The Tree House

A few weeks back we discovered an old 35mm film lying around that hadnt been developed.  It turned out to be various bits’n'bobs from a few years back, but in particular I was thirlled to see it had some pics from a kayaking trip round Muckle Row, Shetland.  For anyone who enjoys sea kayaking and who hasnt been to shetland I would suggest that you book up for your nest holidays.  This is paradise if you like exploring serious caves, tunnels, arches etc…  I have put some more pics on Flickr, but they dont do the reality fo the scenery justice - you will just have to visit yourself and see!

http://www.mtvsticky.com

While trying to track down the full report for the MTV/Microsoft/etal survey (thanks for the lead David) I found two things.  Firstly thast the full report is internal to MTV and its partners, and that MTV have a site for those with an interesting following or studying youth trends.  I have signed up and initial explorations show a mix of the plan bizzare (Chewbacca mimobot® USB drive)

and the interesting. (Wiffiti a service to text places, rather than people!)

Its the kind of site that could have kept me going in interesting blog postings for years, but it would be selfish of me not to share it!  I would very much recomend the site to you - and I have only scratched its surface!

 You must try out http://aveaword.glueserv.com/ 

LTS are reporting that the BBC have done report on raising awareness of “internet savy” youngsters about online safety.

What I find particularly interesting about this is that it opened my eyes to the pressence and activities of the “Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre” or “CEOP” for short.

Its great to see the government taking online safety so seriously.  I contacted them at work today and asked them to send through details of their educational materials.  While I already knew about the thinkUknow website, I hadnt realised that this was part of the CEOP.  More info, especialy for teachers at http://thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers/ 

As web 2.0 becomes more pervasive in society, and the members of that society become publishers, and contributors, there is perhaps an additional responsibility that should be placed on those with responsibility for delivering ICT education. 

 How many of our students know what “liable” means?  The following is an extract from the conditions of use for Bebo. 

you agree NOT to: 

- Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others.
- Publish, distribute and/ or disseminate any harmful, obscene, indecent, unlawful, libellous, profane, defamatory, infringing, inappropriate, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material or information. 

In how many ICT classes across the world have teachers taken students through these terms to help the students understand what they can, and what they cant (shouldn’t) do on Bebo or similar. 

I have used Bebo successfully in raising awareness of online safety with pupils…. perhaps its time to start using it to raise their awareness of how to keep themselves from getting in trouble with the law! 
 

One of the hardest things about having a blog is wanting to share things that you know will be of benefit to colleagues, but because of a number of factors not being able to!  Watch this space.  

I was interested and encouraged to see WEB2.0 mentioned on Channel 4 news tonight, and although they were a little off the mark with one or two things they said, it was good to see web 2.0 becoming more mainstream. 

Bebo, MySpace and (the new kid on the block) Univillage will continue to be a very real challenge to us as professional educators, and will further the opportunities for young people to compromise their online safety or increase their risk of identify theft. 

On one final note (for now), I was very sorry to miss all you bloggers and web2.0 types at SETT and related events.  Commitments at work and financial limitations meant that I couldn’t be released, despite very much wanting to be down and learn/share more with you all.  I was there in spirit. 

Last term was me a little battle weary from a hard year, and other than an enthusiasm for a growing knowledge of web 2.0 found my passion for ICT waining a little.  I always said that my current post (ICT Management) should not become about the technology, but should remain about people.  This remains a challenge, but this years timetable seems me more in the class, and with less time for my management duties.  A blessing of sorts.  Its good to get back to the teaching, and esspecially back to teaching some biology.  I hope to get back to the blogging very soon, but before I do, I thought I would indulgle myself by sharing a few of the highlights from my blog free summer.

It started with a week down in wales, most of which was spent sleeping or kite buggying on a rather splendid beach.  Since moving to the west coast, I have missed the buggying (there isnt much flat land or large beaches arround here), so this was a real treat.  The next couple of weeks were spend mullet fishing, snorkling, and other assorted water sports near girvan on the ayrshire coast.  The highlight of this section of the holidays was snorkling with seals.  There have long been seals on this part of the coast, but this year there one that was particularly inquisitive, and persuaded my brother and I get in the water with it.  Priceless!

