Bored Shorts (Video Tech Task)

Sometimes your kids need a brain break or a conversation starter. It's pretty easy to forget that we're severely trying the concentration and attention spans of our students just about every day. It's easy to forget that the attention span of even an adult is rarely more than about twenty minutes. Kids can work for longer than that on an interesting task, but often need a moment to breath, relax and maybe even let out a chuckle or two.

Another problem that we sometimes inflict upon ourselves is an incredible, overweening self-seriousness in every moment of the school day. We believe in our work, and that's a good thing, but if we approach every day like a great crusade, we are going to find ourselves disappointed, frustrated and burned out. We need to laugh, our students need to laugh. School should be fun and sometimes it's good to make fun of it.

When you think about it, school is a weird thing. Learning was, for most of human history, given by parents and the community and largely had to do with basic survival skills, along with some cultural knowledge. The cruel fact is, that much of what students learn in school, at least the nuts and bolts facts, will have relatively little import in their lives. If they do not know when Jacques Cartier landed on Canadian soil, they will be little disadvantaged.

So sometimes you need to take a step back, relax and laugh a little. Bored Shorts provides a perfect example of something that can be used for a laugh or to start a conversation about something.

If nothing else, you can be that 'cool' teacher for a few minutes.

Doing A Holocaust Wiki (And Other Interesting Tasks)

Over the last little while, I have been working on establishing a Wiki for my Multiage classroom on the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. As you know well if you're familiar with this blog, I have had many adventures with wikis, some positive, some not so much. This shall be my final post regarding the topic of wikis.

I feel that wikis are extremely useful when it comes to creating an open and public framework for an informational topic. The wiki we have created is already a useful potential resource for classrooms and it has certainly given me the desire to use wikis for my classroom when I get a teaching job. They have several of the appealing features of social media, with greater security than is the case for some other forms of social media.

One advantage of the wiki format is that it is very easy and intuitive to make an attractive page that contains as much or as little media as is desired. One thing I enjoy about wikis is that absolutely no coding skills are done. 

The issue about simultaneous editing is an issue, yes, but one simply has to ensure that students are not all attempting to work on it at the same time. I feel that many of the weaknesses of the wiki could be easily resolved through smart management.

Wiki link: http://victimsoftheholocaust.wikispaces.com/

About.Me (Tech Task)

About.Me: http://about.me/kriskeen

I've had my about.me page up for nearly six weeks now, and actually, I've been having quite a number of views on there. It pops up on Google searches of my name periodically (the first pingback that relates to me personally is usually my online portfolio on Weebly), so it's clearly out there and people are looking at it.

How do I feel about about.me in general? I think it could potentially be a useful source, but in general, I find that all manner of short-form media commentaries are a little frustrating. I'm sure I would have embraced Twitter a bit more if it allowed more characters. I enjoy blogging, though I have trouble keeping up with blogs in civilian life (I have a music review and a D&D blog that have gone down to death and delay).

One of the limiting factors with these things, oddly enough, is my aversion towards posting any pictures of myself online, which stems from my aversion to having my picture taken. I suppose I'll have to do something about this at some point ...

Ideas and Thoughts.org (Edublogger Tech Task)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that someone in this class has a pretty high opinion of the thoughts of Dean Shareski, after his Skype presentation to the class. I found some of the content in his blog to be even more illuminating, however.

I'd particularly like to point readers to this post: http://ideasandthoughts.org/2014/02/01/2690/

The fact is, that it isn't particularly valuable, except to one's own ego to get comments that simply express agreement with one's ideas. Sometimes of course, that's simply true, but it's far preferable to engage with someone on a more serious level. There is something to be said for the art of constructive criticism.

This is not to suggest of course, that one needs to be recklessly contrarian. Certainly, the Internet is filled with all manner of bile (examine the average YouTube comment page for proof). The idea is to encourage actual engagement and debate. There is an unfortunate tendency amongst Internet users to create a 'bubble' of websites that largely support and affirm their points of view.

I have to admit, I'm not innocent of it. Where do I get online news? The Guardian, the Independent, BBC World Service and sometimes the Huffington Post. I'm not suggesting that one has to equally value all content services of course, but it couldn't hurt to occasionally look at a source of information presented from a view different from, even contrary to, your own.

