My Lead Article for our School Newsletter

Digital Citizenship and the World Wide Web

Steve Collis, Director of Innovation

Technology has changed everything compared to when I was at school.

When I was 9 years old, Dad brought home a "Sinclair Spectrum" computer. I was enamoured, spending my afternoons figuring out how the BASIC code made the computer games work, and then trying to make my own. The graphics weren't quite up to today's standard.

I first noticed the existence of the internet in 1994. Computers had started speaking to each other, and it changed everything. Previously information was scarce, and mostly found in rectangular paper devices called 'books', but now acquiring information became 'crazy easy', like sipping water from a fire hydrant.

When websites became easily writeable everything changed again. Enter stage right Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and a myriad of wannabes. I understand from our Senior High students that 'MySpace' is passé, but Facebook is de jour.

The internet has changed everything. Anthropologist Michael Wesch understated it when he said, 'we'll need to rethink a few things'.

For example, the privacy horse has well and truly bolted, stable door notwithstanding, as millions freely hand over their vital statistics, day to day diaries, and favourite foods to a for-profit company, no less, Facebook, Inc. Does anyone else remember the hullaballoo over the 'Australia Card' in the 80s? No protest this time. If information is power, then Facebook is punch-drunk powerful.

The copyright cat is also out of the bag. Post some authored nugget to the internet and watch it take on a life of its own. The new economics of publishing is crippling the traditional media. I watch YouTube more than television and read blogs more often than the increasingly thinner Sydney Morning Herald.

The new space of the internet brings incredible promise and potential. At NBCS we think carefully about this and how we, as a school, should respond.

At NBCS there is no conspicuous absence
of the very technologies that define students' navigation of day to day life, and will define their future careers. We recognise our ability as older, wiser adults to guide our young people in their navigation of the Wild Wild Web. We work through issues of copyright and privacy with our students, encouraging them to become responsible digital citizens.

Digital citizenship means our young people make informed and carefully considered decisions about what they do and don't publish, that they manage their online identity with great care, and that, respecting copyright, they use 'Creative Commons' licensing to both build on others' intellectual property, and to license their own work generously in turn.

Many NBCS classes, including kindergarten, have online 'blogs' moderated carefully by the teacher, with a careful safety regime that tapers off slowly as students approach Year 12. Our students are publishing poetry, stories and essays. They contribute to our live internet radio station 'BooralieFM'. Their artwork goes on display in our virtual art gallery, whose curator is in Year 8. A growing number of students are now proud authors of proper books that you can order online and receive in the mail (see http://stores.lulu.com/realaudienceproject)

And they have a very real audience! One class website, launched only a few weeks ago, has had 5,933 visitors. Our little bookstore has made 37 sales. A student CD review recently attracted a comment by the musician himself.

Consider how this audience changes a student's perspective on the value of their creativity. No need to wait until 'real life' after Year 12 to contribute to the world. Say your piece now, and be heard. It's empowering, and it breaks the passivity that easily takes hold in the routine of the classroom.

We have a nascent website drawing together all our publishing projects: www.realaudienceproject.com. Use it today to find a class blog, and leave a comment that will bring delight and new enthusiasm to our students.

You'll see at the same site that many NBCS teachers are now actively using blogging and messaging technologies to participate in a vibrant online community of teachers. For instance, Tim Barrett's 'Chaplaincy Matters' blog shows other teachers how the internet can be a vehicle for Jesus' message of reconciliation.

Jesus said we are the 'salt of the earth' and the 'light of the world'. It follows that we are also to be the 'salt of the net' and the 'light of the web', and that we should train our young people to be the same.

Try Teaching Naked

I've just read an excellent article about stripping lecture halls of technology - http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/ (via @mitchsquires and @educatedlife)

Technology is sometimes equated with better teaching. The assumption is that technology is the road to improved learning.

It's much more complicated than that. Technology consists of a wide and varied set of tools that alter our relationships with each other and our relationships with the world. 

In particular technology tends to mitigate or overcome the limitations and tyranny of distance. It can also enhance, or hamper communication. It can hyper-stimulate. It can obfuscate. 

Teachers using technology blindly and without reflection are at best playing a hit and miss game. 

I talk with teachers who seem to feel guilty because they feel they should 'use technology more' - such a vague and general, and DAMNING statement. Introducing technology into a class for the sake of it, out of some general sense that technology = good, may only have the effect of undermining the best thing going for the class - the energy of a real life passionate teacher. 

