Month: April 2008

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School’s out Friday – but not this week

Yes, today is Friday and time for the customary school’s out post. This week it’s different, because school is definitely on for me and my students tomorrow as we stage our Project Global Cooling concert. Tune in to ustream (streaming live 3.00pm to 5.00pm Melbourne, Aust. timezone) to see the result of my student’s efforts. The concert has been organised with a budget of zero; our students have convinced artists to appear for free and many people in our school and wider community have given their time and donated goods to ensure that the concert can take place. The students are pumped – one has even just posted a comment on this blog to let me know how excited she is. Today we received an email from Peter Garrett, environment minister for our Australian Labor Party (current party holding government) and former lead singer of Australian iconic band Midnight Oil. Here’s what he had to say to us;

Congratulations to Year 9 students at Toorak College for your work with Project Global Cooling.

I am delighted that you are combining two of my great passions – the environment and music. Your positive aim to spread the word about the challenges of climate change that we all face, from Mt.Eliza to the world, is very important. Music is a great way to communicate, inspire and unite people towards this common goal.

Have a great day. Enjoy the music. And once again, congratulations on your good work.

Peter Garrett AM MP

Federal Member for Kingsford Smith

Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. 

 Brooke. one of the students involved in the project, had sent him an email a few weeks ago and thought nothing was going to come of it. She was over the moon today when she walked through the school reception area and was told that Peter Garrett’s ministerial office had just phoned the school to let her know that an email had been sent. One of the artists appearing tomorrow is Mark Seymour. He used to front Hunters and Collectors, a very well known band here in Australia. His brother is Nick Seymour from Crowded House, a band that international readers would be familiar with. This is Mark singing ‘Throw your arms around me’ – enjoy.

On a different note, I was reading the comments thread in Clay Burell’s post about the efforts of schools around the world to stage concerts to raise awareness about global warming and the future of this planet when I saw this comment from Stephen Downes.  

This has bothered me about this sort initiative for a while…

If this is such an “international” collaboration, why do all the participants have names that sound like they were raised in Iowa?

This was my response that I posted in the comment thread;

@Stephen Downes. I’m sorry that it bothers you so much that the participants in Project Global Cooling sound like they come from Iowa. I. in fact, hail from Melbourne, Australia, and it bothers me that your focus seems to be on our common language rather than the incredible efforts of the students involved and their desire to make a difference in their world. My students have worked tirelessly for the last six weeks and are thrilled to be contributing to a global project. Much has been made of their efforts within our school community and I think it fair to say that the entire school is embracing the need for a determined approach to the reduction of our carbon footprint as a result of our involvement in the project. Please recognise the genuine desire of the students involved to make change a reality, rather than focus on your criticisms of what you consider to be a skewed international involvement.

Jenny Luca. Toorak College, Melbourne, Australia.

Enjoy your weekend. I know that tomorrow I will be basking in the energy and enthusiasm emanating from a wonderful group of girls who have worked very hard to make Project Global cooling a reality in our school, our community and the world.    

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Hitting the wall.

Tonight, I’ve had it. I’ve been working myself into the ground helping guide our students to get a fully fledged concert organised for Project Global Cooling and I can tell you that it’s taking its toll. I’m physically exhausted. After taking my son to his drum lesson I curled up on the couch and slept heavily for an hour. Gotta get to bed early tonight -need more than the usual 6 hours!

I sent an email to the international teachers (and Lindsea in Hawaii) this afternoon to let them know the link for our ustream channel so that they could tune in on Saturday (if possible). I hope some do – two of our students are going to be commenting in the backchannel and I know all the girls will be thrilled to know that an international audience tuned in. Beijing are ustreaming their concert from 1.00-4.00pm and I hope that we’ll be able to get a look at what they’re doing as well. In writing the email, I realised that it was exactly six weeks ago that we launched this project with our Yr 9 students with a Skype conversation with Lindsea, Chris Watson and Clay Burell. They’ve managed to pull off what I thought was near impossible, and did so with a two week holiday in the middle of this. They really are amazing kids and I’ve loved every moment of getting to know them so much better over the last six weeks. All of them have exemplified incredible leadership qualities and I think they themselves have been surprised at what they are capable of achieving when they set their mind to it.

Gotta go – sleep beckons.

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To shift your school you need support.

I feel very fortunate to work at the school where I teach. The environment is beautiful, the students are wonderful and I have forged friendships that will last. Enjoying your work is vital I think; I’d hate to rock up every day and feel unsatisfied with what I was doing. I wondered when I started writing this blog how my school community would view this. I knew that my close friends would offer support, but was unsure of the reaction of  the wider school community and the leadership team. I thought they may want me to write anonomously and not reveal my school location.

