Doug Belshaw :: Blog

Hallo
I have uploaded on elgg community site new language pack for Georgian language.
Dear Administrators, please look http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/highlander/read/9324/georgia
and add it to eduspaces too.
Thank you much in advance!!!

I like to consider myself a liberal-minded person, open to various perspectives and points of view quite different than my own. With this premise in mind, I want to share a situation which I am having great difficulty wrapping my head around.

As part of my course on integrating technology into the secondary curriculum, I have students create learning logs as a way of introducing them to weblogs and their many uses. I gave students an opportunity to pick from a number of free, online weblogging applications. Several of my students chose to host their learning logs using Edublogs which seemed at the time to be a reasonable solution.

As I was reading through students weblogs I found links embedded in their content that seemed rather odd. For example one student mentioned the word "energy" in her blog entry and I found a pop-up link directing me to Exxon/Mobile. Hmmm? I thought and I read on. This same student also mentioned "college" in her entry wherein a hyperlink associated with the University of Phoenix popped up. I found this rather odd, since the student was currently enrolled here at the University of Florida. I left a comment on her site asking her why she chose these odd links, only to find that when I returned to her content, the links had disappeared.

I checked my other student learning logs in Edublogs and found a similar pattern. It then dawned on me that these links were being added to their content without their notice.

I quickly dashed a note to Mr. James Farmer, the CEO of Edublogs, asking what was going on here. Were these hyperlinks intentionally being embedded? Was there a disclaimer that users of this free site signed acknowledging that hyperlinks to different advertisements would be embedded in their content? What was going on?

I never heard back from Mr. Farmer, so I decided to go see what information I could find about this situation on the Edublogs site. I found a forum discussion where several Edublogs users were concerned about this practice.

Here is a sample of what they said:

I was updating one of my blogsites this weekend. I noticed that when I changed the theme "ContentLinks" ads started randomly appearing. I cannot have this on my school's blogs. I changed the theme back to "Borderline Chaos" which doesn't appear to have the pop-ups. Is this a feature on all themes now? Is there a way to turn it off? If I become a supporter, would this feature be removed?

I also noticed this issue. I'm using the "Blue Moon" theme. I will try changing my theme. If this is a new edublogs policy, there should have been some notice ahead of time. This is unacceptable for a school blog and I am quite offended by having these ads forced uppon us! Edublogs, do you have an answer??

Content Links in the middle of my posts which include unauthorized advertisements is unacceptable. One of the reasons I moved my blog to Edublogs was to avoid ads in my blog, and this is even worse than Adsense found off to the side which people can easily ignore. Please remove these or let us know if they are here to stay, I will move my blog to another more school friendly blog host if thats the case.

These comments were made 5 months ago when this new "feature" was turned on. They mostly continue in this vein from a handful of the hundreds of Edublogs users. Mr. Farmer offered this response to the situation within the forum as follows:

Apologies for this, it was a bug in our system and should be fixed now, we have been experimenting with (extremely occasional) advertising in order to support Edublogs and you can find more information here: http://edublogs.org/forums/topic.php?id=5303&replies=3

It should be fixed up now.

Cheers, James

The link then takes you to another forum post which is dated "8 months ago" which suggests that this feature was in the works longer than Edublogs users were aware:

Andrew and I have been giving Edublogs and revenue some serious thought of late.

In particular we've been trying to figure out how we can best support the growth and development of the site - both in numbers of users and in terms of functionality (we've got much bigger plans than the forums up our sleeves).

We're thinking about the costs of servers and of development and support staff.

As you know, we've got Edublogs Campus - but as you may not know, it's actually a really competitively priced product... for the amount of support, development and server space it occupies it doesn't really pay for more than itself.

So, we tried the 'Supporter' route and while we've had some great feedback from a lot of people on this and quite a few of you signed up it's not coming anywhere close to paying the hosting bills at the moment.

For example, our monthly hosting costs are around $3.5K, 'Supporter' is $25 (annually) and we've had about 30 - 40 people sign up for it.

I know that improving it still further will assist... but you can see where I'm getting at.

So, we're considering trying out some adsense, in the same way that wp.com do it.

What this would mean would be that:

- You would never see any ads
- Your students would never see any ads
- Your regular readers would never see any ads
- There wouldn't be any ads in feed readers
- Noone who has bookmarked you or types in your URL would see any ads
- No logged in Edublogs users would ever see any ads

In fact, very few people would see ads at all, but enough search engine visitors might in order to help us cover the bills and continue to grow and develop Edublogs.

