eduBuzz reflections

Tags are one of the most important tools for finding information on the web. Edubuzz blogs are now much better equipped to make full use of them.

If it’s new to you, here’s an intro to tags from Wikipedia:

A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.

Tags are usually chosen informally and personally by item author/creator or by its consumer/viewers/community. Tags are typically used for resources such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks (both in social bookmarking services, and in the current generation of web browsers - see Flock). For this reason, “tagging” has become associated with the Web 2.0 buzz.

If you’ve an edubuzz blog, you’ll have noticed a new “Tags” box has appeared below your editor window, and might be wondering what that’s all about. After all, you’ve always had Categories. How are tags different? If you think of Categories as being like big, clunky filing cabinet drawers you won’t go too far wrong.  They’re a good thing, but you can have too many of them. It’s best if each post isn’t in too many Categories.

Tags, on the other hand, are used on a much bigger scale. A post may have lots of tags, and that’s not a problem. Tools like tag clouds make it easier to navigate them.

If you’re interested in using tags, the first thing to do is activate the Simple Tags plugin. This plugin, by Amaury BALMER, adds a host of tag-related features to take full advantage of this new capability. Have fun!

What sort of things would you like to see on the edubuzz home page? 

At this week’s edubuzz Open Meeting the idea of it becoming a busy, one-stop shop providing an overview of what’s happening across East Lothian’s edubuzz community was proposed. It looks like we need to move it to something that needs minimal clicking, and provides the maximum information without the visitor having to scroll down.

What do you think?

An East Lothian teacher I met tonight mentioned how odd it seemed that, in her few years teaching here, she felt that she knew so many staff in the other authority schools, and so much of what was going on.

She’d been in a city school in a previous life, and had felt much less in touch with what was going on despite the relatively short distances between them.

She didn’t put forward any reason for this, but went on to mention how her class had been:

• using blog stats from other school’s blogs for data handling exercises
•  stealing ideas from other class and school blogs to use in class
• enjoying publishing their own blog and getting comments back

She had been actively involved, too, in publishing the work of a project for others to share, and enjoyed browsing staff blogs.

Of course, this doesn’t in any way prove cause and effect, but more and more of this kind of anecdotal evidence is emerging to suggest that this spider’s web of connections between schools, classes, students and staff is gradually creating a strong sense of a single learning community.

Via John Naughton,  the Webware Top 100 (http://www.webware100.com/) . Webware provide a navigator to help with browsing them.

Organisations will soon be scrabbling to get people who can choose the right tools from the Web2.0 toolbox, and use them effectively. Schools that continue to churn out students who’ve been “protected” from them are going to have a lot of explaining to do…

Looks like Web2.0 is now impacting science in radical ways. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about recording those experiments on-line, and not just in private jotters? Via Slashdot:

Scientific American is running a major article on Science 2.0, or the use of Web 2.0 applications and techniques by scientists to collaborate and publish in new ways. “Under [the] radically transparent ‘open notebook’ approach, everything goes online: experimental protocols, successful outcomes, failed attempts, even discussions of papers being prepared for publication… The time stamps on every entry not only establish priority but allow anyone to track the contributions of every person, even in a large collaboration.” One project profiled is MIT’s OpenWetWare, launched in 2005. The wiki-based project now encompasses more than 6,100 Web pages edited by 3,000 registered users. Last year the NSF awarded OpenWetWare a 5-year grant to “transform the platform into a self-sustaining community independent of its current base at MIT… the grant will also support creation of a generic version of OpenWetWare that other research communities can use.” The article also gives air time to Science 2.0 skeptics. “It’s so antithetical to the way scientists are trained,” one Duke University geneticist said, though he eventually became a convert.

I’m getting worried about my old friend BT. She’s fallen in with the wrong company, Phorm, and started behaving completely out of character, being evasive, and started getting into trouble with the law. It was like she didn’t know who she was any more. Saw her interviewed recently, and she couldn’t even answer a simple question.

