Stephen Downes posted a note regarding this video via Karl Kapp. It brings back many memories for me.

Maish Nichani has written a telling post on inner spam filters. He was inspired by an article in the Scientific American, Your Inner Spam Filter. Maish succinctly relates that there are two types of people, “those who can remember large amounts of information (high-capacity individuals) and those who can’t (low-capacity individuals). The draw on research and show that it’s not that the high-capacity individuals have a larger store, it’s just that they are better at ignoring the spam that comes their way! In fact they found that some low-capacity individuals were holding more information than high-capacity individuals.” Which am I?

Is this a skill or an ability that we can teach to our students? This is certainly a skill for the 21st century. Kyle Barrow published the chart shown above last May. I wonder what data generated the chart yet assuming it is accurate it is quite clear that we need to impart to our children the ability to filter out the noise and eliminate the spam in the first instance.

Sketching on the whiteboard during Year 10 history today. Teaching the history of the womens’ movement in Australia. Exchanging ideas with the students regarding the glass ceiling. I asked the students to create a diagram that they felt illustrated the concept. I sketched my own. Consisted of stick figures.

As I sketched one of my students exclaimed, “Whoever invented stick figures was a genius!”.

It was a revelatory moment for her and also for me. That person was a genius.

Dean Groom in his role as Howard as he weaves his OzNZ disciples down the PBL pathway

Sat in on an OzNZ educators flash meeting. It seemed I arrived first and rather idiotically I clicked on the Start Broadcast button and sat there like a stunned mullet for a bit until I realised I had hijacked the opening of the proceedings. Oh well, I will not lose any sleep over at that.

There was discussion regarding Second Life and also Interactive Whiteboards. I was looking forward to more talk on SL actually. SL intrigues me somewhat.

Some educators rave about SL. Others deplore it. Two documentaries regarding virtual worlds and Second Life that aired on the 6th August on SBS TV here in Australia, the Age of Avatars and Wonderland: Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love did not go down too well in some education sectors. PodLove may have perturbed some educators as well.

Then as the online discussion continued, Dean Groom, provided us all with an excellent and impromptu live example of PBL. We were all involved as we gradually collaborated to solve the problem set up by Dean. One gradually took on a role as we sought a solution to the conundrum. Dean is a real practitioner. Impressive. It was a good get together. I lurked more than contributed. Next time I should be more proactive. A number of sites were referenced during the meeting:

AUGrid
Machinima
OSGrid
GenerateWebSite
Skoolabarate
Digital Ethnography

I participated in what I believe was the first OzNZ flash meeting back in April. That was a interesting experience as well.

This evening’s meeting has been archived here. The OzNZ educators group is well supported with a wiki, diigo group and a ning.

Addendum: Discovered this nice piece on Machinima on the SBS TV website. May interest you.

Recently Bill Kerr wrote a thoughtful post on the Cotton wool culture. This is a culture in which children are mollycoddled by society and kept out of harm’s way. His post was inspired by an article in the Guardian, ‘Kids need the adventure of risky play‘ [print]. I commented on Bill’s post and he responded with a selection of related links which I have listed at the foot of this post.

The article in the Mail online, ‘How children lost the right to roam in four generations‘, is particularly telling. It sets out quite clearly how from one generation to the next children are not roaming as far as their parents and grandparents. The article also mentions how walking through parks and gardens can reduce stress levels. It mentions that adding plants to your environment can also reduce stress. Recently, news that the German government plans to ban the Kinder Surprise chocolate egg as they pose a health risk to children has also generated comment regarding the cotton wool culture.

The view from our home in Bellambi looking towards the Pacific Ocean back in the 1960s.

Now, when I was seven our family moved house to a place called Bellambi. Between us and the ocean were open areas and an old rifle range that was rarely used. There were beaches, creeks, rock platforms, bush tracks and large sandhills.

The same stretch of road in 2008. Open space replaced with houses.

It has been turned into a suburb now. One end of our street was actually a dirt road back then. All that free space has largely disappeared. This Google map shows the area today.

Where I roamed as a young boy. Click on the map to view a larger map with a scale and labels.

As kids we would roam around the area. There was so much to do and so much to explore. We would go fishing, swimming, sliding down the sandhills on cardboard or sheets of masonite, look for bullet shells, let off fire crackers, search for geckoes, build massive sand-castles and so on. We would be gone all day, returning home at dusk. No worries, no fears. [We even smoked cigarettes at times, something I never took up thank goodness. You could buy a packet of Rothman's Tens for 21 cents. We would look for empty drink bottles. The bottles were worth three cents each. Seven bottles could buy us a packet of cigarettes. We even smoked at primary school in Year 6 at St Columbkille's when we were on incinerator duty.]

