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  I can't help but dream about a kind of criticism that would not try to judge, but bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea-foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply, not judgments, but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes - all the better. All the better. Michel Foucault

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Is “Never Again” little more than a catchphrase?

Having been teaching for only a few years, I am often taken by surprise that students know little or nothing about international events or historical personalities. For example, most students have no idea who Bill Clinton is; they have never heard of Yugolslavia; when I mention Lenin, they only know John Lennon; and recently, when I referred the Holocaust, most students had a vague idea (at best) of what I was talking about.

Learning about genocide is an important lesson in how prejudice and bigotry can destroy democratic societies and result in the deaths of millions of people. The UN Genocide Convention, passed in 1948, was based on the sentiment of “Never Again”. Never again, it was supposed, would the world remain silent and allow systemic racial hatred to fester into genocide. However, 50 years on, we now know that we have been doomed to witness history repeat itself in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and today in the Sudan. According to the Genocide Education Project, genocides and other forms of mass murder killed 170 million people, more than all the international wars of the 20th century combined. At a time when we talk more and more about globalisation, an awareness of tolerance, human rights, ethics, personal responsibility, and the consequences of their absence, is vital.

The World is Witness, a new “geoblog” from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative, in partnership with Google Earth, documents and maps genocide and related crimes against humanity. The blog has first hand accounts of the effects of genocide and war. The blog also hosts, the Voices on Genocide Prevention, a bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, with insights from human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials.

Via its mapping initiative, USHMM has been using Google Earth and animated maps for a few years now to help people better understand Holocaust history and to raise awareness of the current threats of genocide across the globe.

“The Holocaust took place across the entire European continent, and for all of Europe’s Jews, as well as other victims of Nazism, geography played a major role in determining their fate. The Mapping Initiative shows key Holocaust sites and historic content from the Museum’s collections. The initiative also includes information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.”

The Cambodian Genocide Project has compiled and published 22,000 biographic and bibliographic records, and over 6,000 photographs, along with documents, translations, maps, and an extensive list of books and research papers on the genocide, as well as the interactive Cambodian Geographic Database, CGEO, which includes data on: Cambodia’s 13,000 villages; the 115,000 sites targeted in 231,00 U.S. bombing sorties flown over Cambodia in 1965-75, dropping 2.75 million tons of munitions; 158 prisons run by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime during 1975-1979, and 309 mass-grave sites with an estimated total of 19,000 grave pits; and 76 sites of post-1979 memorials to victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Genocide Intervention Network empowers individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Its “members envision a world in which the global community is willing and able to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities. As part of the anti-genocide movement, we raise both money and political will for civilian protection initiatives around the world.”

Other Resources:

According to Reuters, more than half (58%) of Australian adults turned off their lights to support the second year of Earth Hour on Saturday night (March 29). In an amazing demonstration of the powers of viral marketing, Earth Hour made its way across the globe with an estimated 30 million people taking part worldwide.

Started in Sydney in 2007 to raise awareness of the effects of our dependency on coal-fired electricity, Earth Hour spread to 35 cities across the globe in 2008. Last year, more than 2.2 million Sydneysiders and over 2100 businesses switched off lights and non-essential electrical appliances, leading to a 10% energy reduction across the city. This year, 30 million people in 35 cities turned off their lights for 60 minutes by the time “Earth Hour” — which started in Suva in Fiji and Christchurch in New Zealand — completed its cycle westward.

Earth Hour aims to encourage people to make changes that will help achieve its ultimate goal of reducing emissions by 5%.

Interested in History? Keen to explore the past?

Based on the BAFTA award-winning TV series, Timelines.tv is a free, new and exciting on-line history resource.
“It offers a wealth of quality TV documentary, arranged on interactive historical timelines that put you in control of your journey through the past. Timelines.tv spans the centuries. It’s rich in detail, full of great stories and fascinating flavour. But more than that: it shows how those details ‘connect’.”

I love finding a new history resource, and with a keen interest in British history, I think this site is fantastic. Beginning with the Norman Conquest, 1066 and ending with the Death of Industry, 1984, Timelines.tv has a wide range of video material from the Medieval Manor, Magna Carta, the first parliaments, The Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, Shakespeare’s World, The East India Company, The Rights of Man, the Peterloo Massacre, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, The Dawn of Democracy, The Rise of Labour, A Golden Age 1900-1914 and more.

This is a history lovers’ treasure trove.