A useful experiment for me would be to get rid of technology all together, at least for a certain period of time. This would help me notice afresh how technology changes things.

A few other ideas in the article made particular sense to me:

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1. That PowerPoint is the worst thing in the whole wide world. Don't. Use. It. PowerPoint is the violence of written word against the poetry of speech. (My words, and you can quote me!)

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2. That in some sense technology threatens to do away with the teaching role altogether - or to disrupt it. I teach online French. My students barely need me. And they perform better than face to face students doing the same course. My school offers lots of online courses, and we see the same pattern across the board.

So what's the new role of the teacher when the content of the course can be taught without a human being?

Again this is complex. We generally prefer interactions in our learning. We're not robots and it's no fun learning by staring at a computer screen. There's nothing like an informed, entertaining and persuasive orator. 

On the other hand, busing in 1,000 students into a High School, sitting them down in boxes and getting
 them to copy off the board can be done away with. As can sitting down students in a computer room and telling them to type an essay response. The teacher is serving no role except as dictator, director, baby-er, babying the students, spoon feeding them, rendering them passive. 

High School teacher Andrew Douch uses podcasts to deliver much of the basic content of the biology course. Students work through them when and where they want, at a pace that suits. They can repeat sections, skip other sections. His role is re-invented - and his face to face classes are for discussion, exploration, student-driven experimentation.

I've moved down a very similar path and never want to look back.

Now, stripping technology from the classroom seems to me to be an excellent experiment to see what teachers are still good for! 

Give me technology pushed to its logical conclusion, where I can learn unhampered, free from being bossed around by the teacher-king whose subject I am. 

Or give me a room with some peers and one or more enthusiastic experts in the field, and let's just see what we can do when we bring our creative energies together. I'll thank the expert on the way out for spending time in a room with me helping me to delver deeper into the field.

What purpose then, for classic 9am to 3pm schooling, in little battery boxes? I predict (hope) that the traditional school structures will break down over the coming years. It may be a slow erosion as students begin to outsource certain subjects to alternative providers, or it may come suddenly. I hope it happens.

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3. That students who are used to passive learning kick and scream when prompted to take an active role.

Our online students find online study difficult. My students find themselves backed into a corner. They have no teacher bossing them around. They have to take control, take initiative. They almost always end up rising to the occasion, gaining in the process entrepreneurial skills that will benefit them for life. 

But almost universally they don't like the switch! 

Don't expect your students to thank you any time soon if you start stepping back from a directing role and require them to start driving the learning process. 

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In conclusion, I see a very complex relationship between people, technology and teaching. Technology can be a tool for subduing students, pacifying them. 

It can also be a tool for liberating students from the constraints inherent in the industrial model of teaching. 

Getting rid of all technology sounds to me like a great way of finding clarity about just what teachers are still good for. 

Go the whole way and get rid of pen and paper, which is also technology!

Let me know if you have tried this. Let me know how you've observed tech tools being used to dominate or liberate. 

5 Year Plan for Virtual Worlds in Education & Integration with Moodle

We've had our virtual world "Booralie" running for almost a year now and I'm thinking "Where to next?" 

I sent my thoughts to a team of teachers at my school, Northern Beaches Christian School.

Here is that email. I finish with some conclusions as to where we might go next.

Booralie Island was the beginning of a journey - just a beginning. 'Virtual worlds' will increase in relevance over the coming years.

Technology is changing the fabric of how we relate. This is simply a fact. The choice we're left with as educators, is to stand to the side and watch new generations figure it out for themselves without us, or what I'm suggesting: notice the changes and guide our students as we see best, believing that they can benefit from, and NEED, our adult wisdom. Whether you're skeptical of the new space, or embrace it, is irrelevant - the point is to know what's happening and engage with students so that they hear your perspective and are guided by your adult wisdom. What we don't want is a conspicuous silence/absence.

Here is a superb overview of the current state of virtual worlds and current initiatives in education: http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=592 Have a good read of it if you have time, to get up to speed on where things are up to, globally. 

Highly significant is the argument that we now have the 'V' generation - young people who have grown up using virtual worlds. A classic example of this is Club Penguin. So 5 year olds are familiar and comfortable interacting in an online virtual space then this becomes a staple tool of connection - an assumed space just like the internet has been an assumed space for some older students because they've never known a world without it.

