decommissioning of edna - the loss of a vision

On Tuesday this week we heard
edna is to be decommissioned commencing 30 June 2011 and be completed on 30 September 2011. This decision is the outcome of a recent review.

The seeds of the decommissioning go back quite a long way and will mark the end of an era. EdNA, Education Network Australia, renamed edna a few years back, has provided a range of quality and innovative services for nearly 12 years.

While perhaps it might be thought it had outgrown its usefulness, with the establishment of regional portals especially in the larger states, it is the loss of vision that we must mourn more than anything else, along with the loss of employment to a number of people, some of whom have worked on various parts of edna for a long time. For many of the smaller education systems edna "filled the gaps" with services they could not, and still do not, provide.

The extent of the outreach of edna services will only become apparent as targetted newsletters cease publication, RSS feeds that provided a range of ever updating Australian content into portals and education websites here and overseas die, and the edna calendar and edna database disappear. Other casualties are OzProjects and me.edu.au

Services like edna Groups (based on Moodle) and edna Lists (based on Lyris) will be rebadged under the ESA (Education Services Australia) with a greater DYI flavour.
See further

The vision of a cost saving service that connected with all Australian education portals (and promoted them) began diminishing some years ago as those who contributed to edna's funding knuckled under through new calls on their overcommitted budgets.

Make no bones about it, the loss of edna brings with it too the loss of an expertise in the implementation of ICTs in education, particularly in more technical aspects of service provision, that exists nowhere else. Members of the edna team provided workshops and shared expertise Australia wide.
edna provided a high quality flagship service and enhanced the international reputation of Australian education.

A sad day.

The chicken or the egg?

That caught your attention didn't it? as you scratch your head to fathom what I am going to write about it in this post?

I don't believe that many schools that are considering implementing e-books and e-readers have given enough thought to getting their teachers "experienced" first. In many of the presentations that I have given recently about e-books I have recommended that teachers/librarians/principals set up "proof of concept" projects where they invest in a few Kindles or iPads that they can then lend to staff or students to build that pool of experienced users.

I do believe that successful implementation of an e-book or e-textbook programme relies on a shared pool of expertise/experience. If a school or education system is going to go the considerable expense of kindles or iPads or another brand of e-readers then they need to be used in such a way as to invoke a greater level of productivity than the mere use of made-from-paper books do. Teachers need to be experienced enough to feel "converted" to their use, and to be able to build a bank of pedagogically sound practices.

Many are going into e-book and e-text book programmes on the assumption, largely false, that doing so will save money. They have in mind that e-books will be cheaper because they are digitised text, so we are saving ink and paper. But make no mistake, publishers need to get their money out of this venture too. And add to that the expense of whatever device you are going to use to display the e-books. They are not cheap either although prices are still coming down, for dedicated e-readers at least.  (here's a new Kindle-like device that has just come onto the market in Australia). So we shouldn't be adopting e-book programmes on economic grounds. It would be easy to prove that, in the immediate sense, staying with what we've got will be cheaper. We need to be implementing e-books because pedagogically it makes sense.

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The end of an era

Today I am retiring. I reached that magic 65 a couple of months ago but today has arrived faster than I thought it would.

Retirement for me means the end of formal employment, but I'll still be blogging here and there. Perhaps a little more there than here, because that really is my passion.

I've been in teaching/education now for 43 years and that is a long time in anybody's language but when you add the years when I was a teaching scholar/pre-service teacher it comes to nearly 50.

I have been lucky that I have always enjoyed what I have been paid to do, and particularly, in the last 10 or so years when I have worked with Education.au/Education Services Australia, there has been considerable overlap with the work I have done and my private learning curve. Working here I have represented a great ministerial company and travelled all over Australia and represented the company twice overseas. I have worked with great people, both face2face and virtually, and been given great latitude.

So, no regrets. Don't shed any tears for me. I'm not. I'm looking forward to the future. A rosy one, with some travel coming up next week - off to Abu Dhabi to meet the new grandson, then to a crime fiction convention in Bristol, and then back to AD for my daughter's 30th birthday. And then back to OZ to deliver about 6 presentations on e-books.

So I'll be back here on this blog. Hang around.

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Productive in the classroom with e-books

One of the topics I'd like to explore in the coming months is classroom productivity using e-books. As I've commented before, if all you are doing in your classroom with your e-reader or e-reading App is reading the book just as it if were made of paper, and ignoring all the productivity tools you have on your device, then you are not doing enough.

So what I'd really like to do is to collect some short descriptions of what teachers are doing in the classroom with e-books.

I suspect some northern hemisphere people, in the US in particular, have more tools attached to their e-book readers than we down under do, so I'd like to hear from you in particular.

One of the things I do on a regular basis is review books that I've read on my Kindle. You can see the resulatnt reviews on my crime fiction blog MYSTERIES IN PARADISE. So I'm including some of my tips for writing the reviews below.

Writing Book Reviews using the Kindle

• I highlight/bookmark memorable bits as I'm reading
• I write comments about passages or ideas that strike me as I'm reading - just highlight some text and then press the space bar to begin making your annotation.
• Your book marks and annotations are stored in a file called MyClippings. When you attach your Kindle to your computer, it shows up as an extra drive. Look for a file called MyClippings. This is a text file and the annotations etc for the book you are currently reading will be at the end of the file.
• I copy and paste the relevant parts of the MyClippings file into a new text file and then save it on my computer by the name of the book.
• Once you've saved the text file you can disconnect the Kindle from your computer and then on the Kindle use MENU>View my notes and highlights to check the passages in the e-book that the notes and highlights are connected to.
• From the text file you've saved, you can use highlighted passages in your review as quotes, and hopefully the notes you've made will jog your memory about things you wanted to discuss in your review.
• Sometimes the e-book also includes information about the author and other titles they have written. I often highlight that information and then use it in an "about author" section at the end of my review.
• You'll notice from my reviews on MYSTERIES IN PARADISE that I often use the image from the Amazon site, the product description, and the publisher's blurb in my review, but I always have a section where I talk about my impressions of the book.

