Educational Origami

We have heard alot about the 21st Century Learner. We know that they are:

• Collaborative
• Adaptive
• Information, media and technology savvy
• Communicators
• immediate and instant
• require instant gratification

But what about the 21st Century Teacher, what are the charactoristics we would expect to see in a 21st Century Educator. We know they are student centric, wholistic, they are teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area.

The Adaptor

The 21st Century teacher is an adaptor. Harnessed as we are to an assessment focused education model the 21st Century Educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways.

They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools utilisable by a variety of age groups and abilities.

They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on.

As an educator, we must understand and apply different learning styles. we must be able to adapt our taeching style to be inclusive of different modes of learning.

The Visionary

Imagination, a key component of adaptability, is a crucial component of the educator of today and tommorow. They must see the potential in the emerging tools and web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education?

The visionary teacher can look at others ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class.

The Collaborator

Ning, Blogger, Wikispaces, Bebo, MSN, MySpace, Second life - as an educator we must be able to leverage these collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.

The Risk taker

How can you as an educator know all these things? How can you teach them how to use them… There are so many, so much to learn. You must take risks and some times surrender yourself to the students knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have the students teach each other. The learning pyramid shows that the highest retention of knowledge comes from teaching others. Trust your students.

The Learner

We expect our students to be life long learners. How many schools have the phrase “life long learners” in there mission statements and objectives. We too must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge. We must endeavour to stay current. I wonder how many people are still using their lesson and unit plans from 5 years ago.

In my subject area, Information technology and certainly in many of the sciences, especially the life sciences; knowledge, understanding and technology are fluid and dynamic, they are evolving and changing. To be a teacher here you must change and learn as the horizons and landscape changes.

The 21st Century teacher or educator must learn and adapt.

The Communicator

“Anywhere, anytime” learning is a catchphrase we hear often. Usually its paired with “life learner”. To have anywhere anytime learning, the teacher to must be anywhere and anytime. It does not have to be the same teacher, but the 21st Century teacher is a communicator. They are fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it, they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.

The Model

We must model the behaviours that we expect from our students. Today and tommorow more so, there is an expectation that teachers will teach values.

We, are often the most consistent part of our student life. Teachers will see the students more often, for longer and more reliably than their parents. This is not a criticism of the parents rather a reflection.

What have I missed? What else is our 21st Century teacher?

This was twittered this recently by Helen Otway. Smart Board Resources in the classroom.

This is quite a neat site the page lists a series of smartboard resources for various subject areas. Its worth a visit and a forage through the selection. The resources range across the school spectrum from K to 13 and cover the curriculum too. They have divided it intoideas, lesson plans and websites.

Some of the websites have been moved so anything  to www. kented.org.uk should use this URL

http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/ict/IWB/index.htm

The illuminations website is very interesting and well worth a visit

http://illuminations.nctm.org/

Recently, a good friend of mine (thanks Mark) gave me a old desktop.  Its a celeron 1700 with 256Mb of ram, so nothing spectacular, but a usable and useful machine never the less. I have wanted for a while to have a linux box to play on. So when opportunity presents one must take it. Enter Edubuntu and the Hardy Heron

http://www.edubuntu.org

Well I downloaded the two packages I needed the 8.04 Hardy Heron install disc and the edubuntu add on, I burned these on to a CD and then braced myself for the install.

Well, am I pleasantly suprised. The Hardy Heron (that’s then name of this release) asked me a few pertenent questions like…

• my name and a log in name
• a password
• where I lived
• the type of keyboard
• and did I want to use all of the hard drive

… and then the heron went to work. I came back 15 minutes later to be greated with a complete install and a “can you please restart”. It restarts, asks for a login and off it goes

I then chucked the edubuntu add on disc in. Again, foolishly, I expected a mission. But again I was pleasantly suprised. The installer said “here’s what we’ve got what do you want” (or words to that effect) and 10 minutes later, I have a machine with everything installed and ready to go… Everything you say, well yes - DTP, open office, gimp, modeling software, video editor, email its got the lot. Do you want a periodic table?

What about an application for fractions and factorisation?

So….

Do you have old PC’s that are not being used or can you buy some? Do you want a simple clean OS with a simple install and a feature rich package of software? Software designed for kids of all ages? Do you want it for the cost of the download and 2 blanks CD’s? If the answer is yes - then download http://www.edubuntu.org

Do you want to know whats on the edubuntu package - http://www.edubuntu.org/UsingEdubuntu

This was the easiest install I have ever made.

