Which school computer? Accessibility rules

There must be some attraction for school leaders for the NSW department's approach to provision of computers for schools under the DER. There is one netbook computer for all Yr 9-12 students and teachers, with one set of software at one low price. Don't have to worry about that choice question for quite a while. The other state systems at are leaving the choice of type of computer to schools, with some restrictions. It is a fearsome decision to make. With the NSW approach, a very cheap price can be negotiated and school and system management is greatly simplified. But, it prevents schools making their own adaptations and maybe, locks the system into a less than optimal set-up for several years. There are obvious advantages and there are potential risks. One of these is the constantly changing hardware environment. Netbooks only arrived in the last two years.

Apple's announcement of the iPad might, just might, change the whole environment regarding which computers are used in schools. At this stage the iPad is two months away from release, and it appears to be significantly under-powered for school computing. But our perception of what level of computing is required for which students is constantly evolving.

It is interesting that the Queensland department has a different view to NSW and has not accepted netbooks for DER funding, arguing that notebooks or desktop computers are required if students are to be able to engage in the more creative uses of computers. Most of the other jurisdictions are leaving the decision to schools. Victoria and SA recommends that schools get netbooks, but offer a choice of netbooks, laptops and desktops. Of course the term netbook is not defined. It is a small, relatively low powered computer, and there are big and small members of the family.

So what is the best choice? There will be debate about whether the iPad constitutes a 'laptop computer' within the DER definition but I am betting it will qualify. [Update: no it doesn't because it lacks a physical keyboard! (ruling by DEEWR) 10/3/10] With lots of discussion about smart phones being include in the mix of school computers, there will surely be good arguments to include the iPad. Not for all situations, but my bet is that the iPad will be a very suitable computer for 80% of school purposes. At about $500 it is in the price range. It is very portable and lightweight. It provides instant web access and is a platform for a vast number of applications, with many more purpose-built apps for education on the way. But it does not multi-task, yet, has no camera and has limited storage and will not run lots of standard PC applications. But maybe we need to think about using more than one appliance? Students can take photos and video with their phone, email these to the iPad, create a voice, text image and video presentation upload these to the web and view from any computer anywhere.

The Economist says that the iPad may have its greatest impact on netbook sales. That's the market it is aimed at. I think we need to pay a lot attention to accessibility of a computer. It is the immediacy of iPhone access to the web and to applications that is one of its main appeals. The rigmarole of setting up a laptop, getting it started and accessing information is quite frustrating in a class when the whole process takes at least five minutes - which can feel like an age. Immediately accessible small devices are very appealing. Which to me counters some of the argument of the people who believe that a full strength laptop is the only option. Of course, taking a class to another room where the desktop computers are is at the negative end of the scale of accessibility. Notice that I just argued that accessibility may counter higher power. The two factors have nothing to do with each other, but that is the type of thinking that we go through. Am I willing to trade off factor x in order to increase factor y. By bet is that one-to-one computing is all about universal accessibility to the new tools. That means any-where access (home and school wireless), open systems (minimal filtering and student responsibility) simplicity, portability and speed, so every teacher and every student can use the tools.

Social Bookmarking: an essential learning tool

It is a bit bold to say that any tool is essential for learning, but I think the advantages this tool brings are clear and decisive. The major feature of social bookmarking is that one's bookmarks are stored on the internet and are available from any computer. This is a huge advantage. Few people work exclusively on one computer. The second feature is that bookmarks are categorised by tags and searchable notes so there is no need to put bookmarks in folders in order to locate them. Tags are the way of the future. There is no need to be worried about having too many bookmarks, so long as you have some order in your tags. The third feature is that social bookmarking is social. Your collection can be shared with people you learn, work or play with. In a formal teaching situation this is very valuable learning opportunity if teachers use it.

There are many social bookmarking applications. Delicious is the best known. I like Diigo because it has some extra features and it is quite education-friendly. The video below gives a very brief introduction to the basic process of creating a bookmarking and using tags to organise your collection.

