UPDATE:

Since Stephen Downes linked to this post (and hilighted my fruity language) I feel I need to offer a little in the way of explanation. Firstly, my writing style was even more ’scatty’ than usual because I was exhausted at the end of a frustrating day and really wanted to get some coverage of the event before it ended. Secondly, I was genuinely ‘fired up’ by the provocative nature of Gerry’s keynote and having spent the day being blocked at every turn that should have led to some impressive demonstrations of what is possible in OPEN networks.

I will try to re-iterate my key points in a more considered reflection (and with less fruity language so that more of you will feel comfortable in extending this important conversation). First, I want to listen to Stephen’s audio from his keynote at the conference today and incorporate some great input from podcasts I’ve listened to recently.

STOP PRESS: Too funny – look at the screen grab at the bottom of THIS POST from Graham Wegner (who attended Stephen’s ‘virtual keynote’ today).

Gerry White’s keynote was inspirational and bang on the money! Gerry clearly spent a lot of time digging for facts that back up my experience and intuition and presented them in his own inimitable stlyle (complete with a self deprecating disclaimer about his views which I wish I could remember!!).

OPEN is the key word that has lodged deeply in my brain. An OPEN approach to everything from internet access to IP/CopyRight laws are required to equip our kids for the future. OPEN, ubiquitous, reliable, affordable internet access is an absolute requrement for dealing with the rapid proliferation of devices and exponential growth in content.

Gerry finished his talk with a little ‘report card’ for our education system. If my kids brought home a report card like that I would kick myself up the arse for being a lousy parent. Thanks Gerry for the wake-up call (and sorry I had to rush off and prepare my workshop instead of a chat over coffee).

There were some great presentations, workshops and corridor conversations. The final presso of the day by Peter Simmonds also requires some comment here. He posed the question ‘what schools might look like if…’ (and tried to get us thinking about a vision for post-industrialised education). His opening remarks about the efficiency based origins of much that we do with groups of 30 students in age-graded rows and columns were underscored by a 1950’s propaganda piece on a school of the future (complete with lathes, typewriters and kitchens) that would have been hilarious if it didn’t carry strong echos of what was being shown by vendors in the ‘trade show’ exhibits downstairs. Peter then took us through several popular youtube videos including ’shift happens’ and some leading edge experiments from the UK. I think our vision for the future needs to go a long way past the heavily funded top down efforts of the poms.

Which brings me to the bad news:

I spent 80% of the day fecking with the wi-fi connection offered at the venue, then wrestling with the hapless state government firewall and proxy shambles. My plan was to jump on the net via wi-fi, connect up my bluetooth keyboard and twitter, flickr and live blog my little heart out – then show off fring for free Voip calls with IM presence awareness. Thanks to the preparation done by my fellow net2blazers I knew there was good wifi coverage, a wep key was made available (and there was even a special username and password with special clearance for many web2.0 sites normally blocked in schools).

What happened illustrates the validity of Gerry’s call for OPEN networks (which would have provided seamless web access to my unexpectedly cool device that I had bought to school for the day).

- just before Gerry’s keynote began I was given the WEP key and a verbal indication of the proxy server name

- it took me 15minutes to successfully connect using the (very long) WEP key

- I spent the rest of the keynote fiddling for the UI to configure proxy with no success

- comparing notes with the IT staff and trying three combinations of proxy address did not work

- the coffee break was spent copying the configuration from a working PC (still no success)

- when we arrived in our workshop room there were written instructions including two different IP addresses for a proxy server (on nonstandard ports) – the second worked!

- as soon as my browser fired up I was prompted for proxy authentication (which I got right on the third try)

- half way through our workshop I managed to navigate to twitter and post a ‘tweet’

- I took a photo but it failed to upload via e/mail

- ten minutes more fudging to upload the photo via flickr mobile web UI (ugly)

- the only two web sites I could access were twitter and flickr

- gmail and google reader giving unpredictable results

- e/mail send not working

- fring could not login (has no UI for proxy or its authentication, doesnt seem to share credentials established in browser).

So my scorecard: two twitter ‘tweets’ and a single photo upload during my workshop. three twitter tweets and a second photo upload for the rest of the day (after a battery change and second charge). Woeful. Even worse when we face up to the fact that it is impossible to blacklist enough sites to make the web safe for kids, and impossible to whitelist enough to make it interesting for progressive users. All the CLOSED approach to the web achieves is a little arse coverage for management and a whole lot of grief for educators, students and supporters – and elimination of any pleasant unforseen benefits from emerging technology like cheap mobile phones with wifi!!!

My vision for the future would be fuelled by a ‘front foot’ approach to remedies for what I have described above. My school would agressively pursue open wireless networks with unfettered internet connectivity within highly visible areas of the school grounds – in exchange for open publication of my browsing history.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang

technorati tags:cegsa, cegsa07

UPDATE: Oops had e/mails about the bad links to the movie – sorry, fixed now. As a bonus, wander over to http://fang.blip.tv/ if you want editable versions of all my video stuff for your own mashups.

I had one of those afternoons from hell trying to get my video onto a DVD so I wouldnt need to much around with computers. Of course, I failed and had to run the videos off my laptop (and yes, I forgot the power adaptor and my mobile phone in all the rush). So, I rushed the first half of the talk worrying about batteries.

The talk was beamed througout South OZ via centra, unfortunately without videos. So, as promised, here are links to the powerpoint and video from my talk.

The 30 minute video featuring Kevin Richardson (which was the inspiration for my talk and video mashup) is available via Microsoft’s on10.net – ‘the geek stories’.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:cegsaagm

I just whizzed over to the CEGSA website to check date/time of the talk and notice that a title for the talk has already been published.

