Catch the Wave

Here are some photos I took on the way from my motel to the main conference venue. (See post below.) It was the last morning (after the conference dinner the night before!!) and I was on my way to my first ‘unconference’. I had been asked to contribute to a session on ‘effective cluster/school management of the ICT contract’. Four of us attended (all facilitators) and although we swapped a few ideas the session didn’t turn out as I had imagined it would … there was no-one who was really there to learn. Perhaps everybody knows the answers already (or think they do!) Another possibility is that because there were so many unconference sessions there was no-one left to come to ours. The other possibility is that many delegates were sleeping in after socialising the night before. So I’ve yet to find out what a successful unconference session is like.

By JOHN HAREVELT – The Press | Monday, 26 January 2009

A “flagship” Unicef report, The State of the World’s Children, rates New Zealand’s 15 to 24-year-olds among the best-connected with cellphones and the internet.

There were 94 cellphone owners and 79 internet users per 100 Kiwis aged between 15 and 24, the report said.

DIGITAL WORLD: Sinomi Hood, 15, left, Brooke, 14, and Sam Fairs, 16, all of Christchurch, each carry their own cellphones, iPods and MP3 players. A ‘flagship’ Unicef report, The State of the World’s Children, rates New Zealand’s 15 to 24-year-olds among the best-connected with cellphones and the internet.

Read the full news article on the Stuff Website

Living in Whakatane I’m noticing how quickly the seasons change. We’re only 7 days into spring, but already the sky is bluer, the sun is warmer, the sea sparkles and everything looks greener. I even feel inspired to go for a walk.

Recently I’ve made several freeware discoveries. Teachers I work with needed a programme which would compress photos in bulk. ‘Jpeg 4 Email ‘ does this and it’s really easy to use. You just need to set the size you want, make multi-selections and drag the photos into the Jpeg for email window. You can then save the compressed photos into a new folder. It’s really useful for adding photos to a blog as well.

The second goodie is ‘Switch’, which converts sound files (e.g. .wma) to MP3. You can also multi-select.

Another discovery is the ‘vidtoMP3 website‘ which will save just the music from a video as an MP3. I know you’ll find a use for that one!

I also added the chroma key to Windows Movie maker so I can make blue screen movies. Follow the steps on this wikiHow page I think it’s better to use a green screen though because lots of people wear blue clothes. I ended up with an armless person in my underwater movie because she was wearing a long sleeved blue top!

Sometimes teachers point out to me the fads they’ve seen come and go during their teaching careers – like Process Writing, BSM, Wellington Maths and door-stopper curriculum documents. After teaching something that was celebrated as the latest and greatest, we watched it disappear without a trace after a year or two. Now, thirty years later, we look back, shake our heads and say ‘what were we thinking?’

Ashtrays were put out on staffroom coffee tables along with the cheese and crackers, the five minute afternoon break was just enough time for smokers to light up, students had to do ‘their own work’ and if they didn’t behave, we had ways to make them. What were we thinking?
Driving home from the pub was OK (as long as you went slow) and we did all sorts of risky activities with no thought about personal safety or protection. What were we thinking? Babies were put to sleep on their stomach (invariably snuggled into a sheepskin) and children rode their bikes to school and without helmets. What were we thinking? The TV variety show ‘The Black and White Minstrel Show’. was hugely popular and we laughed at jokes that made fun of another culture. What were we thinking?

In 2007 we have bird flu preparation, KCs, getting more exercise, Literacy (capital L), free fruit, eating less junk food, ICT, debate about the driving age (again), the drinking age (again), Numeracy (capital N), no fizzy drinks, Web 2.0, Inquiry Learning, the education conference pandemic, formative assessment and the preoccupation, agony, opinion, over-analysis about The All Blacks (yet again.)

In thirty years time what will have been worthwhile, lasted the distance and made a difference? And what will we look back on and say ‘what were we thinking?’

technorati tags:tradition, culture, education, teaching, fad, practice, New_Zealand, ICT

Coming up on Monday 24th we’re having our Wanganui ICT Cluster Celebration Day. Each school gets 40 minutes to share thier journey during the last 3 years using multimedia and oral presentations. Its created quite a bit of excitement in schools – although their secrecy means I don’t know what to expect. They want to surprise me on the day .. is this a good thing? I’m hoping so. Judging by the level of excitement, we’re in for an entertaining day. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it all goes later – after the event.

During the changeovers, I’ve planned a ‘lucky number – mystery prize’ game. When a number is drawn that person gets to choose a number and corresponding prize. The prizes are all worth winning except maybe the long round furry giraffe door draught stopper I bought at The Warehouse for $3.00! (But hey, if you have a draughty house …)

We’re also having a quiz of 20 questions (spread out over the day.) Teachers with the most correct answers will be in a draw for 3 great prizes. I’m putting all the questions below – so if you’re in our cluster and you read my blog, good on you! You’ve scored! Reading blogs pays off!

