The next thing - Students Voice continued

This is something continued from a previous post of the students voice.

The next big thing is to organize, tag, and link information to a specific location. Think of the last time you were at a national park. It’s a very good possibility that the only information you had about the park fit on a tri-fold paper that you picked up at the visitor’s station. In the information age, how is this acceptable?

Instead, imagine visiting the park where hundreds of visitors have linked information to specific locations. You have the architect of the visitor’s center who tells you the history of the building. As you move around the park you access information provided by geologists, geographers, botanists, biologists, environmental scientists, conservationists, hiking enthusiasts, bikers, etc. etc. etc. The information is useful because it’s relevant to the location. And it becomes manageable in the same way that the 10s of millions of pictures on flickr have become manageable, through tagging.

If I’m driving down a dirt road, I can access the Internet, enter in the keywords, “eat, roast beef sandwich’. The next time I pass within 5 miles of an Arby’s, my device let’s me know. Or if I have my mountain bike on the back of my car, I search for the keywords ‘mountain bike trails’. Every time I come within a few miles of a trail, my GPS device alerts me.

We’re beginning to see the first threads of this next big idea. Pictures and Wikipedia articles are now linked to Google Earth. You can access information about a location, but it’s still at your desk. The real revolution will come when this information can be accessed completely and easily from a mobile device, while you’re at that location.

Today we have access to an unfathomable amount of information. Web 2.0 has helped us begin to organize and make sense of that information. Tying information to a location is the next step and will literally open up a whole new world.

Here’s hoping the next iPhone has a built-in GPS.

http://www.techconsumer.com/2007/07/16/the-next-big-thing-why-web-20-isnt-enough/

Guidelines for the online publication of Students work

Through the time4online conference one of the themes that is consistently coming up is the online publication of work.

Now for this work to be published online don't the parents have to say that it is able to be available. Maybe the content of it or other people accessing it could be a problem. I know at our school some parents are not allowed to have contact with their children. Could this break that. What about student images that label other students by first and lastname.

Maybe I am being the devils advocate here.

But the ministry has put some guidelines out that I put in place in a previous workplace. Kind of strange when I think about it, it has been seven years since these guidelines came out and still some schools have not put them into place.

The Ministry of Education published guidelines for schools in 2000. The website is still running, check out http://www.tki.org.nz/r/governance/curriculum/copyguide_e.php

This is some of the information and guidelines for developing policy and authorisation forms.

You may be able to also get it as a book through learning media New Zealand

http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/nz/products/moecatalogue/moecatdetail?recno=601006

time4online - Student Voice

I have managed to complete my reports and am making time available in my busy life for the online conference now. This morning the latest conference papers when online.

- Keynote: Student Voices from: Rutherford College, Wellington High School, Nelson Central School, Outram School, Wellington Girls' College (past and present), John McGlashan College, Kaikorai Valley College, and Mornington School.

- Keeping Safe Online with NetSafe

- Online publishing with audio and visual tools with Jane Nicholls and Suzie Vesper

I have already been busily watching the keeping safe online with netsafe. I believe that this is becoming more important with the convervence of technologies. I am getting my year 13 students to complete the students voice section of the conference today, by posing the questions to them.

the students voice section poses the following questions

Invite your students to participate on this noticeboard, or add quotes from them yourself:

• Which technologies do they use often (phone, computer, laptop, iPod, camera...) and what do they use them for?
• Which Web 2.0 tools do they use at home or at school, and what do they do with/on them?
• What
  do they enjoy about the web now, and what do they think we might be
  able to do online in the future? Let's get those imaginations spinning!

I will attempt to answer the questions myself.

What technologies do I use often, Mobile phone (txt messaging mostly with the odd phone call), computer (school work and internet access to look at resources for school as well as gaining personal knowledge), I have a school laptop(email and SMS as well as accessing the LMS), my ipaq(on the go music player and calender), digital camera ( Photos to provide evidence of students work, personal images, images to be used in assessment that does not break copyright regulations, am having to do this more and more now.), now getting into use video camera (evidence as well as filming sports events, GPS, (its nice to know where i am, and how to backtrack the way I went, I get lost in the car) wireless internet access, woosh and a WAP, so I can be anywhere in the house and be connected online. Its handy sometimes.

What web 2.0 technologies do I use at the moment. LMS though i do not know if this is really a web 2.0 application as there is limited two way communication. Bebo for social networking, trademe, of course everyone has an account. My own LMS system Interact for my classes, and of course this my blog account, which I am using more and more to write down my reflections. Youtube, a place to grab video content on almost any topic. Flickr, Flickr I use when I need a background for a topic or for backdrops for the Drama classes production. Web 2.0 is for me a place where the users control the content and how it is displayed. The tagging thing I don't really get though, I know about it but don't really know what its main purpose is.

Last, what will happen in the future, computers will probably move towards be smaller and more portable, I look at the iPhone and think that a modified version of that will be the norm. I say bring back the Apple Newton!

This was a device that was ahead of its time. There will still be desktop PC's but they will become the Media centre of the house, more TVon demand will happen and sky might just get there pay TV on demand to actually work, I still have the pamplet somewhere that said we could say what camera we wanted to view the rugby from in a game, we control what angle we want to see, not what the media thinks we should see. Could have made a huge difference when the fog filled Jade stadium with fog in last years super 14 final. Mobile TV on cellphones I think will be a passing fad. But more GPS will be used, cellphones will have the GPS system that will tell you where the closest ATM or mcdonalds is.

Just when I was writing this and sorting it out in my mind for how to develop this for my students to do I started to think, what is Web 3.0...
Online interactive environment in VRML, This was developed a number of years ago and i started to play around with avatars and the like and developed some simple Virtual Reality back in 1997 when it was just being introduced through netscape, is that what web 3.0 is going to become, Today we have secondlife, wow and an number of online realities, does web 3.0 already exist. Man I can see the couch potato being nuked in front of it monitor if this begins to happen. Or is the headset going to become more used. Sunglassess with one eye for the monitor with built in headphones, microphone and look how small they can get a camera now, and the like. Using your cellphone to video conference with someone in another country while on the go could be the norm instead of audio only calls.. Look at the tour de france a number of years ago with lance armstrong and the mp3 sunglasses, being able to hook in a usb drive and listen to music on the go without the cord running down to your pocket. The technology is with us, how is it going to be used? What will be able to do with the Internet a few years time, who really knows, but someone out there is developing a concept right now.

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Busy time of year

I am sitting here wondering whether to begin writing my reports or keep participating in my first online conference.

The conference runs for two weeks, explores examples of collaborative learning and the application for Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and learning.

In the conference, the aims are

• explore collaborative online learning, Web 2.0 tools and their applications, and the benefits and issues of using these online environments.
  
  
• provide links to workshop presentations using some of these tools, and descriptions of what they are, classroom examples, and practical tutorials.
  
  
• create opportunities for conference participants to share their own ideas and experiences in conference forums, blogs, and wikis

There is three themes of the conference

Each of these sections includes three themes that develop throughout the two weeks:

• Collaborative online learning
• Web 2.0 tools and their applications for educators in their professional learning and teaching practice
• Relevant issues when using online environments.

So now, on with the conference or write senior reports...

The conference address is at http://www.time4online.org.nz