When I was eleven years of age I began riding my brother’s bike around the area. Peter had recently resurrected his old bike and I was keen to learn how to ride the old thing. When I turned twelve I received a Speedwell bike for my birthday and the area in which I roamed with my siblings and friends extended regularly to seven or more kilometres. I remember riding up the hills of Corrimal to the home of my good friend, Robert.

Even before that I used to ride my Cyclops scooter to the home of my friend Peter in Corrimal. At the age of 10 a group of us climbed Brokers’ Nose, on the escarpment west of the Illawarra. My sister and I rode our bikes from primary school on the highway in Corrimal all the way home to Bellambi. Sometimes we even walked home, a journey of several kilometres, if we missed the school bus. We were aged 10 or so at the time.

Things have certainly changed. How far did you roam as a child? How far did your parents and grandparents roam? Would be happy to read your own stories…

Perhaps this could be a meme, How far I roamed as a child… Would you like to help me get it started?

Addendum: Today I was interviewed by ABC radio here in the Illawarra. One of their interns discovered this blog post yesterday and arranged for an interview with Nick Rheinberger during the ‘Mornings‘ show. The interview went live to air as I was teaching my Year Eleven Ancient History class. The interview covered such points as real versus perceived dangers, the degree of violence in the world, the role of the media, taking risks, and the debate over to what extent one should allow children to freely roam. At the conclusion of the interview I returned to teaching. There was a talkback session on the topic with the general public on the radio afterwards. I am hoping to secure a recording of that as I was not able to listen. I shall add links and audio as they come to hand. I added some more links below.

Links:

Bill Kerr ~ Cotton wool culture; just the facts about online youth victimisation; 5 or 6 dangerous things you should let your children do [inspired by..]

Ted Talks ~ Gever Tully: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

The Guardian ~ Kids need the adventure of ‘risky’ play

Waraku Education ~ Playing with stuff

Sydney Morning Herald ~ Charlie Brooker: Egg the youngsters on so that life tastes better

Sydney Morning Herald ~ Surprise ruled bad for health

BBC ~ Analysis: Rearing children in captivity

Times Online: Children who have everything, except freedom to play outside

Mail Online: Children who play unsupervised, turn out fitter and more sociable, study says

Spiked: Don’t blame parents for ‘Cotton wool kids’

Times Online: Help! How afraid should I be of stranger danger?

Lenore Skenazy: Free Range Kids

Times Online: Let ‘cotton-wool kids’ hang out on the streets

Times Online: Our cotton-wool kids

Telegraph.co.uk ~ The danger from our ‘cotton wool kids’

Telegraph.co.uk ~ Get a life and take sensible risks, says safety chief

Guardian.co.uk ~ Cotton wool revolution: Instilling resilience in children is a vital lesson but only makes sense in a supportive society

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis  ~ The Capable Project 

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis  ~ Children who play unsupervised are fitter

Babies online ~ Unsupervised Play is Good for Children

HTI ~ Cotton Wool Kids

Times Online ~ ‘Bring back the conker fight to re-educate cottonwool kids‘

Spiked ~ Unwrapping the ‘cotton wool’ kids

Created a tip sheet for Photoshop Elements ~ version 3 admittedly but still useful for later incarnations of the software. I am running a workshop for Year 6 students from a neighbouring primary school on Monday. They have been collaborating on a project with our Year 7 students. They would like to repair and modify some photographs, hence the workshop. You may find the tip sheet useful. It is a pdf file ~ about 1.3mb. I created it using Comic Life and ‘printed it to pdf’.

Well, had a quick look at Bimbl yet I am not impressed. Should the team at Posterous be worried?

Posted by email from Watershed Lite (posterous)

Updated the Year 9 and 10 history pages last night. Added some links relevant to the local and national sites studies currently being undertaken by the students in those years.

Year Nine History links

Year Ten History links

Some of the sites are worthy, others not so worthy. The students will provide feedback on that. Included some Wikipedia entries as well. Referencing WIkipedia does not always go down well in some academic quarters. Often the external links at the foot of a Wikipedia page are useful.

I shall encourage the students to suggest more links. If you would like to suggest some local Illawarra History site or Australian historical sites of national interest please comment below.

