Never underestimate Wordpress. For years I basically created web sites using Claris Home Page and later, Macromedia Dreamweaver. I used another tool there for a bit but it’s name escapes me. My skill extends to nested tables, copy and paste JavaScript, a little XML and that is it. I can hack code after I have “read” it carefully. I can also tell the difference between acceptable and unacceptable design. I think.

My web site has looked like old brown web pages for two and half years now. It is actually based on a template called Gazette in iWeb. I liked the look and feel of “Gazette” and I reproduced it to some extent using Dreamweaver. It had an “old” look that was in keeping with my teaching of history. Well that look is cluttered I feel. I now wish to simplify site and page construction.

It is time to move on and I am going for something that is cleaner and a lot easier to navigate. A little more professional for want of a better word. I still hope there is something of me in the new site. We will just have to wait and see.

So, I have been rebuilding my web site from the ground up. Not the “antique looking” site you may be looking at right now but a site that is presently gestating within the confines of another sub-domain on my host as at the date of this post. I am using Wordpress.

The thing about Wordpress that I admire the most is it’s capacity to generate static web pages. That is simply excellent. You can have your blog and you can augment your ramblings and news with a variety of supporting content via the static pages.

One can be so empowered. One has the ability to produce a rather professional and elegant web site using Wordpress and it is free. That contrasts so remarkably with some entities that charge you $500-00 for a web site with 5 static pages and an upkeep fee to match.

My new web site, which I hope I can launch before Christmas, will be built entirely using Wordpress. Since the template employs drop-down nested menus I am free to incorporate quite a number of pages and navigation will not be such an interface hassle.

Some Wordpress templates place the page based navigation in a horizontal bar across the top. That may limit you to say 7 pages. As well, other templates place the page navigation down a sidebar. That can be messy if you build an extensive site.

I have incorporated one code hack. I have taken the code generated by a flash album gallery generator and pasted it into the static page and blog post pages so I can easily display a bunch of images.

It is a little clunky but if I create a number of draft posts and pages in advance with the code added and simply leave them unpublished I can drop in a folder of say 32 aptly numbered images and the gallery will be created. All I need do then is finish writing the blog post or page content and publish. Not bad.

Some of the existing Wordpress gallery plug-ins are nice but they are buggy or require you to host the images on their servers.

Getting the galleries right is important for me. My current galleries have poor navigation. I use a Photoshop macro to create the galleries at the moment.

I enjoy taking photographs. Good stress relief. So with this new Wordpress based site hopefully users will find the galleries easier to navigate. I will also begin posting images up to Flickr more frequently so people can access the jpeg file if they so desire.

Wordpress is powerful. Create pages with or without comments. Nested pages. Password protected pages. Publication dates predetermined. Embed flash. Podcasting enclosures. Rich widget capabilities. Mobile blogging is a snap. Self hosted Wordprsss users can tap into plug-ins and an extensive range of themes as well. A creative and devoted user/developer community.

I do hope Wordpress will always maintain it’s logical ease of use and elegant ethos. I hope feature creep does not weigh Wordpress down in the future. I would despair if I witnessed Wordpress evolve into a bloated baggy monster.

Yesterday I raised the issue of avatars and educators on Twitter. I follow a number of teachers, social commentators, relatives and organisations on Twitter and vice versa. There is a wide variety of avatars among those that I follow.

A number of teachers and educators that I follow do not utilise a personal photograph for their avatar. Their avatars range from comic book characters through to line drawings, second-life portraits, logos and animals. Some educators utilise images of themselves taken as children or even images of their own children.

Personally I have utilised all of the images below. My current Twitter avatar is the final photograph on the right.

I utilise a portrait photograph as it represents me. What you see is what you get. As an educator, as a teacher I feel that is the correct approach for myself to take if I am to blog and tweet professionally.

I raised this point on Twitter and it generated a conversation between Lyndon Sharp and myself. I reproduce the conversation below in chronological order top to bottom.

John Larkin: My avatar was once a favourite photo of me as a young kid but then I felt it was a little weird. Some might feel it is misleading. Thoughts?

Lyndon Sharp: @john_larkin Twitter avatar choice: room here for PhD research project. Quirky? Cartoon? Provocative? School Yrbk approach? Best portrait?