Via Doug Belshaw

Helping students take control of their own learning is one of the most important challenges facing teachers. The (inquiry or constructivist) approach is based on providing students with opportunities to formulate their own research and create “artifacts” or “products” that demonstrate their understanding and skill development. However, it often becomes glaringly obvious that “research” to many students involves taking the information from the first couple of web sites that appear from a google search, cobbling it together and “voila” - there it is. This is a long way from the goal of students as knowledge “producers”. Teaching students how to evaluate the reliability of information remains one of the most important literacy skills.

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site is useful to show just how easily students can be manipulated by a professional “looking” web site.

This AfterEd video (Teachers’ College, Columbia University) discusses the importance of providing students with “educated guidance on how to use new media” and helps debunk the assumption that buying lots of computer hardware will meet students’ 21st century literacy needs.

Some key “critical literacy” questions it advocates include:
How was this text contructed?
What are its underlying values?
What are the conventions it uses?
Who is the intended audience?
Who owns and who benefits from this?

Video via: Multiliteracies

This Department of Education Tasmania site also has activities and work samples

Compfight is a new search tool that allows you to search for images hosted on flickr (including creative commons options).

Described as “currently the most widely read worldwide study of what should lie at the heart of an education revolution” (SMH, Dec 2007), the McKinsey report, looked at the qualities of the world’s best performing schools in 2006 and 2007. Some of the most interesting points can be drawn from the case study of Finland, which scores highest in international literacy, numeracy, scientific and problem solving despite having no national testing system and one of the world’s least prescriptive curricula.The following are some of the defining characteristics:

Getting the right people to be teachers

• Finland recruits its teachers from the top 10 per cent of graduates
• Finland has introduced a first-round in its teacher selection process which consists of a multiple-choice examination designed to test literacy, numeracy and problem- solving skills.
• The top-scoring candidates then go through to the second round in the selection procedure which is run by individual universities. Applicants are tested for their communication skills, willingness to learn, academic ability and motivation for teaching.
• Finland limits the number of places on teaching training so that the supply of teachers matches demand.
• Finland, like Australia, frontloads its compensation by paying good starting salaries, but relative to other OECD countries, subsequent increases in salary are small with a difference between the average starting salary and the maximum teacher salary of only 18 percent.
• Teaching is seen as a high status profession in the eyes of the general public in Finland.

Developing teachers into effective instructors

• Finnish teachers work together, plan their lessons jointly, observe each others’ lessons and help each other improve.
• Most faculties of education manage their own training schools: these are fully operational schools where students carry out their initial teaching practice.
• Teachers are given one afternoon each week for joint planning and curriculum development.
• Schools are encouraged to work together and share materials so that best practice spreads quickly throughout the system.

Ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction to each child

• Finland has arguably one of the least prescriptive curricula of all systems. It emphasises the need for teachers to adapt learning to the specific context in which they find themselves, while at the same time setting high expectations for what should ultimately be achieved.
• Finland has largely dispensed with national examinations, conducting only periodic assessments of student performance, the results of which stay confidential.
• Finnish children start preschool at age six and school at age seven and in primary school they study for just four to five hours per day; yet by age 15, Finnish children top the world in the OECD’s assessments of reading, mathematics, science and problem-solving.
• Finland has a highly effective system of interventions to support individual students. Through intervening quickly at the level of individual students, Finland prevents early failure compounding into long-term failure, and thus maintains strong and consistently equitable outcomes for all students.

Source: McKinsey & Company (2007), How the World’s Best-performing School Systems Come Out on Top, http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/resources/pdf/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf

I am currently at Apple’s Innovative Technology Schools Conference at UTS, Sydney, Australia. This is the 18th year the conference has run, and my first visit, so I’m hoping to reflect on what I’ve done this year and work out ways that I can better utilise our 1:1 environment in 2008.
Today’s keynote was delivered by Stephanie Hamilton, Apple’s global education K-12 rep.
She began by discussing how Australia was in an interesting educational landscape following Labor’s election win as the government has indicated that education (in its words an “education revolution”) is the no. 1 national priority, see this post

The keynote theme was “Keeping up in a changing world” and for anyone interested in the ever-evolving nature of the read/write web this is an apt subject because staying abreast of innovation is probably one of the main challenges.