Our kitchen is being replaced. On Friday our old kitchen was removed. Back to the original walls and floors. We temporarily covered the floor to prevent accidents with nails protruding from the wooden part of the floor. Parts of the wall were removed. Inside one of the wall cavities were pages from a newspaper dated March 28th, 1978. I flicked through the pages and the items that caught my eye are illustrated below.

Advertisements for calculators that still give the impression of the revolutionary and brilliant this technology. Calculations… Casio solves them scientifically! I think our family obtained its first calculator in 1977.

Then there is this advertisement for a 48cm colour television with a price tag of $599-00AUD. That was an enormous amount of money back then. That may have been equivalent to a month’s salary for many people, perhaps more. The advertiser has used a photograph of ABBA on the TV screen. Love the AM/FM transistor radio and the bedside AM/FM clock radio. You still see those clock-radios in motels.

Finally, an article about the copyright problems posed by the rich man’s new toy, the video tape recorder. The article indicated thet there would be legal battles between manufactuers, television stations and home consumers of the product. Things have certainly changed in some respects.

We are going to put a current copy of the local paper, wrapped in plastic, back in the wall cavity for the next renovators to discover years from now. I wish there was an anachronism lying around I could throw in for good measure.

Last night Shao Ping and I celebrated the 50th birthday of our friend Luke. Interestingly Luke and I were both born on the 8th August, 1958.  We taught together for about 10 years at St Joseph’s Catholic High School, Albion Park. Luke, and his wife Janine, are now both teaching at the Nobel School, Stevenage, England. Luke and his family are back in Australia for a holiday.

Luke and Larry

Well, Luke and I have shared fifty years. One hundred years in all. We both come from large families and both our dads spent time in Changi Prison as guests of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Pacific War. Luke is a great bloke, full of life, enriched with wisdom and generous with loads of good, old commonsense. Luke always called me Larry at school ~ a play on my family name.

Peter, Beth and I

Luke and his family are having a great experience in England. I think everyone should endeavour to work abroad at some time in their careers. It can open their eyes and make one realise there is so much out there in the world to discover.

Peter, Beth and I discuss the delights of Hong Kong

Caught up with many old friends last night including my old school chum and former colleague, Beth. We both went through school at the same time. She is a legendary English teacher and now happily retired on the south coast of New South Wales at Erowal Bay. Beth, my colleague Peter and I had a great old night talking about the good old days.

• Bill Kerr: cotton wool culture

  Society is too protective of children. Bill writes on the cotton wool culture.

  tags: society

• Tips for Avoiding Problems on Virtual Teams » VisualsSpeak blog

  Informative post about maintaining sound connections within virtual teams.

  tags: virtual teams, collaboration

• The Fischbowl: Should We Be Teaching This in “Social Studies?”

  Karl Fisch ponders the question… Should we be teaching that social transformation of society that is powered by the net via our social studies curriculum.

  tags: social media, social studies

• The Clever Sheep: Teaching Them to Teach Themselves

  Rodd Lucier sets out some excellent strategoes that can be applied when introducing students to the read-write web in an education setting.

  tags: tagging, web 2.0, social media, students, teachers

• The Clever Sheep: To Tweet or Not to Tweet…

  Rodd Lucier provides a nice analysis of the value of that quirky little social networking tool, Twitter.

  tags: Twitter, social media, web 2.0

• The Fischbowl: Shift Happens Statistic of the Day

  Karl Fisch reveals a world where billions of new web sites are created every day.

  tags: statistics, information, Internet

• Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » Student and Teacher Blogging that Succeeds

  Dean Shareski sets out a number of excellent tips for blogging by educators. This is a most informative post.

  tags: blogging, students, edtech

• educational-origami » Bloom’s and ICT tools

  Excellent wiki that reminds us all of Bloom’s Taxonomy and illustrates how it can be applied to digital tactics and strategies.

  tags: bloom, taxonomy, rubrics, assessment

• E-Learning Journeys: How to Flatten Your Classroom – Getting Started

  Planning a collaboration with another classroom, near or far? This post by Julie Lindsay is a good starting point.

  tags: collaboration, global, web 2.0

• Will The Semantic Web Have a Gender?

