This blog will no longer be maintained

As I was using this blog to try out all the blogging platforms, I will no longer be posting here. For all my new posts, tutorials and bookmarks regarding ICT in education, please visit www.school2.co.za

School2.0

In my effort to find the perfect blogging tool to capture all my learnings on web 2.0, I have settled on Edublogs, for a number of reasons...

• Firstly it is totally dedicated to learning and teaching
• It provides a facility whereby you can create dedicated pages. This is a nice feature if you want to create content that has to stay as learning objects.
• It has tons of widget features and quite a lot of different themes

Cons:

• It can be realy slow at times

You will find my School2.0 blog here

Video and maths literacy

Maths literacy absolutely lends itself to using all the wonderful free web 2 tools that are available. How about using a cellphone to create a videocast of what your learners are doing in the classroom. Or better still, let them create their own videos of what they are doing. They can create mini tutorials and for peer assesment, they can draw up a set of criteria and the class can critique the video (content) according to specific brainstormed criteria. Here is a little sample from a classroom.....

New paradigms

I am currently attending the K12 online conference. It is a free conference, conducted entirely online. Just the idea of listening to, and chatting to, and sharing with other teachers right across the globe, without moving my backside off my couch, or spending a load of money to get to a conference....is just such a thrill!

It deals with the new world that is facing education today...

"For decades, education has been an easy institution to define. It consisted of a set of accepted literacy skills, a definable body of knowledge, and the pedagogies for teaching those skills to willing students who were arranged in straight rows. Today, for the first time in decades (in generations of teachers), we are facing the challenge of changing our notions about teaching and learning to adapt to a rapidly changing world. We are struggling to rethink what it is to be educated, to reinvent the classroom, and redefine what it is to be a teacher and a student. There is much that has changed, and for much of it, we have responded to by attempting to ignore, filter, or to block it out." (http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=144)

Here in South Africa we are currently at the beginning of the line (or is it the back of the line) as far as equipping our learners for the challenges that their future may hold. Boundaries are disappearing globally and Web 2.0 and mobile phones (think Facebook, Mxit and Twitter) are creating communities that connects people and learning experiences and networks....and our learners have to be part of that if they want to "cut it" in their future employment world. In our country we are faced with a digital divide not only between the "have" and the "have-not's", but also between connected learners and their teachers who are using antiquated old world teaching methodologies to "impart" knowledge on their learners who are now used to collaboratively "mine" and share knowledge within a social networking system that we are blissfully unaware of or even worse.... ignoring.....or even worse still.....condemming.

I am writing this blog entry as I am listening to David Warlick keynote address that I have downloaded. It is great as I can stop the playback to collect my thoughts and find synergies for my experiences. I have even used a great new little tool to take "snapshots" (Mp3mymp3) of his talk that have special resonance for me. He said that "the problem is when they [our learners] enter our classrooms, we chop those tentacles off ...[meaning their social online, cell networking identities].. because we want our children to be the students we want to teach, rather than teaching the children that they are and this is an insult to our children" he also pointed out how information has changed and calls for a new kind of literacy for our children...So instead of just being passive consumers of what we have to "teach" them and then subsequently memorising and absorbing that information, they now must also know how to find, evaluate and use information as well as interpret that information. This requires a whole new set of literacy skills. Are we equipping our learners for that???

I spoke to an old colleague of mine last night who is a maths teacher and she assured me that I do not have a clue what a war zone classrooms are nowadays. When I asked her if she has implemented the new OBE principles in her classroom, she remarked that if she were to do "group work" she would have chaos in her class...which made me think...maybe we have the wrong group work paradigm in place. Maybe group work should be for the learners to get together in their favourite online social networking space to achieve whatever goal we set for them...just maybe they would jump to that....

So I did a little experiment on my son today. Instead of nagging him to do his daily geometry rider, by printing it out, giving it to him, asking him after a while if he has done it...reminding him to do it...reminding him again (as what would normally happen) I just added it to a little Facebook application called Homework apps and send him an invite to do it (a feature build into the application) He had it done within 10 minutes and instead of scanning his answer and posting it back to me, he chose to "talk me through his answer" using Skype. Amazing. So, the point is, if we use the tools that constitutes their world, then maybe we will reach them effortlessly, instead of fighting the good old fight in the classrooms....??

