Liked 25 Years of EdTech – 2003: Blogs by mweller (blog.edtechie.net)
If I had a desert island EdTech, it would be blogging, and that is not just in a nostalgic sense. No other educational technology has continued to develop, as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests, and also remain so full of potential. I’ve waxed lyrical about academic blogging many times before, but for almost every ed tech that comes along, I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better: e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OERs, social networks.
Bookmarked Welcome to Workload High School (EDUWELLS)
Proposal: Changing your high school structures to match the thinking of Finland, New Zealand, Ken Robinson, and many others will halve your class sizes and stress levels.
Richard Wells reflects upon the structures of high school and potential of projects to shake this up. He provides a series of ideas to support this:

It’s easier implemented as a full school and not in a seperate programme.

Teachers design a menu of interdisciplinary projects based around themes or phenomenon that have a focus on key existing curriculum.

All non-teaching / personal time slots are simultaneous for all. This means all teachers, rooms and resources are timetabled for simultaneous use, meaning each teacher shares the load and you have smaller student numbers to monitor on either a project and mentor group.

Consider Zoning groups of classrooms into Project zones. The usual 5 teachers from 5 rooms are timetabled into the zone to each mentor their smaller number of students.

All teachers take on a general academic mentoring group to focus on learning and project progress.

Teachers share the planning and monitoring of projects which makes the measuring of progress more palatable than traditional standardised teaching and marking.

Projects can be designed generically enough around a theme or phenomenon that they can be simultaneously offered to different age groups with appropriate expectations for outcomes. This can save teacher workload.

Bookmarked We are Missing the Point about Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, etc. (Baekdal)
Imagine if Facebook were to disappear tomorrow, would that solve this problem? No, because then the politicians would just use some other data and find some other tools ... and keep on telling different voters different things. The only way to actually solve this is to regulate the politicians. The politicians are the ones who shouldn't be allowed to do this.
Thomas Baekdal argues that current issues associated with Facebook are far more systemic. He provides three points of change:

Firstly, publishers need to rethink the entire ad model of the internet, and shift it to a 1st party data model rather than the 3rd party model that exists today.

Secondly, publishers need to change the way they report these stories, because, today, your Facebook-centric focus is out of tune with the real problem.

Thirdly, the tech industry needs to change.

Bookmarked Personalized precision education and intimate data analytics (code acts in education)
Precision education represents a shift from the collection of assessment-type data about educational outcomes, to the generation of data about the intimate interior details of students’ genetic make-up, their psychological characteristics, and their neural functioning.
Ben Williamson breaks down the idea of precision through the use of data and how it might apply to education.
Listened Cory Doctorow, Meet the Writers 123 - Radio from Monocle
The British-Canadian journalist and author – co-founder of β€˜Boing Boing’, one of the most influential blogs in the world – talks about his vision for our digital world.

Cory Doctorow talks about his education, growing up with mainframes, the consumption of news and engaging with others,

Some interesting quotes:

On Succeeding in Technology

If you really want a good job in tech then you should have the good fortune of being born in 1971 … Anyone who is my age who made a living in technology just got lucky by when they were born.

Paying for the Product

They say if you are not paying for that you are the product, what we see in an era of unregulated monopolism is that people who are paying for it are still the product. You buy an iPhone or an Android Phone and it is loaded with survellieance technology … If you are a farmer and you drive your 1/2 million dollar John Deer tracker around your fields, it is gathering telemtery on your fields … Monsanto takes that data and sells it back to you in seed, while John Deer takes that data and sells it to the futures market.

People Are Free, not the Internet

The internet does not want to be free, people do.

Riding the Highs and Lows

It does not matter how delicious the punch is if there is a turd floating in the punch bowl

via Chris Aldrich

πŸ““ Notes from Canberra EdTechTeam Summit

Rushton Hurley Keynote

Rushton Hurley:

“We do not spend enough time on the pedagogical implications of ‘fun’ and ‘cool'”

“Don’t worry if it doesn’t work, it happens all the time. Have a go at something different.”

“Our job is to inspire our students … having fun is an important part of that.”

“How often do we have in our heads exactly what we mean?”