  Thought provoking article on the semantic web. Will the semantic web be graced with a neutral gender or not?

  tags: semantic web

• Video Sharing Embed Comparisons

  Excellent comparison of various video uploading services such as BlipTV and YouTube. Useful comments as well.

  tags: video

• Instructify » Blog Archive » Worldmapper combines geography and social science

  This is a great tool for visual learners. Useful for geographers, economists and students of social studies.

  tags: students, teachers, geography, economics

• Tip 50 – Blogger as Collaborative Tool

  Useful tip about collaborative blogging using Blogger. You can email images to a Blogger blog!

  tags: blog, students, collaborative

• Real Honesty about Second Life

  Humiliation and ostracism are alive and well in Second Life. Newbies not welcome.

  tags: web2.0, teachers, Second Life

• TechTicker » Blog Archive » Video Tour of the Isle of Zapp

  Great overview of Second Life from a practical and sensible point of view.

  tags: Second Life, web 2.0

• Around the Corner – MGuhlin.net : YouTube to Edublogs.tv

  Timely post regarding the value of edublogs.TV for educators. Safe and secure.

  tags: video, social media, web 2.0, edublogs.tv

• The Bamboo Project Blog: Five Technology Tools for Capturing and Sharing On-the-Road Learning

  Going on a road trip? Check out this great advice from Michele Martin.

  tags: social media, web 2.0

• The Bamboo Project Blog: Social Media Apps I’ve Tried to Love but Can’t

  Great post by Michelle Martin about those social media apps that so many eulogise yet do not suit all. A good read.

  tags: web 2.0, social media

• Weblogg-ed » Is My Head (and My Life) in the Clouds?

  Cloud computing. Where are you at? Head in the clouds or head in the sand?

  tags: Internet

• 15 Desktop Blogging Tools Reviewed

  Good review of some desktop blogging tools for both the Windows and Mac platforms.

  tags: blogging, tools

Well, it is the morning after my birthday. My wife Shao Ping is teaching Mandarin to a group of adults at the Nan Tien Temple just now. I am sitting here in the living room listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ~ Babe, You Turn Me On…

You race naked through the wilderness
You torment the birds and the bees
You leapt into the abyss, but find
It only goes up to your knees
I move stealthily from tree to tree
I shadow you for hours
I make like I’m a little deer
Grazing on the flowers

Everything is collapsing, dear
All moral sense has gone
It’s just history repeating itself
And babe, you turn me on

There are two gentlemen in our gutted kitchen. They are laying some cement before applying some new tiles. They were both born in Beijing. They have been living in Australia a long time and their children have grown up here. It is funny to hear one of the gentleman to say “G’day” with an Australian accent more broader than my own. They tiled our ground floor several years back. They did a beautiful job. This morning they are so proud due to the Olympic Games opening ceremony. My wife remarked upon the neat way they have levelled the kitchen floor and one of the gentlemen beamed and said, ‘Chinese people can do everything!”.

Yesterday I shared my birthday with a number of people. They include Dustin Hoffman, The Edge and Faye Wong. I admire all three to varying degrees. I exchanged gifts with a student at school who also shares the same birthday and today I will catch up with Luke, a former colleague, also born 080858.

Today is sunny. Later Shao Ping and I shall go out, grab a bite to eat and enjoy the rays. The winter has been cold this week. Too cold. Perhaps my ‘old’ bones feel the cold more now.

Later this weekend I need to begin marking 45 historical investigations submitted by my Year Eleven Ancient History students. Later this term we shall add their investigations to a wiki. They will embed graphics and relevant links. That will be quite an undertaking.

I turn 50 today. It is the eighth of August, 2008. The eighth of the eighth of th eighth. 080808. I was born on the 8th August, 1958. My mother nearly died at the time and I was born two months premature.

My mother and I

My mum’s birthday was on the 6th August. Shared a humidicrib with another baby. His name was Benjamin Kay. Ben was born on the 9th August. We ended going to school together up until the age of eighteen.

This card was on the humidicrib

I was in that humidicrib for quite a few weeks. How would you interpret the comment written across the bottom of the card above? Were they closed for an entire month? I was named after my grandfather, John. He had died a few days before I was born.

My father and I

I remember my tenth birthday on the 8th August, 1968. I visited my father in hospital that day. He had experienced a major heart attack. My father gave me a book that I read from cover to cover…Our World In Space And Time [Odhams Press Ltd., London]. The book still sits there in our bookcase. My father’s birthday greetings are written on the inside cover. He was 49 at the time. He spent some time in hospital. He worked too hard.

I turned 20 during my second year at uniersity. 8th August, 1978. I cannot remember that day at all. Second year at university was a non event. I have blanked out much of 1978. Something must have happened that I prefer to forget. I did see David Bowie perform live for the first time not long after.

