Schools and The Cloud

If you are involved in education here in Victoria it is very easy to see the rise in mobile computing across all levels of schooling. The demand on the servers has been increasing enormously and recently many schools seem to have taken steps to move towards the cloud.

Until recently it has been quite tentative, with pilot projects and limited use, often by individual teachers or faculties for single projects and without a whole school commitment.

At our school some staff, especially those in the technology area who have carefully built our in-house network, the cloud technologies are not an option. They fear the move to the cloud and it will require a significant change in mindset before they come on board. Most of what we use/do is on the intranet. Staff book the internet for their classes if they want to use external sites. This limits the usefulness of many of our online work in wikis and blogs. There are so many other great online tools and  collaborative opportunities for real-world learning. We also need to be teaching students how to exist safely and responsiblity in the online work. I know that there are issues and problems may occur but they seem to see only the problems. There are ways around those as there are with the problems the occur on our intranet. It just requires the will first of all and then planning. If we are not careful we will be left behind if this infographic is anywhere near the mark.

Infographic was put together with US data in August 2012 but anecdotally the trend is also applicable here in this state as well.

Those that research and write for Online Colleges see that a much greater commitment to the cloud is coming.   They estimate that K–12 schools will allocate an average of 17 percent of their total IT budget  (US costs) to cloud-related services and in five years that projection goes up to 27 percent.

Please include attribution to OnlineColleges.net with this graphic.

Useful links – Some of my March sites

  by  jane hewitt 

• 50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About | Fluency21 – Committed Sardine Blog  A list of some of the tech tools, including some that are becoming increasingly popular and widely used in classrooms.
• More New Androids Than Babies, And Other Surprising Mobile Facts [Infographic] – ReadWrite Another interesting infographic about how important our mobile technology has become to our lives.
• Off-Beat Hamlet | Folger SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY From the Floger Shakespeare Library – looked through YouTube and found some wacky Hamlet humor.
• The 20 Best Education Apps And Web Tools Of The Year – Edudemic Article is an excerpt from the December issue of Edudemic Magazine. It lists the best apps (from educators around the world) resources for 2012.
• Creating Infographics with your Students A good guide for creating infographics with students. Slides by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano that provide you with some tips on how to use them with your students .
• Larrikin Post | Who Owns Your Social Media Posts? Who owns your social media posts? Former Australian Copyright Council employee, lawyer Ian McDonald considers the copyright issues
• Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions | User Generated Education Learning to compose a good question is a skill students should possess. Those at the Right Question Institute proposed process for students to learn to formulate their own questions.  This can be a good start to having students learn to compose questions. The post lists the QFT six key steps.
• The Technology Source Archives – Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Lens for Evaluating Online Courses ”The “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education,” originally published in the AAHE Bulletin (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), are a popular framework for evaluating teaching in traditional, face-to-face courses. The principles are based on 50 years of higher education research (Chickering & Reisser, 1993). A faculty inventory (Johnson Foundation, “Faculty,” 1989) and an institutional inventory (Johnson Foundation, “Institutional,” 1989) based on these principles have helped faculty members and higher-education institutions examine and improve their teaching practices. We, a team of five evaluators from Indiana University’s Center for Research on Learning and Technology (CRLT), recently used these principles to evaluate four online courses in a professional school at a large Midwestern university.”
• The 8 Elements Project-Based Learning Must Have | Edudemic To be classed as project-based learning the listed 8 items are considered ‘essential elements’ of a classroom task.
• 6 Steps to Successfully Integrate Minecraft in Your Classroom | EdReach
• TeachThoughtYour Quick-Guide To Using QR Codes In Education
• Comics in The Classrooms- Great Tools and Tips ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
• CILIP | Presentations Here are links to number of interesting presentations from the “E-books in Libraries: A Global Question of Survival?” seminar that took place in London on February 2013. The event was co-sponsored by IFLA MLAS (Management of Library Associations Committee) and CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) and featured presentations by experts about the ebook situation in libraries around the world.
• 10 Ways To Use Technology To Teach Writing There are a many technology tools and methods that are available for teaching writing. The 10 are listed here can make the process easier and more enjoyable for both teachers and students.

Useful Links – Weekly

  by  ianguest 

• http://www.districtdispatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2012_OITP_digilitreport_1_22_13.pdf “School libraries always have been interdisciplinary spaces deeply connected to the curriculum, instrumental in developing students’ research and information literacy skills, and committed to creating an environment of free reading that supports lifelong learning and curiosity. These traditional roles and strengths are increasingly critical as society faces a deluge of digital information, and the lines between content user and content creator are blurred and even actively deconstructed.”

• » New Report Highlights School Libraries’ Promotion of Digital Literacy AASL Blog Discussion about report from the American Library Association’s Digital Literacy Task Force, led by the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy in Washington. They released (in Jan) “Digital Literacy, Libraries, and Public Policy,” a report highlighting support for digital literacy in the context of school, public, and academic libraries.