John Larkin: @lyndons Initially I had no concern regarding the avatar of me as a youth but then felt it would possibly mislead.

John Larkin: @lyndons We teach our students to be wary of those they communicate with as they may not be what they seem. So, what about teacher avatars?

Lyndon Sharp: @john_larkin Avatar choice *is* as yet unstudied. Competing interests: need fr privacy, desire fr openness & projection of self-image…

John Larkin: @lyndons this idea re avatar is interesting. What are we trying to project? One’s employment can have an impact.

Lyndon Sharp: @john_larkin I get th feeling people more experienced in Social Media tend to choose something other thn a photo-portrait: a small privacy?

John Larkin: @lyndons yes, self-employed, consultants, etc have more latitude on their choice.

Perhaps, at Lyndon suggests, this question or issue could be the focus of a research project. If a teacher chooses to blog or publish online professionally in an open manner should their profile avatar be a reasonably recent portrait photograph or not? 

Some may even feel that a portrait photograph is simply more professional. At least a recent photograph. What do you think? Is this too retrograde? Too conservative?

Should educators consider the views of other potential stakeholders: employers, students, parents?

Perhaps an educator is blogging incognito. Their choice of avatar may not be an issue in this case.

It is an interesting question. A possible conundrum. As Lyndon indicates there are competing interests.

What is your position on this? Not an issue? Free country?

I installed Twitterfon on this iPhone tonight. I have been using Tweetie to monitor the Twitter stream.

Twitterfon incorporates a similar feature set and functionality as Tweetie. Twitterfon does feature an autofresh and an autoscroll to the previous update. They are handy.

Yet I still prefer Tweetie. It features an interface similar to the iChat app on the Mac as well as the Text (SMS) aapp on the iPhone. It is purely a visual thing. One other thing, embedded links in Tweetie are active and can be forwarded to other sources.

The initial image displays Twitterfon and the second Tweetie.

I had the good fortune to attend a presentation given by Stephen Downes today at the University of Wollongong courtesy of the Faculty of Education. I once worked within the faculty as a member of the Interactive Multimedia Learning Laboratory a decade back. Much has changed within the faculty since those heady days. I digress. I live just a couple of kilometres away from the university by car.

It was good to bump into Ian Olney of the UOW as well as Gary Molloy from St Joseph’s at Hunters Hill and also Sui Fui John Mak of the Sydney Institute of TAFE. Gary and I later had a chat about activities at our respective schools. I also had the chance to catch up with Garry Hoban and meet Nicola Johnson, both of the Faculty of Education at the UOW. Nicola has blogged about the event as well.

Stephen with myself, Gary Molloy and Sui Fui John Mak

Garry Hoban, Stephen and Nicola Johnson

The title of Stephen’s presentation was Connectivist Learning and the Personal Learning Environment. As the abstract for the presentation set out Stephen spoke of the strategies that educators could employ to design learning for online delivery.

Stephen outlined the strategies employed by himself and George Siemens employed to conduct their Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course during the final quarter of last year. It was an interesting talk. Stephen’s presentation was personable, relaxed and enjoyable. Components of his presentation can be found within the body of these two recent presentations: 

The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course
Connectivism: A Theory of Personal Learning 

Stephen pointed out that the course attracted 2200 participants. He illustrated that the connectivist aspect of the process better suited courses with large enrollments as opposed to those with enrolments with, say, 30 students. It occurred to me that perhaps multiple tertiary institutions could deploy an approach to impart generic introductory course subjects. Faculty often teach those subjects when they have drawn the short straw. Staff could  focus on the more topic specific subjects once freed up from the mass delivery of course opening materials. Just an idea.

The key ideas and approaches can be garnered from Stephen’s presentations. An approach in which the connections between participants within an open environment facilitate learning and not a simple shoveling of data across a student cohort.

A number managed to share a quick cuppa and a bite to eat with Stephen following the presentation. A good afternoon was had by all.

Tomorrow I am giving a presentation as part of the Thinking Globally, Delivering Locally VC Seminars being jointly conducted by the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre at Macquarie University and the New South Wales Department of Education and Training.

As they point out on their web site the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre is hosting the seminars to provide regional and isolated schools with access to innovative technologies. I received an invitation from Anne-Maree Moore, Project Manager Collaborative Technologies at the centre to participate in the Thinking Globally seminars.

