Breadth or depth of skills for an ICT Integrator

Hi all,

I have been playing with the notion of minimum expectations, skills, standards an ICT Integrator needs to have. Then I realised it is about getting a balance between the breadth and depth of the skills the person has to meet the basic needs, projects and future directions of a school’s 1:1 community.

I have often heard of the expression breadth and depth but have never really thought it through in detail.  Thinking about this in relation to ICT skills  has been an interesting experience.  I have pretty good depth in social media, blogging  the use of SharePoint for content management and the creating of reasonable webpages. I have good breadth on tools to use in teaching and learning though I prefer some more than others.   I am not that much into virtual worlds  and there are other things I have not used yet like Voice Thread.

I feel I have  have the skills to manage a new ICT tool even if I have not used it if I need to help someone.

This last sentence is the key to this post – I want ICT integrators to be able to do this and you need a good breadth of skills to be able to do this.

To achieve this we have to work out what is the minimum skills to have good breadth.  To this end I have develop  four key areas an ICT integrator might need to work on to make a good fist of what they need to do.  They need a service mentality to support a 1:1 implementation (no matter what the request and from who), they have to be able to work with a school’s tools for digital learning and content (SharePoint, Moodle or what ever), they need versatility  with the school’s software and hardware (the  laptops,  smartboards, cords..) and they need personalised professional development (so they are ahead of the game).

Here is a graphical representation of the four areas and below that is an attempt to identify what is needed to do this.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Implementation and support

• Run introductory workshops for students
• Support for staff in the classroom
• Support students in the classroom

2.  Management of digital learning and content

• Portal:- Document Libraries-Content Editor Webparts- Galleries/surveys/blogs/wikis- Permissions/ Layout
• Webtools:- Social Media Applications - Cloud Computing
• Third party products such as LAMS,

3. Versatility with school software and hardware

• Video  creation and editing:- Moviemaker /Premier Pro- Create and edit projects for staff and students
• Audio file creation and editing:- Use digital recorder - Manipulate sound files using audacity
• Photo creation and manipulation:- Photoshop and Fireworks – Edit and batch process pictures
• Microsoft Suite:- Should be able to troubleshoot all aspects of these programs for staff and students
• Smart Boards and data projectors:- Should be able to help with all equipment in the school including class and larger meeting areas

4. Professional Development

• Policies, Procedures and documentation
• Formal Professional Development- courses, workshops…
• Nonformal Professional Development through encouragement to blog and use Twitter etc, write articles of projects.

If you have time I would like some feedback on these ideas becasue many of us are in the same position.

cheers  Martin

A possible model to provide support for 1:1 Learning Technologies

Hi all,

I have been playing with some ideas about 1:1 and support for use of learning technologies.   I have been thinking of developing some sort of framework to help ICT Integrators helping teachers to help themselves in a 1:1 setting. Definitely a work in progress.

cheers Martin

I digress and it was worth it

Hi all,

My friend Justin takes me out to dinner each decade for my birthday.  I have my 50^th next month and we went for a nice meal at a place between Piers 6 and 7 Walsh Bay.

I digress.

This year he gave me High Financier: The Life and times of  Siegmund Warburg.  We both did history together at Sydney University and spent some time reading Thomas Mann historical novels like the Buddenbrooks – which is referred to in the book.  I would not normally buy, let alone come across, books like this.  So it was a good heavy book for me to read instead of the surface reading I tend to do on the web.  I finished the 400+ pages in a week which is really good for me. I actually turned the computer off and went to bed to read.

I digress again.

The book, like university history did for me 20 years ago, has lessons for what I do today and it has nothing to do with the title High Financier.

Generally for me there is the message to take a step back and fit the fast new moving trends into a broader historical and geographical context.  Geographically I need to be more mindful of what else is happening in the world and not just my immediate world of  my school  or even just Sydney.  Historically I need to keep track of emerging technologies in the frame work of broader historical trends.

I am not  digressing.

Specifically, the book describes five defining characteristics for a bank which I want to apply to education in general and ICT integration in particular.

1. Moral standing
2. Efficiency
3. Connections
4. Capital
5. High quality personnel

There is no really need to elaborate upon these ideas.  They just ring true for me and stood out in my reading of the book.