So what can you tell me about or point me to?

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Amazon launching Kindle Library Lending

You've probably already caught up with the announcements by Overdrive and Amazon that they are collaborating on a Kindle ebook lending service.

The details are not very clear at the moment but it seems to me that it is simply an extension of Amazon's existing Kindle ebook lending service which allows those in the US who've bought Kindle e-books to lend them once. While the book is lent (for two weeks) the purchaser can't access it on their Kindle. The book can only be lent once, and it doesn't necessarily apply to all purchases - publishers need to give permission.

Crunch Gear has basically republished the media release word for word.

Not much joy here for non-US Kindle users though. Of course Amazon's Kindle e-book lending does not extend outside the US at the moment, so perhaps in the future...

 

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How to help teachers do it better

The Australian newspaper today points to a new report:

The Grattan Institute's report Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: Improving Performance, released today, shows that a system of meaningful appraisal and feedback for teachers will increase their effectiveness by 20 to 30 per cent. It will address teachers' concerns about the current systems of evaluation: 63 per cent of teachers report that appraisals of their work are done purely to meet administrative requirements; 91 per cent say the best teachers do not receive the greatest recognition.

When I was much younger, there was a system of annual assessment, where an "inspector" visited, sat in on a few lessons and then wrote a report. I don't remember any remedial action being taken with me or colleagues as a result of the comments on the report. Perhaps it was done discreetly. I know there were people who used to get panic-stricken about their impending inspection though, and you really did try to put your best foot forward on that day.

These days there is a real tendency to judge teachers on things like student exam results or national test results. A more 360-degree assessment seems a lot fairer, but really only if the resultant report can lead to better remediation rather than punitive steps.

This can be achieved by schools choosing four of eight methods to assess teachers and provide feedback. These are: student performance and assessments; peer observation; observation of classroom teaching and learning; student surveys; parent surveys; 360-degree assessment; self-assessment and external observation.

 

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A book you should read: A THOUSAND CUTS by Simon Lelic

I'm re-publishing here a review for a book that I think at least every teacher should read.

This edition, an ARC from VIKING, published as A THOUSAND CUTS in 2010

aka RUPTURE

ISBN 978-0-670-02150-5

294 pages

Publisher's blurb

In the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into his school assembly and opens fire. He kills three pupils and a colleague before turning the gun on himself.

Lucia May, the young policewoman who is assigned the case, is expected to wrap up things quickly and without fuss. The incident is a tragedy that could not have been predicted and Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Soon, however, Lucia becomes preoccupied with the question no one else seems to want to ask: what drove a mild-mannered, diffident school teacher to commit such a despicable crime?

Piecing together the testimonies of the teachers and children at the school, Lucia discovers an uglier, more complex picture of the months leading up to the shooting. She realises too that she has more in common with Szajkowski than she could have imagined. As the pressure to bury the case builds, she becomes determined to tell the truth about what happened, whatever the consequences . . .

My take:

I came to this with my teacher's hat on, but it could just as easily have been my  parent's hat. For either of those hats this is a horrifying tale. What turns a mild mannered history teacher turn into a lethal killer?

The blurb on the back of the edition I read begins:

It should be an open-and-shut case. Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himelf. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help.

From a police point of view, it looks like a case that you can wrap up quickly. Samuel Szajkowski walked into the assembly and opened fire. He is to blame for the deaths of 5 people including himself.  Detective Inspector Lucia May is given the job of interviewing the witnesses and writing up the final report.

But then Lucia begins to ask why? What pushed Samuel Szajowski over the edge? Who is really to blame? And just who is pushing her boss to get the case wrapped up?

Events like this one have happened in "real life" world wide in recent years, and A THOUSAND CUTS leads us to ask whether the investigators really ever get to the point of understanding the "why".

We know right from the beginning that there is something wrong with the culture of this school. The basic structure of the novel is transcripts of interviews by the investigators with witnesses, and the very first one is with a student who should have been at the assembly but was "down by the ponds, pissing about.."

The interview transcripts are really one-sided conversations. The reader is left to deduce the questions being asked from the actual answers. It is a very arresting narrative technique.

Detective Inspector Lucia May unearths a culture of bullying that extends throughout the entire school: student to student, student to teacher, teacher to student, and teacher to teacher. The worst part is that those who should be preventing the existence of this culture, the principal for example, don't see that as their responsibility. But even the parents don't recognise the bullying happening.

Another aspect of the whole investigation is that Lucia May is herself the victim of bullying, in her personal life, and, in particular, her workplace. It makes us ask whether this is an endemic part of the Western society, regardless of the profession.

A very thought-provoking read.

My rating: 5.0

Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2010.

Shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards 2010.

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize 2010.

Selected for Financial Times Books of the Year 2010.

Selected for New York Times notable crime books 2010.

Selected as one of Amazon’s Rising Stars 2010.

Top 20 Books of 2010 – Lovereading.co.uk.

Blog posts to check:

• EuroCrime: Guest Post Simon Lelic
• Maxine Clarke, review of A THOUSAND CUTS
• Reactions to Reading - review of A THOUSAND CUTS 

Simon Lelic's website

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Most of us don't re-sell our books

One of the problems schools have struck in implementing e-textbooks relates to the re-sale model.

While in the "real", entertainment world, most of us don't want to re-sell the books that we buy, we often do hand them on. In schools though the textbook scenario often operates on one of two premises.

• individual students buy the text book, new or used, and then sell it on to the next year's cohort.
• the school purchases the books and then hands copies in various stages of "batterment" to students until they either fall apart or the school decides to invest in the latest version.

So a textbook that originally is quite expensive, say as much as $80 or even more, may be used over a period of 5 years bringing the actual cost per year down to $16.  There is no problem in handing the book on as you know, you just hand it over.

The problem with e-text books is that they are not designed to be handed on. Stringent DRM (Digital Rights Management) often prevents an e-book from being shifted from one device to another.

Even when there is no DRM in place, the format of the file (whether it is Kindle-compatible or epub) will often be an effective preventive measure.