• Book Spine Poetry Contest! « The LibraryThing Blog An outline of the LibraryThing bookspine poetry contest 2012

• 2012 Book Spine Poem Gallery School library journal 2012 post linking to poem

• http://penguineducation.wordpress.com/ Penguin Australia’s blog for teachers, librarians and educators – bringing you professional development opportunities, book reviews, resources, guest bloggers, book trailers and much more

• 101 Blogs About Schools, Books, & Libraries 100 blogs about school libraries, educational thinking and books

• The Results Are In and They Aren’t Good | Library Marketing 1st in a series of articles by Nancy Dowd examining results from survey. This marketing survey’s purpose was to gain information about how public libraries market themselves, the effectiveness of marketing initiatives undertaken by the library, and the resulting engagement within their communities

• WebSlides – Turning bookmarks and feeds into interactive slideshows… Webslides allows users to easily and instantly convert their bookmarks and feeds and present them as live web pages in an interactive slideshow format complete with the full content pages, links, and comments. It enables a new way to easily create and share unique presentations based on web content and user annotations.

• Games Support Multiple Learning Styles | Edutopia ” align them to games”

• 5 Steps To Make You A Better Researcher – Edudemic  From Edudemic “Research involves a lot of information and data which have to be easily and efficiently managed under tight deadlines and time restraints. The following steps will offer you a bit of insight into how you can become a better researcher using some simple web tools like mind maps and bookmarklets.”

• Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts When Flipping Your Classroom #edchat « syded Some good tips on how to change classroom focus. A good checklist to better better prepare teachers and avoid pitfalls.

• Get Noticed: 3 Customizable Infographic Templates  4 templates to help build your  infographic

• Infographic: How to Implement Blended Learning – Getting Smart by Getting Smart Staff - From the fifth white paper in the DLN Smart Series, “Blended Learning Implementation Guide,” which explores blended learning as a phase change with a goal of accelerating learning toward college and career readiness.

• Top 10 Online Communities for Educators of Game-Based Learning

• Nearpod App – Android Nearpod is available in an Android version as well as iPad, and allows teachers share and control content (including slideshows, videos, and web pages) with students in real-time. Users simply create a presentation from scratch or using PowerPoint, and they can see students marking up an image or answering a question in real time.

• Educational Technology Guy: NearPod – create and share lessons on iPads in classroom – free  Post explaining how Nearpod can be used. Nearpod is available in an Android version as well as iPad, and allows teachers share and control content (including slideshows, videos, and web pages) with students in real-time.

• Finding the Right Tech Tools Is Easy, If You Know Where to Look — THE Journal

• papertigers | interviews | Meme McDonald and Boori Monty Pryor Interview about their writing and collaboration (Oct 32003)

• 25 Websites To Have Fun With Your Photos 25 sites are listed and reviewed. Most of those mentioned are free.  are

• Easel.ly Makes Infographics Easy and Beautiful – 10,000 Words Infographics are a great way to get information across in a visual way. They are also well received by many students. Easel.ly is a tool, Still in Beta at the moment, that seeks to make the creation of an infographic easier.

• easel.ly | create and share visual ideas online ” Easel.ly – an infographics development platform. Users can select from a set of “vhemes” — fully developed and color-coordinated themes than can be edited to suit information — or simply create their own from scratch using Easel.ly’s database of shapes and icons. The result is a comprehensive and visually pleasing infographic that looks professional.” Beta at present

• NCEE » Global Perspectives: How do we prepare students for a world we cannot imagine? ”An interview with Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the Institute of Education, University of London, on his paper entitled Optimizing Talent: Closing Educational and Social Mobility Gap Worldwide, published last year at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria.” How do we as teachers help students develop their abilities to get the best out of themselves? Develop environments that help students learn best? t

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Useful Links – Weekly

• It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing | Public Knowledge An article that looks at the intellectual property implications of 3D printing (written with quite some detail).

• My Top 10 Web Curation Tools as A Teacher ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A good list of some curation web tools that are easy to use and that versions that can be used with most computers

• 16 e-textbook providers: Who’s publishing and who’s selling? | Education Dive ”16 names in e-textbooks that you should know about, as well as what each of them are doing to set themselves apart in a competitive new area of education:”

• Ebook Friendly – ebooks made simple and cool  ”The Ebook Friendly is a site for e-book geeks. You can find here simple tips and fun stuff about ebooks, digital publishing and the future of books!”

• Guest post: Steve Saville of Alfriston College, Auckland, on comics in the classroom | Books and Adventures  “Post by Steve Saville, deputy principal at Alfriston College in South Auckland. For four years, Steve has championed the use of comics in the classroom through a series of innovative workshops which have allowed students to develop and publish their own high quality comic books. In the first of a two-part guest post, Steve tells the story of Alfriston’s unique comic book education project.”

• Learning Ratings | Common Sense Media Ratings are given for a variety of digital media products based on core academic content. There is an assessment of the learning potential. Alternative games and sites that achieve the same goals as the product being reviewed as also given.

