Holiday exploring and reading…

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It’s holiday time!

Time to relax, rest, take off the pressure, have a complete change, and be recharged.

Holiday relaxing: time to catch up on reading

But, recharging doesn’t necessarily mean taking our minds off what to most people in education is a passion!

What do you do when you’ve had your swim, gone for your walk, filled up your daily quota of words chatting with friends and family, devoured the barbecued steak and finished with a glass of wine? You want to try out that new iPad or iPhone, or whatever new toy you got in your stocking. Or maybe you just want to do a bit of surfing online on the old laptop.

Laptop free!

I know, I know! Some of you are bound by some self-imposed rule: you want a break, and you’re not touching anything to do with technology—including the shaver! You just want a decent book or two.

Regardless, at some point in a holiday, the mind turns back to your great passion in the “real world”, and you want to gear up and refresh the brain with new and stimulating ideas, directions, information, news, new resources, and so on. You know only too well, once the holiday’s finished such opportunities diminish.

Knowing this, I asked some of our staff, ‘What would be on your list of professionally stimulating sites to explore and articles and books to read in this situation?’

Here’s that list, to which I’ve added some suggestions of my own. There’s twenty of them, and a list of five books!

Twenty online education resources

Some of these, you can subscribe to by email or RSS feed, so you can receive regular updates through the year.

  1. Teacher’s College Record — The Teachers College Record is a journal of research, analysis, and commentary in education.
  2. e-School News Online — news, reports, resources, and excellent newsletter on education technology.
  3. Horizon Report — This highly respected report is the centerpiece of the New Media Consortium’s (NMC) Emerging Technologies Initiative, which charts the landscape of emerging technologies within education.
  4. Edutopia — George Lucas Education Foundation web site containing many resources for educators.
  5. From Now On — an educational technology journal from Canadian educator, Jamie McKenzie. (Excellent resources, free subscription.)
  6. Education Week on the Web — Full-text articles from EDUCATION WEEK, TEACHER magazine, and background sources, as well as selected education articles from newspapers around the USA.
  7. Learning and Leading with Technology — ISTE‘s membership magazine. Subscription is required for full access.
  8. Educause — a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
  9. AERA journals —The web site of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), an organisation founded in 1916 and devoted to improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly research and dissemination and practical application of the results.
  10. ICT in Education (UNESCO Bangkok) —a web site providing useful material about ICT in Asia-Pacific education including, UNESCO ICT in education projects, policies, training, measuring and monitoring change, online resources, latest news and trends.
  11. ICT in Education — Terry Freedmnan’s blog “for leaders and managers of educational ICT. (Check out the left hand menu for links to articles.)
  12. DEANZ Journal — The Distance Education Association of New Zealand’s web site journal of open, flexible and distance learning. (Log-in is required for full benefits of the site.)
  13. Digital Citizenship at Home — A digital citizenship wiki run by CORE’s Tessa Gray. A fantastic resource about digital citizenship. Holidays could be a good time to return to read all the information.
  14. The Committed Sardine — This is a great blog for keeping up with the latest in technology and educational impact.
  15. Presentation Zen — Garr Reynold’s blog with great tips on professional presentations including slide design and delivery.
  16. Duarte — Another site that provides information on understanding slide design and concepts.
  17. TED — TED is no doubt already a favourite with many. But now’s the time to remind you about taking time out for inspiration.
  18. EDtalks — A site full of videos providing inspiration from some of the world’s leading education thinkers and commentators.
  19. ECE Online — A powerful and growing resource for early childhood educators.
  20. CORE website — Have a look around—there’s more there than you probably realise!

And the book list…

For the solid read under the beach umbrella or tree, we’ve got a short list of interesting, motivational or thought-provoking books.
Reading at the beach

Thanks to Matt, Jedd, Tara and Derek for their contributions to these lists.

Add your own suggestions

Feel free to add some of your own suggestions in the comment box below. We’d love you to share with others those great resources you’ve found.


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The merits of the professional punt – the iPad in learning

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The use of Apple’s iPad in learning environments is a topic that is already eating column inches. Yet pinning down why something new might be worth testing or investing in is often difficult.

Use of iPad in learning

So it is with much anticipation that I watch two groups of teachers pushing the boat out.

iPad tests by BLENNZ excites

Firstly in Wellington, two teachers from the Blind and Low Vision Education Network NZ (BLENNZ) have begun to document the use of an iPad with students who have low vision. They are at the “toes in the water” stage and have only facilitated taster sessions (the iPads are personally owned by the teachers) but the initial footage is raising enough excitement that the documentation was shared across the whole school. From chatting to the teachers, it is one of those scenario’s that when you know the student, and you see the level of attention and engagement, it makes your heart sing.

iPad research in literacy skills

At the other end of the country, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the the Blind (RNZFB) is in the initial stages of a partnership project with BLENNZ where they are purchasing four iPads as a resource for an action research project around access to literacy skills. Again it’s a punt, the technology is relatively new, and there is no research base from which to draw evidence with any longevity.

