Month: March 2008

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SlideRocket – coming soon – take a look

Was looking through feeds on my Google Reader and came across a link to SlideRocket which is due for release soon (I know not when!) according to their website. (Can’t remember whose blog I was reading when I saw the link – sorry – I do like to attribute my sources, only fair, but I can’t find it at the moment!) According to their website this is what SlideRocket can do;

“SlideRocket is a web application that provides everything you need to design professional quality presentations, manage and share libraries of slides and assets, and to deliver presentations in person or remotely over the web.”

You can take a tour of SlideRocket via their homepage – I think it looks fantastic. Some of their transitions are really effective. I hope it’s available soon. I have to prepare a couple of major presentations over this holiday break and I’d love to do them using this tool. They recently won three out of a possible four awards at the Under the Radar conference – read about it on their blog page. Make sure you sign up for an invite to try it out when it approaches release. 

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School’s out Friday

Yes, school’s out today and it’s Good Friday. Time for a feel good video. Easter is nigh and Victorian schools have broken up for the first term holidays. My husband sent me this video during the week and my kids and I have enjoyed watching the special moment that occurs between John Rendall and Ace Berg, two men, who, in the late 1960’s brought a lion named Christian from Harrod’s Department store for 250 Guineas. They reared him for a year in their London Apartment and then enlisted the help of George Adamson, of Born Free fame, to introduce him to the wild at Kora reserve in Africa. He was integrated into a pride and John and Ace returned to their life in London. After a year, they decided to return to see Christian. George Adamson reported that he had not been sighted for nine months and the chances of Christian recognising them would be slim. When they arrived, George told them that Christian had returned the previous night and could be found on his favourite rock in the park. Watch the video and judge for yourself whether or not a wild animal has any recall of their early life. It’s a feel good video and one my children and I have returned to again and again. Enjoy Easter with your families and share feel good vibes this video brings with it.

  

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Back from camp – time to tell you about Google Notebook

Returned from camp today. Had a great time with fantastic Year 7 students willing to give everything a go. I’m a huge supporter of Outdoor Education camps since I left on my first one two years ago. On that one, we paddled 60kms down Australia’s Murray River and camped on river beaches nightly for five days. HUGE learning curve for me – had to adapt very quickly and stay motivated even though I found it really difficult. At the end of the week I’d felt a shift in me – a sense of achievement and a bonding with a group unlike camp experiences I’d had before. Happens every time I do an Outdoor Ed camp – everyone grows in some way. Last night’s debrief session was wonderful – every student could articulate how they had learnt something and what they were going to take away from the experience – powerful stuff!

Something else that I think is pretty powerful and transformational for both teachers and their students is Google Notebook. At the moment I’ve got two Google Notebooks running. One I call blog ideas. What I do is open my notebook when I’m reading feeds from my Google Reader – it’s absolutely essential to get yourself a Google Reader (or other RSS feed service) if you want to subscribe to websites and receive updates that come directly to you rather than you having to go to the effort of finding the website every time you log on. My Google Reader has literally changed my life (and I’m not kidding!) Back to the point of the discussion – I open the Google Notebook called ‘blog ideas’ and what I can do is cut and paste things I’ve read into my notebook that I think might be a good idea for a blog post. It’s helping me to make sense of what I think is important and is also helping me to write posts on a frequent basis. If you remember, I’ve set myself the ridiculous target of attempting to write a blog post a day. Call me stupid -I’m already saying it to myself!

My other notebook is one that I’m using to collate ideas for a presentation I have to make with a colleague. Because we are going to have to work on this together, I have chosen the ‘Share this notebook’ option that is available to you when you use Google Notebook. This sends an invite to people you want to have access to the notebook so that you can both make contributions. It’s this collaborative potential that I think is transformational for staff and students. Teachers could use Google Notebook (or Google Docs) to work on developing ideas for units of work and students could use them for group projects. As individuals, teachers and students would find the Google Notebook valuable for collecting information from the Web for projects. I showed my notebooks to a researcher from a university in Melbourne and she could immediately see the potential this offered for the work she does.

If you haven’t seen it yet, get yourself a google account and check it out – I’m sure you’ll see ways to use this fantastic free resource immediately. Getting a google account is easy too – just register with an email address, user name and password. Dead simple and the benefits are huge.

I’m really comfortable  with my Google Reader and aren’t fussed about opening the notebook at the same time. Download Squad have just posted about a combined feed reader and blog client in one called YeahReader. Here’s how they describe how it works;

“In addition to the usual feed reader tools that let you mark items as read or unread, you can also click a “blog this” button to copy feed items into the blog client. “

They also point out this very valid point which is why I think bloggers should proceed with caution;

“Just be careful to use this power for good and not evil. In other words, if you’re going to say, write about an article you found on Download Squad, please don’t copy the whole article and pass it off as your own work. That’s what we like to call copyright infringement.”

They’re absolutely right – their article is worth a read – I’d encourage you to follow the link.

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Connections everywhere – even at camp!

Thanks to my intrepid OEG guide, here I am at camp being able to write a post. It’s been excrutiatingly hot, we’ve hiked to a camp away from the main site, cooked outdoors (remarkably good chicken pasta!), erected tents, hiked back to base camp, completed a high ropes course and are going to experience canoeing, raft construction and a talent night tomorrow. Kids have been great and all are up to having a go at new things. I have to say, having no internet connection was causing me a bit of angst, but having a chat with our group leader from OEG led to him suggesting that I log on and keep up with what’s happening on the blog. He gets what I’m doing. He’s young and uses this medium to Skype with friends overseas and uses facebook to stay in touch with friends everywhere. His partner is a primary school teacher and is using interactive whiteboards to great effect in her grade 3/4 classroom in country Victoria. 

My learning hasn’t entirely halted while at camp. Any down time (read tent at night with headtorch for light!) has been spent reading Thomas Freidman’s ‘The World is Flat’. Although I’ve read plenty about it, I’ve never actually read the book so I’m forging my way ahead now. The early part reminds me a lot of a documentary I watched quite a few years ago called ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ about computers and the origins of the Internet. It’s quietly affirming to read this book. It’s helping to consolidate thinking I have had for some time that all this blogging and learning about new ways of doing things is essential if we are going to be the people leading our students in the right direction fo the future they are going to encounter. The challenge will continue to be moving those around us forward with the change.

My challenge for tonight is to get some sleep in a tent with a sleeping mat and clothing stuffed into a sleeping bag cover as poor substitute for a pillow. 

For those of you who can’t be bothered with Freidman’s lengthy tome, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach recommended looking a the Wikipedia entry in a keynote speech she delivered last week!   

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Off to camp – see you Thursday

I’m off to camp until Thursday so will be off-line for a few days. It’s always the way isn’t it – just when you feel like you’ve got momentum going something interrupts to stop the flow! Not that I begrudge a camp experience. I love the connectedness you get with a group of kids in any away from school time.

Just don’t forget me while I’m gone! I actually feel like this blog has got legs and is starting to run. I might be a bit like an addict coming off something while I’m away – no internet connection can do that to you! Back on line Thursday so I’ll reconnect with you then. Think of me today in sunny central Victoria in scorching 39 degree heat – bound to be great fun!

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You a Teacher-Librarian or Ed Tech facilitator ? – then read this

Kim Cofino is a 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School of Bangkok. She wrote a really interesting post last week that was mentioned on Jeff Utecht’s SOS podcast about Teacher-Librarians and their connection with Educational Technology facilitators and vice-versa. It was called  Libraries & EdTech: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly! Kim attended the ECIS Librarian’s Conference in Berlin and was obviously impressed by what she saw and heard. I’ve been following Kim on Twitter, and noticed many updates during her time at the conference, with her musing on the ideas being presented. One of the presenters was Ross Todd. TLs in Australia will know Ross as will many others in countries around the world as he is an international presenter. Last year he addressed a Victorian SLAV conference and presented fabulous ideas to help us promote guided inquiry in our libraries and classrooms. I particularly like the way he used the term ‘zones of intervention’ to describe how TLs should be thinking of teaching information literacy in our schools. It resonated with how I see our role – rather than trying to structure information literacy into classrooms or having students come to the library to learn how to ‘do stuff’, we should be targeting specific zones of intervention that present themselves as students work on projects in differing curriculum areas. It is this point of need teaching that has the most impact – when you need to know something you go about learning how to do it – we can all apply this to our own learning so why don’t we try and target information literacy teaching the same way. Don’t believe that in any way I’m having massive success in my school achieving this – like anything, it requires relationship building with teachers so that you can work together on curriculum initiatives.  Chip, chip, chip away!

I suppose the article held appeal because I feel like my role is merging between being a TL and an Ed Tech facilitator. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a tug of war and I don’t know which side is going to win out! Kim took a different view and one that I like. She made the peanut butter and jelly analogy for the following reasons;

  • both peanut butter and jelly are fabulous on their own, but wow, when you put the two together, you get something extra special.
  • peanut butter and jelly both have distinct qualities – they are definitely different, and both are definitely valuable outside of the time they spend together (jelly on toast, peanut butter with chocolate, etc).
  • a pb&j sandwich is really at is best when enveloped by some exceptionally good bread, in this case, I’m thinking the bread is the curriculum – the foundation of the sandwich.