Cheers  MArtin

Griffith Taylor Lecture 2010 – he would have run amuck in this era

Hi all,

Griffifth Taylor Lecture 2010

Every second year through my involvement in the Geographical Society of NSW we invite a guest academic to present the Griffith Taylor  Lecture.  Griffith Taylor was the Foundation Chair of Geography at the University of Sydney and the lecture was given within a couple of 100m of where Grif worked.

This year’s lecture was give by Professor Peter Phibbs currently at the University of Western Sydney.

His work is in urban research and planning and he through considerable insight into urban planning projects in Sydney such and the Cumberland rail line and the “pinkbats” industry.  His interesting observation was that the government’s decisions on pink bats was flawed in not understanding the nature and culture of the industry even though suitable guidelines were in place.

What grabbed my attention as an ICT integrator as well as a Geographer was his view of getting research onto the tables of policy makers and Peter went through some interesting examples of average research making it to the tables of policy makers and the solid research just not been marketed well enough.

Just being there at a lecture was important to me because these days I don’t get to wander the doors of Fisher Stack looking at Journals let alone have access to the databases. Here is a resource from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute for example which will be great for my Year 12 Geography

In question time I could not resist the temptation of seeing where he thought social media as the conduit  between research and policy could fit in.  At one stage the President,  Kevin Dunn asked how would have Griffith Taylor operated in our era and he said “he would have run amock” which was really funny.  Peter cited an article that Griffith wrote that gave 115 self references.  – imagine what he would have been like with a blog and Twitter?

cheers  Martin

twitter.com/plu

Simplicity in ICT Integration

Hi all,

I started this post in draft form in April 2010.

As educators we sometimes get too involved in our own worlds and don’t take the lessons from other aspects of our life into our profession.

My area of other learning for ICT Integration  is in the realm of running.  One of the lessons from running I have learnt is the value of simplicity.

Sometimes I run I take with many layers of clothes, a watch,sun glasses ( and glasses if I need to read a map), cap,  heart rate monitor, foot pod, a radio or iPod and other times I get out of the water at  Avoca Beach and run up and down the beach at low tide for  40 minutes. The former is over complicated and the latter is a lesson in simplicity.

Do you choose complexity or simplicity – I carry these lessons into ICT Integration.

1. Big projects  can be broken into  you break  small sections – run from Gosford to Opera House – 6 km sections.

2. Sleep Train talks about you being your own CEO

http://sleeptrain.blogspot.com/2010/04/are-you-ceo.html

3.  To wear shoes or not Zen Habits

http://zenhabits.net/2010/03/barefoot-philosophy/

For me it comes down to this image.

Sorry I cannot find the reference to this image.

cheers Martin

Social Networking : – representing society's collective consciousness.

Hi all,

In Australia we have an election coming up on 21 August 2010.  I love election time.

One of the things I most like about the election time is not so much who wins but trying to read what society’s collective consciousness is going to  do  and who will win the election.  IN the past these two photos reveal how I have learnt about elections and politics.  This is not the case any more – or should it be?

Soon after the #spill I was able to find a whole heap of media and political people on Twitter because I was able to follow the conversations about the spill.  Having recently experiencing my third birthday on Twitter I realised it has taken a while for a wider cross section of society, media and politicans to use Twitter.

I have also noticed, until the most recent obvious political followers, that there seems to be  a predominance of the less conservative views been expressed  by those I follow.  Recently during my holidays I made a conscious effort to compare the views I was picking up on Twitter and  comparing them to  views I read in the newspapers.  By this I mean I actually read the papers and read them cover to cover – something I never do.  I started to see arguments and viewpoints that were not being expressed on Twitter.  In fact I  was starting to believe that  the views I was reading on  Twitter were the only issues.  So I am grateful for my most recent in depth holiday readings because I believe I was getting a blinkered view about what I believed to be the issues for the election.

Can this collective consciousness be represented through the media?  Now that the media is so diverse is it much harder to do or  is it being more representative but harder to read?

At least now I have realised I have to look beyond Twitter to attempt the find the answer.   Does everyone who uses a #lateline to express a view on an issue ? – No they do not- and are these views representative of reasons and rationales for  predicting the outcome of an election? Don’t know the answer to that one but I will soon find out.

cheers  Martin

The Evolution of my use of Twitter 2007-2010

Hi all,

Around the time of the #spill of Mr Rudd I was looking into  the evolution of my use of twitter.  More recently I have tried a bit of analysis of my use – more on this later.