So 3D spaces are only going to become more 'normal'. This Gartner report addresses commercial implications of this: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=721008 (the full report costs $200!).

Consider the way that people who can't use the internet are disadvantaged. I wonder if it will become more the case that people who can't navigate and interact in virtual worlds are disadvantaged. The internet as 2D 'pages' may be seen as a dinosaur in some years from now.

So, we're on the right journey with Booralie. But, where to next?

Well, I've learnt a thing or two over the last couple of days:

1. There is at least one example, being implemented as we speak, of a virtual space being made available to every student in an entire country. The country is Scotland. Their intranet system is called 'Glow' and seems to function like Moodle for the masses - a central registration system for all the students in all the schools. Think of that! It's happening now!

A guy called Derek Robertson has set up the virtual space, like Booralie but bigger, and linked the user registration system to the country's 'Glow' system, so any student can log in with their normal username and password.

Enter discovery number 2:

2. There is software that runs very similarly to the 'Second Life' system we use for Booralie Island, but it is open source and free. In Craig's words, as we explored this other system on the weekend together, it is the "Moodle of Virtual Worlds". It is called "OpenSim" - keep that in your vocabulary. I've been aware of it vaguely for a while.

However I have recently discovered that there are companies that will set up and run OpenSim for you at the fraction of the price you'd pay to Linden Lab for a Second Life island. You can have much more space for less money. There are no imposed rules (such as users have to be over 13). There shouldn't be any problem tying it to our LDAP user database, i.e. we could make it so that once a student is on Moodle, they can also enter our virtual 3d space.

Thrown into all this is the "SLOODLE" project - that allows Moodle tools to operate in a 3D environment such as Second Life or Open Sim.

What would your Moodle page look like if it was 3D? If it was a house you could walk through? How would that change the way our students view the subject? Their engagement with it? My students are always asking "Mr Collis where on the Year 8 French page is it?" Imagine if I could reply "It's through the new door at the back of the lounge room." How would you logically set out your Moodle page if it were a house, not a page? Or if it were a beach? Or a space station? Or a café? Or a cave? Or a scene from Kill Bill? After all, visually we're wired for 3D space, not 2D space. Moodle begins to look clunky, doesn't it?

Taking all of those developments into account, I have some specific suggestions for where we go next. I need to research them more, but this is what we should probably be doing and where I think we'll probably end up:

1. I <think> we should leave Second Life and get OpenSim set up instead, with a lot more room, and linked to our Moodle user system. The new space would still be called "Booralie".

2. Therefore, envisage a situation where every teacher knows their students can automatically log into our new Booralie. It's assumed. It's normal. They login using their Moodle password. This means younger students in Primary would be able to log in. (We could, and should have a separate space for Primary).

3. We open up a section of Booralie to other schools. ANY other schools. We use the principles of the Beyond Borders website. We charge a fee to the school, thus making it scalable. We aim for the beginning of 2010 with this, and make it a teacher training course that we offer. We need a name for this space. It will become a name recognised in many schools.

4. Within a year from now, some Moodle courses appear in Booralie, especially our online courses where online students can interact with each other in-world. Within 3 to 5 years from now, many/most of our courses exist in Booralie. Also, every Faculty has space on Booralie. We notice that we take Booralie space for granted like we take the physical space of NBCS for granted.

This is all in my head right now. We'll see how it pans out, won't we!?

A Crazy Idea, All in One Lesson, & Blogged Directly from Class

As I type this, my Year 8 French students are working intensely on making comic strips by taking pictures within our virtual 3D world, which we call "Booralie Island". Now they're making comic strips. I'll paste the comics in amongst this text that I am typing.

COMIC 1, by Sarita, Danielle, and Rebekah

We're going to post the comics at http://nbcsfrench.wikispaces.com which is our website dedicated to publishing resources created by students. We categorise those resources by chapter and textbook, so any teacher or student who is using the same textbook can find resources that match exactly what they're looking at at the moment.

COMIC 2, by Connor, Joel and Ethan

I'd like to think that teachers who would otherwise use the textbook, might direct their students to check out our own special comics. I'd like to think that students will find it interesting to see the work produced by their peers in other places - perhaps it will give them a sense of connection with other French students. Also, it's a heck of a lot of fun. The fact I can find 3 minutes to type this shows they are intensely 'into' the activity. I can hear, right now, students discussing their camera angles for the comic shots! Students are asking for virtual money to buy virtual clothing in the virtual clothing shop to wear for the shots!