However I have discerned what I think is another problem. It seems to me that many publishers of e-textbooks are seeing this format as a bit of a cash cow. The most "generous" offers that I have heard from Australian publishers is where a student will have the right to use the e-text book for 2 years, but that the price will be the same as for a paper version of the book. This flies in the face of what is happening in the entertainment market where e-books are very much lower than the paper euqivalents.

A call by the Washington Post for publishers to make e-books DRM free won't solve the transferability problem, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

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On the lookout for e-book trials

That Australian educators and educational administrators are very interested in how e-books and e-readers might be incorporated into the implementation of the curriculum is being demonstrated by the number of invitations I am receiving to conferences and workshops to talk about e-book scenarios.

As a consequence I am constantly on the lookout for information about trials and projects in schools, in Australia in particular, with e-books, e-readers,  and e-text books. As 2011 progresses schools will be making decisions about budgets for 2012 and will be wanting to consider the experiences of others. I am interested in both formal reports and anecdotal ones, so if you are able to point me to anything I can get to on the web, leave a comment.

If you would like to email me about what is happening in your school (or leave a more public comment on this post), I do need a bit of "depth" in the description: what seems to be working, what isn't. What hurdles have you come across, what seems insurmountable, what are you planning for 2012?

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e-readers are not "shared" devices

Many schools implementing e-reading devices, whether they are dedicated e-readers like the Kindle or multi-purpose devices like the iPad, have built up cases for buying batches of them, storing them in the library, and then lending them out as class sets.

While you can manage the sharing of them quite well, in reality once the device has to be handed back at the end of the lesson or the day then the following factors come into play.

• no one student takes reponsibility for looking after the device
  • if something "happens" to its functionality, then it is easy to shift the blame onto the previous user, and not so easy to work out what has actually happened
• making sure the battery is charged becomes the responsibility of the lending "authority"
• there is a lot of down time - the device sits in the library storage between lessons, overnight, and on weekends.
• there is a lot of intervention that goes into managing them
• nor does their real potential ever get realised, simply because they are used for specific and limited purposes, and the users rarely have time to explore.
• even worse the "class set" scenario assumes that even in use they are shared - one between 2, 3, or even 4 students

Most of what I have written above really applies to the multi-user devices, and when it comes to 6" dedicated e-readers like Kindles or Kobos, then use should not be shared.

That's why I was so glad to read Camilla Elliot's blog post today and her conclusion

  that makes me convinced an iPad is NOT a shared device, but a single owner tool.

More blog posts to check about iPads:

• Music Apps in the iPad
• iPads for problem solving
  

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Will I eventually have to upgrade? - my Kindle, that is

My Kindle is a Kindle2, one of the white ones that has been around for over 18 months.

The Kindle3, which is the graphite (greyish) one that was released in time for Christmas giving last year, is slightly smaller, has better text contrast, and more importantly from my point of view, a slightly different "operating system" if that is the right term.

Already Kindle3 has released some upgrades. I've put the differences mentally on the backburner until this morning until I had to install the upgrade on the "work" Kindle which is doing the rounds of the office.

The features the upgrade brings don't seem all that important to me at the moment:

• Public Notes
• Real Page Numbers
• Before You Go = Rate the Book
• New Newspaper and Magazine Layout

But there are some other features to Kindle3 that I don't have, and so I'm trying to work out whether they are important.
The upgrades for Kindle3 are not available to Kindle2, so the only alternative really is to buy a new device.

There are other differences between Kindle2 and Kindle3, such as the fact that Kindle3 has double the storage capacity.
Kindle3 is slightly smaller and a little lighter.
Page turning is "faster".
You get a choice of US or UK dictionaries.
Apparently has a better web browser.
More of the screen is used for text display.

I already know that I can't download to my Kindle2 some of the "apps" Amazon has on offer, but are they important? They seem to just be games.
Or am I just suffering from device-upgrade envy? You know the feeling, you have a perfectly good functioning computer, but the newer one looks so much better, and you have thta feeling that oyu are missing out on something really important.

But I guess that some time in the next 12 or so months I will come to a cross roads. Or do I wait for Kindle4?

Perhaps if you have experience of both, you can tell me some of the differences you've noticed.

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Doing it a bit differently - teaching with blogs

Many teachers will tell you that they don't have time to blog, on top of everything else that they do.
But these have missed the point that blogging isn't just spruking on the street corner, hoping others will listen. It can be a useful classroom tool as well.

My first blog, also named You Are Never Alone, was a company blog for Education.au limited, and existed Spetember 2006 until earlier this year when it was "turned off". The aim was to run a commentary on educational issues and to promote company services like edna.  

I created my first personal blog, Smik's Learning Space, nearly 4 years ago, as a space where I could park materials for workshops that I was conducting. That blog now duplicates my Posterous posts via an RSS feed. From that starting point I went on to create another personal blog at beginning of 2008, geared to my interest in crime fiction.

One of the things that I'm really convinced of is the capacity of a blog to allow the writer some creative reflective space. You are also writing for a critical audience, and that influences the content. Now that is true whether you are a classrom teacher or a student. The second purpose of the blog might be the one I originally had for Smik's Learning Space - a place where you can deposit content for others to use, as in a teacher providing materials for a class.

Teachers might want to consider whether in fact they need two blog spaces - one for personal exploration and reflection and being part of the educational community, and one for use by their students to collect links and work.
And then of course, there would be the matter of having students create blogs for themselves. Writing a daily blog can create the same cathartic effect for your students, providing a reflective space, writing for a purpose knowing they have an audience (and responding to other student's blogs'), and developing a variety of literacy skills.

So here are some more blogs for you to explore:

• Start with this post on The Edublogger
• Here are some teacher librarian blogs:
  • http://ehss3.edublogs.org/
  • http://www.facebook.com/?ref=hp#!/tigslibrary
  • http://campusrc.edublogs.org/
  • www.shcmslibrary.edublogs.org
  • www.mclibrary11.wordpress.com
  • http://caclibrary.blogspot.com/
  • http://library.scotch.vic.edu.au/blog/
  • http://blogs.cccc.vic.edu.au/informationservices/
  • http://bacirc.edublogs.org/
• and some teacher blogs that I follow
  • Edubeacon
  • Open Educator
  • On an e-Journey with Generation Y
  • Betchablog

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Has Twitter changed the way you communicate?

