The day a wiki harnassed the goodwill of unknown colleagues...

In 2005 with help from my school I created Beyond Borders to facilitate collaborative online projects between students around the globe.

I'm very proud that we now have almost 2,500 users, over 50 projects, with schools in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Korean, Saudi Arabia, Canada and America.

Many of the projects run in a nominated language, which is not necessarily English.

To help teachers use Beyond Borders, I created a DVD with tutorial videos.

I wanted to subtitle it in as many languages as possible. Now, although Beyond Borders has won funding, it hasn't won enough to professionally subtitle it.

So I set up a wiki! (What is a wiki? Click here, it is a simple document that anyone can edit.) You can set up a wiki in a minute or two, for free. I used the wikispaces website.

You can see the wiki I set up here: http://beyondbordersdvd.wikispaces.com/

The wiki is not locked. Anyone at all can just show up at the page and contribute anonymously. The wiki has an English transcript of the DVD. Anyone at all can just show up and replace the English with the translation.

I sent out word as far and wide as I could to colleagues. Please, if you could just translate a sentence or two into one of a number of languages?


That was about 8 weeks ago.

Over that time, a pool of unseen labour has sprung up and gotten a lot of the work done as if by magic. The Indonesian and Korean translations are done, and much progress has been much in French, Italian and Chinese versions.

Another advertisement for some more help, and a few more weeks, and the job will be done!

Wikis are revolutionary, powerful, democratic. Wikis harnass goodwill. Thanks to everyone who helped !

Mobile blogging, deep breath in, here we go

Hello World, I've successfully moved my website from Drupal, which was clearly out of my depth, to TypePad, which any fool could use (that's me!).

Mobile Blogging
Right, here we go! I've not only got 5 or 6 mobile blogging projects about to launch at my school, I've also just heard that I'll be presenting at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference in August on these very projects. Click here for the conference program and info.

So... the projects had better go ahead, and I hope they'll be successful. I'm in the process of sending out permission notes to parents.

Why bother with permission notes? The most obvious issue is the costs involved with blogging from their mobile phones, and the possibility that students might not, shock horror, have a mobile phone, although any mobile will do.

I also feel it is important to be upfront with parents about the other two key issues: privacy and copyright. I think these issues are easily managed, so easily managed that it is almost not worth mentioning.

However, as a principle, fear is often generated by vagueness. Fear lurks in shadowy hypotheticals. There is a vague fear about the Internet. By breaking it down to specific issues I hope to pre-empt any parental anxiety that might arise from that vague fear about the Wild Wild Web.

"What could possibly go wrong?" I like to ask myself. Very little, when you break it down to specifics.

Although, I must admit, I've been a little hesitant about involving our music students in podcasting their music. It's been burning at the back of my head for months, ever since I heard a couple of students perform a brilliant song they had composed. In this case, copyright is a real problem. If we post their work to the Internet, they may get recognition, but they also lose control of their intellectual property. Is this a ridiculous concern? I know a lot of musicians publish their songs freely on the net, and there is a lot of truth to the new principle that the more you give something away for free, the more it is now worth. I'll have to sort my thoughts on this out soon.

Anyway, more on copyright and privacy in a later post.

In the meantime, welcome to the new version of www.happysteve.com, dedicated to my journeys in education, technology, and innovation. If you want to see my more casual material, not necessarily professional but hopefully entertaining, pop over to http://stevecollis.blogspot.com.

I welcome any comments, it will be nice to know if this is being read. Stay tuned for updates about how these projects go.

List of Projects about to Launch:
senior French students posting on Twitter
junior English students blogging about the novel "A Fortunate Life"
senior English students mobile blogging about Wordsworth, from urban and natural locations!
Geography students mobile blogging about landscape and cityscape features
online Software Design and Technology students giving mobile audio updates about their work as a means of being accountable

Stay tuned for more information.

P.S.
I cannot say how impressed I am with the Primary School project-based learning website: www.nbcsgreenfingers.com, run by my colleague Anne Sharkey. The website has been a focal point for a unit of work on horticulture, and has raised over $100 via a simulated consultancy service. More on student publishing to come!

ELH2008: Student Publishing and Mobile Phones

ELH2008: Student Publish and Mobile Phones

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS WITH IDEAS FOR HOW YOU'D USE MOBILE BLOGGING FOR DIFFERENT AGES AND SUBJECT AREAS. e.g. Maths students could record jingles to help remember equations.

Some links on managing issues of student copyright and privacy:

Victorian Guidelines

NetAlert

Guidelines from New Zealand

Here are some examples of students publishing content on the Internet:

Projects I've had a hand in:
www.youtube.com/FrenchFM - my French students produce radio shows linked thematically to the
Encore Tricolore French textbook series.

www.frenchonlinelittleprince.wordpress.com - my senior French students publishing content about the famous French children's book "The Little Prince". The site is still under construction.

www.nbcsgreenfingers.com
- a pretend business website set up by teacher Anne Sharkey for Year 3
to simulate a horticulture consultancy service. Questions were taken
from the public and answered by Year 3 and a donation requested for a
charity for Cambodia. Over $100 raised so far! The Year 3 teacher has
integrated this website into her teaching - a fine example of 'project
based' learning. 

http://australianenvironment.wordpress.com - for Year 9 Geography students to post photos and an audio description of Australia from their mobiles.

http://wordsworthreflections.wordpress.com/ A grand success! Year 11 English students posting blogs about Wordsworth's nature poetry from the midst of poetry.

How I Set Up Mobile Blogging:

(Ok, first of all - permission notes to parents!)

#1 I created a WordPress.com blog.

#2 I created a NEW username/password with “Edit” access to
the WordPress.com blog.

#3 Students create an account at utterz.com.

#4 I give them all the same WordPress username/password, which
they use to set up cross-posting to WordPress. (In future I want to give EACH
student a separate wordpress username/password) To do this, they log in at Utterz.Com, then click on "cross-posting". Cross-posting means that Utterz logs into the final wordpress.com website and publishes their work on their behalf. Student -> utterz -> wordpress. In this way all blogs are funneled together.

NOTE: Student RING UP a local number to record audio. They EMAIL images or video or text to go@utterz.com up to 10 minutes BEFORE ringing up, and utterz will combine all elements into one blog post.

Student Publishing by Others:

I was first inspired to try running student publishing projects by a presentation by Will Richardson last August. His websites are here and here.

The projects he referenced are:
http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/bees/ a class publishing a guide to a book and even interviewing the author and publishing the interview.

http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/shows/Willowcast24.html a radio show all about ants by
Primary school students

Also, check out these student blogging websites:

http://greenup2145.ning.com- (Teacher is, I think, Dean Groom) (using the services of ning.com!)

and The Secret Life of Bees by students with the teacher Jo Mcleay    (using wikispaces.com)

Edublogs

http://edublogs.org a blogging/website creation service tailored beautifully to the needs of educators and students. I haven't used it yet but what immediately catches my eye is the ability for you to set up blogs for each of your students, and then have a central page where all these blogs are linked together.