How wrong did that assumption prove to be. Today our enews (electronic newsletter) was released. My husband also receives it because our daughter attends the school. He rang to say that Project Global Cooling was mentioned by our Principal in his reflection. Here’s what he had to say;

One of the key directions we are taking in developing future plans is in the area of Internationalism and a fine example of this is the Year 9 Global Cooling Project.  Under the leadership of Mrs Luca, and with the involvement of students and teachers in other parts of the world, a group of girls are organising a concert to bring attention to the international threat of global warming.  This is a perfect example of the “new internationalism” which focuses more on what we share with other nations rather than how we differ.  It is further evidence of how young people can and do make a difference.  It’s worth noting also that this particular project has been made possible through Internet based collaboration and it reminds us that the tools which often receive bad press when misused are a powerful positive force when well managed.  Please encourage your teenagers to attend the Global Cooling Project concert, which is happening this Saturday 19th April from 3.00 to 5.00pm in the Mary Herring Hall.  Artists appearing include Mark Seymour, White Summer, Tessa and Modern Radio. The event is going to be hosted by Fox Klein who appeared at the Hands Together comedy night. The Year 9 girls involved have been working very hard to get this event organised to try to raise awareness about global warming and sustainability of our planet.

You might also like to take a look at the project web site where you will see a link to Mrs Luca’s blog site – well worth a visit in itself for those interested in exploring Web 2 technologies.

http://projectglobalcooling.org/

     What an affirmation for the students involved in Project Global Cooling and for me and my blog writing. I am so pleased that my Principal has identified the productive value of working collaboratively on internet based projects. I’m especially pleased that he included this statement; “it reminds us that the tools which often receive bad press when misused are a powerful positive force when well managed.”

I feel very supported in my school and am thankful for the forward thinking that I see being applied to curriculum initiatives like Project Global Cooling. I hope other educators with an interest in developing web based learning activities are finding support from their leadership team. I suspect (know!) this is not always the case.   

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Help when you need it – try Fixya.

It’s almost a case of what will they think of next. How many times have you used some sort of electronic device, something goes wrong and you have no clue how to fix it. I don’t know about you, but I fit into the category of luddite and need some hand holding to work me through fixing the problem.  Fixya could be the answer I – and many others I’d suggest – need.

Here’s what they have to say on the site about what they’re offering;

What is FixYa?

Fixya provides Free tech support and technical help for gadgets, electronic equipment and consumer products. Fixya’s technical experts advise on fixing problems and provide instructions on proper usage of products either by chat or message posting. Fixya stores manuals and troubleshooting guides for over half a million products. Fixya’s tech support community will provide a quick solution for your “how to” problem. 


 

There are constant updates on their home page with questions and suggested solutions to problems people are having with devices. You can ask a question of their experts (when I clicked into this there were 167 experts online who could potentially solve a problem) and receive an email alert notifying you when a response has been posted. Handy. Fixya could be the solution for schools with little technical support in-house and for everyday people struggling with devices and instruction manuals that are indecipherable.
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New search engines

I’ve mentioned it before on more that one occasion, but it’s worth saying again. Phil Bradley writes an informative blog and is a valuable source of information for Teacher- Librarians. He created the above  picture for a presentation he gave and made it Creative Commons for others to use. Great sharing Phil – I love the picture as it encompasses the newer search engines now available. I (and I’d have to say the majority of students at my school) continue to default to Google as do the vast majority of the population. I was pleased to hear a staff member say today that she gets her students to use Mooter after I introduced it to her last year. She thinks the students can make greater sense of the results with the clustering technology it employs.

I’ve read about a couple of new search engines via my google reader that may be useful. Phil highlighted Green Maven – the green search engine for people interested in looking for websites focusing on green issues – sustainability and the like. I searched for light globes and my return focused on the energy efficient kind. Phil’s take on it was this;

It works well if what you want is in that subject area – if you do rather more general searches the results start to get a little bit flaky.  

Jane Hart highlighted another quirky offering aimed at the K-12 audience. It’s called Boolify and uses a drop and drag of pieces that resemble a jigsaw to teach kids the importance of boolean logic in their searches. I can see the appeal for younger kids but think secondary students would get frustrated with the time it takes to formulate a search. It could be good to use when teaching kids explicitly about boolean operators however, particularly in the junior end of secondary schools. It’s worth having a bit of a play with. It’s creator, Dave Crusoe, has said this about it;

“So, we’ve worked with a team of librarians and others to develop something called Boolify, a graphical search tool meant for K12 use.   It pulls results from Google’s SafeSearch (Strict), so it’s reasonably classroom-safe, and we get the best of both worlds: a great way to understand and build searches, as well as great results provided by Google.”