I wasn't amongst the early adopters of Twitter, and I had seen it demonstrated as a "back channel" at a couple of conferences before I finally tried it out.

An article in Tuesday's Sydney Morning Herald starts

Dismissed as a joke when it began five years ago this week, Twitter has revolutionised the way we communicate.

This morning when I wanted to send a friend a birthday greeting, I did it on Twitter.

As part of the work I do at Education Services Australia I tweet as findingmyfuture. Three times a week I send out messages about careers, about 10 messages a week. I follow 58 other "careers" tweeters, and nearly 100 follow my tweets. It is proving an effective way of delivering our messages about myfuture, and the resources that students, teachers, and parents can find there. 

Creating short pithy messages can be a bit of a challenge, it really makes you think about what you want to get across.
I add the hashtage #myfuture to each of the messages to help people find them.

I follow the tweets through TweetDeck, which works like an aggregator, where you can create "search" columns to follow particular hashtags.
I also use TweetDeck to re-tweet my #myfuture messages to the community that follows me in my "educational" Twitter identity of smik09. Actually the 09 indicates when I created this particular Twitter account, so I guess I could be seen as a bit of a veteran.
One of the early criticisms of Twitter was that so many signed up and then dropped off active tweeting within days.

In fact I created a Prezi about 12 months ago that asked Is Twitter in Trouble?

Is Twitter in Trouble? on Prezi

 

The other thing I've done is use my Twitter followers list to create a "Daily" newspaper that can be delivered to subscribers by email. This uses a free tool at Paper.li

The myfuture Daily gives a daily summary of the tweets in the previous 24 hours by findingmyfuture  and those that we follow .

I also created The Kerrie Smith Daily which is based on tweets by smik09 and the 224 people I follow in that persona.

Just a note: one of the things that I learnt to do early was to separate my personas.  I blog on educational matters about 3 times a week, and I blog about crime fiction daily. I had originally thought that I could use the same persona in both communities, but I soon learnt there is little overlap and merging both communities in my twitter account just muddied the waters.

So just as I have a personal email address, and a work/educational email address, so I have 2 different Twitter accounts, and 2 differently purposed blogs.

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Will books ever die?

A tongue-in-cheek  article I discovered today Product Review: Will 'Paper' Replace E_readers starts

We were given some review samples of a new technology  called ‘paper’ earlier this week. Paper is a natural material that can be produced in bulk, relatively cheap, and some people think it will replace e-readers such as the iPad and Kindle.

There has been considerable publicity given to headlines like E-book sales surge at Amazon, with e-book sales first of all outstripping hard-cover books in the middle of last year, and, in the last quarter of 2010, outstripping paperback sales.

 

For every 100 paperbacks the company shifted, it sold 115 Kindle books.

We've also had a lot of publicity about the demise of a number of book stores, particularly specialist ones.

From where I stand though, I don't see made-from-paper books disappearing anytime soon, despite a growth in sales of e-readers in the last 9 months. In considering the Amazon statistics, it occurs to me that while I go to Amazon to purchase my e-books, I don't go there to buy either hardbacks or paperbacks. I get them at my local bookstore.

New research on UK eReader sales, from the Publishers Association. We already know that 2010 eBook sales accounted for just 0.4% of the UK book market. So what changed at Christmas? The Publishers Association polled 2,000 people recently, and found that 7% of British adults had some kind of eReader (smartphone, iPad or ereader) for Christmas.  source

There can be no doubt though that e-books are making their mark in the US, doubling from January 2010 to January 2011

I'm not sure that we are seeing the same here in Australia.

Trevor Cairney who blogs at Just in Case lists some good reasons why the book will survive.
He also lists some changes we will probably see in the publishing industry. 
Among them

• Scientific journals will cease to be produced in paper form within 5-10 years.
• Increasingly, authors will publish e-books themselves, creating major problems for publishers and even bookshops.
• Bookshops will only survive if they change to become places where lovers of books meet, chat, eat, share books (in whatever form) and purchase e-books and paper books as well as associated products. Some are already moving down this path.

The remainder in the list are worth checking.

 

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What are your top 10 ICT tools for education?

I am interested in knowing which are the ten ICT tools that you use most often (or are the most useful).
Think about what you've used most often in the last 10 days.

Here are mine

• Email: I have 2 different tools
• blogging tools: Blogger, Posterous - I use both
• MS Word
• MS Excel
• Prezi - I can't imagine going back to Powerpoint for my presentations
• Twitter in combination with TweetDeck - again I have 2 accounts
• XnView - I used this all the time for capturing screen dumps, creating images.
• RSS reading software: again I have 2 different tools
• Browser - combined with Google Search. Again I use 2 differnt browsers.
• editing html - I often look at the raw html for a blog post especially when the blogging software doesn't readily enable a feature like indenting or whatever I've done creates line spaces I don't want.

You'll see I am listing more than 10... mainly because I've also used these in the last few days.

• MS Access
• MS Picture Manager
• Second Life

So what do you use regularly that I don't have on my list? A comment would be great.

Some sites that may be useful to you

• Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, Directory of Tools
• Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, Top 100 tools for 2010
• Go2web20 - a fabulous directory of online tools

On his blog Chris Betcher talks about the skills 21st century teachers need to have.
He says there are 5 skills that affect our ability to function with fluency:

1. Learn to Search
2. Learn to resize and crop a Digital Photo
3. Learn how to edit video
4. Learn to use an html editor
5. Learn to think in hyperlinks

What do you think? Are there any of those that you can't do? I must admit the video one is on my still-to-be-learned list. You might like to pop over to Chris' post and leave a comment there.