Today she wrote to me to “keep me informed”, she said, but it was like her memory had gone completely; she didn’t mention any of it. “You can have complete trust in me”, she said.

And she’s losing her grip on language. If you were asked to clarify the term “significant disadvantage”, would you replace it with “material disadvantage”? No, I thought not. That doesn’t clarify it, it completely changes the meaning. But here’s what her letter said.

Changes to the Terms and Conditions for … BT Total Broadband … took place on 3rd January 2008. The changes are summarised below:

• All references to contractual changes which are to your ‘significant disadvantage’ have been changed to ‘material disadvantage’. These changes are for clarification purposes only.

• In future when we make contractual changes that we reasonably believe is to your ‘material disadvantage’ we will also let you know that you may end the agreement early without paying a charge for doing so.

She seems to have completely lost her grip of how language works, and has started to think you can just redefine words at will.

Or maybe there’s method in this madness? A reasonable person would view introduction of compulsory interception of their private internet traffic as a change to their significant disadvantage. That might lead them to decide to go elsewhere. Even if they were locked into an 18-month contract, they could walk away without charge, because of that “significant disadvantage”.

But if those terms were, er, “clarified” to replace “significant disadvantage” with “material disadvantage”, the old girl might just argue that things were different. Intercepting private traffic without permission might be illegal and breach the psychological contract between ISP and customer - but it might just be argued that it doesn’t cause a material disadvantage.

This episode has got me suddenly appreciating the emphasis on texts of all kinds in the literacy outcomes.

The definition of ‘texts’ also needs to be broad and future proof. Within Curriculum for Excellence,
a text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated.
Texts include those presented in traditional written or print form, but also orally, electronically or on film. link

This is, of course, a private view.

 Not that Microsoft are worried, of course not.

KrispyChips via Slashdot

“In what could be a first Microsoft is working to create a special build of Windows, just because Windows doesn’t run very well on a certain computer. ASUS’ runaway success Eee PC is now ‘officially’ available with Windows XP, but (according to APC magazine) is not exactly a great experience. There are none of the nice pre-loaded apps that come with the Linux version, for example. And XP has some real problems coping with the screen size and limited system specs of the unit. As a result, ASUS says it is going back to Microsoft and working on a special XP build that will be lightweight and more suited to UMPCs.”

Just had the odd experience, while checking for WPMU news, of finding this “What if…?” post which describes a future vision that’s not a million miles from describing East Lothian’s edubuzz community.

Welcome at Do Not Call it a Blog!
What if we didn’t understand what we do in education with blogs as “blogging” but as a quick and easy way to publish online within a learning community? Or a place to feature a portfolio of students’ best work? Or a site where professors and staff track their professional and personal development? What if we understood “campus blogging initiatives” as a community publishing platform to share, learn, and integrate various resources from around the Web into a more specific community?

OECD, the people who run the PISA tests of international student attainment, are now planning to test the skills of adults in today’s work environment. And look what’s a core objective:

One of PIAAC’s core objectives will be to assess how well participants use ICT to access, manage, integrate and evaluate information, construct new knowledge, and communicate with other people.

Not so long ago, the emphasis would have been on the technology, and whether or not people could drive them. Nerds would have done well. Schools could have concentrated on how to use applications.

Now, we’ve moved up the value chain, and the time of the social geek micro-trend documented by Mark Penn. The recent decision in East Lothian to provide every student with their own on-line learning space looks even more like the right move.

Every child will have an on-line space in which they can keep a record of their experiences and achievements that will track through with them from the age of 3 - 18, - Perhaps even from birth where they reflect upon their learning, their experiences and achievements.

Before today’s Glow Mentor training started, Paul Trickett of Preston Lodge High School gave an impromptu demo of some 3-ball juggling.

Juggling Maths teaching and Glow Mentoring, we feel, won’t cause Paul any difficulties.