She discussed how the challenges include “how are you going to take it to the masses”, as there are “pockets of expertise” but the challenge is “spreading expertise so that it is systemic within schools” and that “systemic instances of success are the thing to look for…”

Stephanie discussed how people often refer to the “biggest challenge is getting teachers ready for technology”. She pointed out how many people have been using technology since the 80s- “how long does it take? Why isn’t it moving to general audience?”
Challenge of keeping up – you think I’m really good at this but it’s so yesterday

Much of the presentation was about Change:

– the only constant in life
- The road to the 21st century is paved with
- Lifelong learning implies

I would add: Change is the only thing you can depend on

“Teaching as the only “risk averse” occupation”

Changing technology
Changing learner
Changing world

She discussed the ideas of the usual names rolled at conferences – Daniel Pink, Wikinomics, The Long Tail, The Wisdom Crowds, (think Wikippedia/Twitter) with the “did you know” video allusions about how many honour students China has etc. - am so bored by this line of thinking… anyway
She also discussed the new skills required in emering economies and how Berkely Engineering grads now must major in social science first

New economy – personalisation

One of the best quotations (from an Australian student) was that “school is like taking a QANTAS flight – sit down, face forward, strap yourself in and turn off all your electronic devices …”
“If your lucky, the trip will be relevant. If not, you’ll be able to resume your life in 3-5 hours”

The best part of this keynote, because if you read blogs etc., you would have heard most of it before, was that the challenge is to embrace the “ad hoc” nature of the read/write web and to build engaging learning environments. “The characterising features of these are that they are highly creative, ad hoc netoworks – IT guys don’t like ad hoc” - this is whole notion of PLNs –

Stephanie pointed out how most people find “ad hoc scary – everything is [should be] siloed and locked down” i.e schools desire that everything is hosted “in house” and teachers there will be some magical piece of software that will serve all your needs and you won’t keep learning new programs/engines/OS etc. but  anyone who has watched the web 2.0 phenomon knows there “ain’t” no such thing. It appears that change is defining feature of our tech-driven society.

tag: itsc07

There has been lots of discussion about realising student participation in the edublogosphere in the past year. Driven be a belief that students “should be participating in our edublogger conversations on an equal footing, as equal partners”, Clay Burrell and others have helped students set up Student 2.0, a blog that is “administered, designed, edited, and written by a global mix of students of varying ages, interests, voices, and points of view, Students 2.0 will feature content written by both staff writers and guest contributors. From Hawaii and Washington, from St. Louis and Chicago, from Vermont, New York, Scotland, Korea, and other points on the globe, these writings will be united in one central aspect: quality student writing, full-voiced and engaging, about education.”

A great quote by Barry Vercoe, one of the six founding professors of the MIT MediaLab from Ewan McIntosh

How does innovation occur?

The future is not to predict but to design… Innovation comes from:

• a clash of cultures
• clash of disciplines
• clash of ways of doing things
• high tolerance of failure

In the words of Woody Allen: “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
Photo: DanCoyote’s New Art Sim

From Lee Lefever at Common Craft

An election has just been held in Australia and will bring a Labor government into power after 11 years of Liberal (Conservative) Party rule. The first priority of the new government, according to Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, is an “education revolution”. The key planks of this policy include promises to link every school to a proposed national high-speed broadband network and to give every student in years 9 to 12 access to their own computer through tax rebates worth $2.3 billion to low- and middle-income parents.

While this is potentially exciting, it will take more than computer hardware to help students develop innovative and adaptive thinking and interpersonal skills. Hopefully, this may also encourage a rethink in education to allow for genuinely collaborative, deep, creative, critical, interdisciplinary and process-based learning rather than content-based and test dominated curricula that predominate in most areas.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this may lead…

Photo: flickr: Quick Step by Kiri

I’ve been too busy to blog anything thoughtful lately as I try to tame the beastly workload that comes at the end of the school year, so I was really chuffed to be shortlisted for the 2007 Edublogs Awards for best new blog. There are some fantastic writers/teachers/thinkers who are using the read/write web to connect with others who are passionate about creating education systems and classrooms that are progressive and engaging. Many people say that they write for the reflection that blogging allows (and it does), but for me blogging is about being inspired by, and connecting with, other teachers who are also on the slippery slope of learning in a world changed by technology.

Check out the nominees here:

1. Best individual blog
2. Best group blog
3. Best new blog
4. Best resource sharing blog
5. Most influential blog post
6. Best teacher blog
7. Best librarian / library blog
8. Best educational tech support blog
9. Best elearning / corporate education blog
10. Best educational use of audio
11. Best educational use of video / visual
12. Best educational wiki
13. Best educational use of a social networking service
14. Best educational use of a virtual world

Just found this Digital Arts for Multiple Intelligences wiki by Clay Burell, via Watson Common.

There is a MI questionnaire, along with a range of activities “to see which “Digital Arts” might be most enjoyable for you to explore in iLife and Web 2.0“.

As I expected, I fall mostly in the linguistic, intrapersonal intelligence and am very lacking in most of the other areas. This is a really useful resource.

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