This week  has been interesting.

We started teaching our new school year on Tuesday period 3.  Monday was a public holiday, and unlike many schools who take the first week to do course enrolments and approvals, we did this last week. The school year started with 2 assemblies (Periods 1 & 2) then normal timetable.

Its a shock to the system, but it sets the tone and the expectations for the year. Its great to be back working with the students and its exciting! I like teaching.

The second reason this week has been interesting is National Standards (not to be confused with National Testing, like No child left behind).

Depending on your view point this is either good or very bad. I sit balanced in the middle. If you look at the goals of the scheme they are laudable:

• better communication to parents
• increased parental engagement
• identification and support of learning needs
• consistancy etc.

And these goals seems to be supported by the parents and public – the NZ Herald reporting approximately 75% of parents supporting it - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10624503

On the other side of the coin many teachers are concerned about the rapid implementation, lack of trial and testing periods, increased workload and poor consultation. These too are valid points. I share the concerns expressed by John Hattie about League tables – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=144&objectid=10624412 League tables are often bias and lack depth of understanding. We see this so often when NCEA is compared with other qualification systems like Cambridge and the International Baccalaureate.

Time will tell how successful or not this venture is.  I suspect that it will helps, that it will make a difference but that the road to this eventual success may be rock. Atleast we have not proceeded down the road of No Child Left Untested which has lead to:

• students held back because of their lack of success in a test,
• entire years of learning focused on reaching the NCLB standards,
• a focus on summative rather than formative assessments
• and performance linked pay based on NCLB
• and niche industries preparing students for these examinations

Yes, this has been an interesting week.

In this update we have a little something for everyone.

1. State of the Internet – http://www.focus.com/fyi/information-technology/state-internet/ – this is a good infographi summarising 2009 and the internet. This graphic looks at connections, bloggers, speed, access and use… An excellent resource for technology and Humanities.

2. Creative Chemistry – http://www.creative-chemistry.org.uk/index.htm – This is a UK site targetted at teachers and students undertaking Secondary school chemistrey. Lots of resources and materials.

3. Math Dictionary - http://www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/ – This is a useful site for students and teachers alike. The site is a dictionary of mathematical terms and flash interactive exercises that help to clarify the definition.

4. Fundamentals of student success in middle grades – http://www.nmsa.org/Advocacy/AdvocacyToolstoUse/FundamentalsPresentation/tabid/793/Default.aspx# – this is the download for a 17 minute presentation from the National Middle School Association. Worth watching – Home page – http://www.nmsa.org

5. Daggett’s Application Model - http://www.cordonline.net/connections/19_7/19_7_daggett.htm I found this after reading an interesting blog post from David Warlick – http://davidwarlick.com. This information Model looks at applying knowledge, processes and skills to different scenerios, with increasing  complexity of application and with successful application retention and understanding. This is a good model.

6. Nourish Interactive – http://www.nourishinteractive.com/ - this is a useful site for Health, science and PE. It contains nutritional information and resources.

7. VUE – Visual Understanding Environment  – http://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm this is a open source visual tool that allows you to “search, organise and present”. An excellent free, open source mind mapping/graphical organiser.

and finally Vision Mapper – http://www.visionmapper.org.uk/ this UK site is part of Future Lab and an excellent resource for learning, teaching and pedagogy.

Here are a few more sites that have caught my interest this week.

1. Planet ebook - http://www.planetebook.com/ this is another e-book source with classic liturature avaialble for free. This is worth visiting and potentially saving on your text book budget. Also have a look at science books online  – http://sciencebooksonline.info/

2. National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery – http://nsf.gov/news/mmg/index.cfm?s=2 – this is a great source of media clips with a science theme. Definitely an excellent resource for science.

3. PDFmyURL – http://pdfmyurl.com/ – this is a useful site that will convert a webpage into a PDF document. A good utility and saves on printing webpages. A useful addition for the read/write learner and the visual learner.

4. The Neural advantages of speaking 2 languages – http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bilingual-brains – this is a fascinating article from Scientific american on the advantages of speaking 2 languages. Research has found improved understanding of the first language and improvements to problem solving as well.

and finally – 50 things we did not know this time last year – from ATT.net http://www.att.net/s/editorial.dll?eetype=Article&eeid=7020757&render=y&Table=&ch=ne&

Here is an interesting collection of websites that I have stumbled across this week. There is something for the geographer,scientist, musician, economist

1. Placefy – http://www.placefy.com/ This web site presents you with an image from a well place and provides a list of possible locations. A good stimulus or warm up exercise, as well as being quite good fun.

