issues with Web 2.0

• Restricted access: district and school blocked sites such as Hotmail or Facebook
• Technology issues: lack of IT support in schools means all support done by volunteer teachers, lack of money in some schools for technology, technology quickly outdated, incompatible equipment   
• Privacy issues
• Age issues: online content may be inappropriate for students
• Professional support: often a lack of support for professional development, left to the discretion of individual teacher to learn new technologies
• many teachers are digital refugees 
• people may resist change
• lack of access at home
• huge discrepancies of available technology throughout the district, province, country
• does good access=money, are we perpetuating the digital divide?
• how do we close the digital divide?
• how do we keep our technology current? why don’t school rent like businesses do, thereby staying current, having IT support, having computers and networks that actually work?

How can we tackle these issues and enact positive change? I see many posts and hear comments that it is up to the district or the parents or the school or the ministry or the government to provide appropriate resources for what schools and students need, and for this I have to disagree. We are the district. We are the parents and the school. We elect the government (who supposedly represent us). We are the ones who need to be leaders of change by getting involved at school, district and higher levels. We need to be getting others involved also.

Here’s a fine example of Web 2.0 tools for professional use. And another. Here is a wiki about new literacies.

Photo Sharing

Picassa is a desktop filing system that you download for PCs only. You can upload iPhoto docs to Picassa, but what would be the point? 

Flickr is web-based and allows you to determine the privacy level of your photos, but you can also make them public. I personally find it hugely time consuming to upload and the monthly limit is low for prolific digital camera addicts like myself. On the other hand, most bloggers I know are all over Flickr, but they pay for improves service. One thing I really like about Flickr is that you can identify your photos as copyright protected or creative commons.

I just created a little slideshow using Picassa thinking it would be fun to post on a blog. WordPress doesn’t allow this from Picasa, though it does allow you from other sites. Blogger, despite being a Google thing, also doesn’t support Picassa slide shows. Frustrating, but not as much as receiving a batch of emailed photos.

I take tons of photos, but I don’t use photo sharing sites often. I usually just post on Facebook in little albums so I can share with my friends. I guess the difference is that I am not trying to network with other photo takers. I do have a Flickr account, but I have only used it once to share photos I took at a new media conference.

In elementary school there are some serious concerns with using Flickr or some other photo sharing applications with your students, mainly to do with privacy. If I taught IT or Fine Arts or Photography in secondary school, then Flickr would be an important component. As for sharing photos of the children, I can see no reason to do this using Flickr, although posting on a private blog or wiki with parent permission would be valuable. I do post photos of student work.

Last year we had caterpillars that turned into butterflies. I photographed the creatures and my students through every stage. I would have been nice for the students and their parents to post these online in a private setting since many parents are unable to come by the school and see our displays. In addition, not printing photos is less costly to school budgets and the environment.

The same considerations are relevant to video clips of children. It is important to respect the privacy of each child and their families.

 

Mashups and RSS

I had no idea what mashups were until this class. Makes sense. On Lisa’s computer we looked at one mashup that allows you to see genocide in Darfur as it happens. Disturbing, and makes it very real in a way that the odd newspaper article does not.

I highly enjoyed For Sale By Owner which allows you to click on the US map for real estate for sale. Easy to use and I just wish we had it for Canada.

I had another bit of fun with the mashup awards site. Check out the visual headlines. Very cool. I see that many mashups combine Google Maps or Google Earth with something else (Flickr).

In terms of educational applications, mashups would be great for sharing research. For example, you could combine a map of Canada from Google Maps with school library webcats, or literacy levels, or (heaven forbid) standardized tests, or drop out rates, or % of students enrolled in higher level mathematics courses.

Having students access mashups is valuable in that it helps make the information more real (Darfur example above). Having students create mashups would be an incredible process for those learners. They would be creating new understandings for themselves and their audience, building their multi literacy skills and experience. I have worked with several gifted children who wold both love to investigate mashups and create their own.

RSS is a funny little orange button I see all over the place. My basic understanding is that you sign up to receive notification when your favourite blog or site is updated, thereby making your online time more efficient. I have never used one, though I can see the benefits, especially for us busy folk who need to keep tabs on many things. I also understand from Sandra, that you need an aggregator ( I just love these terms) to help with all this.

I think I need to spend a wee bit more time with RSS before attempting to introduce it to students. Then again, maybe some of them could teach me:)

teaching digital natives

My friend phoned me the other day to give me the reservation number for our campsite.

“Text me,” I said, “I’m on my cell walking down Broadway and I don’t have a pen.”

“Gawd, I don’t even know how to do that,” she complained.

Thank goodness I have a teenage daughter, I thought for a change. My daughter taught me how to text message so that we wouldn’t have to ‘waste time’ talking on the phone. Initially I was insulted, I then I began to experience the benefits. You can text in places where phoning is not great (loud bus, meetings, workshops), you can convey important information without having to spend 5 minutes on the phone with social niceties, you can text multiple people at the same time, you can remind people very quickly (get milk), and you can tell your teenage daughter to get home now without embarrassing her in front of her friends.

“No matter if I finish reading my books,” my daughter said, “I can just watch one of several movies on my iPod.”

“You have movies on your iPod???” I asked in disbelief.

She rolled her eyes, “Duh, like its 4 gigs.”

She taught me how to lock and unlock photos on my camera, how to limit profile access on Facebook, how to use Facebook chat, how to drive to Ikea using her cell phone to get directions, and how to set the clock in our car. 

These humbling little episodes beg the essential question: Who is teaching whom?

And how do I teach digital natives using technology? 

I think you just jump aboard, get some good firsthand experience and understanding, and finally, get them to teach you.

Wisdom from Lana: digital natives have short attention spans, so give them lots of different things to do (and choices for assignments)

Podcasts, Problems, and Possibilities

Another reason to love Macs: you can create a simple podcast right from your own laptop in class with no additional software or equipment! Garage Band and a built in microphone allows novice podcasters to make their own, export to iTunes and then… How exactly do you get it on a blog or make it accessible to others? As near as I can tell ( and I spend most of the class fiddling and investigating this), you need to upload your podcast to a feed, which can cost you. One way to post an audio clip on a blog is to convert it to an MP3 file and then upload it to the internet. You then paste code into the blog. Ugh. I haven’t managed to do this yet, but I have made a little test podcast that I converted to an MP3 file.

I did listen to an episode of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe. Very cool. If i had an iPod I would put in on there.