David Bowie, Sydney, 1978.

I remember my 30th birthday. It was the 8th of the 8th, 1988. A lot of eights. It was a pupil free day at school and there was a party held at school. Amazingly, myself and one other colleague, Luke, shared birthdays. Both of us were born on the 8th August, 1958. Luke thought I was kidding when I made the discovery. We are both catching up this Saturday actually. Luke teaches in England now. My father came to school once to speak to the students about his experiences as a prisoner of war in the Second World War.

My father and I address the students at St Joseph’s Catholic High School

My fortieth birthday was quiet. 8th August, 1998. There was a heavy rain storm that night. I received an antique Astro Boy figurine from my wife Shao Ping. I received some South Park videos as well. Our family was going to celebrate my birthday a couple of weeks later but that was cancelled following a severe storm event in which our region was flooded. That storm happened on the 17th August. Our suburb received 313mm of rain that day. The party was cancelled. There are some accounts of the storms here and here. August 1998 was a wet month.

There will be a surprise party in our faculty staff room today. This evening my wife Shao Ping and I are going out with 4 of my 6 siblings as well as their spouses. I am having a larger party in September at the beginning of the school holidays.

My dad and all my brothers and sisters. That is me wearing the loud shirt. 2001.

All of my siblings are educators too. Let me see… two history teachers, university lecturer, mathematics teacher, music teacher, primary school teacher, librarian. What do you think we all talk about when we get together?

How do I feel turning 50? Not much really. It is a bit of a crossroads. It is harder to get a new job at this age. If I branch out it will be consulting and/or training. When will I retire? Not sure. I hope it is a simple transition that passes unnoticed. I do not think I can teach kids forever. It would be the death of me.

Recent photograph of myself and workshop participant Gabriel taken in Singapore.

I will remember this birthday as our kitchen is also being ripped out tomorrow. A new kitchen will be built next week. I remember events via association with other events. I then move backwards and forwards down the mental timeline in my head.

Another recent photograph taken with my colleague Chris, and our visiting Japanese teachers from Koshigaya Minami Senior High School in Japan ~ Tatsuo and Mitsuyo.

I will probably blog one or two more posts over the next few days. The old read-write web has seemed burdensome of late. Time to rationalise again. Twitter or Plurk? Diigo or Delicious? Wordpress or Posterous? Both my wife Shao Ping and I blog.

Shao Ping and I in a previous life

The number eight is significant in Chinese culture. It has various meanings and associations. Good fortune. Wealth. Luck and so on. That is why the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony is commencing at 8.08PM on the 8th August, 2008.

Why not celebrate my birthday instead? It has just gone past midnight here in New South Wales, Australia. Plenty of room to write in the comments below. Cheers, John.

Last Thursday myself and a few colleagues gathered together for a lunchtime sharing of techie tools and ideas. I was in and out of the meeting as I took some photographs of events around the school. This meeting was attended by Peter, Frank, Marion, Michelle, Steve and myself. We were also joined by our two guest teachers from Koshigaya Minami Senior High School in Japan ~ Mitsuyo and Tatsuo.

Mitsuyo and Tatsuo at Bulli Beach

I opened the proceedings with a demo of Posterous. I showed how it is capable of creating rich multimedia blog posts with elegant galleries, embedded video and podcasts ~ all via email.

Frank was impressed enough to publish his students’ Comic Life projects using Posterous. The students’ geography projects can be viewed here. As I have mentioned elsewhere this elegant publishing tool is improving by the day.

Frank shared KeepVid with the group. This site allows you to download streamed video clips from sites such as YouTube. You simply paste the web address or url of the clip in the url download field.

It searches available download links providing the user with links to flv or mp4 file downloads. Click on the download link to commence the operation. This is a useful site. Cross platform. I still prefer Tooble.

Peter shared an alternative to Apple with respect to publishing your photographs in a coffee table book. Viovio allows you to publish coffee table photo books by submitting a pdf file of the ‘book’ created in another tool such as iPhoto. It costs significantly lower than other providers of such services. Peter has just ordered a book. Stay posted for a review of the product when it arrives.

Last week I shared Posterous with some colleagues during a lunchtime Geek
meet. The image display component of Posterous impressed one colleague in
particular and he is now using Posterous to display his junior Geography
students’ Comic Life projects.

Each project was exported as image files. My colleague then posted each
project to Posterous as a separate email.

http://yr7geography2008.posterous.com/

Posted by email from Watershed (posterous)