2. Wild Music - http://www.wildmusic.org/ This site explores sound from various approaches including science, music and nature. It allows you to build your own sound scapes and general play. Quite cool

3. Economy Professor – http://www.economyprofessor.com/dictionary/aa-dictionary.php This is a dictionary of economics terms. While perhaps a little dry, its an excellent and very useful resource for Humanities and Economics.

4. Re: Cry of the Dolphins – http://www.youtube.com/oceanking97 this is a well constructed and interesting cybersafety video. Worth watching and sharing with your students.

5. Exploring the science of light – http://www.opticsforkids.org/ this site does, as its name suggests, explores the science of light including interesting optical illusions. A good science resource.

6. Interactive periodic table – http://www.activescience-gsk.com/module5/home.html This site produced by Glaxo Smith Kline has a fun interactive periodic table. This is one of many interesting and interactive Modules that are definitely worth exploring – check them out here – http://www.activescience-gsk.com – A science site aligned for the English and welsh curriculum – a wealth of resources.

And finally a comment from one of my Favourite flickr Photostreams  – Will Lion’s  – http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/

source: – http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2673/3975273940_442c4e9b37.jpg

A number of news items recently have flagged censorship as a current issue for me. As a result of the Hacker attacks on Google and their threatened withdrawal from China, the issue of Chinese Censorship has again raised its ugly head. Add to that Cameron Slater (aka Whale oil) on breaching suppression orders.

The question has to be asked? Do we need censorship? And my answer is an emphatic yes!

But what is censorship and what should be censored? How do we decide what or what not to censor?

Definition:

Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

Is China’s Censorship to much? Should Slater publish the name of a suspect before they are brough to trial? Should pornography, terrrorism websites and those spewing hate be blocked?

How do we make the decisions about what is acceptable or unacceptable levels of censorship?

Do we make these decisions on a moral or ethical basis? this is hard as each of use has a slightly different moral and ethical code depending on our upbring, religious following etc? If we make these decisions based on a moral or ethical stance does this mean that the level of censorship we would see in predominanently Islamic countries is correct compared to the censorship of the predominantely christian nations ?

What about basing it on, democracy,  freedom of expression and right to free speech? These are great ideals but I would questions this as a basis too. Should the terrorists, bomb makers, child pornographers, drug peddlers and authors of hate, racism and sexism be allowed to freely proclaim their bias?

This too raises questions.

What about basing the censorship decisions on the laws of the land? But this to runs into hurdles and issues, becuase the laws in many countries like China, Myanmar, Iran etc forbid criticism of the government, even if the actions of the government are morally reprehensable.

Cameron Slater’s action in publishing the name of a “famous” person (who has name suppression)  before the courts, raises yet more questions. Should the people be aware of whom this person is? Do they have a right to know? From Slater’s perspective we do, but the court granted name suppression. I disagree with Slater’s actions, as they undermine the judicial system, effect the persons chances of a fair and imparical trial and effect others. We have seen many people who have been condemned by the public statements to trial by media. A trial that is unbalanced and more often than not focused on sensationalism rather than balanced factual accuracy.

But do court name suppression orders violate our “right” to freedom of information? Do they impinge on our freedom of speech? Should we be able to know what has been going on? Or are they, as I believe, appropriate as they may lead to a fair judicial process with out bias and in the end should a person be found guilty or not appropriate levels of publication applied. Can you ever be found not guilty in trial by media? Does the accused (they are not convicted) have a right to privacy?

Who should set the rules and  what should be the basis for these?

There are so many questions and I am looking forward to raising these with my students as we discuss freedom of speech, privacy, censorship in this new year.

February 2006.”]

A National Geographic Magazine censored by Iranian authorities. The offending cover was about the subject of love, and the picture hidden beneath the white sticker is of an embracing couple.[11

Here are somne interesting websites and resources that I have come across this week.

1. Kindlerama – http://kindlerama.com/ebook-sources this is free ebooks for the Kindle. A number of magazines are prediucting the growth of e-books for 2010. This will an interesting development to watch. The potential savings and the costs of these technologies will need to be worked through. But given the growth of information at the rate we are seeing it, we cannot with out deforesting our planet continue to print each and every new publication on paper.

