• Science in the open » Policy and technology for e-science - A forum on on open science policy

  A good blog post concerning James Boyle and his talk where the ‘central theme was the relationship between where we are today with open science and where international computer networks were in 1992. He likened making the case for open science today with that of people suggesting in 1992 that the networks would benefit from being made freely accessible, freely useable, and based on open standards’.

  tags: escience, science, technology

• 21st Century Learning: K12Online Coolness

  Interesting blog post about k-12 technologies.

  tags: k12online

• Blog your way to happiness - web - Technology - smh.com.au

  An interesting article about some of the benefits of blogging.

  tags: blogging

  • Researchers in the US have concluded that blogging also makes
    bloggers better thinkers. US neurologists Fernette and Brock Eide
    conducted a survey of the blogosphere and posted their results on
    their own site. The research began with the proposition that our
    mental activities actually cause changes in the structures of our
    brains -not only what we think, but how we think as well.

• World’s oldest blogger makes final post

  An amazing old blogger has gone to that great blog in the sky. Touching story about the world’s oldest blogger who recently passed away.

  tags: blog, life

Chris posted this nice link on Twitter a moment ago. He was asking what could be added to this set of resources?

http://betchablog.wikispaces.com/Learning+is+a+Conversation

St Joseph’s Institution, Singapore.

Yesterday. My first full day in Singapore on this trip. Did not sleep much the first night. Too much on my mind. Getting past the first workshop or presentation is always a bit of a hurdle. Not sure why. Anxiety, probably. Those stage-fright tensions. Always feel it even though I have been doing this sort of thing since 1994. Once the curtain is raised I feel fine.

I conducted the first workshop at St Joseph’s Institution Junior School [wikipedia entry]. The campus is located on the site of the former St Michael’s School in Novena. It is a primary school. The workshop consisted of presentation and a hands-on component. There were teachers from a variety of schools across Singapore. About 30 teachers in all.

St Joseph’s Institution Junior School. Condominiums in the background.

Time was at a premium and I attempted to make the most of it. I created a presentation ppt yet that is more for the benefit of the participants as they make notes on the hard copy as I usually flick across to a browser and show them examples of the tools at work.

The teachers were quite reserved which is not unusual and I always look for ways to break the ice like singing a song in mandarin, sharing some anecdotes about history and so on.

Once the questions begin and then things begin to bubble along and the workshop thrives. I am always grateful for that first question. I think all of the other participants are too. We looked at eduBlogs, Twitter, QR Codes, QR Codes generators, Flickr, Compfight, Posterous and Plurk among others. I shared some of the wikis made by my Year Eleven students and blogs written by my Year Nine students. The participants also received Twitter greetings from acroamatic, janelowe, isaakkwok, skytrystsjoy, syamsul and catspyjamasnz. More materials and downloads can be found here.

Ming Liang, Keith, Chan Chuan and Feliz (l to r)

The workshop was organised by Keith See from the Infocom Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). His colleagues, Chan Chuan and Feliz were also in attendance. The IDA is working in tandem with the Ministry of Education on a number of innovative projects including the Edvantage Programme, Future Schools@Singapore and iAccess~Interactive Learning Trails. There are many more projects. Singapore is an island state. Its main resource are the children of Singapore. As well as my presentation there was a demonstration by Ng Ming Liang of G Element Pte Ltd of Earth@SG and several impressive geographic visualisation tools being developed for use in teaching and learning.

The day concluded about 5.30PM or thereabouts and I congratulated the teachers for their attentiveness on a late Friday afternoon. The likelihood of that happening with teachers in Australia is not as high. Once that Australian school bell rings at 3.30PM there is a stampede, with the teachers leading the charge, and the school is empty by 3.35PM, with the dust barely settled.

Chinatown

I chatted with some of the teachers after that and we then began to make tracks for our respective digs. Jumped on the MRT and alighted at Outram Park. I eventually ended up in Chinatown and had dinner at my favourite haunt. I have been eating in this ‘coffee shop’ for about nine years now. I used to work just around the corner. Ate the usual and slowly consumed a nice drop of Tiger beer with the owner of the coffee shop.

Tiger Beer

Then, unwinding. I sat for a while, thought about the day, watched the world go by, finished the beer, cooled down and then caught a train and bus back to the NTU campus.

Arrived in Singapore last night for a week of workshops. I am staying at Nanyang Technological University.

Scenery at Nanyang Technological University

Today I shall be going across to St Joseph’s Institution [wikipedia entry] to share some ideas with a number of teachers regarding blogging and other read~write tools. It will be a busy workshop. Too much to do but I am sure we will all get there. I have uploaded some resources for the participants here.