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Observing ALL BLACK DAY March 22, 2011

On February 22, 2011 Christchurch was devastated by an earthquake.  Lives were lost and others irrevocably changed. The city centre sustained massive damage and the landscape will never be the same.

Many in Australian schools have strong ties to New Zealand, and particularly, Christchurch.

 Therefore, to help them cope and contribute we have launched

ALL BLACK DAY

On March 22, 2011. on the one-month anniversary of this event

we are asking the staff and students of Australian schools to wear all black

and to contribute a gold coin for the privilege.

All money raised is to be donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

   

Christchurch Cathedral after the quake.

Photo by Geof Wilson

You can help by

• helping to co-ordinate this event within your school
• promoting this event in your school and community
• playing this video on a continuous link
• donating money raised to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal 
• contacting your state co-ordinator advising the amount raised
• watching this page to see the total grow
• sharing photos of the events in your school

 

If your staff and students need assistance in dealing with the events in Christchurch

please  consult these resources for advice.

Co-ordinators

New South Wales

Jill McGeorge (primary schools)

jill.mcgeorge@det.nsw.edu.au

Lara O'Donoghue (secondary schools)

LARA-DALE.ODONOGHUE@det.nsw.edu.au

 

Queensland

 

Margaret Forbes

forbesm@mbbc.qld.edu.au

 

 

Victoria

 

Judith Way

judithway1@gmail.com

 

Western Australia

 

Jill Oats

Christchurch@bilbies.iinet.net.au 

 

Tasmania, South Australia, Northern Territory, ACT

 

Barbara Braxton

barbara.288@bigpond.com

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40 years of e-books

You might like to check the rest of the infographic above on TeleRead.

I hadn't realised until looking at that, that Project Gutenberg was that old, or that the digitized Declartion of Independence was the world's first e-book. You'll see also on the infographic that only 10 e-books were created on Project Gutenberg in the first 18 years, but that the Project has tripled output in the last eight years.

A number of factors have given the e-book project a real dynamic in the last 3 years.

I saw an e-book reader at Microsoft in 2001 but in today's terminology it was a real "brick" and didn't take off. Before the launch of Amazon's Kindle nobody could really take e-book readers seriously, and the only place you could read your Project Gutenberg e-book was on your computer, and even then it was often an unfriendly text file with peculiar line lengths.

With the advent of the Kindle came new technology and new features

• e-ink
• text sizing
• a new way of acquiring the books through wi-fi download
• text to voice
• lighter in weight and smaller in size than earlier e-readers

Some of the other technology that has made the e-book (and e-textbook) revolution possible has almost passed us by without notice because it is has been so bound up with what we have come to expect.

• faster computer processing
• larger capacity storage chips
• widespread uptake of wi-fi
• file size reduction - we tend to think of file sizes as being bigger than they were, but that is true only to a point - in fact the file sizes being used in pdf, mobi, and azw files is pretty small. While the photos you take on your camera are often pretty large (4 MB+), the digital images used in e-reading software are much smaller because of the file compression software being used

With the arrival of the iPad on the scene in the middle of last year, then the idea of viable tablets/ computers where one of the applications was an e-reader really took hold. Dedicated e-readers like the Kindle still have the upper hand in terms of battery life and basic cost. The 3G Kindle retails at $189, and it seems that the iPad2 costs nearly twice that to manufacture and retails at approximately 4 times that. These are serious issues for educational institutions, but already we have seen contenders who are promising much cheaper tablets. Prices for the iPad in Australia are all over the place.

So now it is really coming down to an issue of whether you are happy with a dedicated e-reader, or you want, and are prepared to pay for, a tool that can do a lot more. I'm not sure that those who say that consumers won't buy both are right. There are already examples of people who are buying both.

Last week, March 6-12, was read an e-book week. So a belated happy birthday e-books!

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iPad trials in Australia

2011 has seen the proliferation of iPad trials in Australian schools and Universities.

In most of these cased the iPad has been adopted as much for the Apps available as for its e-reading tools.

Here are some sites and reports to look at.

iPads for Learning: Victorian government:
This website is for educators who want to learn about using iPads in education. Here you will find
information about the Victorian school iPads for Learning trial including specially selected apps,
classroom ideas and technical tips. The 10 participating schools are diverse, including primary, secondary, Prep to Year 12 and specialist settings.

St Peter's College Adelaide
In the Senior School, 338 Years 11 and 12 boys have been provided with wireless iPads to support an eBook program. Licences have been obtained to supply all students with e-textbooks via personalised secure access. A user friendly interface, Keystone, has been developed. Users have the ability to download and purchase eBooks, upload and share their work and ideas.

Other schools trials:

• Queensland state schools: Throughout Semester 1, Kedron State High School and Doomadgee State School will explore the teaching, learning and business potential.
• At least five independent Sydney schools will trial iPads in select classes this year.
• Two schools in Singapore: A secondary school in Singapore, where the youngest students are aged 12, has spent S$135,000 ($100,000) to buy 150 iPads for 140 students and 10 teachers as part of this project.

In 2011 Adelaide University has given out iPads to to 750 students in first year science.

• announcement
• Media Release 2 Feb 2011
• FAQs
• Campus Review report
• University to develop its own set of resources

Other university trials

• RMIT
• Trinity College Melbourne pilot report - phase1 completed, a 6 months trial
  Report on the Step Forward iPad Pilot Project (you need to be able access Google Docs)
  blog: http://ipadpilot.wordpress.com/
• University of Kentucky begins an 18 month trial on an iPad curriculum.
  The University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce is working with Apple to run an 18-month trial in which students, faculty and staff will all use iPads to complete course work. The department will use iPads for everything from student recruitment, admissions, seminars, graduation, and classes. Apple is supporting the school throughout the trial, with things like program development and strategy, as well as training users. The goal of the project is to explore how to take advantage of the device in the classroom setting and to discover which applications work best for studying diplomacy and international commerce. In February, about 50 Patterson School students, faculty, and staff began using the iPad trial, and another 35 students will join the trial program once the 2011 students are chosen. The program will include both first and second-generation iPads.