The focus of my presentation is Getting Started with Web 2.0 Technologies. During the course of the presentation regarding classroom implementation of Web 2.0 technologies I plan to emphasise three points.

1. Choose an aspect of the curriculum with which you hold a passion.

2. Choose an online tool with which you feel comfortable or ‘clicks’ for you.

3. Steer a simple, straightforward path at the outset.

As well, timing is also important… For example I find term III is favourable moment when the pressure is off somewhat. No final exams and no reports to write. [Actually these ideas apply to any technology based curriculum integration, not just Web 2.0 technologies. Some of my ideas are available in this document containing notes, ideas and some brainstorms.]

Why do I give this advice? By following these simple rules of thumb a teacher new to technology will be able to ease themselves into the process gently. Being familiar with the curriculum component enables the teacher to focus on the implementation and the technology. Selecting a technology that they are comfortable with serves to ease the burden with the actual implementation. A simple beginning provides a a practical and commonsensical framework for the implementation to be effected.

I base this on experience, pure and simple. It may not have been Web 2.0 but back in 1992-1993 the tool that clicked for me was Apple’s HyperCard. I was given a quick demo of HyperCard by Dr John Hedberg, during a promotional presentation for a new course being offered by the University of Wollongong. John was teaching at the Faculty of Education at the university and he was a member of the famous Interactive Multimedia Learning Laboratory, now EmLab. John is now Professor and Head of the School of Education at Macquarie University.

John’s demo of HyperCard in addition to the other components of the presentation convinced me to enrol in the Graduate Certificate of History Education at the UOW. In addition to the pedagogical components the course included a technology subject that introduced the students to multimedia programming and educational technologies. It was brilliant. It changed my life.

I chose an area of the curriculum that held my passion. The Pacific War. In particular the unit on Australian prisoners of war. My late father, Francis Xavier Larkin Snr, had been a guest of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) across various parts of Asia from January 1942 through to August 1945. My father had shared with me his letters, photographs, relics, maps and other documents from that period. This was an area that fascinated me, personally and professionally. I created a curriculum matrix at the time.

I scanned the documents using an Apple Scanner, a Mac Classic and a HyperCard stack that acted as the interface. I created a HyperCard stack that incorporated the documents and my father’s recollections that I had recorded on to cassette tape and then later digitised on the Mac. I bought a Mac LCIII.

Main menu of the Prisoner of War HyperCard stack.

Entry point for Photographs 1940 to 1942.

Photograph of my father taken in 1944 by the IJA. Clicking on the play button allowed the listener to hear my father’s thoughts regarding the photograph.

HyperCard was an excellent tool. It introduced programming to the masses. Once I had figured out the navigation and the ’stack map’ developing the stack, card by card, was straightforward. It was an enjoyable process and provided myself with a real sense of achievement. When it was completed I placed it on a server at school with the help of two colleagues, Ken Orrock and David Emery.

My Year Nine students could access it to complete a number of activities. They were amused by the fact that they were attending History lessons in the computer laboratory. During subsequent years I wore a second hat at school and taught students how to create HyperCard stacks as part of their Design and Technology course. I made other stacks on Kite Flying, the Iceman and a simple game about the end of the world called Hunger City. That stack taught students about the importance of collecting appropriate evidence when creating a historical argument.

I actually racked my brain repeatedly for a topic that I could use as the foundation for my first HyperCard stack. Various topics crossed my mind. One evening when I was going through my father’s relics it dawned on me. My father’s wartime experiences were the perfect topic. I had an interest in the topic and by scanning the letters, relics and photographs and by creating the stack I was able to share the relics with the students without fear that the original relics would be lost or damaged. The students could access the materials on the server via the stack. It was a great solution. I have since created a web site that feature my father’s relics.

So, my journey into educational technology began with a topic for which I had a passion, a piece of technology that clicked and a reasonably straightforward beginning. It was a good experience. I enjoyed it. The students enjoyed it. It reinvigorated my passion for education. I had reached a point in my career where I was basically teaching within a reasonably secure comfort zone. That HyperCard stack took me outside my comfort zone and set me on a journey that continues to this day.

Well, time has passed and not long back I wished to set up some blogs for my middle secondary History students. What steps did I take?

