Building your plane as you fliy into the classroom

Gary Pultland used this wonderful video in his talk in Sydney today, illustrating the on the job learning and maybe the makeshift nature of using new technology. At least that's what I think about when watching it. EDS took a smart risk in using it to show how their staff are responsive, adabtable etc. Nasty people will say it illustrates last minute patchups done by programmers. Whatever: it looks like any really lively classroom to me. The passengers generally look please withe getting to their destination.



Gary's talk covered a huge range of opportunities and challenges, then right at the end, one person said, "What about the potential for 3D worlds in learning, like Second Life." Which made me thing, typical, just when you start to get a handle on the business, someone introduces a wild card of unknown potential into your lap (to mix a few metaphors), but get used to it. Keep building your plane!

Travel grassroots video: better than slides?

I have been experimenting with grassroots video making and the following is an attempt to provide an alternative to interminable slide shows. I used a simple digital still camera and took lots of short vids. Is it better than or complementary to snaps? I have just been on a holiday to Japan.



The biggest breakthrough in making this is that I have recently acquired the latest mac with includes iMovie 2008 which makes video editing significantly easier. About as easy as word processing and just as fluid.

This creative effort raises some curly questions though, that are inherent to movie-making. Should I use a soundtrack, is the music too syrupy, and lots of other film making issues that most of us have little experience with.

Some Principles for Child Internet Safety

Having been a school principal for much of my working life I have had plenty of time to observe how people cope with change, and to discover a few guiding principles. Here is a handful of these that seem to apply to the current lively issue in schools about child safety and the internet.

1. learning involves risks but it is better than ignorance
2. there are few really new issues under the education sun
3. parents are sensible and realists
4. bad administrators seek control by fear
5. good administrators look to the long term

Learning involves risks but it it better than ignorance
There is no doubt that the internet poses some real risks to children - but so do roads, sport and school corridors. You can get run over on a road, sport often involves injury and hostile behaviour, and school corridors are sometimes where bullying occurs. The solution is not to hide from the risks but to learn how to cope with them. Of course we also take action to prevent risks, like wearing protective equipment in some sports, but we cannot completely eliminate risk from many activities. Sex education where this phenomenon has been demonstrated. Recent research in the US has shown that students in some systems with very limited sex education are more likely to experience teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseased that teenagers with more information.

There are few really new issues under the educational sun
This may seem like a strange thing to say when we are confronted with a very rapid rate of change in society and schooling. But is is very instructive to look for links to past situations that are relevant to today's problems. For example, anonymous letters and telephone calls are not very different from malicious emails. Comics were once touted as a serious time waster and corruption of proper leisure activities long before computer games were accused of the same. Bullying has occurred in schools in the playground and behind the bike shed long before the internet, and the bullying was not solved just by putting the bike shed out of bounds. New tools like the internet mainly raise old problems in new forms. So well established principles usually point to solutions.

Parents are sensible and realistic
Parents are dealing with learning and managing real life all the time and if given adequate information are responsive and reasonable. Too often their voice is represented by an alarmed minority. If schools make parent information and involvement a priority they will appreciate and take notice of school leadership. This particularly applies to issues like managing internet use because parents are very well aware, often more so than teachers, that controlling and banning teens from certain activities is frequently counter productive.

Bad administrators seek control by fear
Usually this is not a conscious or cynical ploy, but is a response to their own fear. When issues like internet child-predators arise, the ill informed and easily frightened administrator will often respond to the threat by simple controlling measures are based on fear of child harm or litigation, without stepping back and assessing the risks and educational responses that are available. These administrators may apply the same behaviour to other risks like school excursions, but usually not, because these risks are ones they have become accustomed to and have learned how to manage. New areas of risk in unfamiliar areas such as the internet can encourage a resort to fear.

Good administrators look to the long term
Good school administrators look to long term educational outcomes rather then short term solutions to immediate problems. Bullying on the internet, like bullying in the corridors, is in part an immediate technical issue - supervision of email in the former and overcrowding and lack of supervision in the latter instance. But fundamentally it is not a technical issue, but one of school culture in both instances. Managing responsible internet use is in part an immediate issue for schools, but more fundamentally it is preparing students for their near future in which they will not be supervised at all while online. Solutions which simply address the immediate issue will not prepare students for the rest of their lives.

By age 15 or 16 at the very latest, most students are heavy and independent users of the internet. Learning about the internet in schools must begin much earlier than this, be educative rather than controlling, and, like learning how to ride a bike, involve some manageable risks as students learn by doing.