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e-textbooks in schools: what do you need to think about?

Here in Australia school administrators and teachers are already beginning to think about next year.

In terms of converting over to e-textbooks for 2011 they've already missed the boat, but are beginning to think about what would be involved in implementation in 2012.

So what factors need to be considered?
The list below is by no means complete and you may like to suggest things to be added.

• are you happy with the text books that you have?
  Do you want to replace any of them? Source new ones?
• If you convert to e-textbooks what device will you deliver them on?
  netbooks, laptops, iPads, other table device
  What specs will the device need?
• who owns the device? will the school buy it and lend it out? or can the students get the text on a device of their choice?
• What sort of budget do you have?
  There is an impression that converting to e-textbooks will save money.
  Unfortunately that is not the way it is working at the moment.
  In general your e-textbook will cost approximately 50% to 70% of your made-from-paper one. You are basically leasing it and at some stage it will expire or self-destruct, probably at the end of the school year, but perhaps after 2 years.
• who will supply devices for the teachers? And how will you encourage them to explore the productivities that come with e-textbooks?
• Are you aware that your e-textbook has no resale value? And unless it actually comes originally as a CD that oyu own, then oyu won't be able to transfer it from one device to another because of restrictive DRM practices.

My advice:

• Talk to your current textbook suppliers, tell them you are interested in the e-text scenario, and ask them what they can do for you
• Talk directly to the publishers of your current text books and ask the same questions. Be sure to include questions about cost.
• Ask your teachers to look for alternatives to their current text books.

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Where do you get it? Calibre launches DRM free

calibre introduces Open Books, a site for easy browsing of DRM-free e-books (e-books without DRM) that are not in the public domain.

Open Books is a compilation non DRM e-books from various sources linked to enable readers to browse and download them.

So far the e-books are generally coming in via Smashwords, Closed Circle, BeWrite Books, and Carina Press. The cost for each e-book is fairly small, generally under $5, sometimes much less than that. The user is asked to abide by an "honesty" system that does not encourage piracy.

The e-books are generally available in .mobi (Kindle), epub and pdf.

For DRM-free public domain books visit the Project Gutenberg website. The Project Gutenberg catalogue contains public domain e-books free of cost as well as DRM-free in various languages.

One of the great pointers to e-books on the Project Gutenberg site is the Magic Catalog.

Amazon has a few DRM-free e-books. Look for "Simultaneous Device Usage" under "Product Details" and if it is set to "Unlimited" then the book is DRM-free.

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March 8, International Women's Day

Google is celebrating the 100th anniversary of  IWD with this new logo

Their link takes you to

We invite you to join tens of thousands of people coming together on bridges all over the world -- from the Millennium Bridge in London, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo -- to show your support for women's causes and celebrate women's achievements.

Each year around the world, International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. Hundreds of events occur not just on this day but throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Some years have seen global IWD themes honoured around the world, while in other years groups have preferred to 'localise' their own themes to make them more specific and relevant.

This year's United Nations theme is Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women

In Australia

- Australia, UNIFEM: Unite to End Violence Against Women
- Australia, Queensland Government Office for Women: Our Women, Our State
- Australia, WA Department for Communities: Sharing the Caring for the Future

Sites to check / teaching activities

• http://www.internationalwomensday.com/default.asp
• http://www.internationalwomensday.org.au/
• Gender Equality - Global Education resources
  • a teaching activity examining gender equality in  3 to 5 contrasting countries
  • teaching activity: Improving the lives of women in the Solomon Islands
  • a teaching activity: Women in Fisheries
  • a case study: Women and Fisheries: Opening access in the Marshall Islands
• http://www.unifem.org/
• https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
• http://hdr.undp.org/
• http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/indwm/indwm2.htm

Messages to give girls about careers

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New version of My School released - Australia

New features in this release of My School include:

• an easy-to-use profile page with key facts and figures;
• financial information for each school;
• an indication of students' literacy and numeracy achievement as they progress through school; and
• students' NAPLAN performance over a number of years.

The My School website has two main purposes.

Firstly, it provides parents and students with information on each school – its view of itself and its mission, its staffing, its resources and its students’ characteristics and their performances.

Secondly, it provides schools and their communities with comparisons of their students’ performances in literacy and numeracy with those of students in other schools, most importantly those in schools that serve similar students. These comparisons provide information to support improvements in schools. Among schools with similar students, those achieving higher student performances can stimulate others to lift expectations of what they and their students can achieve. The schools with higher performing students can be a source of information for others on the policies and practices that produce those higher performances.

My School enables you to search the profiles of almost 10,000 Australian schools. My School is an Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) information service. ACARA is an independent authority with functions including the publishing of nationally comparable data on all Australian schools.

Key changes that have been made to the website in 2011 include:

• Providing an easy-to-use summary page with key facts and figures, including an expanded commentary on the school context, information about students from language backgrounds other than English, and more nationally comparable senior secondary outcomes information
• Reporting financial information for each school, including recurrent income and capital expenditure broken down by funding source
• Enhancing depictions of NAPLAN results, including a new depiction of students’ literacy and numeracy improvement as they progress through school.

Interestingly the search for specific schools is protected by a Captcha and "accept conditions" button. I can't help wondering why?
Is it a literacy test or an information literacy test?
I can't see any place where I can insert any spam (should I want to)

All sorts of interesting info available though, including lots of graphs, how many students it caters for, and financial information showing how much the school budget is, and recurrent income per student.

However one not so good sign - the site froze temporarily during my exploration. - heavy load?

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2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes - celebrating school science

Entries for the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, Australia's premier national science awards program, are now open.