“You could be that teacher that gives a student hope for the future”

“The only person to who you ever need compare yourself is the you who you were yesterday” #edtechteam

Discussing the Five Day Teacher Challenge http://rushtonh.com/category/the-5-day-teacher-challenge/ and getting better #edtechteam

“Can you go the whole day without asking the question: do you know the right answer or raising your voice once” #edtechteam

Next Vista For Learning provides a library of free videos made by and for teachers and students everywhere www.nextvista.org/ #edtechteam

“How do we make learning effective and memorable … will it be remembered in 20-years time?” #edtechteam

“Creativity is a muscle that we exercise” -> is blogging and reflection a muscle too?

Critical Creativity

Amy Burvall:

Notes associated with ‘Critical Creativity: Creating with Words, Images and Sounds’ https://sites.google.com/view/amyburvallettcanberrasummit/home/critical-creativity-workshops #edtechteam

“Through making we have meaning” #edtechteam

“Rigorous Whimsy is purposeful play” CC @mythsysizer

Jenga Poetry -> this reminds me of @ddonahoo and Lego Poetry https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/a-colourful-case-of-writers-blocks-20110527-1f7ul.html

Four Fun and Powerful Activities for Starting Class

Rushton Hurley:

Choose an obscure image and make connections with learning. -> @kathleen_morris has a great resource to support finding images

“Best people to create questions are the students. Create a question and four answers. Get them to explain why they made the choices that they did”

Q & A with Suan Yeo

Suan:

Google have developed a solution with managed devices to run NAPLAN on Chromebook through a locked-down browser app

Showing the Jamboard app via iOS and Android. Beyond that, users can still view. -> Reminds me a lot of Explain Everything

Amy Burvall Keynote

ο½ο½ο½™ο½‚ο½•ο½’ο½–ο½ο½Œο½Œ:

“We are surrounded by poetry on all sides” -> you just need to see it #edtechteam

“If you share your work with a wider audience, you never know who you might effect”

A collection of history videos for music lovers https://www.youtube.com/user/historyteachers/videos

On the IKEA effect. The accomplishment of putting a little bit of effort to achieve something.

Never say, “I’m just a teacher” Everyone is an artist!

Creativity is connecting dots https://amysmooc.wordpress.com/2017/08/06/rawthought-on-ditching-the-dangerous-dichotomy-between-content-knowledge-and-creativity/

“For if you know it you can change it”

“If they build it they will get it”

“Imagination is the root of empathy”

The best app on your phone is your camera. -> Gary Stager has written about thisΒ http://stager.tv/blog/?p=2791

“The most famous remix is the alphabet”

“We need to make our disciplines dance together”

“Get to the ‘ness’ of something”

“Creativity thrives on time, trust and tools”

Sometimes we need to get up, get out and go walkabout https://amysmooc.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/pd-walkabout-a-tourist-in-ones-own-land/

Site Maintenance

Simon Ashby:

The power and potential of Google Sites http://bit.ly/newsitesNZ #edtechteam

Sites can now be found through Google Drive -> here is a link to all the new Google Sites on one page https://sites.google.com/new?usp=jotspot_si

Sites provide the flexibility of adjusting the privacy of spaces https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2018/01/publish-google-sites-to-specific-audience.html

“Sites now allows you to embed” -> one potential workaround for ‘conversations’ is to use Padlet https://www.teachercast.net/blog/how-to-add-a-blog-or-comments-box-in-new-googlesites-using-padlet/

Share your computer’s screen from one Chrome browser to another https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cast-for-education/bnmgbcehmiinmmlmepibeeflglhbhlea

SheetsGeek

Jay Atwood:

Coding is for Losers https://sites.google.com/edtechteam.com/jay/coding-is-for-losers-computational-thinking-with-sheets HT @LosersHQ

If you click ‘create new rule’ when doing conditional formatting before pressing ‘done’ then it will copy all the ingredients of the previous rules #sheetsgeek

Whenever you are working with a formula, it can be good to work from inside out #edtechteam #SheetsGeek

Two YouTube playlists associated with Google Sheets: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Nrs6rglVNEtgl2YcPy-dVIGad0Luehn&disable_polymer=true and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6B2lA5Vd2A78PPIzDrTtAvZq6HiG0kU7

One of the key concepts when working with a database, if you ever want to change the data then always go back to the source

I remember Alice Keeler explaining how Google triage the feedback results in order to identify aspects to improve. I know where to go to find just the new Sites, where though do I actually post feedback though, such as the inability to filter Drive by new Sites, inability to copy or deploy Sites as templates and option to use Google Apps Scripts.

Of course it is in the bottom left-hand corner:

Screenshot highlighting where to provide feedback

Thanks Jay Atwood