First of all I did some investigation. I began with a simple Teacher~Class blog in which problems and questions were posed by myself and the students responded via comments. I utilised Blogger as the tool. I would utilise eduBlogs now.

Actually, thinking back I had a blog of my own for a while before creating a teacher-class blog. By working with my own blog I gradually understood how they worked. I gained an understanding of the positive characteristics of the blog and also the pitfalls.

Then, how about blogs for each student? This was a significant task. I considered some of the educational blogging services but discovered, for example, that once I had exceeded 50 student blogs, that fees kicked in for the school. In other cases there was a lack of control. How could one set up multiple student blogs? Well this is how I did it. This time.

I wanted my middle secondary students to compose online diaries as if they were living through the Great Depression and/or the Second World War. I explored some blogging possibilities and I went with Blogger. I set up the Blogger accounts for each student. That took up some time. I created a simple initial welcome post in each blog.

I created a sample blog that illustrated the sort of product that I would like to see the students begin with as they started blogging. I was then hoping that they would become more creative as they proceeded with the blog. The next day in class I asked the students to list their student email accounts in turn in a spreadsheet. I showed them the sample blog and how they would need to post a blog entry. I invited each student to pick a template for their blog as well. I invited each student to be an author of their blog. I would be the administrator.

The following day I had booked the students (two separate classes) into two separate computer labs at school to begin blogging. There were some technical problems but all of that was sorted and a subsequent visit was more fruitful. The holidays then intervened. I was away as well and now that the fourth term has commenced I shall encourage the students to start blogging again. I have a role to play there.

I am notified of each blog post via a RSS newsreader. Comments will come to me via email for vetting.  Just for now I just wish to see the students enjoying the process of creatively writing via a different medium. They understand why I have set up these safeguards. The students began their blogging with mixed results and about a dozen have really sunk their teeth into the project. many of the students have only made one post. Squeezing this project within the normal programming of the subject is challenging but I am getting there, gradually. I have added some screen shots below.

From a historical perspective it is interesting as the blog entries are sprinkled with dating errors, anachronisms and other anomalies.  They provide a source of fruitful analysis when the students share their blogs in class.

For tomorrow’s presentation I shall point the participants to the following resources…

Web 2.0 links and resources: Here you will find online guides and resources for applications and tools as diverse as Twitter, Second Life, Wikis and more. There are links to classroom blogs, wikis, Second Life sites, teacher blogs and a variety of advice from educators near and far. I have just updated the list with additional Nings and Twitter resources.

How to guides. This page is chock-a-block full of pdf guides to blogs, wikis, Twitter, RSS feeds, Posterous and much more. Feel free to download and use these guides. Worpdress has just been updated so that guide is a little out of date. I have also added these resources to my home page.

Blogrolls. These are some of the blogs that I read some of the time, not all of the time. This needs updating. Need to import my latest OPML file into Google Reader.

I have also uploaded four rough edits of an interview recorded by Nanyang Technological University. Four questions were answered.

Click on each question to view the relevant video. You will need to ensure you have Quicktime installed.

What is Web 2.0?

How can teachers and students exploit Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning?

How can teachers benefit from web 2.0 technologies?

How can students benefit from web 2.0 technologies?

A number of useful tools:

Wordpress blog: hosted by Wordpress | hosted by yourself

Flickr

Creative Commons

Compfight

Posterous

Twitter

Remember, before embarking on a dedicated implementation of technology as part of your curriculum consider your existing workload and the demands that are made upon your time on a daily basis. Some time is required to make changes to your programming and the strategies that you employ in your teaching. Allowing for this time should not be a burden.

Choose a part of the curriculum which holds a particular interest for you. Select a technology that clicks for you. Do not re-invent the wheel. If other colleagues or teachers elsewhere have also established similar implementations within the curriculum then drop them a line and seek their advice or assistance. Perhaps you could collaborate. Take small steps, one after the other. A simple, straightforward path. Nothing too extravagant or burdensome.

And something I have neglected… tap into the skills of your students. Allow the students to assist as appropriate. Empower the students.

The journey should be pleasant. An opportunity or professional growth. An opportunity to stretch. An opportunity to be observed in a different light by your peers and your students.

What steps have you taken in the past? What steps will you take in the future? Please share them below if you wish by adding a comment.

[This post was created via an amalgamation of earlier posts, the inclusion of new material and republished for the benefit of participants in tomorrow's presentation.]

School folder on the iPhone

I purchased an iPhone not long ago. I had not used a mobile phone for about eighteen months prior to that. I passed my previous mobile phone to my wife when her mobile phone bit the dust. I did not particularly miss my mobile phone. I managed to survive. It is possible.

I had my eye on an iPhone for some time and I finally decided last Christmas to bite the bullet and obtain one. I have added a number of apps to the phone during the last few months. The most useful have been NetNewsWire, Air Sharing, Tweetie, Remote, ……..

I have utilised Air Sharing to back-up all my school related documents. The folders on the iPhone replicate those on my Mac I use at home and the Mac I utilise at school. I prefer to use my MacBook Pro and I would lug it from home to school and back each day. They are not as light as Apple would have you believe.

I recently performed a clean re-install of Mac OSX on the 12″ MacBook G4 I use at school. That laptop is supplied to me by the school. Good, eh? It is three or so years old now and it is still an excellent machine. I have Leopard installed on it and it works like a charm. I have always felt that the 12″ MacBook G4 was an elegant piece of engineering. I have kept it quite lean in terms of installed applications. I only have the apps that I really need on a daily basis at school. I have also backed up all my school related documents on that laptop as well.

So, in short my school based files, all 1.94 gigabytes, are replicated on three different devices that I use regularly (in addition to an external hard drive):

1. MacBook Pro 15″ (Home)
2. MacBook G4 12″ (Work)
3. iPhone (Anywhere)

Yesterday I did a little research in order to see if I could find an Automator script that would allow me to sync all three devices at the end of each day. Ideally I would like a scripted ‘drop box’ type set up which automatically syncs files on the fly. It is still early days yet I managed to find a simple automated action appropriately titled ‘Sync Folders‘. I imported it into Automator and then exported it as a self contained app or ‘droplet’ if you like. I named the droplet ’sync’.

Aliases or shortcuts on the desktop

I have created a folder on each Mac and the iPhone named ‘Files Transfer’. I simply save any new files into that folder on the Mac that I am using at that point in time. Later I shift the files to their appropriate destination within the school documents folders. I created aliases, or shortcuts, to the transfer folders and the sync app on the desktop of each computer. All I need do is select and drag the folders to the sync app and the contents of the respective ‘transfer’ folders on the Mac and the iPhone are synced. I perform the process at school and then repeat the same process when I return home. And vice versa. It is easy and fast.

File Transfer folder on the iPhone

What is the net effect of all that? I no longer lug any laptop to and from school. All I need is the iPhone. Simple. Sure, it is a bit of a pose. But, what the hell? I prefer to travel light. I think that makes me a geek.

I know I could use a thumbdrive and achieve the same result yet the impact is simply not the same. Gotta go geek.

I travel to school each day as part of a car pool. I share the travel with two colleagues. They often commented on the heavy backpack I carried to and from school each day. You can read about our adventures here and even see photographs of we three scaling massive mountains and traversing threatening cliffs, Ripping Yarns style.

Well, while I am waiting for my colleagues either in the morning or the afternoon I can catch up with my various feeds. I use the NetNewsWire client on my Mac most of the time. The feeds are synced to my NewsGator account and thence to the NetNewsWire app on my iPhone. If there is a post I would like to investigate further I can add it to my ‘Clippings’ and the next time I launch NetNewsWire on the Mac there they are. All is synced. Beautiful. Geek.

Then there is Tweetie. I have used it to microblog in 140 characters or less from various locations and even to post a photograph easily accessible from my Twitter feed. Geek.

When I am at home I can use Remote to manage my iTunes playlists on my MacBook Pro. I have my stereo linked to the wireless network at home via AirTunes and now I can sit outside, barbecuing, or drinking a beer, and change the song or playlist without having to go back inside the home. Geek.

As a complement to my Air Sharing experiment I have started making use of a DropBox account I opened 6 months ago. I will begin dropping files on DropBox in the future. I am not sure how it will handle the proxy at school. DropBox gives you 2 gbyte of space free. Quite good. The client interface on the Mac is very nice. It adds an elegant icon and menu to the menubar.