The next section saw our return as a family to Shetland,  and my return to some spectacular coastal scenery by Kayak.  For those of you who paddle, shetland is well worth a trip.  The sea caves are second to none (in my humble opinion).   

The final section of the holidays we finally got home, and spent some time recovering before starting back at work.

I have a feeling that this is going to be an interesting year, both professionally and personally, and I will of course share it all with you wonderfull people out there in the blogoshere!  Now what have I got first thing tommorow?

As those of you who have been reading the treehouse for a while will know, Bebo has been a hot topic, and although there hasn’t been a bebo related post for a while after visiting the site again tonight I felt it was time for another post. 

I went on the site a few days ago and was pleased to see a NSPCC and ChildLine advert on the sites homepage dealing with issues of child abuse.   Tonight when I went on I noticed that the first featured Bebo profile was also linked to the NSPCC campaign  I am presuming that this had been done with the support of Bebo, and I am delighted to see such a frank and honest look at the issues being such an integral part of the site.  The NSPCC had taken this message right into the very heart of youth culture by creating bebo profiles for the characters in its campaign.  

There is even a flashbox of the advert on the site, also here 

This new insight into how bebo can be used for good has come in a week where I have been trying to defend the line of keeping bebo available in the school where I work despite all other schools in the region blocking it. (That is all that have responded to my request for information).  I think that bebo’s days are numbered in my school. 

One positive thing that has however come from the debate is that I have been given the go-ahead to have a whole school assembly to look at online safety in order to ensure ALL pupils in the school are aware of the issues, not just the ones with ICT, or ICT related lessons. 

As a final part to this post, I would to make a request to the NSPCC and Childline.  Taking just a few minutes to work through the comments left on the above profiles highlights just how real an issue this is for many of the young people that we work with, and how many of the bebo’ers need the support of Childline.  Please, please follow up the comments are are being left on the profiles - the campaign has reached some young folks that from the sound of it haven’t been reached before, and need you.  

If you want to do something about child abuse, and ensuring that young people get the support they need you can visit the NSPCC support campaign  where you can send Patricial Hewit (Secretary of State for Health) an email, or your local MP.  Why stop there, you can send an email to Tony Blair via the No10 site, to David Cameron via email, or even visit the blog of Ming Campbell and post a comment!  Finally you could donate some cash to the NSPCC - If this is too much hastle for you post a comment of support and I will add £1 for every comment to the donation I will make.

At work for the last few weeks, I have been using my extra time to set up a system within the school for recording and monitoring “Target Setting”.  As a school we recognised that this was an area where we could do a little more, and after a period of debating the issues, it was agreed to try out a web based system. 

We already use a web based system for our “behaviour management”, and over the last 5 years I have seen my skills in developing this kind of system grow to the point where I am now surprising myself with what I can do! 

Although its not the best web authoring tool, I use FrontPage with an Access (or two) database sitting in the background.  The reason for its use is largely historical, and a little bit financial! 

The big accomplishment with this new system is that it is more “web 2.0″ than anything I have done before.  About 4 months a go we changed the behaviour system to allow pupils to see what information we were entering into the system, both negative and praise loggings.  This was met with enthusiasm by the pupils and also by the staff! 

The new target setting system will allow both pupils and staff to enter targets.  We/I hope that it will encourage a bit more “conversation” on targets and target setting within the school community, and allow the documentation of this conversation via the web interface. 

Just realised, you guys now have that same glazed look my wife gets when I start talking geek-speak.  I apologise, I’m just pleased with how its worked out so far. 

I have been fighting it for a week or so, but tonight when I went to look at the comments on this blog there were 34 spam comments.  To be honest, I can see spam being the biggest real hurdle to overcome if we are going to get classroom teachers using the technology.  I have been aware for a week or so now about the spam reducing measures available with edublogs, and tonight I will be (with sadness) implementing them.  I’m sad because I can no longer trust the www with my blog. :-(  I also got the first bit of spam on the blog I am trying out with my chemistry class.  A sad day indeed.  Having taken several steps down the road to being a “champion” of web2.0 in the class, I am wondering if the hype can outweigh the time and hastle of dealing with the dross.

I therefore appologies if you want to make a comment on an old post.  As of tonight old posts will be closed to comments automatically.