As Dean makes a note of, it's about your own learning as well as that of the people making the comments.

Web 3.0?

For many years now, the idea of "Web 2.0" has been an widely established one, with social media being among the forefront aspects, along with increased participation and interactivity with 'ordinary' users, as opposed to a small 'Web Elite' which previously made up the majority of online content creation.

So what will Web 3.0 look like?

This is significant for us in education, because I feel like we've only begun to get to grips with Web 2.0. And some school divisions still seem to be trying the best they can to ignore the existence of social media entirely. Most likely, just as educators are coming to grips with the current model of the Internet, the paradigm will shift again. But what will it shift into?

I think we've started to move towards the model already, with Internet access being freed form the constraints of traditional computer equipment and put into increasingly portable forms. Google is experimenting with glasses that can surf the Internet. Many people rely largely on their phones as their primary source of Internet browsing. This trend towards micro-sizing and ubiquity will likely only continue.

The user-driven model of 2.0 will likely continue to grow and thrive, moving out from simple formats such as sharing text, images and videos and into more complex fields such as software and game design. Powerful tools to make online content already exist and many of them are free. The tyranny of paid software has started to crack to a huge extent, with free models such as Google Drive and OpenOffice rapidly supplanting traditional software.

I don't know what exactly Web 3.0 will look like, but some of the trends are already forming. I think another change will be more social, as people become more and more invested into their online selves. Already, the 'Wild West' elements of the Internet are fading rapidly and are being replaced with more regulated models, by various agencies certainly, but also by users themselves.

In any case, it's going to be interesting to see what happens, and how we cope with it.

Like Oxygen

One of the speakers at the 1-on-1 Panel held here at Brandon University made a very interesting analogy about technology in the classroom, comparing it to oxygen. He said that it should be "omnipresent, necessary and invisible". I want to hold that oxygen metaphor for a moment and consider it in a little more detail.

Oxygen is essential to life. As we move further and further into the digital age, so is technology. Twenty years ago, the Internet was virtually a novelty for the general population, fifteen years ago, it was just starting to come into widespread use. Today, Internet access and digital technology has rapidly become a necessity rather than a luxury. Fortunately, with the advent of tablets, smartphones and highly affordable laptop systems, it has also become far more accessible than it ever was before. While still a daunting prospect, it is possible for schools to move towards a 1-on-1 model for technology.

Oxygen and technology are necessary, then.

What about omnipresence? Oxygen is all around us, and so is technology. Even in school divisions that could never be accused of being particularly progressive, technology is a major part of the academic life of a school as well as the social lives of all the people who live within it. One in four children in Grade Four have a smartphone and the numbers increase drastically as one goes through the grade levels. By the time kids are in Grades Seven or Eight, that number is likely a majority and by high school, very few children indeed do not have access to this technology. Smartboards exist in just about every classroom and devices are easily accessible even in schools that do not have a 1-on-1 model.

Oxygen and technology are omnipresent.

Invisibility. Oxygen makes up about twenty percent of air, is essential to life and yet, we cannot see it. While I wouldn't say that technology has truly become invisible yet (we'll need to wait another generation or so, I think, for the possibility of neural implants), it has become far subtler than it used to be. Computers used to fill enormous rooms, cost millions of dollars- and have less processing power than even the tiniest smartphone today. A typical consumer system today contains more processing power than NASA had on hand to take men to the moon in 1969. Technology has become lighter and smaller than the books that it would replace, not the thousands of books of a school library, but a single book. A smartphone is lighter than virtually any book.

Technology is rapidly becoming invisible, like oxygen is.

There's something else about oxygen, though, that I think can extend the metaphor a little bit. What does a fire need to survive and grow? Oxygen.

In today's world, what has more potential than anything else to transform pedagogy and light the fires of student learning? Technology.

Infogr.am and the Winter Olympics

One of the tech tasks before us is to create an infographic and then make it public in some fashion. I have chosen to use infogr.am and made a quick and simple table of the gold medal totals of the Winter Olympics. Overall the program is not difficult to use, though certainly, I could stand to develop my skills on it a little more. 