And (and this makes us very different to wp.com) if you are an Edublogs Supporter there would never be any ads on your site ever.

And of course no Campus sites would have ads either.

I have to be honest, I was first very opposed to the concept (as you might have guessed!) but something I've figured out over the last few months of talking about it to people online and face to face is that not many people actually care.

I have never, for example, heard of a user saying that they don't want to use wp.com because of their ads, or that they'd choose Edublogs over wp.com based on their ad policy (that I mentioned above).

Also, our idea with this is that we try it out temporarily and if it doesn't work out or upsets people too much - we'll look into other approaches.

But at this time we'd love to hear your thoughts, so please, um, let us hear your thoughts below :)

Cheers, James

While Mr. Farmer offers a cogent explanation for the need for revenue to support free, online hosting of Edublogs, he never says anything about embedding advertisements in user created content. I am not opposed to advertisements on free online applications. However, there is a big difference between placing an advertisement on a free site and placing an advertisement in the user's content. Huge difference. Major fucking difference. By doing such, Edublogs has crossed a line that is highly unethical in terms of having user's unknowingly endorse corporations or advertising content within content they have generated. Again, having a widget or a sidebar filled with advertising content is one thing; embedding advertisements in user generated content is another. The differences are not in the same ball park, not in the same area code, not in the same hemisphere.

What makes matters a tad worse is the defensive posture assumed by Edublogs and "drmike -- Volunteer Support Guru." They seem to be missing the point. Very few users are complaining about adverts. What users are concerned about is the way in which this situation is being managed. Since "drmike" is an anonymous unpaid professional, I suppose... you get what you pay for. You might think with the new advertising revenue being generated by Edublogs, they could afford to hire a less cynical customer relations person.

While I am not a legal scholar, I have requested legal counselors to consider this situation and will be reporting on their findings in the near future. I am not sure how "in-line" advertising in this manner will lead to better service for users, nor are users given any indication of what these services might be.

Overall I am quite perplexed by this situation. My students using Edublogs report feeling violated and that their content is being mis-represented by the hosting service. Myself and my students are clearly okay with advertiser-supported services. What we do not like is having words or brands put in our mouths that we have not chosen to support. Legally, in certain circumstances, this action is close to vilification or libel and it should not be tolerated by any user of any free service unless you have legally agreed to allow the host to do so.

While I am clearly late to this discussion, I am angry at myself for not looking into this before recommending it to my students. There are many free sites used by my class that advertise, but none, zero, zilch, nada, that embed advertisements in the content created by us, the users. And why haven't other free applications done this? I can only guess it was for legal and ethical reasons loosely considered by the Edublogs administration.

More to come...

 

Image from here and here

I just saw the latest Nasa Space Shuttle launch live on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/spacevidcast and followed along in the chatroom and on Twitter.

You can see the High Definition video of the launch here. Actual launch at 8:56 mins into the vid.

Wonderful - quite wonderful. The presenters gave me a list of the acronyms associated with the mission here:

http://www.itc.nl/~bakker/nasa.acr.html

and all the Web 2.0 links to do with space are here:

http://arielwaldman.pbwiki.com/space

Enjoy

- the mission goes on for 15 days.

Twitter links

- http://www.twitter.com/SSEndeavour

- http://www.twitter.com/spaceVidcast

Youtube Vidcast channel - http://uk.youtube.com/user/spacevidcast

Wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceVidcast

 

 

 

 

As some of you will have noticed, we have given EduSpaces a new skin and added a couple of features, namely; Shouts, Push to Twitter, Incoming Twitter and FriendFeed on all profiles.

This combination of features allows users on EduSpaces to continue using the external tools of their choice while still updating their followers on EduSpaces.

A few may ask why we have revamped EduSpaces, the answer is simple, this site launched four years ago this month, before Facebook, MySpace, Twitter et al were household names. Yes, it has gone through a couple of rocky patches, however, people kept on using it, so we wanted to show our commitment and say thank you.

The service will continue to be free to use, however, we are considering putting a couple of links on the frontpage to a few worthwhile educational charities, I hope this is ok.

Anyway, thanks to those users who kept supporting the site, we appreciate it.

Overview

I volunteered to attend and give  feedback to the first strand of this event

"Teaching and learning, with particular attention to personalisation"

at the Thistle Hotel in London today. I have replicated the slide handout we were given about the consultation process and then documented some of  the discussions that went on in text, picture  and audio formats using Web 2.0 collaborative tools - please annotate and comment on my observations.

There are 8 strands in all - I am only reporting back for event number 1 emboldened :

1    5 November 2008    10am-4pm    Teaching and learning, with particular attention to personalisation

 

2    6 November 2008      Assessment for learning and the use of performance data for pupil tracking

3    11 November 2008    Subject knowledge for teaching

4    12 November 2008    Curriculum and curriculum development, literacy, numeracy, 14-19 developments and ICT

5    13 November 2008    How children and young people develop and how they learn, and management of their behaviour

6    18 November 2008    Inclusion – special educational needs, English as an additional language

7    19 November 2008    Leadership and management, especially for subjects or curriculum areas

8    20 November 2008    Working with others in and beyond the classroom – the school workforce and the children’s workforce, and working with parents and carers

Where possible I have rerepresented diagrams in the powerpoint to avoid copyright issues and also to clarify feedback in diagrammatic form. All content is copyright TDA and I fully acknowledge them as the primary source.

 

Masters in Teaching and Learning : The Aim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slide from TDA consultation rerepresented for explanation. This is the TDA's main aim on this .

So this was the first slide (rerepresented to avoid copyright issues) that we were presented with. It's a broad brush view of the TDA aim. It's obviously transformative.

The next slide is what was called the "snail diagram":

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key factors ensuring transformation model.

This diagram outlines the process whereby this particular strand can be implemented and consultation was asked for around this as a basis for the model being rolled out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enablement

Improved teacher quality

Timetable of consultation prior to rollout

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three phases and in more detail each phase -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phase 2 in more detail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phase 3 in more detail:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were then given a separate sheet clarifying the starting point of the TDA which I have also replicated below - then I will outline further context and the day:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timescale of rollout - very tight!

I had notes on this saying 2009 all NQTs in North West - Newly apointed NQTs. The outcomes from the consultation will be to develop:

"a national framework for MTL that can be used by providers of MTL to develop the programme and that is tight enough to gain national consistency, but flexible enough to develop a programme to meet local needs. The TDA will work with a range of national  expertsto develop this framework, using the outcomes from consultation as a starting point. Once this framework has been reviewed by social partners and representatives from schools, HEIs and local authorities, it will be used as a basis for those providing MTL, for roll out from September 2009, to develop their MTL programmes."

Our first task was to :

Develop an example of a real-life classroom or department scenario that an MTL participant needs to engage with in order to broaden and embed professional knowledge skills and understanding.

- How would coverage of 'teaching and learning' as a content area thread through this scenario?

- How should the scenario draw upon any of the other content areas? 

I took a mobile phone shot of our outcomes and annotated it on flickr - just click on the picture to take you to the original and roll over the boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not going to into any more immense detail - we had a look at Core Professional Standards - M level descriptors  and M Level descriptors and Core Professional Standards and tried to square them. We wondered why we were being asked to do this and we guessed it might tie into money interms of professional development linked to the qualification - and so there was some mapping going on.

Here's our and another table's feedback at our stab at that with quick feedback that I recorded on the Mac.

Click for audio recording here 

 

Things that came up throughout the day:

Role of Coaches?

Possible dumbing down of standards - constant referral to competencies - worry by HEI over this as opposed to proper academic rigor.

HEI's on our table were concerned about lack of time for reading and writing and higher order reflection informing practice.

When best in the cycle of NQT to do the more intensive stuff. Basically you need to get established to before you can get a focus for a masters.

Possible conflict between schol Prof Dev and Masters coaches - you may find something extremely useful from study but not being seen to get your game together in terms of requirements in prof dev.

So chinese walls solution perhaps?

I was concerned there seemed to be a lack of communications infrastructure - suggested solutions but HEIs seemed to think there students should remain within their portals but admitted their students used social media extra murally :). I outlined a distributed model - don't really think people understood what I was talking about.

From my viewpoint.

A lot of video and new social media web 2.0 apps could solve the problem of time for reflection and collabortion. A lot of HEIs seemed resistant to this idea, some of them seemed to think I was talking about a completely virtual environment that would replace face to face meetings - I had to explain that they would augment rather than replace. I was surprised not to see any JISC members there.

Unfortunately the tenders have already gone out so this aspect could not be included in any spec - and that, in my estimation is not an ideal situation.

However  if collaboration is a major strand people are going to have to build quick solutions because the timeframe for this and the scope and scalability have implications obviously for schools if all NQTs are to get this opportunity. So my question would be how do you scale this up without dumbing down - I really do think a Web 2.0 Personal Learning Environment would be a solution if implemented otherwise I think people will have missed the boat on this one - that is a personal view but I'm willing to take odds on that there will be problems of scalability and implementation further down the line if this is not to become burdensome...