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From little things big things grow

Funny how life is isn’t it. Sometimes a smallish idea can manifest into something that could be great. Sue Tapp set up a Flash meeting tonight for Oz educators as an  opportunity to touch base and make some connections outside of our blogs and twitter. She planted a seed and didn’t even know it. It was great and I want to publicly thank Sue for making the effort to get this meeting organised – 20 people participated and it was useful but we did have problems with the setup. This led to the always thinking Sue Waters moving to ustream and then elluminate to see if they worked any better.

Once in elluminate the seed started to grow. I came in late after attending to homework and kid’s bedtime and the discussion was in full swing. Vicki Davis was acting as moderator with Sue Waters and the discussion focused on  digital citizenship and the best way we could educate our students, parents, colleagues, administrators and education departments about the value of participating as global citizens via digital means.  As a reult of the discussion, a Google group has been set up  – Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety and Success. If you’re a Teacher-Librarian join and contribute to the discussion. This is an area where TLs should be active and an active TL is their own best advocate. We don’t need policy documents drawn up to prove our worth -we need to be active in our schools and leading the charge in terms of modelling and no-one will question the need for TLs in schools.

There was a lot of energy in the session and twitter talk was buzzing afterwards. It’s promising to have a global group forming and will give people an avenue through which ideas can be shared which may affect perception and initiate education and change. Let’s see what kind of tree grows from the small seed. (Being an Aussie seed it’s bound to be a eucalypt – huge with lots of vigorous growth!) 

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School’s out Friday

Yes, I know it is Saturday. Couldn’t post last night because I went to see Matchbox 20 at Rod Laver arena here in Melbourne. Really great concert  – they are such a cool band. Rob Thomas has such presence and an absolutely incredible voice. Melbourne’s an hours drive from where I live, but it was well worth the effort – great way to start the weekend. A concert highlight was when they covered INXS’ ‘Need you tonight’ as a means of relating to the aussie audience – forgotten how much I loved INXS.

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Guest on Open PD – who would have thought!

This morning I was skyped into a conversation about blogging on Darren Draper and Robin Ellis’ Open PD session. I found out about it via a conversation on Twitter with Sue Waters, who was musing about the difficulties of waking up at 5.00am (or earlier!) so that she could take part. Sue’s an incredibly generous person (and prolific blogger and twitterer) who is always willing to champion others and bring them into the fold. I’ve only been communicating with her a short while, but already this is blatantly evident. I always admire others willing to share the knowledge around – it’s the mark of a good teacher.

I had problems with ustream and the skype call dropped out a couple of times before we finally established connection, but it was well worth taking the time before work to get involved. Things like this make me realise that I am part of an incredible network of educators who are all focused on moving us forward. I’ve said it before but it is the stand out impression I’m left with after entering the edublogosphere. It’s like I’ve discovered the staffroom I always wanted to be a part of except that it exists in a digital environment!

On another good note, I had parent teacher interviews tonight and showed many parents our blog which is set to private. I discussed the notion of moving it to public in the future so that our students could connect with classrooms outside of our walls. Mostly positive reactions to the idea with comments referring to myspace and facebook and the internet presence the kids already have. Very interesting. I sense a shift in the air. 

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Me and Bella

Just created this using www.befunky.com. I think I’m being a little kind to myself here, although I did use the plus size options when selecting clothing!! Thought it might be a fun site for my Yr 7 students who are going to be creating pages within a class blog I’ve set up for them. It’s set to private – taking the walled garden approach until the parent body gets more comfortable with the idea of a public blog. They were so excited today – you should have seen them scrambling to create their wordpress account. Befunky might be a good way to get them to create their own avatar – or uvatar as it’s called there. You can also cartoonise pictures that you have or get them represented in a sketch. A fun, easy and free tool. Thanks again to Jim Gates at tipline who found out about it from Michelle Krill.   

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Project Global Cooling concert approaching fast.

Since we’ve become involved in Project Global Cooling life’s become a bit of a blur. We came in late but have stepped up to the plate and have a concert organised for Saturday April 19th. We have no budget but have convinced artists and bands to play for free. Mark Seymour (ex Hunters and Collectors), White Summer, Modern Radio and Tessa ,one of our students are performing. We just found out that Fox Klein has agreed to MC the event and another comedian, Michael Chamberlin is apparently interested in performing.  We are only asking for a gold coin donation for entry as our aim is to raise awareness about issues affecting the state of the planet – it’s not a fundraiser.  Security has been organised by a student who has managed to get people for free, and we are going to beef this up with the addition of staff, husbands and parents.  We’re working out how we are going to provide food and water for the event. We’re hoping to ustream the concert and will post about where you go in ustream to watch us go live. In the meantime, check out Naomi’s cool poster we’re using to publicise the event- we think it’s REALLY COOL.