your heart.
And you will be mine until, “Death Do Us Part”

In 1972, Neil Young released his often covered track, “The Needle and the Damage Done“, which chronicles the descent of musicians he knew into heroin addiction. It was written about the heroin use of his Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten.  Danny eventually died from an overdose. The other night I was listening to this track and decided that as a follow on from my last article about Heath Ledger, this brief song needed a music video to help people to better undertand Young’s intentions.

 I hope you liked the poem above and this video. Please leave any comments below.

January 22 2008: What a shocking, tragic waste. An all too stunning but brief spectacle – like a meteorite that flashes across the midnight sky. At only 28 years of age, a young man in the prime of his emerging career is dead. What can you say? What can anyone say?

You keep clicking Refresh on the Google News page and the details remain sketchy. What is it that draws young people with the entire world at their feet to risk obliteration by chasing a thrill that is brought about by performing chemistry experiments inside their own head? Is this one and only world that we get a lone chance to experience so totally screwed up that an early exit to nothingness is really a desired outcome? Why live at all in the first place?

Heath had everything in front of him. The Dark Knight and Ledger’s reportedly stunning portrayal of The Joker is now more than ever the most highly anticipated film release of 2008. How will cinema-goers now react to the film? Will the originally expected fan-reaction be one of thrills, excitement and awe? Or will we realise that Heath actually shows more of his own character in his playing of The Joker and will all feelings toward this amazing motion picture tend toward sorrow and despair?

We as a society and as a race must do something about this. We mustn’t let Heath Ledger’s passing just get tacked onto a neverending list of fallen stars. Life means more than that.

Heath Ledger, Rest in Peace.

GOVERNMENTS and authorities around the world have been using shock tactics in ”Public Service Announcements” for several years now, but their use of graphic advertising has been on the increase. Certainly, it is universally acknowledged that smoking, driving without a seat belt and drugs are dangerous and carry certain risks, but it seems the public needs to be reminded, often on a daily basis, of these dangers in gory detail. 

In the above advertisement from Australia, we are shown the real, personal aftermath of a short lifetime of smoking. This is literally one of hundreds of such ads now being aired in countries all over the planet. These may cause smokers to try to quit, but will this stop people taking up smoking in the first place?  Many young people have a short attention span and that is especially when it comes to thinking about the future. If they know smoking is not going to kill you within days, then the youth won’t care. This will again be dismissed as everyone who starts smoking believes they can quit at any time. Despite these shock ads, that’s not going to change.

Maybe authorities should move away from the graphic scare campaign and onto more behavior-related methods. Most non-smokers (young and old) are turned off by smoking. Seeing someone you find attractive turn and light up a cigarette is a huge turn-off for so many people. If smokers realised this they might think about it a bit more.  Shame not scare.

Now what about all those “horror” safe-driving campaigns? The next one here is a quite powerful one from a series of UK ads based on the “Think!” concept. This one asks from two angles, “How does what you do affect others?”

From Norway comes a clever and highly visual example of how seat belts save lives.

And another of the UK “Think!” ads, this time looking at how driving just a little over the speed limit can really alter a situation, with deadly consequences.

Finally, this is probably the most graphic Public Service Announcement I’ve ever seen. It’s a Canadian Work Safety ad aiming to alert employees to be more vigilant and careful at work. It also pulls at heartstrings by introducing the human in the story to the audience, so she’s not just some nameless, faceless crash test dummy.

So, the real question is, do they work? Are smoking rates going down because of these ads or because its being banned from most indoor areas across the western world? Do more people wear seat belts and less people talk on their cell phone while driving because they’ve been terrorised by these graphic public service announcements or because more and more people are being fined for these offences? Are people slowing down because they are terrified of killing a child or because of the ever growing use of speed cameras? And as for the last ad, hell, I don’t know if I want to go to work tomorrow!

Whether the ads are working or not, there is a pretty serious side-effect. The more these types of ads are shown, the more we as a society are being de-sensitized. Most of the comments at YouTube attached to these ads are mocking the people and situations in them. There’s very little sense of horror and more of the opposite – hilarity. The people commenting at YouTube are Internet veterans. They’ve seen everything there is to see. From hostages being decapitated in Iraq through to the worst imaginable XXX porn. All just a few clicks of the mouse away. Just what will a de-sensitized society be like, I wonder? We may not have to wait too long to find out.