We did discuss the possibility of social networks to enable tutors or students to come together and find like minded peers with similar situations or problems but I really do not think people quite understood this concept...the senior manager in a school on table did though and has a localised solution in his school.

And that is my feedback on the day - the food was good too...

 

 

 

Has the ability to post by email been removed? I've used it in the past, but not for ages & was trying to test it - and had forgotten what random address I'd set up. I can't find where I entered the details, though, now.

In developing a lesson in Media Literacy Education I ran across a slideshow by Renee Hobbes, a tenured full professor at Temple University School of Communication and Theater in Philadelphia, PA. In her presentation Hobbes provides a useful heuristic for examining different forms of media that I thought would be worth sharing.

The purpose of media literacy education can be defined helping learners of all ages to develop "habits of inquiry and skills of expression" that are needed to foster critical thinking, effective communication, and active citizenry in today's world (1). Under the guise of promoting habits of inquiry, there are three key elements you can base your analysis on: Authors & Audiences, Messages & Meanings, and Representations & Realities.

Authors & Audiences
Authorship: Who made this?
Purpose: Why was it made? Who is the target audience?
Economics: Who paid for it?
Impact: Who benefits from this? Why does it matter to me?
Response: What kinds of actions might I take?

Messages & Meanings
Content: What is this about? What values and points of view are expressed? What is omitted?
Techniques: How was this constructed? What tools and techniques were used?
Interpretations: How might different people understand this message? What is my interpretation and what do I learn about myself from my reaction?

Representations & Realities
Representation: How does this message represent its subject?
Context: When was this made? Where or how was it shared?
Credibility: What are the sources of information, ideas or assertions? What criteria do I use to evaluate it?

I like how Hobbes questions provide a solid frame from which we may access, analyze, evaluate and communicate media messages.Given the wide range media that surrounds us (e.g., advertising, narrative & documentary film, print & TV news media, music and popular culture), it is critical that educators and learners of all stripes are aware of media's influence and the ways of seeing and habits of mind they promote. Media literacy education is a fun way to play with our understanding of the world, a way to engage and participate with media that invites a host of critical thinking skills that can serve us all well.

I am reminded of my first taste of media literacy education in an undergraduate film theory course. Armed with a new grammar of cinema and a recognition of the impact camera angles, sound and light, dialogue, transitions and how they affected the movie's message, I could never look at movie the same way again! Of course this meant I was never invited to watch movies with any non-film theory majors. I couldn't help offering a running commentary on the director's and editor's choices and the impact they were having on our perceptions. (How bleeding obnoxious!) I've since calmed down and can now enjoy films in the company of others without feeling the need to take notes....

If you're up to it, let me know of other media literacy sources you've found helpful.

 

References:

(1) Core Principles of Media Literacy Education, AMLA, St. Louis (2007)

Image via www.nfb.ca via MFT&L

Eduspaces seems to have a flaw.  You can only add to it.  How can I delete a community that I created?

I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum here at my uni. Not having taught this course before presented a number of challenges associated with the types of assignments that might be most beneficial for students as well as determining what types of skills might serve students best.

I initially started out by focusing on teaching and learning basics, lesson plan design, and instructional strategies (i.e., pedagogical content knowledge), with the idea of inserting technological pedagogical content knowledge through different learning experiences and class activities. I found after the first few weeks that I was spending too much time teaching students how to create lesson plans and not enough time showing how technology might be integrated into the lessons they were creating, as well as giving students opportunities to practice what they have learned. Assignments were constructed in such a way as to have students actually using technology experientially (e.g., weblogs, wikis, PowerPoints, Moodle, Googledocs, Google forms, polls, spreadsheets, YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr, discussion forums, podcasts, Wordle) on a daily basis; however, students seemed unaware of how what we were doing transferred to the lessons they were creating. After much reflection and one bungled lesson plan assignment, it occurred to me that I was trying to do too much. The mid-term evaluation I asked students to complete showed me that I was doing well on many fronts, but that I was moving too quickly. Students wanted the opportunity to slow down so they too could have some time to think more deeply about what we were doing and how they might apply what they've learned. Armed with this new knowledge I made a few adjustments to the syllabus so that we could concentrate on why and how technology could be used effectively in a teaching and learning environment. As such, students have warmed up considerably to our new pace and are showing me and each other a number of new ideas and strategies that indicate that the content we are covering is beginning to become their own.

