The Tree House

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.   

While reading blogs in bloglines, I learned of google trends.  The graph below is for blog and wiki.  It speaks volumes.

A while back I posted about setting up a wiki for my new SG chemistry class.  I chose not to give out the address for two reasons, (security of the kids who I hoped would use it - I wanted to see that they could use it responsibly, and secondly, because I wanted to see that it would work).  Very soon after setting it up I realised that it wasn’t going to work in the way that I had envisaged.  It has therefore been sidelined for the time being. (Sorry Ollie - I know you had been interested to see how it worked!)
 It occurred to me that what I needed was something more structured, and which I could “control” a little easier.  I had planned on using a blog with my higher class, but since the SG course had now started, I thought I might as well give it a go, but using a different model to that planned for the S5 class.
I have now been posting to the S3 Chemistry blog for over a month now.  Every day I have the class I write a post, saying what we did in class, linking to some of the resources that we used, and perhaps asking a few questions.  I am encouraging the pupils to comment on the posts, perhaps with answers to my questions, questions of their own, or perhaps commenting on their understanding of the days activities.
I have been encouraged by the way that the class have taken to it (at least some have).  Perhaps this is linked to me telling them that the more comments there are on the blog, the less written homework they will get!
At the “new technologies” course I was on in Stirling, there was talk about the “conversation” that web 2.0 facilitated.  The class blog appears to be delivering this.  One pupil posted a comment saying that she had not understood an aspect of that days work.  I picked up the comment that night, and was able to prepare work for the following day which hoped top help the young lady overcome the difficulties she was having.  Incidentally, I was going to be at an inservice that day so the cover work for the class was left on the blog itself, including the additional tutorial on endothermic and exothermic reactions!  The next post the student made was saying that the work had helped, a little! 
As if this wasn’t enough encouragement, I was sitting at lunch later that week, when another teacher opposite me said
“I want one of those blog things”
I was a little confused as I had kept the blog very quiet (again wanting to see its worth before sharing it with colleagues).  That was until it dawned on me that the teacher had a daughter in the chemistry class.  She had seen its value, not from a teachers perspective, but from a parents perspective.  She saw the benefit it was having with her daughter, and wanted set one up for her to use with her new S3 class.
Until last week, I have seen the potential with web 2.0 for education but with no real personal evidence for its benefits.  This has held me back from becoming a “champion” for the cause.  Now, I have the evidence!

Note, I am not going to post the address of the chemistry blog to this blog, as I want to allow the students a little more freedom, that they would not have if the school were identified.  Since my school can be identified from this blog…. No links.  If you are interested, feel free to ask, and I will send the link to your email address.

Life has been a little hectic the last wee while, and although I have been setting up a blog for use with my new chemistry class, I have been too busy (sorry) to fire up bloglines or even post here.  The only problem is, now that I am back, there is just far too much good stuff in my bloglines waiting to be read.  Is there room in an individuals life for a full time job, wife, kids, house, garden, excercise, and blogging?  and I even missed of the most important thing from the list. 

One aspect of my job is puting systems in place which will make the life of my fellow teachers easier.  Our biggest hit so far is the behaviour managenment system that allows us to log kids behaviour (good and not so good) via a webpage on our school intranet.  The staff like it, the managers like it, and we recently allowed the pupils to view their own loggings - they too love it, and behaviour accross the school appears to be getting better since!  This week the staff in the school have been discussing target setting with a view to formalise what we are already doing accross the school, and to move over to a database driven, web interface target setting application.  Time will tell, but I am hopefull that it will make things easier for staff in the long term and may even allow us to do away with formal reports to parents…. 

Anyway, next week I will start developing it.  The point of this rant however is that technology should make our lives easier, and free up our time to spend interacting with people, with friends and family, and the students we teach.  Im sitting here blogging with my back to the TV, (and my wife), when really I should be spending the evening with her.  I guess therefore that this post should really conclude with something “relationship building”.  I was interested to learn that Oly was into kayaking.  As someone who lives near some great kayaking country/seascape, I feel it only fair to issue an invitation to any kayakers up this neck of the woods to came and visit (stay if you are house trained), and we can paddle, and ponder the wonders of web 2.0, and if I crank up the gain on my wireless connection, even blog from a canoe in the bay in front of the house with my iPac.

Im off to spend some quality time with the wife in front of friday night’s TV best.

http://safeinternet.blogspot.com/2006/04/internet-safety-survey-is-now-ready.html#links

Tis the season for internet safety.  The SQA are looking into an internet safety related qualification.