Easymaths New site: Relaunch

The new, database driven community maths site, Easymaths, has finally been published at http://www.easymaths.co.za/ in its first cut format. Which means that you will be able to see it "grow" and help with the development and troubleshoot process. The site is portal site where you can upload and download maths rescources as well as engage in a maths community of your choice, where you can share experiences and knowledge, learn how to incorporate computers into your maths/maths lit classes and generally "chill out" in a mathematical way. As this is a community site that has been developed with volunteer energy, we have decided to make everybody part of this process. This will mean that you, as the user, will have insight into how it is structured and will be able to make sure that the site works for you. The Department of Education has made it possible for the site to be incorporated into the national Thutong portal, which means that it will run on the powerful databases of the portal. But we will also be able to keep our independance and structure the site the way we want it...which is cool :-)But we need your help!!!As this is a community website, we need the input and the assistance of the community as a whole to maintain the site and make it a better resource for everybody. Volunteering your time will be invaluable to us! The following assistance is needed:

• Editing of pages: Even if you edit 1 page for content accuracy and language it will make our site more accurate for everybody.
• We need volunteers to help with ongoing tagging of material according to learning outcomes and assessment standards.
• We need volunteers to add resources to our databases
• We need administrative assistance for general office responsibilities like phoning teachers and schools and a help desk.
• We need teachers to volunteer their time on a rotation basis to assist with learner queries.
• ............

To become part of this development process, please go to our development area, where we have created a blog where you can keep track of our progress and report problems that you are experiencing.

Please Share!!

To make this site a truely community based resource....we need lots of resources!! You can share anything relating to mathematics and mathematics teaching, from jokes to more serious stuff, events, lessonplans, test and exams.... You need to have registered with either the Thutong site or the Easymaths site before you will be able to make use of the upload facility:

• Register with Easymaths (Your Thutong username and password will work for Easymaths as well)
• Upload a resource
  

YouTube as an educational tool: New Math

I am thinking of using Youtube (www.YouTube.com) as a tool for teaching and learning. So before I grab my video camera, or point my cellphone video at anything, never mind anything educational, let us first look at what others have been coming up with…. So, of course, the first thing is to search for videos on my favourite educational topics.

Mathematics. I am impressed, quite a few offerings here and quite amusing too. They will make great ice breakers at workshops or in the classroom. For instance, the video snippet, New Math, by Tom Lehre (performed by RonfarZ3) explains that New Math is all about understanding what you doing rather than getting the right answer…. So feel free to watch the video and share your understanding of New Math….

Lost knowledge

I am currently busy updating my Easymaths community to be in line with the new curriculum, as it is going to be re-launched soon in its new improved database driven format (courtesy of the DoE). I was testing some of the outside links to local content when I stumbled across a black hole...I had to hang on with all my might not to be sucked in and disappear forever.....

Okay, maybe a bit melodramatic, but that is exactly how I felt. Over the years I have been keeping track of local knowledge making its way onto the internet. And here I am specifically referring to content and resources for maths teachers and learners. Now as we all know, there are not a lot of local content available for free use in our country, the reasons of which I am only too fully aware. Spending time to create local content is not only time consuming but also costly. And I for one had to on various occasions leave my "hobby" of content creation and caring for my Easymaths community website, to do a "day job" to pay the bills.

But what I don't understand is stunning resources disappearing from the local radar for no apparent reason? One such an example is the Learning channel. They provide support material for their learning broadcasts on SABC TV. The friendly faces of their broadcast educators have entertained and taught us for years. Now here is the snag. Over the years they have made really good resources available for consumption from their website. But with regular intervals, the resources are removed to be replaced with other content, sometimes not as great as the previous versions. So what happened to the old resources? I know that we are now implementing our new curriculum, but that does not mean that we have to throw away all the "old stuff". As a matter of fact, it provides us with an opportunity to make a transition. How can we transform the old into the new...(for example) Are we saying that the old knowledge is no longer relevant at all? Or should it be relegated to the black hole of lost knowledge?

So before I get sucked away into a far off obscure galaxy of irrelevancy, let me make a simple plea to all content providers. Please provide a space for “outdated /past resources” in a “retirement estate of knowledge” (or archive), where it can be accessible to collectors of knowledge, lifelong learners and internet wonderers like me. Please.