I also took some time to talk with my colleague who teaches a similar class for elementary education students to see how he managed both the course in a way that seemed to benefit students best. I quickly picked up a few strategies that I will incorporate next semester, including adopting Jonassen's Learning With Technology text and having students "teach" the text to each other. This term I chose Bransford's How People Learn as the course text which seems to be serving the students well in terms of providing them the requisite pedagogical knowledge necessary to talk about how to teach students. I believe combining this text with Jonassen's next semester will give students a solid foundation and understanding of both pedagogical content knowledge and technological pedagogical content knowledge that is clearly the goal for this course. I have also been supplementing students' reading with selections from TED, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, danah boyd, Will Richardson, and others which allows us to keep abreast of the social complexities associated with teaching, learning, and technology in our brave and ever-changing world.

Overall, I feel I've come to a greater understanding and appreciation for going deep as opposed to going long. In other words, it feels like both the students and I are getting more out of the class when we take our time and truly explore course concepts deeply as opposed to covering more, if that makes sense. I am finding that I sometimes forget what it's like to be a beginner and end up approaching the class too much like an expert which in turn does not help students new to teaching and learning with technology. I am also glad I am able to take some time to reflect on my thinking. I want students to feel confident about when, where, how, and why to use technology in their classrooms and I want to be able to model it for them so they can use their experience with me as a powerful example as opposed to a powerful non-example. We still have a several weeks to go in the semester and I am happy to be able to take what I've learned and make the necessary adjustments to make this experience better for them and me.

 

Image: Ode to Joy

Tonight was my Eureka moment for media, web 2.0, virtual worlds and education and how things are all joining up together to make new, exciting spaces that we can pollinate with rich interactive content for learners. I don't say teachers and learners because we're all in this collaboratively now and those roles are shifting sands in these times.

I was looking for some way of introducing dynamic content into Second Life using Flickr and Twitter and other video services in some sort of mashup. It was then I came across Chris Smith's blog on Media Players in Second Life.  And because of that I met Sylvio Runo inworld who runs the NHC Media Center test area. After a quick demo I immediately bought the suite of Media Players he has made.

These play YouTube videos that link and autoupdate by HTML, PHP, ASP. It plays MP4, MOV, 3GP, and a lot more file types;  also images such as JPG, BMP, GIF and more. There are also audio options (MP3, WAV, MPA,). It also has a search function that will play the video results of a key word search and load videos into a cache system to play later as well - impressive. I hadn't realised that this would be so powerful a device to make the viewing of media so easy inworld. It's very robust and works very efficiently. But that wasn't the Eureka moment.

Earlier in the day I had purchased a little app called Flickr2SL that plays Flickr streams and groups. This is nothing new Matt Biddulph and Kisa Naumova  did much more dynamic stuff a couple of years back.

Flickr2SL is a very limited little app that pulls in content from the Flickr site and also displays the results for users who have open permissions on their content. But when messing around with both apps' players and their channels I noticed that - well you'll have to look at the video to see what happened next...

 

And this got me to thinking - that it will soon be quite possible to parse media XML RSS feeds dynamically on the fly into a video player using key words and parameters. So if people around the world decide to video, twitter or twitter pic a field trip or event - the results can be aggregated and will come streaming into Second Life and for a fraction of the cost of traditional outside broadcast media if you use services like the new Mogulus Pro Web site for example. You should also be able to aggregate videos taken on handhelds by suggesting a keyword and away you go - ubiquity of viewpoint and debate at events. Take the concepts as far as you want.

You can have a 2 way, real time, live auditorium. A live remote TV station with several channels pushing in and out of SL. The media and activites will join and augment via Mashups like this. Inworld participants can push out content through Machinima - the scope of possibilities is endless. You will also have dynamic search. You could track someone videoing live in the real world for instance by entering co-ordinates if they had an always on wearable cam; panopticon or gamers' heaven? This is very, very exciting.

I IM'd Sylvio Runo inworld to show him the chance interaction and he was kind enough to pop in and have a look. But he was unimpressed and told me of a few dynamic features coming to his new player in a few weeks' time which I will look forward to.

With the NHC players I like being able to load a URL straight in - I'd like it even better if I could load and search a video feed based around users' aggregated content. I can't wait for that to happen, but for now, look at the vids in this blog to get a flavour of what these players can do.

Oh and yes the Beatles quote was modded - this is Second Life you know!