In the meantime here is how my use has evolved – old fashion handwriting .  What has been your experience?

Cheers  Martin

Learning from others – knowing my limitations

Hi all,

I have always tried to learn off others that know more than me.  Most of my conversations each day lead to this result. I would like to give you an example of a lesson for me on knowing my limitations – it has taken me 3 years to learn it.

The Lesson

In 2008 I saw the PPT of a presentation Mark Pesce did.  At the time he had 1500 followers and I was one of them.  He started this presentation off with a fast moving video collage to music of the avatars of all 1500 of his followers – even managed to see me flash through.  I sat down and tried to do the same thing. After many hours of right clicking avatars to save them, putting them into MovieMaker, placing them next to each other adjusting the speed…. I just gave up thinking how did he manage to do this.  Fast forward a couple of years to this weekend.

The Background

Those who follow @mpesce will realise that he tweets when he is writing or preparing for his next presentation . Sometimes he also tweets phases he plans to use and this is how I knew he was doing something about Python- Project Thunderware.   I was also intrigued because I thought it would have something to do with him closing his Facebook account a few weeks ago.  All I know  that this is a programming language which means nothing to me except that programming makes possible all the things I do as an ICT Integrator.  I am just happy that there men and women who do these things so I can do my thing.

I made a note to follow up  his link to his presentation which he does on the day of his presentation.  The Presentation was called “ How not to be seen” and I sat down and read it on Saturday arvo.

The real lesson

Well I realised how silly, naive and in beyond my depth I was when I tried to replicate the 2008  avatar video collage when I read this:

My biggest Python project (before last week) was a simple script to create a video used in the opening of my 2008 WebDirections South keynote.  I wanted to show the ‘cloud’ of Twitter followers I had started to accumulate – around 1500.  Not just a ‘wall’ of different faces, but a film, an animation, where each person I followed on Twitter had their moment in the sun.  The script retrieved the list of people I follow, then iterated through this list, getting profile information for each individual, extracting from that the URL for the user’s avatar, which it then retrieved, Using Python Imaging Library, it then embossed the user’s handle onto the image.  After that it was a basic drag-and-drop operation into Adobe Premiere.  Presto! – I had a movie.  Thank you, Python.

Source: http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=381

It is the second time this week this has happened to me.  This week it was the help of a 14 year old student. During the week I was deleting posts in four Twitter accounts I have set up for a school activity in  August.  I thought I would be smart and get the students to help out.   So  four  students set to the task of delete 50 plus photos from four Twitpic accounts and the tweets from  their respective Twitter accounts.  I noticed one student was finish miles had of the others and  when I asked her how she was finishing quickly -she had done a search and found a tool to auto delete posts  from Twitter.

So I have learnt quite a few things this weekend.

1. I still have a lot of learning to do by sharing with others.
2. I need to know my limitations – there are more efficient ways to do things.
3.  Continue to let my students do their own thing

cheers Martin

Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Geography Paper

Hi all,

Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Geography Paper

Backgound Thoughts

I’ll stamp my colours to the wall – personal thoughts.  I am backing the process of the National Curriculum and the  direction of the Geography Shape Paper.

I have been professionally involved in Geography for 30 years.  I am increasingly of the opinion that geographers are conservative by nature. This includes five years full time study in Geography including an Honours degree. At least one article research and published each year since I have left university on either straight geography of the integration of technology into the teaching of Geography.  I have been involved with the GTANSW since the 1980s and have been on the Council in a variety of capacities since the early 1990s, in addition I have 10 years experience on the Council of the Geographical Society of NSW. Finally,  I have taught Geography every year of my teaching career.  I am not sure if all this experience is an advantage or not and I know others have more experience – at least I am partially informed and what follows are my personal thoughts.

It is clear that Geography as a discipline has been struggling in terms of school student numbers and identity over the past few years. At university I believe   a lot of students are studying  geographical content and skill though not under the heading of Geography.  Some argue there  is little comfort to geography school teachers to argue the discipline is represented when schools  feel the subject’s viability is  at issue.