Comic 3, by Lee, Daniel D and Daniel MB

It's the sort of activity where, if you're not careful, the students will spend hours and hours getting distracted. I've been very careful to get them moving - keep the comics simple, but let's get them done here and now and have them posted by the end of the lesson. It's now 10 minutes after the end of the lesson, and I am about to publish this blog post and the comics below. This is crucial - I can't sustain uses of technology that take hours of my time. 10 minutes, I can handle!

AHHH We didn't all finish! Out of 6 groups of students, 3 groups finished on time - not a bad start considering I had to teach them how to position the camera in the virtual world, how to take screen shots, add speech bubbles, resize pictures etc. The frenetic pace to the class worked well because the students worked efficiently.

Next time we'll aim higher!

If you have 20 seconds, leave a quick comment and say which city/country you’re from – I’ll show the comments to the students. (I showed them the comments on the lolcatz blog post – you just can’t beat the effect it has on our class perspective!)

“Booralie” Virtual World for High School Learning

"Second Life" is free software that connects you to a 3D virtual space, shared and built by 100,000s of other virtual citizens.

My colleague Mark Liddell and I are presenting at an educators conference that takes place within this virtual world. The virtual world has an audio channel, so you'll be able to hear us speaking and see the slides we present.

We are presenting on our experience of using a 3D virtual space for our High School students. This virtual space we have called "Booralie Island". It is cut off entirely from the adult Second Life virtual world where we are presenting. Booralie Island is only for the students and teachers of our school.

We established the island at the start of this year. We've been using it for both open-ended projects with the students, but also for targeting specific skills.

Below is a summary of what we're presenting. If you'd like to join us but don't have a Second Life account, or have never used it, that's not a problem. Go to
www.secondlife.com
and sign up – follow the instructions to get into the virtual world. You'll appear in a special tutorial area. Find your way out of the tutorial area and onto the main part of Second Life. Then click here and you'll be teleported to right where we're presenting: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20II/231/177/25

The Presentation:

I'm going to start by introducing how we established the island at the start of the year, offering to register students early if they were willing to be 'moderators' of the island.

I also wrote the "Booralie Charter" to which every participant must agree:

We know that in Booralie, this is how we will…

…be

Our real life names we may choose to give out, or we may choose to keep tucked away. Our teachers know who we are. We're all in this together at Booralie. We always work hard to include everyone in our projects, activities and conversations.

…speak

Booralie is for open, public conversations. We will keep private conversations for real life. In Booralie we'll say exactly what we mean so we understand each other.

…work

We'll come into Booralie at the right times that suit our real life.

…enjoy

In Booralie, laughter comes from good times together, and successes.

…create

Everything we do, say or build will make Booralie better. We're in Booralie to learn, explore, build, perform and collaborate.

…share

We are all teachers in Booralie, sharing knowledge and skills freely and actively with each other.

I was very careful to keep statements in the affirmative, and keep them all-encompassing.

I'll describe our registration process to – essentially any student over 13 years old can 'opt-in' and get an account to access the world, but can only login at home with parental permission. Meanwhile we also register swathes of students whose teachers have set them up to use the environment in class.

All the way through our journey I've in mind that we're experimenting and trying to seek out effective practices. Some ideas will work, some won't, but I personally have two key criteria for good use of technology for learning:

1. LOW INPUT – must require minimum effort on the part of the teacher.
   


2. HIGH IMPACT – conversely, must have a real and powerful impact on the students' learning.
   

There are three broad categories of learning activities that take place in Booralie Island. We'll look at them one by one.

The first category is structured activities, run by class teachers for their classes, targeting specific student outcomes.

The second category is unstructured student collaboration, driven entirely by students. Almost every building on the island has been built from scratch by teams of students – they teach each other how to build, and how to program the world to behave in ways they've envisaged. Students do this in their own time, under no compulsion, but they're developing creativity, project-management skills, and collaboration skills that will last them a lifetime.

The third category is establishing a culture of celebration that draws in student creativity well beyond our little island. We have an in-world virtual Art Gallery, Bookstore, and live radio station, showcasing real-world art, text, and audio from across our whole school, Kindie to Year 12.

Here are the images for our presentation: