The Educated Kiwi
blogging
drop.io
Mar 9th
has been around since November last year and is a very convenient file sharing web 2.0 app. No signup or e-mail address is needed, just create a URL and drop your file with password protection if you wish, it couldn’t be more simple. The creators of drop.io feel that your privacy is paramount and do not snoop at your files, your files automatically become RSS feeds and they give you a number of ways to upload files including a wordpress plugin. I find the wordpress plugin particularly interesting as a way for students to hand work in. In case you are wondering .io is an Indian Ocean domain.
Our reading level.
Nov 16th
I don’t know if this is testament to our limited grasp of the English language our the fact that we tend to be economical with words but hey junior high is about right. All been pretty busy lately between PD for staff and end of year wrap up for seniors, not to mention the new addition to the Davies family.
So now we look forward to implementing changes for next year KKC blogs is going great guns with over 300 individual blogs, some even being used for educational purposes 
. Not to mention some of the fantastic content on the Music Department and Arts blogs so it seems we have really made a start here.
Also congratulations must go to Nat and Phil for their blogs for clocking up over 15,000 and 7,000 hits respectively, keep up the good work guys.
Blogged with Flock
Whole school blogging
Nov 4th
“Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr. Lipwig?”
“Because people don’t like change. But make change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another”
Terry Pratchett, Making Money
Artists paint caricatures of people and Terry Pratchett writes caricatures of humanity. The reason I enjoy his work so much and for so long is because of the clever observations he makes about human behaviour and in particular the mentality of the mob.
I have been fortunate to be in a position where I have implemented a multi user blog site in our college. We did not tell anyone what was coming and we did not publicise it once it was there. The only way anyone has found out about it is because myself and another member of staff introduced it to our classes. That was 3 weeks ago.
We now have 237 blogs (quarter of the students), out of those 5 are run by departments (half of which I was surprised at) and our librarian is getting stuck in with the library blog. I am also getting e-mails asking for specific functionality which I try and accommodate and so far the students have kept it clean. I have only had to deactivate one blog for bad language but after the student was spoken to it was reinstated.
I can’t help but think that this would never have happened if it had to go through committees and approval processes, one can only imagine the conservative points of view which block so many good ideas. As it is our students are acting as responsible internet citizens, learning skills that will serve them as the workforce of the future.
More than just about the Rugby
Oct 30th
After Reading David Warlicks’ post about how people were utilising a newspaper website for more than just the news it seemed uncanny that this appeared in the New Zealand Herald:
The Herald website has just reached an amazing threshold in debate in this country.In the biggest forum thread ever in NZ’s online history, our online Your Views debate about why the All Blacks failed in their 2007 World Cup rugby bid today passed 1000 pages in length – probably the biggest rugby thread anywhere online.
If you do wish for real insight into an issue once you weed out the spam and off the wall comments there is some very valuable information in these comment threads. In fact when it comes to buying things I often Google a review and then read the comments as this is where people will come to vent their displeasure at a product or give helpful advice on how to get more out of it. The following image is snipped from the Apple store and is people giving feedback about OS X Leopard, where it is getting four and a half stars.
For everything from Sports gear to tech gear the comments section of consumer websites are something to have a look at.
In the other section of interest was Microsoft which acquired a 1.6% stake in Facebook last week for $240 million. This from Digital Inspiration
This in turn allows Microsoft to sell ads on Facebook web pages and share the ad revenue with Facebook. Some basic calculations:
Total Value of Facebook = $15 billion (since 1.6% = 240 million)
Total Number of Facebook users =~ 50 million
Price Microsoft paid per Facebook member = 15b/50m = $300.
wow! my facebook account for $300 where do I sign up to get my money. Obviously they are going to find a way to squeeze some serious money out of this.
WordPressed out
Oct 15th
For the past two weeks I have been building Katikati Colleges’ blog site and it has been a time consuming task. When our hosting company offered us WordPress mu and Mediawiki hosting for a decent price we jumped at the chance for a school blog and wiki. Things are not always that simple as we found out.
WordPress mu is a fantastic package but it is by no means ready for deployment in a school. Check out the “finished” site here.
Many hours of testing and delving into PHP and MYSQL have resulted in a useable and most importantly controllable blog engine. All we need now are some bloggers and we are away.
Our colleague in the Social Studies department has already moved his blog and is encouraging students to start their own.
Any advice from people running their own school blogs would be greatly appreciated.
Katipedia
Oct 8th
I know it sounds somewhat like a bug but Katipedia is KKC’s attempt to get a full school wiki going. This along with our Blog server are some of the things we are trialling. Our reasoning behind all this was to bring all our blogs together under one url and have a front page similar to stj school’s iBlog which should be very doable with the WordPress platform. WordPress also gives us all the themes and widgets that our students are already using and by allowing them to export their blog it can be something they take with them when they finish college.
I’ll be interested to see how Katipedia goes as a lot of this functionality is already offered by Moodle. But I’m hoping that it will provide a place for class essays and unit work to be shared in the senior school. Would be interested to hear from others who are having success with mediawiki.
More from the don’t know how lucky we are file.
Aug 21st
Recently I have been having a few discussions around both the security of blogging and privacy issues with our students. While every student does complete an acceptable use policy it might be time to re-look at these with respect to what students are publishing and what is acceptable. A number of blog posts have had some good reading lately
This post from Andrew Churches got it started
Click play on the video below to see a fascinating documentary showing the dangers of searching on Google. “http://www.cnbc.com/id/18978264/”
Then Derek Wenmouth complied several posts on the topic, Moral fear vs Digital Faith being one. An so it has continued until today I was reading wordpress news and found that wordpress.com had been banned in Turkey, for some discussion on this see here. The reasoning behind the block has changed regularly, from it being due to military secrets being leaked to a simple DNS error.