I attended the meeting in May to discuss the Advice Paper and I can say that our ideas were listen to as I compare the Advice Paper to the Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Geography Paper.  Those who have entered the consultation process  now would not know this because I/we were  not allowed to air publicly what we  were given to examined in May.  In the same way changes would have been made  in the process leading up to what I saw in May.

I would like to identify two examples.

There appears to be concern from a range of quarters about the regular issue of competing for hours with History and the nature of the knowledge and skills to be taught in Geography.  The former issue was raise in May and we were told the state of affairs. My interpretation – the horse has bolted in relation to History .  For me it  did when History got into Phase 1 and Geography in Phase 2 of the National Curriculum.

In relation to the nature of the knowledge and skills,  the university experiences I have heard about indicate that in many Faculties there is a division between physical and human geography. So I am not surprised that  parts of Geography of have been split between Geography and Sciences.  This is a trend that has been around for a while which we have not being able to  fix up.

I feel it is time for geography as a school discipline to move on and embrace the more integrated nature of Geography rather than specialising on the fields of physical/environments and human geography.  After all there are a heap of geographical  jobs in the Sydney Morning Herald on a Saturday but only the education  section of the employment pages have the term Geography in them.  In addition, I feel there is a need to show students that there are careers in Geography that they do not know about because they cannot get past their understanding of what Geography is – ie: the knowledge and skills are bigger  than the term/subject Geography in schools.

Thoughts on the Draft Shape of the Geography Curriculum: Geography

Firstly, the format of the Paper takes a while to get used to with the consecutive numbers.  I understand why this was the case as we moved between sections of the paper during the May meeting.

The definition of Geography with  seven points seems a bit too much.  Surely we can get it down to one statement of a couple of sentences. We need the equivalent of a 30 second media grab to sell the subject to students.  I think the order of what is Geography and why Geography has been changed around – that makes more logical sense.  I just think there is too much in the definition and justification of Geography.

Then we come to the Aims of the K-12 Geography Curriculum.  The last one in (14) on geographical inquiry is the telling Aim,  because  it is the only one with an academic reference. I wondered why this is the case?

I like the  use of cross curricular dimensions (17-35) though there seems to be a lot in the last one. They include indigenous history and culture, sustainability, Asia and Australia’s engagement  with Asia and  Geography’s contribution tot he general capabilities.  Once again these are driven at a higher level and apply to all subjects in the National Curriculum.  The conservative side of me questions  the too much focus on sustainability though I do acknowledge that is a most important issue.

How the Geography curriculum is organised starts at Number 36.  The two  key strands are geographical knowledge and understanding and geographical inquiry and skills.

This seems to cover all avenues of concern for Geography though how it is implemented (48) is interesting because of the focus on inquiry based learning ( hence the referenced point in Number 14).  I am by no means an expert on pedagogy and I wonder why this approach is the focus. Though I do like the way there are no prescribed case studies and thus you can integrate local content where appropriate – ie: curriculum flexibility (56).

The suggested scope and sequence is worthwhile breaking into sections, though I feel more qualified to speak about the secondary schools.  The progression of higher order thinking as the years progress suggested to me that you cannot do higher order thinking in the younger years.  Of course in practice this would not be the case but it seems to be implied otherwise in the document  (57).

Jumping ahead to Years 7-10 (63).  The fact that the course can be taught by non geography teachers (64) is a good thing because the reality is that there are not enough geography teachers and if we can bring on board more teachers to understand and appreciate geography then  I believe this is a good thing. The environmental stream (65) will be easy to engage the students with though the spatial  distributions and their consequences theme (66)  could be hit and miss depending on examples and how well taught. The comparative case studies (67) will work well.  The  conceptual focus of place environment and space is clear and the examples are workable and provide some substance for the curriculum writers.

The Senior Secondary (69) has the aims: further develop students’ knowledge  of and the ability  to apply geographical inquiry and enable the students to  deepen their knowledge through studies that extend the themes of place, environment and space.  The unit on the environment is good and I cannot not see why physical geography cannot be included in this section (73).  I am not sure of the need to specifically single out climate change  in relation to the study of natural hazards.

