Tagged In: TTF | Posted on July 13th, 2011 | Comments Off
A new role for me.
Firstly, this post is an apology that the blog has been a little quiet over the last couple of weeks. In truth, I’ve had lots of ideas about what to share with you but I have had little time to get them down here! I’ve been busy adding to the content of the new Computers in Education Group of South Australia (CEGSA) website; I think I wrote 3 posts there last week! I’ve also been busy getting settled into my job at Flinders University. I am now employed to work as an ICTPO – an ICT Pedagogical Officer (rathe than the telebtubby name it sounds like). What a fantastic role it is too!
As part of the Teaching Teachers for the Future project I’m working with certain staff to examine the experience Pre-service teachers (PSTs – yes it sounds like you’re trying to get someone’s attention at a whisper have in relation to ICTE (ICT in Education) the ACARA (The Aussie Curriculum) and the National Standards for graduate teachers.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the TTF project and what this might mean for you then you might like to read the post I put up on the CEGSA site.
As for this site? I think it might start to evolve even more. I’m going to be exposed to the ACARA a lot and so I can start sharing news on how ICTE fits into that as well as continuing my research into new and innovative ICTs. Like Google+ Have you managed to get an invite yet? I know I have and it’s very cool! Feel free to comment if you want an invite
Needless to say, I can promise that I will still be blogging, adding resources for you to use for free and sharing what ever knowledge I can share, i will share with you. Come and share the journey!
Tagged In: FACEBOOK | Posted on June 20th, 2011 | Comments Off
This is a topic that comes up a lot during Cyber Safety conversations. I am still astounded however by the number of both students and colleagues I work with who haven’t really considered the amount of private data that they are choosing the share with the world via Facebook. Countless, high-profile, job loses have occurred for many an educator who’s mate tagged them in an “un-professional” pose on Facebook whilst their Facebook profile was open to EVERYONE. There are also lots of students applying for university posts or first jobs… their prospective employers need only to Google their name and ooops…. Even Obama warned students about that one..
Although some schools do take the time to advise students (and teachers) about Facebook. The response from most schools in regard to this tool in schools seems to have been to ban it. (it reminds me of a similar knee jerk reaction to You Tube a few years ago). The question is, is it more necessary to educate than to ban? If we all took the time (and I do mean all… Teachers and students a like) to learn a little more about the security options in Facebook wouldn’t our personal information be a lot more secure and wouldn’t we have a great, safe place to collaborate and discuss? I know I use the Teacher Technologies Facebook page for that very reason…
Of course, we must not forget that these collaborations could only legally occur with students over the age of 13 and although it doesn’t seem much of a priority for Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg himself has recently hinted that developing Facebook for education might be a good idea in the future. He won’t be rushing it until he has child protection sorted on his network!
There are educators out there already attempting to use Facebook to help students connect with characters in literature without even needing to use the page. Take the Nerdy Teacher’s blog on “What Would Romeo’s Facebook Page Look Like?“ and the templates provided by Suzanne Whitlow. I know I’ve ‘borrowed’ these ideas myself. Just imagine though, the full potential of using groups, pages, wiki, documents… all within Facebook.
Facebook Privacy Settings Location
So, in a world where Facebook has evolved beyond a platform for embarrassing friends and rating who’s coolest, if we were going to tighten up security what would I recommend?
First of all, make sure that you know where the privacy settings are in Facebook. You’ll find them in the top right hand corner of your Facebook page in a menu accessed by clicking on “Account”. This is where you’ll find a whole host of features for choosing who sees what and when. My account can only be searched and found by ‘friends’ and my Facebook information doesn’t show up in a Google search. No one is going to get my phone number or address from its pages and I have set separate lists so I can control what my (now ex) students can and cannot see on my Facebook pages. Let’s see how all of this can be achieved….
Log in to Facebook and follow along if you like…
Once you’ve clicked “Privacy Settings” you’ll see the first item in the list is “Connecting on Facebook”.
Facebook Connection Options
Click “View Settings”.
Here’s how mine are set up:
Control who can find you and what they can see…
Each of the drop down menus to the right of the menu options can be changed. You can see for example that only my Friends can search for me on Facebook but that anyone is able to send me a Facebook request, send me a message and see my current home town. Only my friends can see my other friends and my activities information. For my education and work settings, you can see how I have limited this even further by creating a group… My students can not see my work and education settings at all. If all of these settings were at “everyone” then that really does mean EVERYONE who has an internet connection can see EVERYTHING posted about you on Facebook. It’s worth checking that you information is secure.
Once you’re done changing settings here, click on “Back to Privacy” (Found in the top left hand corner).