DropBox opens in Safari on the iPhone. It has a dedicated mobile interface. When you open DropBox for the first time on the iPhone do as I do. Select the “+” button at the foot of the Safari iPhone screen and select “Add To Home Screen” to place a DropBox icon amongst your apps on the iPhone. I do that with all of the mobile friendly sites that I access on the phone. DropBox also has a partially user friendly mobile interface. The top level is user friendly. The subsequent levels are not. As well, you have no options when you access a file. It would be convenient if you could email a selected file to an individual for example. More on DropBox in the future.

Twelve months ago to the day I wrote the following post….

“This morning I read and commented on a post by Will Richardson in which he reflects on the 130 plus comments that one of his earlier posts received. He asked the following questions within his post and I replied as indicated below:

Question: Can anyone really read through 130 comments? Answer: Not all the time.

Question: Are we getting too distracted, too connected, too participatory for our own good? Answer: Yes.

When I began using Netscape I used to bookmark everything. It was all so new. It was like being a collector. An obsessive compulsive disorder. I just had to collect that next bookmark. Those hundreds of bookmarks are on a CD-ROM gathering digital dust.

There are only about a dozen websites that I regularly visit now. That is enough.

But then there is those 184 blogs in my RSS reader. Will the majority of those blog feeds go the same way as my deceased bookmarks? I think so.

That question again: Are we getting too distracted, too connected, too participatory for our own good? Answer: Yes.

I feel that there is a considerable amount of redundancy within the edublogosphere, a consequential reduction in original thought and the growth of an edublogging elite.”

Well, twelve months have passed and I find I that I now have 208 feeds in my reader. I did pare down the number to less than 100 at one stage but the number has crept back up. A number are subscriptions to Delicious bookmarks. I find those to be most useful. I still only regularly visit a select number of web sites. Online newspapers in the main. Will Richardson mentions he received 130 comments on a single post. It would take about 12 months for my entire blog to accumulate that many comments. Oh well. That’s life.

I use NetNewsWire on the Mac to keep track of the feeds I read. I find I can skim through the feeds much more quickly than with Google Reader. I scan through the feed headings and pick out those with the most interesting titles, particularly for those fetched from, for example, Read Write Web and TUAW. Their posts really pile up after a few days. I also apply a similar technique to those bloggers that are prolifically reviewing and linking to educational resources. A quick scan, select a post here and there and mark all the rest as read.

The NetNewsWire application is synced to both NewsGator online and the NetnNewsWire app on my phone. I am able to scan through posts quickly on the phone and any that I wish to follow up I add to Clippings. These turn up on the client on my Mac. Useful.

Twelve months on there is still a great deal of overlap and redundancy in the feeds that I read. Material is being reinterpreted, recycled and reposted. Just as I have done with this post. I feel that the micro-blogging service Twitter has had an impact on blogging. I follow 500+ people on Twitter yet I have not subscribed to all of their blogs. What am I missing out on I sometimes wonder. I even feel guilty about that sometimes. I should not of course. Comes from a Catholic upbringing.

During January and February of this year I rarely scanned through the feeds. Perhaps I missed some great posts yet the sun still rises and sets each day and the edublogosphere continues to rotate on its axis. Not too sure what forms the composition of that axis. That’s a thought.

I focus more upon the blogs composed by those members of my PLN that interact on a regular basis. Feels like the thing to do. Need to reciprocate more frequently.

Mark has written a post in which he evaluates Twitter and writes rather astutely about that audience that many bloggers and twitterers ponder upon, seek or desire. It is a good read, like all Mark’s blog posts. Mark is also great with video. Check this out. This one too. Anyway, I digress. Mark’s post about Twitter and his side note on the audience garnered a response from me and as I have done in the past I repeat those thoughts below.

Mark, a nice evaluation and thoroughly enjoyed reading the side note. Many of us have those thoughts, emotions, feelings regarding publishing on the net. It is only human.

The advice I have read and received is blog for yourself. Write for yourself. Simply blog about things you have done. The audience will come, whether you know it or not. It may be small or even large. That is not important.

Cheers, John.

Source: Historical Tweets

A post by Francesca Tonchin in Classical Archaeology News just alerted me to Historical Tweets. The specific tweet relates to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and the consequent disaster that befell Pompeii, Herculaneum and other regions of Campania. [This event and the societies of Pompeii and Herculaneum are a core unit of the Ancient History course in the New South Wales Higher School Certificate.]