Teachers can log their student into Diigo as a group. They can the work as a private group to share bookmarks on topics they are studying. This means that students can get feedback on their selection of bookmarks and the comments and tags they use. They can develop the quite sophisticated categorisation and selection skills involved in this process.

Diigo is distinctive in that it has an additional feature, that it allows web pages to be annotated with sticky notes. This means that if student are searching for web information on a class topic, not only can they bookmark it and share this with their classmates, but they can also attach notes (annotations) to the actual web page that are only seen by members of their class group. This creates some very interesting opportunities for discussion about web sites.

A class Wiki: a do it yourself learning management system

Wikis have come a long way and now some big players are providing free wiki sites they are becoming an attractive option for most teachers to consider. The video below is a getting started guide to using Google Sites which is the system I like. But there are many more like WetPait, WikiSpaces and EduBlogs.

Most teachers seem to be introduced to technologies like this by first looking at what functions the sofware perform, then they start to consider how it might be useful in their class. In an ideal world they would probably do it differently. First consider teaching purposes, then ponder all the way of helping achieve these, narrow the options down to maybe some software, then, do an analysis of the software and select the most suitable. I think in reality people are not so cold bloodedly logical, and jump back and forth from see an idea in a tool, thinking about its classroom use, then going back to look at the tool. It is a mishmash of seeing an opportunity, checking out its learning potential, wrestling with practical issues, personal skills development, trying it out with students, taliking about it with colleagues. Practical learning is working at several levels simultaneously.

So, this video will tell you a bit about functions that Sites offers, and it shows some of the quite practical steps to getting it running in your class. Because this is the thinking processes that I suspect you will be going through when considering whether to use a tool like a wiki.





Teachers who quickly find a use of a wiki are interested in student publishing, creating a real audience for writing, collaboration and student responsibility and creativity.

My experience in workshops is that teachers can effectively manage their Sites wiki after about an hour of exploration. This is a testamnent to the first main feature of a wiki - simplicity.
The second feature is colaborative editing, so a group can manage a site, and the third is access to version of the site, giving one the capacity to recover from mistakes or vandalism. Together, the three features make it a very good tool for a class web site with student involvement.

An important aspect of wikis like the Google one is that even though they are fairly simple to manage, they have some powerful features. An example is the ability to subscribe to a site or a page. Once this is done the subscriber receives an email each time the site or page is altered, which makes it easy to keep up to date with a page or site you are sharing respobsibility for.

The best way to find out if software like this is useful to you is to give it a go. It's free.

Teaching outlining with thinklinkr

The best educational software allows teachers to teach skills they have always taught but to do so in a much more effective way. Thinklinkr is the first online Outlining application and it has great promise for teachers. The video below shows a movie of an outline being built up. It takes about 10 minutes to become familiar with the controls. It does a simple task well.


I suspect that outlining is not usually well taught, because it is a tedious task for the writer, is messy as one moves sections around on a piece of scrap paper and seems to get in the way with the actual writing. A very easy to use and clean interface like thinklinkr is very accessible (once you have a computer and an internet connection) and is fun to use. There are few bells and whistles: just simple text that can be exported into Word or whatever at the conclusion of the outlining process.

A big advantage of this tool over conventional outlining is that being online, it can very easily be a collaborative activity. Students can submit their outline to the teacher for comment, groups of students can work on an outline together from home.

The video demonstrates a very neat function of thinklinkr, that the old versions of the outline, the revisions, can be played as a movie, and one can scroll back and forth to see how the outline has evolved with each keystroke.

A tool like this allows and encourages more attention to learning an important skill.
If you are using Internet Explorer, just click on the button to download Chrome Frame it it will work fine. You can have a play with my outline here (but not edit it).

Infernal technology 2: eBooks!