1. What do the letters www stand for?
2. What is the name of the most popular Internet search engine?
3. The name of the man who devised a thinking taxonomy in 1956 is …
4. Who is the Minister of Education?
5. On a cell phone, which number is with the letters a, b and c?
6. ICT stands for what?
7. Tahoma, Broadway and Algerian are all what?
8. An online journal is a called a …….
9. What is the address of the Wanganui ICT Cluster website?
10. A thinking map showing overlapping circles is called a what?
11. Is a jpeg a text file, spreadsheet file or graphic file?
12. What is the name of the Australian who invented the Thinkers Keys?
13. An audio file uploaded for sharing on the Internet is called a what?
14. What is the text acronym OTT short for?
15. What is data stored on inside a computer?
16. 16 behavioural & problem solving characteristics developed by Art Costa are
collectively called what?
17. What, where, why, who, when, which and how are collectively called The Seven …. What?
18. A brand of laptop starting with T is a ……
19. The smallest individual dot that can be displayed on a computer screen is called a …
20. What is the name of the port on a computer where you plug in a pen drive?

technorati tags:ICT, Cluster, celebration, New_Zealand, quiz, blog, Wanganui

I’ve been busy lately. Mostly job related – although I did hang around at home waiting for tradesmen twice – if that can be described as being busy. I had a heat pump intalled and the hot water element replaced. (You don’t think about hot water until you don’t have any!) Everything else is about professional development and/or professional learning … if someone wants to write a 1 sentence definition of the difference between these, that would be great. So sometimes I feel like just a head walking around. My poor neglected body. I’d go to the gym if they had the Internet.
So lately I’ve either been providing PD for others, getting some myself from real experts, or trying to teach myself something. The latter being very haphazard with varying degrees of success!
It’s good when two of those things combine. At the end of August I presented (I’m uncomfortable with that word, but alternatives I try are worse!) a couple of workshops at the Waimarino Cluster Conference in Tauranga and scored two great keynotes – Mark Treadwell and Trevor Bond. Being back in the Bay of Plenty was great. BOP people make great audiences – a possible research topic for someone is ‘BOP people have more personality than other New Zealanders.’
Then last Thursday I snuck into a Pam Hook and Julie Mills workshop at Coley Street School (I Can We Can Cluster) and learnt so many new things that the pressure on my skill from my expanding brain has further increased. You can check out their inquire2learn wik to learn more. I’m thinking that as a sideline or optional extra, Pam and Julie should market themselves as conference after dinner speakers or even tour as a two woman comedy and motivational show. The full extent of their talents could be wasted in education, not to mention Auckland. (Maybe they should move to the BOP?)
The other things I’m doing – in the largely self taught category – are exploring (often with frustration) Twitter and Facebook. I’m working on finding more friends and the following people around thing. It’s as tiring as it sounds and I’m still working on the ‘why?’ question.
Milestone 11 got slotted into the left over time. Watching tradesmen crash around, install, fix, test and ask me questions I didn’t know the answers to was useful time for that.

I can’t let the start of the rugby world cup go by without writing a post about it. (It was easy to give up on my plan to write something intellectual!) Yesterday some of the schools in my ICT Cluster celebrated the occassion by wearing black and flying the All Blacks flag from the school flag pole. At one school teachers chose between wearing black or dressing like the French. strped clothes and berets, old red rugby jerseys and other clothing which perhaps looked vaguely French. They also attempted conversations in rusty schoolboy/girl French.

Another school renamed all their classrooms to players names – so Room 10 became Room Carter and Room 7 became Room McCaw. The admin staff wore black Tshirts with the slogan ‘Howlett’s Girls’ and the Principal’s Tshirt was emblazoned ‘Henry for PM’. All the students wore black with plenty of black face painting and fake tatoos. Celebrating important events is fun.

I was up early to watch the opening ceremony and the France vs Argentina game. Argentina won!! What an upset!  That makes things even more interesting. It will be late to bed tonight after watching the NZ vs Italy game. The Rugby World Cup like gives life a bit of extra zing! GO the All Blacks!

technorati tags:All_Blacks, New_Zealand, rugby, celebration, Rugby_World_Cup, schools

I like the cup stacking video. The girl is so fast and skilful. She must be really motivated to get that good. I hadn’t heard of student sport stacking before … much less world record attempts and national tournaments! American schools have a student culture quite different from ours in New Zealand. The spelling bee is another example. While big in the US, they are largely unknown here – I mean the big-event-with-an-audience sort of thing. I have to say that American schools could have more exciting things going on than NZ schools!

Back in the day, I remember padder tennis tournaments, target tournaments (hitting a tennis ball against a small wooden fame and catching it on the full), skipping and hoola-hoop competitions. The whole school would be seated around the netball court to watch the finals. The winner won sponsored prizes and a few days of fame. ‘Basic Facts Battle’ was another biggie which electrified the school. The final was held at the last senior syndicate assembly of the term. Parents attended and teachers hoped their student would win. Do exciting events like this still happen? Or have New Zealand schools got a bit dull and boring? Why not get sport stacking happening in your school – ‘Its a track meet for your hands … at warp speed!’

technorati tags:New_Zealand, America, school, teaching, learning, students, motivation, competition

On TV tonight I saw an ad for a funeral plan which told me that ‘my application WOULD be accepted’. Funny! Ads like this tend to catch my attention at MS time.

Although there is no direct connection, this got me thinking about scams and how they work by making people feel special. While a scam is fraud, its not always the same as Internet fraud. If I’m told I’ve won an overseas lottery, or that a distant relative has died in -you guessed it – Nigeria, I laugh and delete. Why do people fall for such obvious scams? Plenty do. How weird. So maybe I was too confident … because Internet fraud found me.
Recently my credit card was used in a shop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Then again in the USA, to bet on a baseball game and again to purchase computer hardware … and no, it was not me shopping on the Internet. Nor had I lost my card – it was safely in my wallet. So who got hold of my card details and how? The bank’s view was that ‘it could have happened anywhere’. This may be true, but I don’t use my credit card a lot and I had a theory about the location of the fraudster. I was disappointed that the bank didn’t try to nail them. I was after blood! I was told that if the correct procedure isn’t followed, then the card has been used fraudulently and the merchant is the loser. Tough. That’s the difference between a bank and the police investigating, I guess. What could I have done to avoid Internet fraud? The scary answer is nothing. Now I understand why people sign up for funeral plans.

technorati tags:funeral, scam, Internet, fraud, shopping, credit_card