Movember

I guess we are all entitled to one off task post.
I am growing a mo for mens' health.
Here it is day 15.
Donations go to great cause will post pic again later.
















Using xbox camera and skype for video snapshot.

Five minutes on economic impact

This is intended to be a five minute post on one to one computing and price point.
While not the only issue things have to be affordable for parents and schools.
The price of the same Acer Aspire one netbook as gone up 20 percent in the past month.
Ouch !!!
So the contenders are

• The classmate pc
• The acer Aspire one
• The eeepc approx

Not sure if they have all gone up but:
What we would need to see is: offsetting this against other costs such as stationary
but also an improvement in student learning.
This is notoriously hard to measure.

Here is hoping the parent jury value and believe that a good teacher will see
students learning to learn and showing exciting outcomes and understandings
from a 1 to 1 experience.













By the way the classmate is my favorite because of the price/performance

And oops took 10 mins of time for post looks like price of time has also gone up

What matters matters

The things changing in education should be carefully considered.
If you read/view any post on this blog make it this one.

• Why change?
• What is the purpose?

Two years ago our school moved a learning plan system that included
student voice and presence at parent interviews.

It made the learner central to this. At the time we had student interview some teachers and students who had been through the process.

• It was change!
• It had purpose!

• It worked!

The above clip shows a teacher who carefully considers why he does things.
With the introduction of the learning plan he considered what would take the learner further.
He considered the purpose for the learner and what might effect them in the process.

I feel we need to this more. Engage learners and give them purpose and it will work too.

Face 2 Face has online down for count?

Get engaged?

Wanting to reflect on what face to face and what online communication
and learning had to offer. I used the following to stir my thinking pot about it.

• The Face to Face curve
• Average retention rates Pyramid
• The Australian article about students saying no podcasts
  

The Face To Face Curve

While not dismissing online interactions this representation points to some thing special
happening in face to face environments. It makes some sense to me having just been to the big face to face of Ulearn08. I believe that huge learning that can happen when we txt, blog, read and comment within our personal learning networks. The people we are involved with in these
spaces are more filterable and subject to our moderation. The New Zealand educators in my learning network may get verified by f2f meetings but there can be an interaction richness long before this. It would lead me to think that f2f can provide alot but the essence of effective learning may come about from other nuances likely to exist in that environment.



























Average Retention Rates



















The average retention diagram (from USA's National Training Laboratory)has some other insights in my mind as to what we might look for to maximise learning.
Given the f2f curve's proposition that communication, capability and richness increase as we approach a f2f threshhold the average retention throws down a different perspective.

Much participatory and active learning achievement can come from engagement in online learning.

Even some physical achievements are virtualised and placed online as performances, document of construction and actual events.

In fact the face to face often is now recorded to become the digital artifact.

Many bloggers have posting as a part of a personal learning network that has perhaps more emotional engagement and nuance (perhaps stretching it) than we would expect.

Facilitating f2f meetings will bring most for these bloggers when the same discussion groups, teaching of others and practice by doing is afforded by the face to face experience.

(note this diagram has been ousted as a hoax)

Students say no to Podcasts

Which brings me to no wonder we have students saying no to the lack of inspiration, encouragement and isolation where online learning is not well constructed and understanding interaction richness.

E-day and beyond

Took a whole lot of equipment to the e waste day in Hamilton and was suprised with
a line up of cars queuing to drop off e waste. There were people being sent away who had trailers
of stuff. We had been stock piling crt screens which had been replaced with more energy efficient LCDs. We also had some wireless cards that were no longer compatible with our network.

It was good to see proactive people organising this waste.
We are a small country but we collected
over 900 tonnes of equipment.

“All equipment collected through eDay will be recycled by accredited recyclers who have advised us that over 95% of the materials in a computer can be recovered and re-used. Precious materials such as copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver can all be recovered from e-waste and turned into new products instead of being dumped in landfills,” said Mr Zwimpfer in Wellington.

What still scares me is that some one in China will probably burn off the plastic and inhale
the toxic fumes of disposal, wade in heavy metals etc.

To improve our sustainability we can purchase equipment designed for its end of life
and with less impact in its life.

Envirochips - the low power consumption of the intel atom chipset makes it the sustainability pick for all but higher end video editing tasks.

Three desktop units that may be suitable are

Asus EEEpc desktop








Shuttle x27







Very Pc company








And we need to have a way to recycle these with less burning and looting.

Looking at visual literacy yet again

This is a simple but effective shaping example taken from a class at Selwyn Ridge on a visit a while back. Take photo white out tshirt shape. Write bio poem or similar. Nice so good to see a real image with the writing.

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Visual literacy

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