A whole unit on an independent geographical project (74) appears to be quite substantial.  I feel it would be wise to see how this pans out because  there are a number of courses with major projects and I know students think about course and whether they have a project or not. Also a whole unit – presumably half a year is a long time for a project so there will be a need for time spent teaching methodology of research. The third unit (75) and the fourth unit (76) to me seem to overlap a fair bit and thus might cause confusion unless the fourth unit is meant to be more on a regional scale while the third unit  is more global.

Final thoughts

I like the document and think there is enough for the curriculum writers to work with.

1. I have raised  questions about the inquiry methodology.  This not so much that I disagree rather II would like to know the reasons why and what perhaps identify the other options.

2.  The two strands are a good organisational framework.  Geographical knowledge and understanding  and geographical inquiry and skills can be independent enough to be covered any where in Australia or globally. The allocation of the  skills along the way in year groups is good but I would like to think that previous skills are able to be  taught and used in later years not just in the allocated years when it comes to assessment.

3. The focus on sustainability  is specifically addressed even though it is a cross curricular goal as well – why not specifically address an other  areas such as indigenous issues.  I would like to know the reasons why sustainability. It is an important issue but is it more important than other issues.

4.  These are just personal thoughts and even now I can pick holes in my argument but I need to get on with other things.

cheers  Martin

Far North Queensland Experience and Twitter

Hi all,

Here is what we did  using Twitter as the engine room .

Loreto Normanhurst – Year 9  Far North Queensland Experience FNQE and  the use of  Twitter

The second task which the school implemented using cloud computing involved  150 students on a field trip and community service  for an extended period of time.   The aim was to enable immediate communication back to the school with photos on what was happening in the field and community service.  In past years staff would ring back and “postcards” were put on the schools website to allow the community to see what was happening.  This year we decided to try another approach which embraced another cloud computing option which combined the use of Twitter and blogging.

The 150 students were broken into four group’s red, blue green and yellow.  The groups in colours proved to be most useful to the overall strategy.  The students and teachers were to be spread over Far North Queensland venues of learning and community service.

Step one was to buy 4 mobile phones and we thought just texting messages with photos back to school would work.  Each phone was colour coded according to the group so back at school we knew which group and according to the itinerary we could work out the locations of the photos.  It was workable but not very efficient and would place a number of layers of labour intensive work at school for already busy people.

So we turned to Twitter.  However, we had to work out a strategy to keep things private.   One main account was set up and set to private and other account was set up called a guest account.  This meant the guest account could follow the main account.  The aim was to give the details of the guest account to the school community so they could follow the main account.  It was around the time that Twitter had hit the mainstream media in Australia we decided to use the functionality of Twitter to collect the information and display the information to the school community in a password protected blog through the school portal rather than making available to the school community the Twitter accounts.

In May 2009 we did a trial to see how it would work while some staff went on a ‘recon’ of the field study community service area.  We found out that in the field the phones were not too reliable and what was more  of an issue was the  then when the messages came back the photos were fine but we realized that  being able to link the photos to linking the messages to the photos in an easily identifiable manner.

So the next stage of using Twitter evolved.  We created four Twitter accounts, called them their colour name and had their allocated colour as the avatar for their account.    All the accounts were set to private and the “following” relationship was set up between the coloured accounts and the main account.  This meant that we could just log on to the main account and all the tweets from the four coloured accounts would feed through to the main account.  Now we could see more easily what each group was doing because it was colour coded.

Each phone was set up so when a photo was taken a comment could be made with the photos and sent to Twitpic, which is a third party application for Twitter, to send photos and messages via the phone.  Each morning and afternoon the photos and the messages would be uploaded to a gallery on a SharePoint blog which was password protected. Side by side with this teachers and students on the trip would send back longer accounts through staff Blackberries and iPhones.  This enabled the school community the opportunity to experience the fieldtrip and community service in a virtual manner though the use of several cloud based web tool applications.

The use of a cloud platform for teaching and learning , though at times can be challenging  to implement, is a worthwhile pursuit.   In the case of the Year 9 FNQE   Twitter was the perfect  platform to develop real time communication back to this school community and we are looking forward to developing live video feeds and the like in future years.

Last week we went on a recon for this year’s trip and took Netbooks with 3g cards.  Now we are looking into live blogs and Twitvids back to the school community.

cheers  Martin