I have had a great month of June.  I have worked non stop, even through the weekends.  The highlights have been the tutorials site going live.   I have also been working with osteopaths in Auckland and with tourism operators in North Canterbury working with them to show how social media tools can be used to reach out and inform their target audiences.  The schedule has been punishing, but the outcomes and rewards have been more than worth it.  Finally, today I have learned that I have been accepted to present at the ITOC conference in August.  Hopefully this will open up a whole new avenue of opportunity for me in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks to Simon Evans who alerted me to the impending deadline for submission of papers to this year’s Ulearn11 conference, I have now submitted my proposals. This year I have submitted four breakout proposals and now have to wait to see which, if any, of the suggested ideas will be accepted by the organizing committee.

Will know soon enough.

Composed and published via iPad using Wordpress’ iPad app.

I purchased an iPad last week and have spent the last week or so checking out it’s potential for learning.

There is no doubt that the app store has a plethora of tools that meet the enrichment layer of the e-learning strands. But I have been looking for tools of collaboration and publishing. I will be posting my reflections on this great content consumption tool over the next few weeks. What I am looking for is the other layers of e-learning and how this tool can facilitate this in the classroom. Watch this space.

What you should know is that this post has been written on the iPad via the Wordpress app… So easy content creation is an option…

Dragontape has been on my resources page for a while now, it is a great tool but convincing teachers to see its learning potential is sometimes hard. The devastating earthquake and resultant tsunami is a good case in point. Many students will arrive to school on monday morning wanting to talk about this event and dragontape allows teachers to collate, trim and publish video clips into one. Doing this enables teachers to focus on the information they need their students to focus on. It is also a tool that students can use equally well too.

The embedded video below was made in Dragontape from several video sources on Youtube.

The earthquake of 22 February 2011 was a tragic event that will forever mark a point in time for Cantabrians and all of New Zealand. The impact upon the families directly affected by the loss of life and the loss of everything else is one, that for those of us unnafected, can not begin to imagine. The immediate and everlasting change that the shaking ground has wrought on the architectural heritage of Christchurch is a social history marker. And while many are suffering, the events of 22 February and its aftermath are also an opportunity in time to record the impact and change to the fabric of an entire city for all to see.

A tool like History Pin should be used by all the people in Christchurch. I am suggesting that every single home owner, tennant, property owner and business owner (when they are allowed into the restricted cordon) photograph their building as it is today, as it will become over the coming weeks and months; as services are replaced, repaired and life returns to normal and finally when the repairs to each building are completed, each stage of this healing process be recorded in photographs. These photographs should be posted to History Pin and placed in the appropriate Google Maps Street view orientation. Doing this, future generations will be able to see what Christchurch was before the quake, what it is currently and what it will become. It will provide a slice through time for every suburb so that we, who were not affected, can see the true scale of this devastating quake on ordinary people.

From this terrible event it is possible for Christchurch to record the total impact on each suburb, each street corner, each home without prejudice and to document the transition back to normality. If everyone does this simple recording task, with their own home or place of work, a complete record in images of the destruction and rebuilding of Christchurch can be recorded. The web2.0 tools such as Google Maps and History Pin offer us the opportunity to record change as never before. From this bleak moment in time there is the opportunity for clarity, one I think that is too important to ignore.

The latest issue of Interface Magazine is out - issue 29 Term1, February 2011. In my article I discuss some of the issues covered in my Building a 5th wall presentation. So for those of you who did not get to see my presentation, here is some text that can accompany the slides of the previous post:
http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/articles.cfm?c_id=32&id=941

The presentation suffered from the morning after the night before and from those who are in Christchurch with other priorities. However, to the 30 of you who turned up so early after the conference dinner the night before, thank you for making the effort. The reaction to the presentation was overwhelmingly positive. It is all about empowering teachers to make the change today as Scott McLeod implored us to make on Wednesday. The presentation is below:

Carolyn Marino, Principal of Westmere School, reflects here on the impact of e-learning upon the school and students as a whole in 2010.  In this discussion she raises some interesting points that will need to be un-packed in the weeks and terms to come.

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These two videos represent the final two interviews of 2010.  Jenny and Vashti have been integrating e-learning into their classrooms in 2010 and you an see and hear their reflections in these two videos.  Vashti has also recorded student reflections and once she has posted that video I will link to it here.

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Today was my last day at Wakaaranga for 2010.  This school has come so far in one year.  When I started working there at the start of the year there was an overt climate of cynicism about the potential for e-learning.  The staff had been fed a diet of unreliability with the network and had no real clear vision for the power of e-learning.  When I made my presentation to the staff back in early December 2009, the climax was a tangible Tui moment of “Yeah Right!” But a year later, the staff, the school and now the parents all want in to the e-learning programme.  So although this is my last day, I can not wait to get back in there next year to work with a new crop of now willing and not cynical teachers who also want to integrate e-learning into their class programme and witness the increased student engagement, attainment and enthusiasm to learn that other teachers have experienced this year.

Working with Shumba today, she wanted to share her progress this year, unbidden.   Her one condition was not to be videoed, so I recorded her using Audacity.  Listen to what she has to say here:

shumba-reflects-on-2010