• The Difference Between Content Curation and Link Spraying | Social Media Today

• Caitlin Barry: Educators, Please Stop Confusing Media Literacy with Ed Tech

• Great Critical Thinking Map for your Classroom ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning ”You ask any teacher today about the skills they want their students to develop and you will get critical thinking skills as an obvious answer; of course together with other skills. With the advance of technology and the educational paradigmatic shift that ensued , critical thinking skills have occupied a central part in the literature of teaching and learning pedagogy, not that these skills were not important before but I would say they came to the foreground now more than in any time before”

• A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age The broad aim is to inspire an open, learner-centered dialogue around the rights, responsibilities, and possibilities for education in the globally-connected world of the present and beyond

• 11 Facebook Updates to Privacy and Timeline You Should Know | Social Media Today  ”It’s common for Facebook to undergo drastic (or silent) changes whether the users like it or not. The real question is, how ready are you when Facebook is determined to ‘make the world more open and connected’? Have you made full use of the privacy and account settings to your advantage? Also, if you’ve been observant enough you should’ve discovered several improvements on the existing features to make them more visible and user friendly. Why not give this list a run-through and see if you missed any.”

• A Must Have Check List Poster for Innovative Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• Maybe ‘What do you want your students to do?’ is the wrong question | Dangerously Irrelevant  ”Laptops. iPads (or other tablet devices). Chromebooks. Maybe even netbooks or ultrabooks… As more schools and districts move toward 1:1 computing, one of the most common questions is ‘What device should we get for our students?’ The typical response is another question: ‘Well, what do you want your students to do?’ I wonder, though, if that’s the wrong question…”

• How Teachers are Using Tumblr in the Classroom | Emerging Education Technology Some of the different ways teachers are using tumblr in their classrooms

• 10 Secrets To Unlocking The Learning Potential Of The iPad The ideas and concepts apply to tablets (or mobile devices) not just the ipad

• ML: Macaulay Library The Mcaulay Library is the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings

• Library Services in the Digital Age | Pew Internet Libraries

• ‘Bill of Rights’ Seeks to Protect Students’ Interests as Online Learning Expands – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education ”12 educators, many of them well known in online-education circles, did manage to draft a document that they hope will serve as a philosophical framework for protecting the interests of students as online education. Called “A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age,” the document proposes a set of “inalienable rights” that the authors say students and their advocates should demand from institutions and companies that offer online courses and technology tools.”

• 26 Latest Photoshop Tutorials 2013 | Tutorials | Graphic Design Junction Jan 2013 Photoshop Tutorials. These tutorials are created by Photoshop experts. The article gathers professional Photoshop tutorials that may enhance designing skills and improve the quality of digital works.

• The Ultimate List of Pinterest Tips – Blogging with Amy  A good number of tips. Areas covered: Pinterest Basics; How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic; How to Add the “Pin It” Button to Posts; Pinterest Copyright Issues; Further Reading

• How to Track Traffic From Pinterest in Google Analytics How many referrals does Pinterest generate? How many people use the “pin it” button on a site? Which pictures on a site are the most pinned and repinned? Here are four ways to measure Pinterest using Google Analytics.

• New Pew Internet & American Life Project Report Looks at Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits | LJ INFOdocket A new report (Oct 2012) from Pew Internet focusing on the reading habits and public library habits of younger Americans’ (ages 16-29) is now available online.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Educational Achievement Gap in our schools

With the Victorian teachers striking again this week it seems timely to have a look at this infographic below. Although many teachers are doing a great number of fantastic things in our schools there are still a lot of inequities in education.

What the infographic below highlights are some major issues in the schooling systems all over the world not just Australia and there are similarities across the board. We all know that there are many inequities for educational opportunities for all our students in our education system and the infographic below shows a direct correlation between achievement and economic status.

The government sponsored NAPLAN results confirm serious inequalities. For instance they:

1. reaffirm the significant achievement gap between indigenous and non-indigenous students (see also an article in the Australian Dec 2012) and
2. show the gap in achievement widening as students progress through their schooling.

The ACT initiative “Save our Schools” site has quite a lot of published documents including one in December that discussed inequities in science and maths.

The statistics and information that form the basis for this infographic are included at the bottom and I have read a few of the sources but I think I will have a look at a few more.

Educators have been aware of inequity in schools, in fact historically there has always been some inequity but the political rhetoric has been increasingly strident and politicians from all sides have declared that we want/need to make the gap smaller. Nothing substantial and long-term seems to be put in place. Despite the Gonski Report, we still seem a long way from any major changes to the current system so how can we help our students overcome social and economic disadvantages that are not of their making? We all see that we need to help foster learning and give opportunities to all our students. Most have bright and enquiring minds in the beginning and we need to help them develop to be the best they can be. This is vital for not just the students but for our society as a whole. I have no answers but I will continue to question and work within my own sphere to try to bridge the gap.