This is interesting for us in education as the initial reaction of IT departments and teachers is to lock things down, to make them safe and thus I am reminded of a quote I learned at school from an adult student. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” (now thanks to Google I learn that he stole that from William Shedd) not to mention Ewan McIntosh and this great excerpt from Harry Potter
Dolores Umbridge: Your previous instruction in this subject has been disturbingly uneven. But you will be pleased to know from now on, you will be following a carefully structured, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic.
Hermione Granger: There’s nothing in here about using defensive spells.
Dolores Umbridge: Using spells? Ha ha! Well I can’t imagine why you would need to use spells in my classroom.
Ron Weasley: We’re not gonna use magic?
Dolores Umbridge: You will be learning about defensive spells in a secure, risk-free way.
Harry Potter: Well, what use is that? If we’re gonna be attacked it won’t be risk-free.
Dolores Umbridge: Students will raise their hands when they speak in my class.
[pauses]
Dolores Umbridge: It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all, is what school is all about.
Harry Potter: And how is theory supposed to prepare us for what’s out there?
Dolores Umbridge: There is nothing out there, dear! Who do you imagine would want to attack children like yourself?
Harry Potter: I don’t know, maybe, Lord Voldemort!
So let us continue to find a way to educate students on how to best use the technology and stop some of the paranoia about what they might see. Municipal wifi will be here eventually and then it will be interesting to see how schools deal with students and laptops. Already in many urban areas there are a number of unsecured wireless networks available due to many people not understanding the technology.
How you can blog with your classes.
Aug 15th
I intend to add to this post but thought I would just put this link so people can read it.
Distributed Teaching and Learning
The Power of Pedagogy and Audience
by Darren Kuropatwa
Go English Go.
Jul 17th
Yes the title of this post came to me from Go dog go which I am reading to my daughter, slightly better than Hop on pop. But I digress. The English faculty at Katikati college are doing some great work between the class blogs and wikis it’s awesome to see what is being produced. Of particular note is fun with fruit which has had 1600+ views on slideshare.
[slideshare id=65163&doc=bananaslide1102&w=425]
For a quick look at some of these sites check out
Lana’s class blog, Nat’s class blog, and Emma’s Wiki this is just the beginning I’m sure of some great work. For any help setting up your own blog/wiki either send me an email or I’m sure these guys could tell you how easy it was.
The changing nature of work
Jul 16th
Came across this presentation thanks to the cool cat teacher blog and feel it sums up some of the changes that the working world is having. I am always interested when speaking to family overseas how their working week is structured on different times with schools open later and earlier but teachers doing shifts, wonder how that would go down here
[slideshare id=42907&doc=meet-charlie-what-is-enterprise20-29751&w=425]
Sometimes I get trapped like this.
Jul 16th
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.Technorati Tags:blogging, work
The Blog writers.
Jun 27th
Over the past few months I have been trailing various offline blog writers. On Windows I’ve tried Zoundry which I found very easy to use and Microsoft Livewriter which while in Beta (still in development) is pretty good and I guess my pick for xp. On the Mac I’ve tried Ecto and Marsedit and have decided to go with Marsedit. My reasoning is it was the easiest to use while trailing so many different ones. I would like to hear any others using anything better and of course there is online which is what I use anyway since it is seldom I don’t have a connection. Mind you Edublogs has been down for a week for an upgrade and it was handy to have somewhere to get things down to upload later. Thus when I’ve finished editing a bunch of posts they will be there.
Technorati Tags:
blogging
Paris in Prison?
Jun 15th
Stumbling upon the Paris in Prison photos on a wiki site made me realise the scope of wiki’s for a wider purpose, not that I’m encouraging you to create a fan site for the socialite but it was funny all the same.
While I find writing a blog entry a chore at times, contributing to wikipedia or a wikispace is fairly easy. All you have to do is click on the edit tab and while having rubbish written on a wiki does happen it is easy enough with PBWiki or any of the other free options such as Ben Nolan’s and Foopad really it is a matter of personal preference. For some examples of ones being used by teachers check out this wiki or this one on pbwiki. Some of the quotes from the page express its simplicity
The interface is easy to use. I made my wiki in less than 15 minutes.
The results have been great. Simple to use (no reading of instructions), bugs
that we had with uploads were fixed without having to report them, and the
service is fast.
Ok now I’m interested in blogging
Jun 7th
This from the Guardian UK
Want to start a blog in Iran? Then you’ll have to register it with the government – which has recently begun to require that all bloggers register at samandehi.ir, a site established by the ministry of culture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. All you need do is give your personal information, including your blog’s
username and password – otherwise it will be filtered and blocked so that nobody in Iran, and perhaps outside too, will be able to access it. This has led to an outcry among many Iranian bloggers who consider the net an independent and free forum for expression.
And then I followed the links to the President’s personal blog wow in english and farsi. The comments alone are enough to help with a social studies class.
technorati tags:blogs, world, iran, censorship
Blogging for kids
Jun 1st
Quite important to share this information from David Warlick about blogging and while the statistics are from teachers who use blogging so they will be reasonably positive, I enjoyed the statistics regarding the care they take with their writing on a blog. I guess for our two colleges we have to get over the students initial issues with writing rubbish on wikis and blogs (eg the attack on the katikati college wikipedia entry) but this will pass and then we should hopefully see similar results to those quoted in these statistics. Also for a great blog site for students check out the schol site from ncowie.
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