Mr DK’s Blog

Gordon’s new book is titled ‘Unlimited‘ – free coies given out at the conference.

Drydon thinks that the digital revolution needs to be simplified. Innovators, adopters (15% of population) need ways to jump the chasm and reach the ‘conservatives’ (70%). The remaining 15% are the laggards… ie remove the obstacles in the way of the adopters!

Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning. Jump to the link to read more.

Gordon is a firm advocate of the PYP as a curriculum model.  He is going to speak at Kristin when the school hostes an IB conference in 2010, and has worked with Claudi Wysocki when she was a principal at the school.

Keys to unlocking the learning revolution:

1. It’s personal: For everyone, everywhere, any time, in your own way.

2. It’s interactive: Easy-to-use.

3. It’s global: The Web owned by no one, but used by almost everyone

4. It’s instant: Just in time, when you need it, as you need it

5. It’s mainly free: Or nearly free

6. It’s easily shared: The new world of collaborative networks

7. It’s co-creative

(he used shutterstock  for all pics in his book)

In this short taster session, Stuart mentioned/demonstrated the following cool applications and shared some other ideas:

Keynote-remote – link your touch/iphone to your pc and then control your presentations

halenz – Stuart’s delicious account, lots of useful links, like this one for Ten essential back-to-school iPhone apps 

My favourite is ‘myHomework’

iPod docking station – enables x15 itouches to synch at the same time.

iRead – microphone for itouch ($25), students reading was improved after recording and then listening to themselves on their iTouches.

Access and affordability make itouch appealing.  (Not to forget the cool factor!)

Wordbook – great dictionary and thesaurus.

Pockets of potential – details opportunity in mobile technology to promote children’s learning.

iPod touch research report – good for motivators if you are considering arguing a case

Band – Running records (NZ developed) - Decibal meter – Iblogger (other worthwhile applicatons that were mentioned)

I love my iPhone – I’ll never take a PC to another conference (unless presenting).  I used it for note-taking, internet (Facebook, research, Twitter, Blogging…) and email.  Is there anything this phone cannot do – it even led me to workshop venues.  Sold.

What a dry unfiltered pure academic keynote. Death by reading of powerpoint…

Margaret spoke about the desirable learning outcomes of resilience, relationships and imagination. 

The notion of ‘possible selves’ discussed. Interestingly she suggests that the self that we do not want to become is the default settings.

Dimensions of strength:

A = Agency (mindfulness);

B = Breadth (breadth);

C = Continuity (frequency);

D = Depth (or Distribution: complexity).

On the off chance that this is your cup of tea, read about it here:

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/content/download/507/3828/file/dimensions-for-tki.doc 

Multiple presenters were selling their wares… 

A common movement is emering at uLearn 09; more and more schools are shifting to ‘the cloud’.

•a school example of  how high-speed (fiber), and moving everything to ‘the cloud’ saved money, eventhough fiber costs more was sited. The save was made on staffing and hardware.
•’ncomputing‘  peddled the virtualization of the computer. There are definite cost advantage to this, for example a $1700 pc could be used by x7 students symultaniously for little additional cost. Core 2 duo pcs are recommended.
•iPhone

As the title suggests, Adrian’s workshop dealt with game-making & programming (using C# and Xna) for the xbox www.adrianjanson.com.au
Dreamspark – free software for students. These are professional applications for those students wanting to take programming further. http://www.dreamspark.com/
Xna – a program for the xbox http://www.xna.com/
C# – works alongside xna. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/default.aspx
Both of the above are also free.
Complicated programming, but good for Y11+ Information Technology at Kristin.

Derek spoke about several changes that are underway in the education arena.  These are the ones that stuck out for me:
Blog http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/
• Horizon Report: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/
• Shiftables:  http://siftables.com/
TED talks: http://carter.edublogs.org/2009/02/18/ted-talks-shiftables/
• KAREN network – improved connectivity and speed.
• Wiki Educator – open Ed  http://wikieducator.org/
• AJHS – most of their resources are in the cloud. Improving access, cutting costs & sharing material are all clear advantages.

www.stager.org/ULearn
1.1 it’s not about the hardware it’s abt the software…
1 Write a novel.
2 Share knowledge.
3 Answer tough questions.  Access primary sources.
4 Make sense of data.
5 Design a video game.
6 Build a killer robot. (time, material n support)
7 Lose weight. Remember – Less us, more them.
8 Direct a blockbuster – make sure it is short, and well-edited.
9 Compose a symphony.
10 Change the world – activism rules.
11 +
Technology matters.

Sharon is co-founder and president of the Galileo Educational Network. www.iostudent.com/2353
She spoke about a Canadian example of deep, enduring learning.  In essence it was a tale of a teacher who has worked with an expert mentor to develop a unit of work of a sufficient standard to be entered in a national film festival.
The teacher began with digital story-telling. The importance of scripting, scaffolding, skill development, grounding in real-world meaning, and authenticity was emphasized.
Rubrics were based on high-quality exemplars. These were collaboratively created – students co-wrote top and bottom levels, the teacher wrote the middle levels. Interestingly, the students chose ‘pathetic’ as the name for the bottom level!  Reasons for word selection were well justified.
•       audience has a reason to care (one of the rubric indicators)
Self-reflection (daily), whole-class feedback (occassional), peer feedback (daily), external, parent & teacher feedback were all part of the unit. With this sort of feedback, huge gains were made in student advancement.
The teacher found that the students needed skills in how to work as an effective team (group).  Sporting examples were used to highlight the needed team-work skills.
Positive spin-offs: Student-to-student relationships were strengthened.
One of the movies went on to win the film festival.

Romeo & Juliet Trailer This is one machinima example that was completed by my Y10 Information Technology class.  The module was challenging partly because we used consoles and PC games as raw material.  This produced files in both mp4 and avi format.  Finding an editor (free/cheap) that that could handle both and still allow creative freedom was difficult.  Matt and Mitchell used AVS Video Editor (trial, hence the watermark).  Other students used Movie Maker. It’s a start.

Machinima (muh-sheen-eh-mah) is filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies.In an expanded definition, it is the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development. Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans, scripts or artificial intelligence. 

By combining the techniques of filmmaking, animation production and the technology of real-time 3D game engines, Machinima makes for a very cost- and time-efficient way to produce films, with a large amount of creative control (http://www.machinima.org/machinima-faq.html).

A Dream within a Dream by Tom Jantol

Other fine examples at http://www.machinima.com/