In Sept 2007 I wrote a post in the form of a facetious letter to the editor in 1899 about the shortcomings of the automobile compared to horse transport and bicycles and walking. It was inspired by the constant dribble of complaints about new technology based on a similar argument: that everything old is necessarily superior to new ways of doing things.

Over the last few years I have had numerous conversations with people who have never read an eBook - a book on a screen, but are quite convinced that they will never catch on, because the person just loves the feel and the smell and the touch of a book. Well so do I, but have read quite a lot of books on various small devices and I can tell you that it is a pretty good experience.

I am currently nearly finished a 500 or so page non fiction book on my iPhone, which is about a third of the page area of a paperback book, and I can testify to it being a darn good experience. I read it in bed, lighter than a book and does not require a bed light at 3 am, and I read it for 45 minutes while waiting for the RAA to arrive, and I have marked selected sections with Notes, and it cost less than a paper book, arrived in abut 1 minute and did not involve a trip to the library. I can't share it with others, so it isn't perfect in every way, but you ought be open minded to the possibility of eBooks, because like the automobile they are here to stay, and probably dominate reading in the very near future.

The image is what you see on the screen. The display can be rotated to landscape view as well.

Google Sites: a wiki with good sibling relations

I have been presenting a group of workshops recently showcasing a number of Web 2.0 applications and have used Google Sites as the starting point. From the speed with which teachers were able to set up a site and make it look presentable and funcitonal it is like most wikis, very easy to use. As I explored Sites more I found that it has some very useful features. One is that once you have a Google account - using any email as your identity, you can creat as many sites as you like. Different sites can have different acces right for a class of student to view, or edit, or open to the world. These can all be linked to a home site, so on the menu to the right, I was the sole editor of most of the pages listed, but Open Access is actually another site that could be edited by the workshop participants.

Another feature is a result of having some powerful siblings in the Google family, most of which integrate with Sites very well. You can view Calendars, Picasa Web Album slide shows, Google docs, and in the case of Forms, complete a suvey.

Many of the teachers immediately began setting up one or more sites for class use. The immediacy of wikis is very appealing to teachers, and the Forms from Google docs is an added bonus. This feature make creating a form, or survey a 15 minute task if you know what you want to ask and the resulting survey can be viewed in Sites, or emailed to the participants. The image of a survey to the right is how the survey appears when inserted into a Sites page.

A nice little feature is that when you go to the Insert menu in Sites and select a document to insert, you are taken to the list of files from you Google docs home page: Mr Google having taken the liberty of opening up the sibling site in the family. A single login to a Google account makes all of this very accessible and easy to use.

But really, most of these or similar features can be found in WetPaint or WikiSpaces and other wikis. The big news is that web publishing for students and teachers is available right now. What teachers really like and deserve is control of these applications. Teaching is an individual and often spontaneous art and teachers should not have to go through a middle-person to access these powerful learning tools.

If you would like to browse a site you can do so HERE.

Names, children, internet identity and common sense

Last year in a workshop on Web 2.0 applications we got into discussion about children's personal information and privacy and safety. Some teachers showed a deep-seated fear of children's identities being discovered on the internet and dreadful but unspecfied consequences occuring as a result. Obviously it is a good idea to be sensibly discrete about personal information, especially if you are young and not having developed the the set of sensible caution-antennae that is called adulthood. But after the workshop I called in at a local roasted chicken establishment, as one does, and waiting in front of me was a girl about 12 wearing a pullover with the names of all the year 6, 7s and 8s in her school on the back. So I can now tell you that Hazel McIntyre is in year 7 at St xxx School. Apparently there is something about internet personal information that is much more dangerous than old-media personal information. I can read in the local free newspaper that Lucy Liu is goalkeeper of the school netball team, just below her photograph. The unthinking fear about exposing any child information on the internet needs to balanced against the way we routinely use similar information in the public arena without any apparent harm. Teachers need to be engaged with Web 2.0 tools on the internet so they can understand from their own involvement how to manage privacy and openness in a sensibe ways.