2. What does china censor? http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/what-does-china-censor-online/ Information is Beautiful is a blog I subscribe to and an excellent source of infographics. With Google possibly pulling out of China this infographic is appropriate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8458150.stm

3. Project Natel – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluWsMlfj68 this is  a youtube video of Project Natel. I first ran into this microsoft Xbox project last year and its amazing. Have a look its thought provoking

4. Steering clear of cybertricks – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrG061_Rm7E this is a useful cybersafety and digital citizenship video. Well Worth watching and made by Youtube.  This is nicely produced and pitched at a good level.  Have a look at the other videos produced by these guys – http://www.youtube.com/user/SafetyCenterVideos Also check out the common creaft videos. http://www.commoncraft.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/SafetyCenterVideos#p/u/2/DQ5zJvA0NYY playing and staying safe online

And finally From Becta – http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=41343 the impact of Digital Techology

As part of preparing for a series of presentations at various conferences this year, I have developed six quick sheets for Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. These resources outline the different taxonomic levels and provide the Digital Taxonomy Verbs with some (this is not exhaustive) possibilities for classroom use.

For the complete Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy go to the Educational Origami Wiki @ http://edorigami.wikispaces.com

Here are the quick sheets:

As always I would appreciate comments, feedback and suggestions.

Here are some resources with a science flavour with dashings of literature garnished with Learning tools.

1. Cold Spring Harbour Laboratories - http://www.cshl.edu/ This site has a series of useful biology and genetics resources, particularly some short animated videos and flash animations you can download. Here are the URL’s:

• 3D animations  – Mainly Genetics - http://www.dnalc.org/resources/3d/index.html
• Biology Animations – http://www.dnalc.org/resources/animations/index.html
• 3D Brain Interactive  – http://www.dnalc.org/resources/3dbrain.html

2. OpenCulture – free eBooks – http://www.openculture.com/free_ebooks this is a list of classic books available in a variety of flavours (feedbooks, gutenburg, google books and kindle) for free. This is an excellent way to reduce costs and be environmentally friendly. Also check out my favourite for the Auditory Learner – http://librivox.org/

3. 2010 Learning tools compendium – http://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/index.html this is an excellent resource produced by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

4. Digital Growth – http://www.emc.com/collateral/demos/microsites/idc-digital-universe/iview.htm this is a video examining the growth of the digital universe – well worth watching.

and finally – this video is worth watching – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxJUQtoe0TU – Kevin Honeycutts  -

I Need My Teachers To Learn 2.0.mov

Educause has just released the latest of its Seven things you should know series.

If you haven’t seen them you should take the time to investigate these monthly reports that examine the educational potential and impact of an emerging technology. The latest is looking at Next generation presentation tools.

This is examining tools like Slideshare, Zoho Show and alike. Collaborative presentation tools.

Here are the latest four reports

Next Generation Presentation Tools – http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7056.pdf

Google Wave - http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutGoogl/188963

Collaborative Annotation – http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutColla/182641

Telepresence – http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutTelep/179124

and the series page

http://www.educause.edu/7Things

How do I use them?

I use these reports as an updtae for my skills, I distribute them to the staff as a reading for professional development and I use them with my Information technology classes. With the students, I find these provide not only a good technical background but also raise social and ethical issues. Hense they are good stimulus and technical materials.

A neat trick for those of us using Twitter and Del.icio.us is syndicating your bookmarks from Del.icio.us to your twitter account with a message explaining what they are.

Here is how we do it

1. Make sure you have the latest Del.icio.us extension or add on (this is good practice)

2. Set up your linkage between your del.icio.us account and twitter. Log in to you del.icio.us account and go to Settings > Bookmarks > Bookmark sharing and work through the set up process. You will need your twitter ID and password.

3. Now save a bookmark using your Del.icio.us button. This will open the Save a bookmark window. You will see in the SEND field the @twitter recipient and underneath it the Message field. Type in your Message in this space.

Save the Bookmark and here is the end result published or shared in Twitter.

Useful LInks

Extensions and Add ons for Del.icio.us - http://support.delicious.com/forum/index.php?CategoryID=11

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com

Del.icio.us – http://del.icio.us

Commoncraft videos

http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english

http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter

http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter-search