Infographic Link: Winter Olympic Gold Medals

What does this infographic reveal about the Winter Olympic medal totals? One is that there is a fairly high degree of random variance in such an event, not surprising given the relatively small numbers that one works with in the Olympics. The other is that host countries get a significant bump to their medal totals under many circumstances- certainly the Canadians benefited from this bump in Vancouver and the Russians are enjoying it so-far in Sochi.

There are some general trends that can be assessed from the information, though. The first is that Germany has been a consistent top-level performer, and indeed, has by far the most consistently high scores of any of the countries on this list. Aside from the meteoric highs of the Vancouver Olympics, Canada has been improving its overall scores. Considering the events remaining in Sochi, a final total of 7 or 8 Olympic gold medals is likely, indicating that Canada is a contender in the Games, but likely not the top one.

Russian performance has consistently dropped. This will likely reverse due to the 'home ice' advantage in Sochi but even so, the Russians will be very fortunate to do as well as they did in 1994, let alone as well as the Soviet Union traditionally did in the Olympics. Norway is traditionally a top competitor in the games and indeed has more medals than any other country in the all-time standings, but for some reason, had a calamitously bad performance at Salt Lake City, winning only 2 gold medals as opposed to numbers usually around or in excess of ten.

When the Sochi games are finished, it will be interesting to revisit this infographic and see what else can be added to it, if some trends continue or are broken.

Online Organization

Once upon a time, most people's online presence consisted of whatever websites they happened to be browsing (remember when it was called surfing?) and a singular email address. This was very easily kept track of. If one found a website they particularly liked, it was more than enough simply to bookmark it on one's browser, which was probably Internet Explorer at the time, perhaps even Netscape (man, I'm Internet old) ...

That doesn't cut it anymore.

I did a brief tally of my affiliations with various sites, and I have ...

4 blogs (mostly not updated in quite awhile, which is kind of sad).
3 major email addresses (Personal email, work email, school email)
A Twitter account
A Facebook account
A Google Plus account
Membership at a variety of forums
Regular readership of a number of websites, blogs and webcomics

So here's the deal. I have got to organize myself a little better. What am I going to use to do that? First, there's the Feedly, into which I've organized all the blog posts and such. Secondly, there's the possibility of using Symbaloo in order to organize some of the websites. I'm sure I could probably rig the two to link to each other ...

The possibility exists for me to place the various facets of my online existence into seperate folders which link to each other but do not cross over. When I'm looking for jobs on school division websites, I don't need to accidentally click on some RPG-related forum!* Or indeed, it would probably not be wise to confuse this blog somehow with that defunct one where I did excessively long album reviews.

Our online lives have become far richer and more complex since the early days of the Internet. We need to have a grasp on how to organize it, or it's very easy to get lost.

*= Yes, I'm a nerd.

I Think John Finch Is Tired Of Talking About Technology

The guy has a point.

It's not that technology isn't a worthwhile thing to talk about or teach to. Far from it. Technology is one of the factors that is defining our world today, if not the primary factor. The power, potential and limitations of technology are shaping our modern age.

But a lot of the time, we just stop there. We have the workshop. It's great. We learn some cool new tricks for the classroom.

"Hey kids, we're gonna do fake Twitter profiles and updates for characters."

Is there anything wrong with this? Not at all. But sometimes, we make the critical mistake of divorcing technology from pedagogy. If we are not integrating technology into our teaching practice and putting it to work, then it really is just a trick. We're in the business of educating, not distracting or entertaining per se. It's a trap I've seen other teachers fall into and it's one that I've probably tripped over myself.

It is very, very easy to miss the forest for the trees.

It seems odd that we would have a guest speaker come in for a two hour class and spend perhaps a quarter of it actively discussing technology. Setting aside about ten percent of the time or so that was spent discussing donuts, you're left with a conversation that was mostly about pedagogy and the inquiry method of teaching.

What is the lesson to be drawn here? Here is the technology expert, talking mostly about pedagogical method and being very honest about his frustration in that there isn't more conversation about how technology and pedagogy intersect.

It's something to think about. I know I'll be doing quite a bit of thinking about it.