The Issues Book

One of the things I’ve been involved in for a long time now, and one that I usually find reflects and connects well with my own teaching, is the co-writing of a text book for VCE English students. The new edition of The Issues Book, came out this week and I like the muted, subdued colours, and the production this year.

It’s published by Cengage and the co-writing of it always helps me to think back on what worked in my class this year, and what didn’t.  I think it was Ken Robinson who talked about giving students the ‘whole story’; science teachers should be passionate about science, English teachers should read and write, that kind of thing. Starting a blog is a powerful way of beginning that writing I’ve found.

The Kindle

Had my first touch and play with the Amazon Kindle eb0ok reader, now available in Australia. At first glance it’s smaller and lighter than I imagined, more the thickness of a magazine than a book, and lighter.  Not super cheap at $269AUD and the screen wasn’t quite as clear as I was hoping: I’d need to sit down and read a couple of chapters of a book to see what the reading experience actually was like.  There’s other objections too; black and white!, a lack of flexibility in the format that can’t read PDFs and needs a special format conversion to take something from your own PC to the kindle format.  For a traveller I imagine this would be a great device, light enough not to get you fined for excess baggage and still have plenty of books on hand.

But what about for the student? I’ve heard a few people arguing that the ebook reader might spell the end of textbooks, but haven’t we heard that before? Many of the textbooks I see around the place include a CD of the contents in PDF format, and lots of students have notebook computers, but I don’t see many of them replacing textbooks in this way. Or is that teacher choice rather than student choice? And, if a student does have a notebook computer what advantage is an ebook reader over reading the text on their own computer?

There’s still some way to go I think, but I can imaging that we’re going to see big progress in the technology in this area. Let’s hope that open standards prevail, that publishers can all come on board and real choice, including Australian small press publishers, is there for the readers.

 

 

The Millennial Muddle

Having just been in a discussion on the old Nicholas Carr article,  Is Google Making Us Stupid, which threatened to lurch irrevocably about how they couldn’t concentrate as well as we, and how it was up to us to do something about them or else they wouldn’t be able to think as deeply and powerfully as us, I was interested to read The Millennial Muddle by Eric Hoover which has as its byline:  ”How stereotyping students became a thriving industry and a bundle of contradictions”

I’ve never totally bought the new-gen, gen-y, digital native divide that demographers and social scientists often love. I like the divide less when it seeks to depict young people as shallow, narcissistic, attention-seeking and unable to think. The students I work with aren’t like that, and I’m more likely to go along with Negroponte and see these students as more worldly, more connected and more diversely literate than those before them. Negroponte can get all misty-eyed about this, but I’d rather his optimistic appraisal of where they are, than the ones who keep wanting to turn out students into us.

Hoover explores the divisions that exist in all the stereotyping in an interesting way. As a rule I say, beware of generalisations!

A view from the bridge

I spent a couple of memorable hours during the holidays exploring the Brooklyn Bridge in NY, a beautiful bit of engineering and central symbol from Arthur Miller’s  wonderful play A View from the Bridge, which I taught to Year 12 a couple of years ago and really enjoyed.  I took the photo above and lots of others!

I thought of bridges today, saying goodbye to the Year 12 class at the final lunch and wishing them well for the exams. It’s a strange cycle, teaching, when you think about it. Building a class culture and working relationships and then finishing that journey, saying goodbye, and starting again.  They’re ready to go, ready for the exam, ready to cross that bridge from school into the next stage of their lives and that’s what you want as a teacher or a parent; that they are ready.  You do your best to prepare them and then you watch them cross that bridge.  And start thinking about next year.

Palm sized computing

I must admit I’ve always been a fan of the full sized (notebook) computer.  Forget weight issues (I’m a strong lad)  the bigger and more powerful the computer the better: a decent hard drive, widescreen and especially a full-sized keyboard for those of us who learned to touch-type in the heady days when the Public Service typing pool seemed a job for life.