The ideal is to have a TL with a working knowledge of Web 2.0 – this is where information is heading and a head in the sand approach just isn’t going to cut it I’m afraid. If schools had the budgets to appoint Ed Tech facilitators this would be an added bonus. Not happening where I work at the moment. International schools seem streets ahead of us on this front. Better yet, let’s seriously look at something that Jeff UTecht broached in a document he wrote that I posted two months ago. He called the role the Literacy/Media Specialist in a document called ‘Planning for 21st Century Technologies.’

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As a profession, Teacher-Librarians need to seriously look at what is happening in relation to the way our students interact with the internet to find, create and collaborate when learning. We need to skill ourselves well to embrace the future and we need to be working very closely with Ed Tech facilitators. If they’re not in our schools then maybe it’s us who need to take the reins and guide our teachers and students forward. To my way of thinking, this is how we keep our profession relevant and it’s the best kind of advocacy we can present to convince our school administrations of the need for qualified TL’s in School Libraries.  Take a read of Kim’s post and see what you think. 

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Buddy, can you spare Common Craft a vote?

Just had to write this to support our pals at Common Craft. Those of you who read this blog must know by now that I am a huge fan of Lee and Sachi Lefever’s in plain English videos. I think they’re doing education and the world a huge favour by producing funny, engaging videos that explain Web 2.0 apps in, as they say, plain English. I’ve used them in classrooms this year and the students love them (especially the boos and yays!) Now they need our help. Their video “Zombies in Plain English” has been nominated for a Yahoo Video award for Best Animated Video. As they would say, “Yay!” Go to yvideo.com to register your vote and support our friends who are helping to make our jobs a lot easier.

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Down for everyone or just me?

How’s this for a handy site, Down for everyone or just me?. Found out about it from Download Squad who posted it 12 mins ago!  (I just love my Google reader.) How many times have you tried to open a site only to receive an error message or some script you don’t understand.  This would have been really handy for me yesterday. Our school server was down, and being the weekend, I couldn’t determine if it was just me or if everyone else was in the same boat. Had I known about this site, I could have just typed the URL into the search bar, clicked ‘or just me’, and I would have been able to find out if I was on my own or part of the collective whole experiencing problems.   

Download Squad  questioned whether people were going to remember the URL (http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/). Personally I think it’s great- it’s exactly what I’m thinking when I can’t get access to a site so I’m sure I’m going to remember it. 
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School’s out Friday

Are you looking forward to the weekend? Do you need something to lighten your spirits at the end of a tiring working week? I do. Especially after staying up until 1.30am last night watching Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s keynote address at a conference in the US via ustream. You’ve got to love the fact that you can do PD these days from the comfort of your own bed! Loved the backchannel discussion as well – a great way to establish networks. 

Time for the fun. Home grown aussie talent this time. A couple of weeks ago I featured an Australian comedy program, The Chaser’s War on Everthing, and their Life is a Musical routine in a Bunnings store. Today’s post is from Joel Gilmore, who very cleverly chased the chasers and enacted his own ‘Life is a Musical’ routine at a book signing the Chaser’s team were appearing at. Funny stuff. Thanks for the laugh Joel.

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Our flat world surprises mediasauce!

Had an interesting experience today.  The Elibrarian (a fantastic support – it’s wonderful having someone on staff who operates on the same page and can implement many of the ideas we talk about) sent me a link to a page that had featured on Stephen’s Lighthouse – Stephen Abram’s blog. We both subscribe to this site via our Google readers and love the fact that he shares so much of what he does. I really appreciate the fact that he posts many of his slides from presentations he gives – they are informative even if no audio accompanies them. Anyways, back to the story. The link was to a video called ‘Are you relevant?’, produced by Mediasauce for the Association of Fraternity Advisors in America. It’s pretty cool – a woman is talking to you and posing questions about how ‘young people’ communicate and how the ‘older generation’ uses communication devices like telephone books that are passe to people of her ilk. I really liked it and our Elibrarian put it on our Enewsletter for our staff to look at.

At the bottom of the page was a box asking ‘Like what you see?’ and offering more information if you clicked their link. It took me to an email window so I shot off an email to Scott Henderson from Mediasauce telling him I liked the video and would he mind if I wrote a post about it. What was interesting was his reply;

Thanks for the nice words about our site (our main site or the Are You Relevant? site).  We’re glad to let you write about it.  It’ll cost you one thing, though.   

You have to help me trace how you got the link.  I’d like to write a post on our blog about how an Australian college got connected to a company in Indiana, USA.

So of course, I sent off a reply explaining the process as outlined above. What I find interesting is that Scott found it fascinating how we got onto his video. Isn’t this exactly what they are exalting in their video. Our means of communication is changing and we need to adapt to these changes. My Google reader provides me with RSS feeds that are probably my primary source of information these days and it’s breaking down barriers in terms of comminication. As I replied to Scott, keeping up is the name of the game these days (as your video suggests!)