Digital / Manual

All my life I've had hobbies - even before I knew what a 'hobby' was. I look back at my life and see what must be a cycle - hobby 1, hobby 2, hobby 3, hobby 1 - over and over again. I'm back onto photography again. But things have changed - this time I'm using a Pentax *ist DL but with a manual screw mount lens. It's kind of a blast. However as more than person has noticed - swapping from k-mount to M42 lens mount is about the the easiest thing to do in the world. Getting it undone - well that takes some effort and I note here what one has to do so that I can remember it for next time:

The screw mount to bayonet adapter is easy enough to insert in the camera, removing it turned out to be more tricky. If you study the adapter closely, you see a small spring steel spring that is screwed on to the adapter proper. When this is in the camera, the spring will engage a small catch inside the lens mount, preventing the adapter from rotating when the lens is unscrewed. To remove the adapter it is necessary to disengage the spring by inserting the tool that comes with the adapter in the right place, that is outside the spring. However, when subsequently trying to turn the adpater clockwise, the tool easily cathes on to the bayonet flange, preventing removal.Obviously, this procedure requires training, preferably in a dust free environment, before trying it in the field. I am tempted to purchase a prime screw mount lens to use in the field together with the Peleng, just to avoid having to fiddle with the adapter!

However, the instructions don't mention why the adaptor ring tool has a small prong on one side. The prong is what goes over the spring to push it in. After the first few degrees of movement you then have to raise up the prong so that you can then turn the adaptor for the final turn. It's no where near as easy as a bayonet mount lens. But I still think using the M42 lenses is worth the effort.

DVD Commentaries and Oral Literacy

I'm feeling sick today as a great wave of pestilence sweeps across our merry school. I would have taken a sick day off last week, but you know how it is ... programming requirements - gotta get to meetings, a sports / dance carnival. Hey grin and bear it baby! And that was before we all swagged it out by a campfire overnight in another school's grounds. Sometimes, you know, even when we're feeling down - living and working out in The APY Lands has its real upsides.

Anyway feeling poorly as I was this morning I lingered over that coffee and was casting my eyes through The Weekend Australian when I came across an article about alternative homebrewed DVD commentaries that appeared in Lawrie Zion's DVD Letterbox column on the 9th of September, 2006. In the article (see below) Zion refers to MMM Commentaries, an Aussie site. It occured to me what an excellent opportunity this could provide for an alternative literacy outlet - students creating their own commentary of a movie (perhaps based on their shared class reading of a text) or providing a commentary to any genre movie / documentary or whatever based on their study (for example they could take on the role of 'scholar' and explain some technical detail - or tell you why its wrong). It would certainly provide a refreshing alternative to the traditional 'my book report' format. And I think in my context, it would give students who are essentially ESL / EFL, an opportunity to construct a higher order text when they don't (mostly) have the necessary independent reading and writing skills to construct an equivalent written text. More information on Alternative DVD commentaries can be found here in a 2002 article and of course here, on Wikipedia.

Be the sound of a tech savy teacher (there is no sound)

Graham Wegener's Teaching Generation Z blog reflects on The Blue Skunk Blog's perspective on Hiring a tech savvy teacher. In particular I was taken with the question:

How should a tech-savvy teacher create lesson plans? What is the mix of off-the-shelf apps, teacher-created projects/apps and traditional media (books etc.)? I've always thought the first sign of a technologically literate teacher is one who knows when to use technology and when not to use technology. A good teacher will use a variety of instructional strategies depending on the needs of the individual learner and the skill to be mastered.

It was just earlier today that I was faced with the imortance of this point; knowing when to use technology. Namely that tech savvy teaching doesn't just mean that you use computers. At the end of the day computers / the internet can be a potentially wide-band medium for us to convey our message with (just as a pen and paper can be narrow band). I think that potentially, the sound of a tech-savy teacher is going to be the sound of someone making the links between formal literacy lessons, various classroom discussions, pen and paper / chalk and talk learning activities. All of these things need to come along (and sometimes it may seem like these things come kicking and screaming) when one enters the tech-savy ICT zone.