The second menu system on the Privacy Settings page is “Sharing on Facebook”. This is where you can change who sees the information that you (or other people) are adding about you on the site. The default settings, in my opinion, leave you a little open…
Facebook Security - Sharing Default
Everyone can see all status updates, all photos and posts, they can see your personal information in the form of a ‘bio’ and can see your family and relationship information… Too much information for my liking. Especially when you consider those photographs that ‘everyone’ can see could have been uploaded and ‘tagged’ by someone other than yourself!
My advice? Click on Custom and personalise how this all operates. To do this choose “Custom” from the right and then click on the link that says “Customise settings” in the center. Below is a screen shot of some of the options that are then open to you. You’ll see that there is a lot of flexibility over who can see what. In the same way in which we change settings on the “Connecting” Facebook menu options, we simply drop down the lists at the end of each statement and choose who to share with.
Facebook Security - Customise Sharing Options
You might have noticed that in my settings I have statements such as “except: Students”. When you’re dropping down menus you’ll notice the options to “customise… edit”. Yep, there are even more custom security options there. By creating lists of people you can choose who, from your friends, can see what. You could divide them into professional and personal “Facebook Friends” for example or, as I have done, a list of ex-students who want to keep in touch.
Obviously, this amount of security is great for us as professionals, but it is something to be aware of as a parent. If your child knows about these settings then, despite you being Facebook friends, they could be choosing to place all of their family into a list so that they can restrict what you see. Apparently, in the world of Facebook, children are able to make these wise choices at age 13…. It may, therefore, not be enough to just be friends with your child. With younger members of the Facebook community I would suggest that you have their password and they have to ask you to log them on for supervised sessions. By the time they’re at uni, however, you might want to encourage them to add you to a list! There are somethings you just won’t want to see! lol
Facebook Security - Creating Lists - Edit Friends
How do you create these lists? Well, head back to the top of your Facebook screen and choose “Account”. This time, select “Edit Friends”. Doing so will bring up a complete list of all of your Facebook Friends. It’s from here you can hit the little cross to delete people. It’s also from here that you can begin to create your lists to separate personal from professional! To the right of the word “Friends” You’ll see the option to “Create a list”
Facebook Security - Create a list
Click this button and you’ll be prompted to give your list a name and to add people to it. Once you’re done you’ll see a list of your erm… ‘lists’ appear on the left hand side of the Facebook page. Now, if you want to you can use the option to “customise… edit” on each of the drop down menus in the ‘Privacy Settings’. For example, this could mean that your friends can see your pictures and what’s written by others on your wall but not those in the list “professional” or “students”. Thus, making it all a lot more secure and most importantly giving you control over who sees what.
I know, there are a lot of settings here. But shouldn’t we be sharing this information with both students and colleagues? Not only to help make Facebook a safer place but also to protect ourselves now and in the future…
Update: @heyjudeonline just posted this one on Twitter… Perfect!
Firstly, I’ll let Jensen Harris from Microsoft show you around the new system.
Now, what strikes me as interesting is the way this new system is geared towards fingers on screens. Not keyboards and Mice but swipes and gestures and APPs. Even the traditional Microsoft products like Office are being described here as “Apps” rather than “programs” or “Software Packages”. Apart from the death of words like those, this really could change everything. I know, I know, that’s Apple’s favourite saying but even their operating system isn’t designed in this way. Will it be?
Will laptops with Keyboards and Mice become a thing of the past. Will laptop trolleys in the classroom with 1.5 hour battery life be replaced with slates that can manage 10 hours? I know that would help me a lot. There’s nothing worse than booking those laptops, only to discover someone used them the lesson before and they have no battery power left! Perhaps things like this product from RM ( The Windows Slate) will actually take some precedent over the iPad 1:1 choices that are being made at the moment.
Will we stop needing massive IT classrooms with dedicated computer desks? We’ve already been able to reclaim space by moving to slimmer machines but what if those machines were in the desk? I mean, you could couldn’t you? You could place a slate, with windows 8, into a dip in a desk and (with the help of wi-fi) have an interactive, fully functional device from which to study, research and collaborate.
Do you think this will have an impact? What do you envisage?
How can you help visual learners understand the intricacies of the structure of a text? How can you help them see “a writer at work” let alone give them an opportunity to demonstrate “some detailed exploration of how structural choices support the writer’s theme or purpose,” (Reading AF 4, Level 6). What about helping them to “Analyse text structures” (ACELT1772 Year 9 Lit) so that they can then analyse and evaluate ( (ACELT1774) Year 10) what they see?
Have you thought about using Excel? I know! Maths, graphs, numbers in an English lesson… but it works! The example you see on the left shows how the tension rises and falls in one of the scenes in the play version of Frankenstein. Here we can clearly see how the author deliberately gets his audience to relax before scaring us half to death! Most students think that tension is built in a steady, rising, crescendo like structure. This visual way of presenting the information really helps them to see how the author is making choices to maximize the structure. Just imagine what the end of “An Inspector Calls” looks like!