Celebrating school science in two ways:
1. For the students
Have your students create a short film on any science topic to be in the running for cash prizes and fame. Enter the University of Sydney Sleek Geeks Science Eureka Prize for primary and secondary students.
For info go to http://eureka.australianmuseum.net.au/enter and select the primary or secondary category. And don't forget that there are resources online to help get you  started
http://eureka.australianmuseum.net.au/news/sleek-geeks-science-eureka-prize-teacher-resources

2. For the teachers
Do you know an outstanding secondary science or mathematics teacher, one who motivates and inspires students? Enter yourself or nominate a colleague for the Industry & Investment NSW Eureka Prize for Science or Mathematics Teaching.
For info go to http://eureka.australianmuseum.net.au/eureka-prize/science-or-mathematics-teaching

Entries close midnight AEST Friday 6 May.
Do you have a question about our school science program, or need help with an entry or nomination? Contact eureka@austmus.gov.au or phone 02 9320 6483

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ALL BLACK DAY, March 22

I received this from Barbara Braxton this morning.

If you are at an "overseas" school and want to participate, I suggest you contact Barbara direct.

---

It is one week since the devastating earthquake that has shattered Christchurch and its people and there would be few schools in Australia that do not have a student or a staff member with a Kiwi connection.

Psychologists say that the trauma can be intensified by a feeling of wanting to help but being unable to do so, so to help overcome this a group of Kiwi teacher librarians teaching in Australia are proposing

ALL BLACK DAY

We are suggesting that on March 22, 2011 students be allowed to wear all black instead of their regular school uniform and pay a gold coin for the privilege. 

If school regulations demand students remain in uniform, then an alternative could be to create a coin trail over the words ANZAC, Aotearoa, Christchurch, or Otautahi (Maori for Christchurch).

Any other form of fundraising would also be welcome. If you have ideas, please share them with us to share with everybody.
The money raised will then by donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal http://www.christchurchearthquakeappeal.govt.nz/ through whatever financial procedures schools have to follow to do this.

Amounts raised would then be reported to a state co-ordinator who will tally them so we can determine the total contribution of Australian schools and share this with participants. We are planning to establish a Facebook page so state and national totals are available and even photos of students participating can be posted.

We need you to
•    publicise this event as widely as possible, sending it to any network you belong to
•    consider volunteering to be your state co-ordinator which will just involve receiving emails from schools with their tallies and sending the total to a central co-ordinator.  We already have co-ordinators for NSW and Queensland, but no doubt they would appreciate help.
•    spread the word about your school’s activities with any media connections you have

If you have any questions, or are willing to act as a state co-ordinator, please contact one of us.

Barbara Braxton
Teacher librarian (retired)
COOMA NSW 2630
barbara.288@bigpond.com

Jill McGeorge
Teacher Librarian
Willoughby Public School
jill.mcgeorge@det.nsw.edu.au

Lara O'Donoghue
Teacher Librarian
Lake Macquarie High School
LARA-DALE.ODONOGHUE@det.nsw.edu.au

Margaret Forbes
Teacher librarian
Moreton Bay Boys' College
forbesm@mbbc.qld.edu.au

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Days/events to celebrate, particuarly in Australian schools

Many thanks to edna's Global Education newsletter for the following information.

Visit http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/news to subscribe to the newsletter or to read the latest issue online.
Global Education News is published by the Global Education website, funded by AusAID to support its Global Education Program and compiled by education.au limited.

Schools Clean Up Australia Day, 4 March

Join the thousands of school students across Australia on the Friday before the National Clean Up Day. Registration provides you with an education kit. http://www.cleanup.com.au
Read the Case study, The power of many, Waste management in Wewak, Papua New Guinea to find out about students in PNG cleaning up their environment and writing about it.
 http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/152

National Seaweek, 6-12 March

Seaweek is the Marine Education Society of Australasia’s (MESA) major national public awareness campaign. In 2011, the theme is ‘Spotlight on Marine Science’. Through a spotlight on the work of scientists we can learn more our marine environment to understand its complex ecosystems and become better equipped to preserve it. Information and teaching resources are available at
http://www.mesa.edu.au/seaweek2011

Try the global education website’s Global Learning Quest, Prawns the global delicacy.
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/2556

International Women's Day, 8 March

On International Women’s Day, we can review the progress made towards equal rights, and equality of political and economic participation, for women. The UN CyberSchoolBus has accessible information on equality, discrimination, and access to education for women, and contains some useful links for the celebration of International Women’s Day.
http://www0.un.org/cyberschoolbus/womensday/index.asp
Choose activities from the global education website to help students explore the consequences of discrimination on the basis of gender and understand how the empowerment of women and girls leads to improved living conditions for all.
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/1886

Commonwealth Day, 9 March

The aim of commemorating Commonwealth Day is to promote understanding on global issues, international co-operation and the work of the Commonwealth to improve the lives of its 2 billion citizens. The theme for 2011 is Women as Agents of Change'
http://www.thecommonwealth.org/Internal/148532/commonwealth_day/

Harmony Day, 21 March

‘Living in Harmony’ is an Australian Government initiative designed to promote community harmony, build relationships between people and address racism where it occurs in Australia. It coincides with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and promotes the values of harmony, community, diversity, commitment, goodwill, and understanding. The theme for 2011 is ‘Everyone Belongs’. The website provides useful links to resources, classroom activities and lessons plans as well as free posters, button badges, Harmony Day temporary tattoos, stickers and balloons.
http://www.harmony.gov.au/harmony-day/

World Forestry Day, 21 March

World Forestry Day, helps us focus on the International Year of Forests. It helps us consider the benefits of forests - such as catchment protection, providing habitat for plants, areas for recreation, education and scientific study, and as a source of many products including timber and honey. World Forestry Day also aims to provide opportunities for people to learn how forests can be managed and used sustainably for these many purposes.
http://www.fao.org/forestry/en/

World Water Day 2011, 22 March

The theme for 2011, Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge, aims to focus international attention on the impact of rapid urban population growth, industrialization and uncertainties caused by climate change, conflicts and natural disasters on urban water systems.
http://www.worldwaterday.org/

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Is IWD 2011 on your calendar?

Each year around the world, International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. Hundreds of events occur not just on this day but throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Some years have seen global IWD themes honoured around the world, while in other years groups have preferred to 'localise' their own themes to make them more specific and relevant.