But just as Toni Twiss committed her eFellowship to investigating “the use of mobile phones in classrooms“, someone has to break the ground, and the more that do, the more variables we can bring together.

iPad suited to the school environment

The iPad is a big step forward to the school environment

My own first impression on handling an iPad is that it is sleek, light and will fit neatly wedged behind a lunch box in a school bag. These may sound like flippant observations, but in the land of assistive technology, such attributes are a good start.

For those of us who spend much of our day trying to support the adaption of learning spaces, the advent of technology that is flexible, functional, and good looking is enough to make us cheer.

For so long, technology solutions have been clunky, weighed a ton, and often the learner had to sit apart from their peers because they needed an extra desk to set up all their gear. Plus, assistive technology is notoriously “specialist” and uncollaborative because no-one, other than the learner, knows how to operate it, and by default it becomes the exclusive domain of the learner with the disability, a great model for inclusion!

What other stories and thoughts out there?

So to anyone out there reading this, I’d love to hear if you are using an iPad in the classroom as a tool for you, and/or with your students, or if you have stumbled on interesting stories from colleagues or from reading around.

One of my current favorites, covered by the New York Times describes the the introduction of an iPad into the world of a young boy called Owen Cain. What I love about it, is that it demonstrates how if the adults alongside learners are bold and prepared to take a bit of a punt, all sorts of unexpected learning opportunities can happen – check out the video and see what you think.

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Nine tips for online community newbies

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As an online facilitator, there is also work to be done offline!

When encouraging people to come into an online community, it can be useful to supply them with a list of tips. Here is an example of what has worked well for me:

Some tips for making the most of belonging to an online community

1. Upload your photo

Upload your photo

Upload your photo – it’s more personal and friendly, and helps to build a sense of community.

2. Assume good intent

Assume the best intent

Text can be stark and it’s possible to misread someone if you can’t hear their tone of voice or see their facial expressions- as a rule, always assume good intent!

3. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes

put yourself in the reader's shoes: don't confuse them

Think about how others may read your posts – it is easy for humorous or ‘throw away’ comments to be misunderstood.

4. Show your mood

Use emoticons

Use emoticons so people can get a sense of your tone.

5. Respond to posts

Respond to other's posts; don't ignore them.

Respond constructively to other’s posts. Nobody wants to feel like they are being ignored.

6. Keep the conversation short

shorter posts

Most of the time, short posts are better because they are easier to read and respond to in conversations.

7. Frequent is fun

Post frequently

It works better if you log on often – e.g. ten minutes, three times a week is better and more fun than once a month for two hours.

8. It’s just a chat

Just a chat

Do you enjoy chatting with people over coffee? Think of the conversations in the online community as the same thing – being online allows us to continue these conversations.

9. Just be you

Be yourself

Be yourself – there is no right or wrong way of taking part – enjoy!

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A planned approach to conference attendance

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Conference attendees

With the 11th Learning@School Conference planned for February 23-25 2011 the question needs to be asked….

Do schools get what they need from a conference experience?

There is no doubt that education conferences such as Learning @School and Ulearn provide a wealth of professional learning opportunity, but the degree to which conferences and workshops result in changed practice in the classroom is difficult to gauge. Ideas are swapped and generated, and stories are shared that have impact upon teachers’ knowledge and thinking during the conference itself, but where does this lead post-conference?

Many schools sometimes fall short of getting optimum return from staff attendance.

Professor Helen Timperley from the University of Auckland  states:

“Teachers engaging in professional learning experiences must have some idea of what the desired outcomes are, otherwise their engagement is not likely to make a difference to their students’ learning”

(Teacher professional learning& Development Educational Practices series 2008 IAE)

Conferences offer a wealth of opportunity

Conferences offer many benefits including:

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Virtual Learning Network: a portal to rule them all?

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The Ministry of Education’s Virtual Learning Network – or VLN – has been around for a long time.  It is a suite of services that offers “advice and guidance on a whole range of things that schools, tertiaries, government agencies (and so on) may need to make these connections pedagogically, as well as with applications in this networked environment”.

So, schools who are isolated geographically, for example, or students who want to study courses not offered in the school, can hook into learning programmes online.

Recent developments, managed by CORE Education, have seen the VLN begin to migrate its services to the VLN in an Elgg environment.

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