The idea generated some thought and made me wonder about other possible applications such as “Famous Last Tweets”. Imagine asking students of literature, during a break or diversion in that programmed syllabus, to compose tweets that would have been written by writers such as Plato, Lawrence, Dickens, Twain, Pepys, Shakespeare, Orwell, Donne, and so on. I believe John Donne’s tweets could have been particularly telling…. “This bed has fleas…” or “Just picked up a nice compass“.

Care to suggest others?

I met Darcy Moore the other day. I enjoy reading Darcy’s blog and catching up on his tweets. We grabbed a brew at the Laconia coffee lounge in Kiama. I like that place. Like stepping back in time as you stir your coffee, complete with a real cup and saucer, as you sit in one of those luxurious booths that hark back to the glory days of the 1950s.

Our conversation covered career, driving and the change that is happening with the Internet and mobile technologies. The other day Darcy gave a presentation at the Illawarra and South East Regional Conference (DET). As Darcy wrote on his blog his “aim was to propose a way that educators could engage students using new tools by transforming professional development in the ISER region with Web 2.0 concepts”. Darcy’s post is an informative read and a number of great comments have been added to the post. I suggest you give Darcy’s post a read and add to the conversation. I commented as well and I thought I would take my words and repeat them here…

Darcy, your drive and passion will have an impact. You have sown the seeds and now is the time to nurture the growth and spread the thinking, rationale and implementations of the programme set out above. Incremental yet formative steps.

Change is underway in how many members of society communicate and act. Individuals are no longer simply the passive recipients of news and information. They now have the power to publish and disseminate information. Passive has been replaced by proactive. That entails a measure of responsibility.

Decision making and choice was often imposed upon society via marketing and regulation. Now, via the web, individuals have the ability to make change occur from the ground up via rapid publication and the sharing of their views and decisions. Ideas and actions, both good and bad, can be disseminated quickly and efficiently.

Technology has provided society with a new swathe of communication and publication skill sets. These new skills have arrived rapidly. Much can be achieved with the change that is taking place with respect to the empowerment of the individual and the group facilitated via the changing use of the Internet. The wise and beneficial use of these skills as positive change agents within society predicate that good exemplars and education is required.

The Internet as a platform has changed. individuals are not simply an audience observing a performance on stage. They now have the potential to be part of the performance whether they be actors, writers, directors or producers. Education has a role to play in facilitating the staging of a good performance.

Think upon the car. A rapid impact on society. Imagine driving on the roads if driver education had not taken place. Not the best of similes yet I feel that the evolution of the Internet as a media that primarily facilitated consumption to one that fosters participation educators (and also those elected to oversee the functioning of our society) cannot simply sit back and watch it happen. They need to be involved and, at least, to understand. Comprehension of the change can facilitate sound judgement and the provision of good exemplars for students, colleagues and the wider community.

On another level the Internet and mobile technologies have collectively allowed the individual to be either a passenger or a driver on this new road. Our students have already made the decision to be drivers. The ride can either be bumpy or smooth. Would you rather be a passenger or a driver? Certainly not hiding in the boot of the car.

Compulsory PD re Web 2.0? Will it happen? Frankly, I am not sure. Perhaps, like the car, the impact on society of Web 2.0 will become so significant and so pervasive that educators will want to secure that license and learn how to drive it anyway. Not all, but many.

We all need to grab a map, buckle up, turn that ignition key and make the journey happen otherwise we will be left behind, standing at the kerb, and observing opportunity as it disappears over the horizon.

Well, this is a first for me. I am composing this post on the phone. I think this will be primarily used for quick text based posts. I think I should make the time to update my version of Wordpress. Been a while since the last update.

During the afternoon I gave a presentation via the Net to a group of teachers gathered together in Ungarie in far western NSW, Australia. They were attending a two-day Weaving Technology workshop. The title of the presentation was “Getting started ~ putting knowledge into practice”. The presentation was in conjunction with the NSW CAP programme, the DET and the Weaving Technology group. Anne-Maree Moore and Stacey Kelly were the prime movers behind the day.

A number of educators worked with the teachers during the last two days. In addition to Anne-Maree and Stacey the participants heard from Adam Currey, Phil Nosworthy, Darron Watt and Greg Alchin. A couple of new tools were brought to my attention during the two days: Kahootz and Shoutem.