This year's United Nations theme is Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women

In Australia

- Australia, UNIFEM: Unite to End Violence Against Women
- Australia, Queensland Government Office for Women: Our Women, Our State
- Australia, WA Department for Communities: Sharing the Caring for the Future

Sites to check / teaching activities

• http://www.internationalwomensday.com/default.asp
• http://www.internationalwomensday.org.au/
• Gender Equality - Global Education resources
  • a teaching activity examining gender equality in  3 to 5 contrasting countries
  • teaching activity: Improving the lives of women in the Solomon Islands
  • a teaching activity: Women in Fisheries
  • a case study: Women and Fisheries: Opening access in the Marshall Islands
• http://www.unifem.org/
• https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
• http://hdr.undp.org/
• http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/indwm/indwm2.htm

 

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e-book management strategies for schools

One of the problems in managing e-book use in schools is that we are dealing with a number of scenarios as the top of this diagram indicates, and the solutions required, or possible, will vary.

The other is that the e-reading devices are not always owned by the school. The school may be providing devices for experiential reasons, or social/economic equity, but often you'll need to manage download to not only a variety of devices, involving 3 main formats (see yesterday's post), but also allow access to school resources to privately owned devices.

What I've tried to show in the bottom diagram Repositories are the solutions being attempted in Australian schools. It is a sort of tiered approach, although the elements run in parellel to each other,  and it is possible that not all 4 elements will be present. The Third Party Solutions for example may well be financially beyond the school as setting them up and then paying an annual licence fee are expensive. The Third Party Solutions won't replace the hard copy holdings of the school library, and if the school ends up with nothing to show for their spending on e-books, then higher authorities may not regard it as money well spent. The other thing with a Third Party Solution is that implementation in a school has to be accompanied by quite a high level of usage to present an economically valid argument. Anecdotal reports I have heard about implementation in public libraries for example have talked about an initial flurry of borrowing, then a slackening off, and the need to build up a clientele through pro-active measures.

Is your school doing something that doesn't fit this diagram? Or does it cover everything you are doing? I'd love to know. Leave a comment please.

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A classroom with e-books

There are logistical problems (page numbering, battery life, power, using text to voice) but they are not insurmountable.

Bigger problems are going to come from getting copies downloaded onto the various devices, but even those are solvable.

Some of my thinking is that the teacher will need to think the pedagogy through carefully. Each of these devices has its own set of distractions and disruptions.

My main question is, if the hard copy option exists, whether the students will learn to, or be encouraged to,  use the productivity tools that e-books and e-readers afford the user.

My fear is that one of the hard copies will be the teacher.

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Rate of change in the e-reading world

I'm building up to some e-book presentations in the next few weeks and beginning to assemble my thoughts.

I wrote an article on e-readers for teacher librarians and cataloguers which was published at the end of the year.

I began

2010 will be seen as the year of the advent of the e-book and the e-book reader. Toward the end of the year teachers and libraries worldwide, and in Australia, had begun pooling their experiences with the new devices, trying to wrap their heads around how e-books could be used in schools, and libraries in particular. The opportunities are enormous, but so are the challenges.

E-books and e-readers have become a topic of special interest to me, and it became obvious from responses to articles that I wrote, presentations that I delivered, and webinars and forums that I participated in, that it is of great interest to others as well.

I suspect that by the end of 2011 we may well have solved some of the challenges, and e-book use will be well-entrenched in our schools and our libraries. We may have to resign ourselves to the insolubility of the other challenges at least for the moment.

So now I'm trying to analyse what progress we've made since I wrote the article. One of the things I'm conscious of is that in a sense nothing has changed, and yet at the same time the rate of change has been huge.
I think by "nothing has changed" I mean that the overall issues are still there, particularly if you are talking about libraries lending e-books and schools issuing e-text books. The barriers still exist as do the management problems. If you have money, then there are solutions within reach, but they may not take you down the path you wanted to travel on.

On the other hand if you are talking about e-readers themselves then the rate of change is enormous. I have a Kindle2 and already Kindle3 has had an upgrade and my Kindle2 is obsolete, if you are talking in terms of the "improvements".
Mind you, a number of the improvements, as far as I can judge, have been cosmetic, and my Kindle2 still does what it always did, provides the service it always has. It seems a pity that Amazon has no intention now of upgrading the functionality of my Kindle2.

I'll witter on a bit more tomorrow...

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Horizon Report 2012

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years.

The areas of emerging technology cited for 2011 are:
Time to adoption: One Year or Less > Electronic Books & Mobiles
Time to adoption: Two to Three Years > Augmented Reality & Game-based Learning
Time to adoption: Four to Five Years > Gesture-based Computing & Learning Analytics

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/2011HorizonReport/223122

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Australia's National Year of Reading 2012 - NYOR

Australian libraries and library associations are behind a campaign to turn 2012 into the National Year of Reading, NYOR,  linking together all the great things that are already happening around books, reading and literacy, and giving them an extra boost, with fun programs and activities taking place across the country.

Upcoming events listed on the website Love2Read include World Book Day on 3 March, and World Read Aloud Day on 9 March.

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Library Lovers Day, 14 Feb

Show your library and librarians a little love today!

Here are some ideas and resources

From WASLA - a quiz and other ideas

Great ideas from Library Lovers at ALIA

 

 

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Australian National Professional Standards for Teachers

Australian Education Ministers announced the release of the National Professional Standards for Teachers on 9 February 2011.  The Standards were endorsed by Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA) in late December 2010.

The development of the Standards are seen as a crucial milestone in the national education reforms of Australia.

The Standards aim to promote excellence in teaching and provide a nationally consistent basis for recognising quality teaching. They make explicit what teachers should know, be able to do and what is expected of effective teachers across their career.

Find the standards here:

AITSL National Professional Standards for Teachers.pdf (515 Kb)

Frequently Asked Questions

AITSL National Professional Standards for Teachers - FAQ.pdf (372 Kb)

Media Releases

Tony Mackay, chairman of AITSL, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, writing in The Australian: Teachers Make a Difference

Justine Ferrari of The Australian: What happens next is critical

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