Straight off the press. Lazy Sunday. Breakfast. Reading yesterday’s newspaper. Few blog posts read. Couple of my own posted. Tidied the sheets. A few  quick tweets.  Just had a shower. While I was in the shower Gary Stager popped into my head. I composed a song about Gary, while I was standing there in the shower, to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme. Now, that’s a worry.

Anyway, I thought I would give Gary a bit of a plug here while my hair, what’s left of it, is still drying. I first discovered Gary on the net when researching podcasts back in late December 2004 or early 2005. He was compiling resources on podcasting almost from the beginning.

I like Gary’s blog ~ Stager-to-Go. He shows no fear. He writes how he feels. He is like a devil’s advocate in the edublogging world. Not all of his posts are applicable to the scene here downunder but I like to read them all anyway. I do not agree with all his stuff but why should I? Still enjoyable to read regardless. I enjoy reading Gary when he has a go at some sacred cows. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I think we need more bloggers like Gary Stager.

Well, what happened today? Well, first of all I transferred some notes on my classroom’s whiteboard to my MacBook. I had quickly jotted down some notes down on the board yesterday while sharing some ideas with the class about various theories regarding the downfall of the Minoan Civilisation and a possible connection with the volcanic demise of Thera. There is debate regarding possible connections and the dating of the eruption on Thera. I was repeating the lesson to a second Year Eleven class later today.

My first class, with Year Ten History, focused on the Day of Mourning on the 26th January, 1938. That was the 150th anniversary of white settlement in Australia. William Cooper and William Ferguson organised the Day of Mourning, related publications and protests.

Following that lesson I taught a class about the conscription debate that took place in Australia during The First World War 1914-1918. Australia was supporting the efforts of Great Britain during the conflict. Voluntary enlistments were high during the first two years of the war but by 1916 numbers  were dropping off and the current Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, led the call for an amendment to our conscription laws so that men could be conscripted to fight overseas. The debate was highly emotional and split the nation in half. Two referendums were held and the No vote won on each occasion. The results were relatively close on each occasion. 

Following recess I taught a double period Year Eleven Ancient History class regarding the nature of, and evidence for, the relationship between the island of Thera, the Mionoan Civilisation on Crete and the Mycenaean Civilsation on the Greek mainland. I repeated that double period with a second Year Eleven group after lunch. I also interviewed a number of students regarding the current state of their historical investigations.

During lunch, grabbed some kites, went out to the oval and flew kites with some of the Year Seven students. A crowd of students turned up all wanting a turn. Years ago I used to build and fly kites with the students. I remember one day we had about 30 kites flying above the school. An old photograph from those days is included below.

The kite flyers, 1995.

It was quite windy today and we could only fly the smaller single and dual line kites. One kite was damaged when it hit the ground, hard. Repaired it when I arrived home. It was great to watch the kites flipping about in the wind today. The kids had a great time ~ running, launching kites, untangling lines, laughing, watching and clamouring for more. Students are fascinated with the kites. Such a simple ‘technology’ with which they love to play. Shall be flying the kites again tomorrow.

My favourite kite, Jurong East, Singapore, 2003.

I enjoy kite flying. It is a great way to de-stress. I take a few with me when I travel. I have a couple of soft kites that can be folder and rolled so small that they take up no more room than a pair of folded socks.

After reapiring the kite, scanned the Google Reader and cleared all the posts. Saved nineteen for later reading. Did note that a number of the NECC related blog posts reveal a little frustration with the numbers and ‘noise’ of edubloggers in some venues. Too many edubloggers in one place? Is that possible? Is this homophily in action? I feel that a conference full of edubloggers would be almost superfluous given their skills in connecting online already. I guess that is why there is an unconference but even that may have suffered due to homophily. Perhaps I am wrong. I am not there. Wish I was, admittedly.

I shall be catching up with some edubloggers in July hopefully. The last thing I wish to talk about is edublogging, twitter, education technology and the like. I simply wish to eat, drink, chat and converse about politics, people, IVF, weather, wine, beer, pets, house renovations, climate change, whatever. Get my drift? Whichever way the wind blows.

How did I create this post? I scanned the photograph on a HP Photosmart 2570 All-in-One device, rotated and resized it in Adobe Photoshop Elements, saved it as a jpeg using the Save for web… option in Elements, uploaded it to my host using CyberDuck. Of course the blog post was created using Wordpress. I also linked to an image in my own gallery.

Sunset, Tioman Island, Malaysia, 2001.