The workshops that happened in Ungarie were a follow up to the excellent Weaving Technology conference that was held in Wagga, NSW, Australia last October. Following that conference I composed a few ideas regarding the thought or process of getting started with technology in the classroom. I blogged about those ideas at the time.

Essentially, when starting out with technology in the classroom I feel it is useful to keep the following three rules of thumb in mind…

1. Choose an aspect of the curriculum with which you hold a passion.
2. Choose an online tool with which you feel comfortable or ‘clicks’ for you.
3. Steer a simple, straightforward path at the outset.

As well, timing is also important… For example I find term III is favourable moment when the pressure is off somewhat. No final exams and no reports to write.

I pointed the participants in today’s presentation to the following resources…

Web 2.0 links and resources: Here you will find online guides and resources for applications and tools as diverse as Twitter, Second Life, Wikis and more. There are links to classroom blogs, wikis, Second Life sites, teacher blogs and a variety of advice from educators near and far. I have just updated the list with additional Nings and Twitter resources.

How to guides. This page is chock-a-block full of pdf guides to blogs, wikis, Twitter, RSS feeds, Posterous and much more. Feel free to download and use these guides. Worpdress has just been updated so that guide is a little out of date. I have also added these resources to my home page.

Blogrolls. These are some of the blogs that I read some of the time, not all of the time. This needs updating. Need to import my latest OPML file into Google Reader.

I have also uploaded four rough edits of an interview recorded by Nanyang Technological University. Four questions were answered. These videos could have acted as a back-up in the event that I could not connect with the participants for whatever reason. Click on each question to view the relevant video. You will need to ensure you have Quicktime installed.

What is Web 2.0?
How can teachers and students exploit Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning?
How can teachers benefit from web 2.0 technologies?
How can students benefit from web 2.0 technologies?

The presentation that was conducted this afternoon was recorded and is available here. Jump to 37.11 when the presentation actually begins. There were, initially, some issues with audio at my end. That was ironic as we had been experiencing some issues with video earlier this week. Technology keeps you on your toes, eh?

Cheers, John.

Wednesday morning, Sydney. Arrived last night. Workshop is on today. Innovative Technology in Schools Conference at the University of Technology in Sydney. Printed the resources (grab your own copy here) and updated the links for today’s participants. Added a number of Second Life related links to the Web 2.0 Workshop page. These include links to the ISTE Second Life site, Terra Incognita site and Skoolabarate.

I also updated the Web 2.0 workshop page with some additional resources and links, particularly with respect to that most enigmatic of all technology tools, Twitter. See you there.

Just corrected some links on this blog to these resources…

Web 2.0 Workshop Resources
Technology guides and support documents
Web 2.0 links

I like my Jaiku badge. It sits on my web site’s Welcome page. It acts like a “What’s New?” item. It takes in feeds from my blog, Flickr, delicious, etc. Visitors to my site quickly know what is going on.

Jaiku was feted as a Twitter killer yet that did not come to pass. I never used Jaiku as a Twitter replacement. I do not post Jaikus if you know what I mean. When Kevin Lim* shared it with the Media Socialists at Toa Payoh Library in Singapore last year I thought, “Brilliant, I can set up an elegant little lifestream on my home page!” One can add their feeds, fine tune the appearance and colour palette to match their site, copy and paste the code and there you have it.

Well, the embedded links have failed to work for some time. Clicking on an item would not take you to the originating source, for example, my blog. The embedded links worked on some Macs and some PCs but not others. Updating or rolling back the version of Flash Player worked. Sometimes it did not. I had a temporary fix and then that no longer worked.

I put the problem in the ‘too hard’ basket for a while. I decided to Google the problem again this morning and this page from Adobe popped up in the results: Links from SWF files in HTML page no longer function (Flash Player 9).

I read the data, added the relevant lines of code to the Jaiku badge code and “Voila!”, it works!

Now, for the next problem. Jaiku will not find my Twitter feed. Oh well. Solve one problem and another one appears on the horizon to provide me with a challenge. Although, I think this is a problem with Google~Jaiku.

*If you have not subscribed to Kevin Lim’s blog then why not do so now? He is currently researching social networking technologies as part of his doctoral studies. He is a worthy, entertaining and enjoyable read.