I think that all too often we see teachers entering the computer room as if that room were a place apart, another realm on the far side of a great divide. And routinely we see lessons undertaken as if all that had been planned and learned in the past was now, somehow, irrelevant (i.e. that's old technology). It's not any great point, but it has to be recognised that ICT is everywhere - it isn't a mode in other words like old word processing programs used to operate (1st I'm in type mode, then I'm in preview mode, now I'm in print mode after I've been in spelling mode). ICT is essentially modeless - or it should be - and we should recognise that, ideally, technology is not a divide in our lives, rather it is everywhere. I'm sure that a lot of teachers get put off the idea of teaching ICT / or teaching in a tech savy manner because they do not realise this very point. And so they still go to the computer room and think 'computer mode'.

Wikis, education and blocked websites

Just a series of links concerning wiki's for this one: Wiki's what are they and how to use them and How I use wiki's. What do you do?

Although its a little ironic - most of the links that I want to go to are blocked by our Education department. As an educatator I want to access these links for the reasons that they were blocked in the first place - for example a skypecast about wiki's and education is blocked because it is "Chat". It's the little things like this that can spring up - unblocking isn't a problem for me - getting a website unblocked can be a real hassle; I remember when I started out. A block appears at the last minute and you have to locate the person who can unblock it, ask them to do it, and then perhaps wait ... wait until they get around it, wait until their humour improves, etc. At any rate, some of the links are blocked for reasons that are hard to explain your way around - for example bittorrent is blocked (reason "illegal") by default at my site. Now to explain why you want to access it (i.e. some files are 'free' - for example a bootable linux version of gcompris) that I want to try out on some of our older classroom PC's. It's not a 1 minute chat to explain why it's free, why the block can be removed without fear of repercussion. Well, there's this little thing called open source software ... But you have to contextualise this conversation against less than clear job descriptions, informal workplace norms / conventions that have established themselves. You know, the usual stuff - you can have all the official support in the world, but you end up having to work through other people that haven't been apprised of all the official support that you've been afforded.

Anyway, better get off to work.

Time and Tide

We live in an extraordinary time. As Vannevar Bush famously noted as far back as 1945:

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

However, it seems to me that whilst so much is potentially available to empower us as educators and so much appears to be 'just around the corner' as it were. I wonder who it is, exactly, that is going to use these devices and what teaching methodology they are going to use to achieve wonderful (but often unstated) learning outcomes.

To put this question into perspective consider the One Laptop per Child organization and their goal of creating the US$100 laptop for third world students. Whilst I personally support and applaud this project I sometimes wonder about its aims, which seem to some extent, to consider that the provision of technology is an end that will provide an educational result in itself. Consider the text on their homepage:

Introducing 2B1, the children's laptop from One Laptop per Child — a potent learning tool … a flexible, ultra low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development — immediately transforming the content and quality of their children's learning.

If we consider Marc Prensky’s “Do They Really Think Differently”, it becomes apparent that even if we do use technology, it won’t, in itself, provide much of a impact if we end up simply using this new technology to repurpose our old curriculum. What then, is the future then of 'literacy' - (if we take literacy as the abitlity to read and decode a traditional text like a novel - a handy skill to have if you ever have to read a report) - if what I or we are teaching (and I am mandated to do so) is a certain type of program requiring a monolithic block of time (perhaps 2 continuous hours) and a fairly linear approach to completing a session? How exactly then does my use of an A$6500.00 IWB / Projector / laptop combination - despite being incredibly ICT centric (merging as it does text / pictures / sound and reconstruction) - actually address such fundamental challenges as short attention spans or a tendency towards random access of text?

What exactly is it that changing our technology base / lesson mindset will require and how are we to use what we have, whether it’s a fleet of US$100 laptops in the developing world or an IWB and predominance of computers in the classroom?