Mike Seyfang:- How Can 2 Work For You?

The net2blazers are planning to meet immediately after the AGM – I would like to enlist the help of anyone reading this post. I’m hoping for some conversation/feedback to help me shape my talk and I would like some online, real-time assistance from at least one live blogger (graham?), audience member (al?) and three or four twitter users (???).

For the content of the talk I was thinking along the lines of something I have been thinking about lately:

‘UncleMike’s excellent emerging technology excursion‘

or, for the academics

‘Inverting the paradigm – a model for dealing with increasing rate of growth in new tools and technologies students are using and bringing into schools‘

The basic idea is to demonstrate that no single educator could possibly keep up with all the technologies their students will be using and that no learning institution could implement a policy that would grant appropriate access to all such technologies. This is a symptom of what I like to call the ‘Blancmange Effect‘ – just when you think all the issues have been grasped, something unforseen emerges (try squeezing a flavoured jelly dessert in your hands and you will quickly get the idea). The point was driven home for me last week when discussing how I thought I had a solution for internet access from schools, the principal of my children’s school asked – what about access from mobile phones (and other wireless devices)!!

My basic thesis is to treat access to new technology services like going on an excursion – an idea inspired by Al Upton’s analogy of road safety to internet safety. Road traffic within school grounds is controlled more carefully than outside but we do, from time to time, take children on excursions – learning both skills like crossing roads safely and learning from the wonderful things that exist outside the school grounds. I would like to present a model where educators passionate about the potential of emerging technologies (e.g. social networking / web2 etc) assume that the default access to everything interesting is BLOCKED and that they develop and model lessons that take learners on ‘excursions’ into a totally OPEN internet, with a level of care and guidance commensurate with the age group involved.

I plan to present a scenario that might help spark some ideas around what one of these ‘excursions’ might be like. At this point I have a few bullet points rattling round my brain:

• Assume/ensure most of the interesting internet sites are BLOCKED at school
• Collect ‘consent forms’ from caregivers
• A topic of research (e.g. local historical figure(s)) is given from the curriculum
• Divide class into groups (library, computer room, field trip)
• Library: use books + computers with limited internet access to gather information
• Computer Room: has full OPEN internet access for the duraion of the supervised lesson, all net activity is logged (maybe even displayed on a screen at the front of the room)
• Field Trip: mobile phones are used to collect information (txt, photos, audio, video) which is sent to sites accessible from the computer room (e.g. flickr, youtube, blogs, twitter etc)
• Information collected is ’synthesised’ into something like an internal school wiki or equivalent

Following an ‘excursion’ like this several interesting learning scenarios could be explored:

• Information literacy challenge – try and find some missing or inaccurate information about the topic of research in wikipedea
• Use a ’screencast’ of the history of that wikipedia page to show the extent of misinformation in terms of time and volume
• Use the information collected in the first ‘excursion’ as a basis for an update to wikipedia
• Discuss any ‘risky’ behavior that was observed during the excursion with a view to developing safety strategies appropriate to the age group
• And many more…

If any of this sparks a response, please share it before next week. Over the weekend I plan to throw together a quick mash-up of screen recordings of some elements that invoke the most response, I may even script a live demo if there is sufficient demand / interest in these ideas.

This is one way I see ‘how (web) 2 can work for you‘ So, please, tell me what you think.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

http://www.cegsa.sa.edu.au/Events/AGM/default.asp

technorati tags:education, wikipedia, eduausem2007

No teacher left behind: the Urgency of Web2.0 ” (video) podcast and wiki.

Enjoy

Fang – Mike Seyfang

CIMG4313.JPG

UPDATE: ‘Podium Cam’ video here on youtube.

Was a treat for me! What an honor to present with people who live and breathe this Web2.0 stuff – and what a funky room in which to present – more gadgets than you can poke a stick at.

Resources from my Podcast/Fickr/Mashup demo HERE.

(Note the ‘lo fi’ podcast I recorded was uploaded during Q&A and not too shabby for less than $100 worth of gear)

More after I get some dinner.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:eduauweb2, education, mashup, remix, creativecommons

ScreenCast of demo rehearsals [SILENT] demo1.m4v, demo2.m4v

iPod video of mashup preso.m4v

Bloglines RSS Feed of demo elements

My flickr photos
Anthony Burnett flickr photos [Nice original artwork]
http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting/
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/btn [Podcasting 15th August]

Podcasts, Flickr & Mashups – Mike Seyfang
A recent Pew study shows that 57% of teens create/share some form of digital content. This segment will take you on a whirlwind tour of some of the things they are up to. Podcasts – what are they, how to ‘catch‘ them, listen to them and create them. Flickr – what is it, how to find images, how to upload images and why its called ’social software’. Finally we will play a couple of ‘mash-ups’ that show how stories can be told using a new kind of literacy.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Podcast of live event HERE.

ScreenCast of demo rehearsals [SILENT] demo1.m4v, demo2.m4v

iPod video of mashup preso.m4v

Bloglines RSS Feed of demo elements.

My flickr photos
Anthony Burnett flickr photos [Nice original artwork]

http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting/

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/btn/video/default.htm?program=btn&pres=20060815 [podcasting]

Podcasts, Flickr & Mashups – Mike Seyfang
A recent Pew study shows that 57% of teens create/share some form of digital content. This segment will take you on a whirlwind tour of some of the things they are up to. Podcasts – what are they, how to ‘catch’ them, listen to them and create them. Flickr – what is it, how to find images, how to upload images and why its called ’social software’. Finally we will play a couple of ‘mash-ups’ that show how stories can be told using a new kind of literacy.

Fang – Mike Seyfang