So, I’ve generally argued against netbooks, PDAs and mobile phones as replacements for ‘real’ 1-1 computing solutions except in cases when the $200-$300 price difference makes a critical difference in getting the program going.  And, while I stick to those guns, I must admit being pretty impressed so far with my new 64GB Ipod Touch with full wireless capacity and the ability to work with all the downloadable Iphone applications.

It’s not going to replace my computer, and I’m not going to write my thesis on it, but I can quite happily read emails, check my calendar,  work with Twitter and quickly move through my rss feeds via Google Reader. I can make Skype calls with the headphone microphone plugged in, read from my EverNote account and read the Age or the NY Times. I can record voice memos, or my cycling training and probably play a bizillion games I’m too nervous to download in case I get addicted.  When I was walking around lost in Salem recently I could stop for coffee at a wireless cafe and fire up the Google Map and figure out how to get back to the ferry.  And did I mention it’s got ALL my music on it?  With voice control so if I say ‘Play artist Neil Young’ it does! And I say that a lot!

It’s a powerful little hand-held computer and it’s got potential which I’ve been busily exploring as I download lots of little applications for it.   The big drawback remains that it’s hard to create on it; to write much, to draw, to brainstorm, to produce. But you can access information with ease and I can see, with this user interface, how hand-held mobile devices might have a bigger part to play than I thought.

Here’s how I’ve organised my Ipod so far; three screens. I’d love to hear how you’ve set yours up and whether you’ve found the perfect application to go with it.

The GMAIL App works seamlessly with Gmail accounts as does Evernote, Tweetdeck and Skype. Everyone needs a shopping list and To Do list right? The cycling log is a bit specialised but does the job nicely.

Screen 2 is less commonly used apps; a couple of Melbourne public transport specific apps and the ubiquitous ‘AppBox Pro’ and it’s bag of tricks (I would have loved to have had the ‘Tip Calculator’ when I was in NY recently) Urbanspoon is a restaurant finder and very cool. iTwitterPro I bought, but it isn’t as good as Tweetdeck.

Screen 3 are web slices; direct links to web pages I read a lot. Sort of visible bookmarks. The Google Reader is an application that makes reading your RSS feeds a breeze.

Screen 4 is apps I don’t use, but can’t delete. I haven’t got any stocks and the ‘Music’ button is much better than the iTunes one.

Sunset on term 3

Okay, that blog post heading might have been a bit of an excuse for me to show off this gorgeous winter sunset photo, which I took from Mt Martha, looking over Port Phillip Bay.  And the sun has set on Term 3 too, which is a good thing. A very busy last few weeks with the Expanding Horizons Conference, the Chisholm ‘Ripple’ presentation, which seemed to go well, as well as the normal ’stuff’ that fills up a teaching term. Looking forward to the holidays, and excited about heading to NY for the first time. Which no doubt will make an appearance here sometime later on.

The Education Revolution

Video promoting the NSW component of the ‘Digital Revolution’, the 1-1 notebook (or netbook) program. NSW, which originally seemed unenthusiastic about the Federal Government’s plans to give each student a computer (where’s the infrastructure) seems committed now. Scott McLeod calls it a great idea in his recent blog post, and it’s hard to argue with putting powerful tools in the hands of our students.

A teacher’s guide to web 2.0 at school

I like the drawings and hand-lettered look of this, and I bet it would have been a good presentation. From Sacha Chua.

Ripple

I spent a bit of time this weekend preparing my presentation for Ripple: the inaugural Chisholm Institute e-learning conference, coming up soon.  I’ll be talking about the learning expectations that the net-generation bring to the classroom, and what we might do about all that. They say:

‘Ripple’ will draw on the insights and experiences of leading educators and Industry professionals from both Australia and North America, to present the new era of e-Learning. An era characterised by the emergence of the powerful  connective capability of the World Wide Web. The conference speakers will challenge the notion of traditional models of e-Learning and the role of the  educator in the learning experience.

The website is created using Weebly, which I’m pretty keen to try out as it looks pretty impressive.

Social media no fad!

An updated version of the ‘Shift Happens’ video; with an emphasis on the economic implications of peer review.