Watershed ~ a critical point that marks a division or a change of course; a turning point; a period of time that marks a turning point in a course of action.

Well, I think that we are in the midst of a turning point or a change of course in terms of education so I have decided to give my blog a new name ~ Watershed.

I have been pondering this name change for a while.

The term watershed has been a part of my vocabulary since I read The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler about 30 years ago. In this seminal tome Koestler gives an account of mankind’s changing view of the universe and cosmology. He applied the term watershed to that period of the scientific revolution when Kepler and Galileo forever changed our view of the universe.

Dusk, Albion Park, NSW. 2006.

This afternoon my colleague, Wayne, and I were chatting in the car on the way home. Wayne mentioned that he had read that if we look far enough into the universe we should eventually be able to see the back of our head as the universe folds back on itself, apparently. I mentioned I would like to be around if instantenous interstellar travel was ever invented. A few of the places I would like to visit are depicted below.

The Andromeda Galaxy. Photography by DJMcGrady. Some rights reserved.

The Horsehead Nebula and Flame. Photography by DJMcGrady. Some rights reserved.

The Great Nebula In Orion. Photography by DJMcGrady. Some rights reserved.

Of course, things would look a little different given that the light visible in these photographs may have taken hundreds or thousands of light years to reach Earth.

Thinking about the universe reminded me of the relative insignifcance of the planet Earth. Then the thought crossed my mind that its most civilised inhabitants are quite strange. The human race has missed the point. If we were truly an intelligent species would we be working five or more days a week for most of our lives? Would an intelligent species establish a society that is directly contributing to the demise of its planet via climate degradation? Would an intelligent species war with itself?

Global Warming. Mind Map prepared by Learning Fundamentals.

Then, thinking about global warming, mass extinctions of plant and animal species, peak oil, melting ice-caps and so on I wonder what will the current generation of students inherit after we shake off our mortal coils? Some of the more recent predictions regarding the health of this planet are rather dire. The planet is not in good shape.

How long will the human race be around for? Will we ever reach the stars? Will the human race see out the next 1000 years? The next 100 years?

Twelve or so years ago there were a few web sites that I liked to visit on a regular basis and share with other teachers when giving professional development regarding the Internet. Three sites in particular have reasonably stood the test of time… The Nine Planets, Volcano World and Astronomy Picture of the Day.

The Nine Planets is always a fascinating site to visit due to the quality of the photographs of the various bodies that inhabit our solar system. The site was established and is maintained by Bill Arnett. Bill included multimedia elements, such as audio and video, at an early stage of the site’s evolution. My favourite planets… Jupiter and Saturn. You can even find out about the Oort Cloud. Of course, the site’s banner testifies to Pluto’s recent exclusion as a planet. I feel that the original site, without adverts, looked better.

Volcano World stood out from the rest of the other sites evolving on the web back then due to the constantly updated content and quality of the materials. It was always supported with a rich set of external links. It utilised multimedia and excellent images. The site also has a blog.

Parts of the site have remained as is since the early days complete with horizontal bars and large navigational icons.

Finally, Astronomy Picture of the Day, was a site I visited as often as I could. The site is maintained by Robert J. Nemiroff and Jerry T. Bonnell. One thing that has always fascinated me about APOD is the fact that each daily entry is rich with a large number of links to supporting and related information. Robert and Jerry had fully utilised the power of hypertext links. Favourite images? Cat’s Eye Nebula, M17~stellar nursery, Saturn and Jupiter.

Three happy blokes

Westley Field, an old sparring partner of mind from that good old multimedia days at the University of Wollongong is always at me to be ‘online’ more often. That is, he often mentions that he cannot find me so to that end I have been leaving Skype and iChat online. Well, Westley and I have have had more chats of late and more collaborations have been generated as a result.

Well, last weekend I had a quick chat with Westley while he was in San Francisco and I knew he was heading over to Strawberry to take a canoe ride with Alan Levine. Well the iChat was fired up and we three managed to get in a quick conversation. It was good to actually speak with Alan (and Westley too!). All previous communications had been comment exchanges about recycling wood and interesting conference speakers.

Nothing serious. Quick chat about canoeing, looking for water, dogs, cats, absent principals, meeting my wife, NECC, July meetup, my next trip to Singapore, Skoolabarate Congress 2008 and the possibility of dragging Alan across to Singapore in February of next year for a conference. Laughed about collaborations, being high maintenance, and adventures abroad.

A nice moment all in all. Technology can be good. It’s wireless. Its now. Think about it. Half a world away from each other, sixteen hours apart, yet three blokes share a laugh, swap a few notes and cement those bonds.