I must be honest, I have not played seriously in second life. My lack of participation does not come from any philosophical agenda, from any technical impediment or from anything other than time. I think 2nd Life has great potential, but I don’t have time to exploit this potential.

Second life allows its participants to engage, collaborate, share, express, create and participate. Its a amazing “place” with huge potential. Like anything, it has its risks. There are undoubtedly unsavory individuals who given the opportunity will take advantage unaware or unprepared citizens of this virtual world. However, I would challenge you to find one society, virtual or real that does not have its share of twisted individuals.

I read this morning David Warlick post on BAN SECOND LIFE (David is strangely enough not advocating this rather commenting on it). A US politician is proposing to Ban Second Life in Libraries and Schools.

What a sad statement this is. Are we going to ban walking down the street because we might get attacked, are we going to ban treats because they might cause tooth decay or you might get fat? No we tell our students how to be safe, about moderation etc

Second life, has huge education potential. Even if we ignore the opportunities to meet and converse with experts in virtual forums, or to communicate and collaborate with our peers. You can’t over look the value of virtual locations like Education Island - http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

http://www.schome.ac.uk/

http://schome.open.ac.uk/wikiworks/index.php/Schome_Park

Banning Second life at school and in libraries, will achieve little. Students who want a second life will still access it through cafes, at home etc or by bypassing security setting. In these environments they will have little or no supervision.

In some many ways having these accessable at school is actually going to make the usage of these facilities safer. At school and in libraries there is supervision, there are adults who should be informed and able to provide advise, there are monitoring tools that log and track activity, and their are processes in place to support students who intentionally or accidentally access or connect with aberent activites, behaviours or information.

Banning Second life on the basis of risk is like burning books because they “might” have unacceptable content. Schools and libraries are education and learning centre, lets use them.

Just picked this up from twitter. Its an excellent post by James Linzel called a few things for educators.

He’s gone through and looked at some excellent resources for science teachers and for IT too. Here is teh URL of his post - http://www.utechtips.com/?p=702

here are some of the key links, but please read his post its well worth it:

• Streaming video from Nature - human evolution
• Streaming video from Nature - Gut Microbes
• Online Video Streaming Archive - Archive
• 3D images - http://www.proteopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Good post.

Pivot is free product that I am using to introduce Animation and Multimedia to some of my students. Pivot is the creation of Peter Bone and is a simple, easy to use and fun product.

Pivot has a range of pre-made figures with different “Pivot” points on the limbs, so to animate you figure you simply move the limb into the required position and click “next frame” to add another frame. Once completed, with multiple figures, backgrounds etc, you can then export it as animated GIF.

For me, I use this tool to teach students about framerate, resolution, continuity of motion within the animated character. I also use it for simple story boarding process to. Once the students have storyboarded a animation, I can then have them quickly do a stick figure rough cut. Importing the GIF into movie maker allows them to overlay voices, music etc.

You can get Pivot by going to Peter’s Yahoo page or downloading from this URL - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/stickfigure.html.

Interesting: When I gave this to my years 10 to use (its a big class) only 3 had not used this before.

http://www.tweetwheel.com/ 

If you use twitter you may find this site useful and interesting.

Essentially it draws a relationship circle between you and your friends. As you hover over a follower its shows you who else follows (or has a relationship) with that person. Clicking on the person will open their profile. Here is my Tweetwheel. Simply type in the url (http://www.tweetwheel.com/) with your tweeter id after it (http://www.tweetwheel.com/achurches)

Most of us have used google images to find suitable images for product we are creating. Well here is a specialised search engine for images.

http://elzr.com/imagery

The search does work quite nicely and the interface is cleaner than google’s images interface, but it renders out the much the same data for the search. Its a choice of which you prefer

http://www.googlelittrips.org/

This is an interesting approach to a virtual field trip. Using Google Earth, a browser and your internet connection you are able to take a literature trip on your favourite story (well from the selection they have available) .

This one is Homer’s Odyssey Submitted by Matthew Hart, Granada High School, Livermore, CA.

Here is what they say

“Placing the Odyssey’s locales is difficult. There are several different versions competing, all backed by serious critics. One new book actually suggests that Troy was located in England!

I’ve included two versions here. The Odyssey-1B.kmz is a very traditional, Greek-mainland-centric version. The Odyssey-2B.kmz is a more modern, Mediterranean-wide version. My preference is the second version as it lines up better with Virgil and makes more sense in some key spots.”

Thanks Richard - Nice spotting

http://www.fontcubes.com/

This is a useful site for getting those fonts you need for students presentations, desktop publishing etc or just adding some variety to your own resources. Lots to choose from.