Great for:
UK
APP
AF4 –identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level
AF6 – identify and comment on writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the overall effect of the text on the reader
Text structure and organisation: Understand that authors innovate with text structures and language for specific purposes and effects (ACELA1553)
So…. How does this all work?
First of all choose a short section of text in which an author has used structure to create an effect. Let’s take an extract from A Christmas Carol for example… after all Scrooge is waiting for a ghost isn’t he? There must be some tension there but how is Dickens creating it with structure?
Rate each event from 1 -5
Read the extract together and then ask your students to summarize it in 10-20 short sentences. These should be the key moments that occur. Whilst they’re working on that get Excel open. Ask one of the students to come up and be your scribe. Their job is to input each of the events into a column. Obviously, as this is a task being completed with the help of the whole class you might need to move events around to fit in bits we might have forgotten… copy and paste will let them do this with ease.
Once that’s done ask the students to rate each event in relation to the effect that is trying to be created. In this instance, we were looking at tension so each event is being given a rating from 1-5 for its scariness.
Now for the really visual bit…
Using your left mouse button, click and drag over all of the statements and numbers to highlight them. Head to the Insert Ribbon and choose “line” from the selection of graphs available.
Christmas Carol Tension Graph
Et Voila! Excel has provided you with an instant, visual representation of the structure. This can then be used to examine the way (in this case) tension rises and falls and can lead to conversations about why it does so. You have enabled your students to see the structure clearly so that they are able to make judgement about the reasons why this technique has been used, what’s it’s purpose is and how it affects the reader.
Of course, it can also be cool to ask each student to create their own in isolation. We can then compare how each individual reacted and have a conversation about how effective this technique has really been on a range of readers!
As usual let me know how you get on in the comments! I love hearing how different students react to this and how teachers adapt it
Even if they forgot to bring it to school, have no printer/ink/credit etc. (we’ve all heard the excuses), with the internet being readily available in homes, schools and libraries there is no longer any excuse for your students not to hand their homework or coursework in on the day of a given deadline. If a student turns up without their work, I just ask, “Do you have the internet?”. Students are always happy to reply with an “Of course” ( with a ‘don’t be ridiculous this is the 21st century’ smirk on their face) I then add “Do you have an email address? Do you know how to attach files?” Again, they reply with a confident “of course”. It’s at this point that I tell them to email it to me by 6pm that day. It’s also at this point that those who have been telling me little white lies will go a pale and mutter “ok” reluctantly. (and we get to smirk instead *cue inner evil laughter* )
Comments around a Macbeth Essay
Yes, you can accept their homework or coursework by email and yes it is even possible to mark it in Word and email it back. Saving trees and giving students very clear steps to follow to improve their work. There have been several occasions where I have taught a student who has been struggling with their coursework and they have found this method of working a real help. They email me a draft, I add comments in the way I am about to show you and then sent it right back to them. If you allow, second and third drafts start to appears and this extra help is really appreciated when their grades start to rise as a result.
Of course, it is also handy to have a digital copy of work so that if it is ever lost you always have something in your email inbox folder for emergencies and you’ve got a copy of all of their drafts if you ever need to show the progress that they are making.
In this example I am using Microsoft Word 2010. For instructions using Office 07 please click here.
To add comments to the text you’re marking you’ll need to use the “Review” ribbon.
The Review Ribbon Word 2010
Before we start let’s check our Review settings…
You might want to share these with your students too.
In the review ribbon your settings should like this:
In the top menu you need to select “Original: Show Markup
In the “Show Markup” setting make sure that everything is ticked and in the balloons menu choose “Show only comments and Formatting Balloons”
To use the comments simply highlight the specific sentence you want to comment on (by holding your left mouse button over the words and dragging) and then click the “new comment” icon; this will place a bracket around the words you want to comment upon and add a comment bubble to the right of your page. Simply type into this bubble. Your students will be able to see exactly which phrase or word you are commenting on.
Deleting comments as you go
You’ve created a tick list of tasks that they can delete as they go! As they work through the comments all they have to do is right click and choose “delete comment”.
Students like this very precise way of marking for several reasons.
1. They know exactly which bit you’re talking about
2. The get feedback faster and feel like they’re editing rather than rewriting (most of the time!)
3. They can delete your comments as they go, making sure that they address each point in turn.
Firstly, this post is an apology that the blog has been a little quiet over the last couple of weeks. In truth, I’ve had lots of ideas about what to share with you but I have had little time to get them down here! I’ve been busy adding to the content of the new Computers in Education Group of South Australia (CEGSA) website; I think I wrote 3 posts there last week! I’ve also been busy getting settled into my job at Flinders University. I am now employed to work as an ICTPO – an ICT Pedagogical Officer (rathe than the telebtubby name it sounds like). What a fantastic role it is too!
have in relation to ICTE (ICT in Education) the ACARA (The Aussie Curriculum) and the National Standards for graduate teachers.
