Cooper-Taylor Training

• Gt wk in Rarotonga. Napier flight delayed. Stuck in Auckland airport. #

• I'm facilitating a workshop at Auckland Uni on Twitter. Pls tweet me NOW #
• RT @heyjudeonline 7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave | EDUCAUSE http://ow.ly/yqA6 #
• Great 2 days @ Auckland Uni doing social networking workshops #
• I've got my Wave invite – Yeah!!!! #
• Where would you recommend starting recording pod casts for use with slideshare? #
• My Teaching With Twitter workshop slides have been translated into Italian. Grazie. http://tinyurl.com/yfcgrwd #
• Wow I broke through the 200 readers of my blog today. Thansk to everyone of them http://cooper-taylor.com/blog/ #
• Going on holiday to Rarotonga tomorrow. Not taking laptop, so will be quiet for a few days! #

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These are the slides from a workshop I did at Auckland University recently.

• Google maps become more readable http://bit.ly/78KTY #
• RT @tweetmeme How Does This Share http://retwt.me/1tcV1 another great post from @chrisbrogan #
• Internet set to have URIs in Asian, Arabic or other scripts http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8326241.stm #
• Great example of using social media to get your homework done http://bit.ly/1DrqNf #
• Facebook memorials for deceased users. Tacky or not? Im sitting on the fence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8327607.stm #
• I will be facilitating Twitter workshop at Auckland Uni on Monday 2-4 NZ time. If you are around pls interact with us. Thnx #
• Are you in Hawkes Bay NZ/ Let me know and I'll add you to my list http://bit.ly/1ja4zU #
• At Topp Twins. Fantastic. Full house. #

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This conference was great last year. I even managed to make a new contact right on my door step.

The theme/focus for the conference this year is Convergence in Workplace Learning.

To register, you must first register on the LearnTrends community and then register on the Conference Event Page.

The conference will also include the LearnTrends Innovation Awards 2009. Please see that post for details.

The conference organisers are looking for help

Anything you can do to help get the word out would be appreciated. Some ideas:

• Post about it on your blog.
• Add it to your sidebar.
• Put a comment in a discussion group or LinkedIn group.
• Tweet about it.
• Send an email to your work colleagues to let them know.

The hashtag for the event is #learntrends.
Read more: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/09/learntrends-2009-free-online-conference.html#ixzz0UtnjJQSu

• So how do you get a Google Wave account???????? #
• Anyone want to invite me to Google Wave? #
• Broadband in a backpack for use after disasters. So now we have food, shelter, medical aid and broadband http://tinyurl.com/yl3tjsj #
• Twitter messages to be indexed by Google & Microsoft http://bit.ly/4xa4lS #
• Twitter Contest – Free Copy of Digital Habitats – Stewarding Technology for Communities – http://bit.ly/MYIw #learntrends #
• The Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations Conference November 17-19, 2009 | Online | Free http://tinyurl.com/ygqv4hp #

• Working with faculty again today on instructional design. #
• When saving images include the dimensions in the file name imagename-150×200.jpg Easier to see what size it is when looking a list of file #
• Don't use blocks of italic or bold text – difficult for visually impaired/dyslexic. Instead use table with coloured background for emphasis #
• How NOT to get staff to participate in a planning meeting http://bit.ly/M3sPu #
• Last few weeks to contribute your TopTools for Learning http://tinyurl.com/ykyl9um #
• Can anyone point me at any protocols for instructional designers and faculty working together? cont… #
• … e.g ID will not make edits unless invited to do so by staff #
• The Polish authorities in charge of Auschwitz launch an official site on Facebook http://tinyurl.com/yj3egjw #
• // in URLs could have been avoided Berners-Lee "apologises" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8306631.stm #
• A survey of 16 to 24 year olds has found that 75% of them feel they "couldn't live" without the internet. http://tinyurl.com/yjsz2s8 #
• Other uses for the "/" http://bit.ly/17Bvrx #
• Very near epicentre 4.2 quake last night. All ok #
• How Tiny Camcorders are Changing Education http://bit.ly/xL7Gp #
• DEANZ2010 conference call for papers is open http://bit.ly/8KbZJ #
• Google Docs can now share folders. Yeah!!!! #
• Who says today's youth have no drive and determination? Take a look at these guys http://techxav.com/about/ #
• Ask For Answer – new site create by and for teens. Worth a look. Best of luck guys http://askforanswer.com/ #
• Interesting alternative to Trademe or EBay http://www.bidhere.com/?ref_id=501 #
• MP met with criminal gangs costing tax payer $6000+ http://tinyurl.com/ykwhk8m Go figure #

• How to keep tabs on your boss with Twitter http://bit.ly/cFBNM #
• RT @tweetmeme More Email Management Tips http://retwt.me/BocK #
• Energy-from-waste powers US army http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8290130.stm #
• How to attribute a Creative Commons photo from Flickr http://tinyurl.com/yjr5mvn #
• New blog post: How to Stop Blog Spam in Edu-Blogs #
• 193 readers on my blog. Inching closer to that 2000. Can I make it before the end of Oct? http://tinyurl.com/dcsgnx #
• Oops make that 200! When I get to 2000 I'm gon'a throw a party #
• All 2000 would be invited – bring a plate #
• Not at #Ulearn09 (sadly) but following their tag #
• Blogger is 10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8286174.stm #
• Legal threat closes postcode feed http://tinyurl.com/y9ocsoe But surely a postcode is public domain? If it ain't it should be. #
• Need to explain what a browser is? http://bit.ly/2ELB4e #
• Anyone tell me how to put my twitter feed on my Facebook page? #
• Effective PD needs 2 raise opps to challenge teacher assumptions & process new learning with others – over and over #ulearn09 (via @BronSt) #
• YouTube gets 1 Bn users a day. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8299951.stm Now that must generate some click throughs! #
• International version of the Kindle available for USA and 100 countries BUT NA is not one of them. SHAME on you Amazon http://bit.ly/tt5Pm #
• Trying out http://www.audible.com Get books to listen too #

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The new Horizon Report is out.

Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R. , Smythe, T., & Stone, S. (2009).
The Horizon Report: 2009 Australia–New Zealand Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Here is my take. My comments in italics

For those of you new to this report, “The New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project is an ongoing research project that aims to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry within education around the globe over a five-year time period. The project’s central products are the Horizon Reports, an annual series of publications that describe promising emerging technologies and highlight their relevance to education. This edition, the Horizon Report: 2009 Australia-New Zealand Edition, is the second in the ANZ series and focuses on emerging technologies as they appear in and affect education in Australia and New Zealand particularly.”

Key Trends:

• The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing. Many jobs that will be sought and filled by educated young people require the ability to improvise, though this skill is neither taught nor prized in school.
  So please people stop teaching facts and examining what students can remember. In today’s world facts can be found and don’t have to all be remembered. Start teaching in a way that encourages improvisation and looking at the world through different lenses.
  
• Technology continues to impact how people work, play, gain information, and participate in communities. … the Internet has now become firmly established as a key medium through which people connect with one another. It provides virtual spaces where people who share interests can congregate; … .
  So why aren’t we using FaceBook et al to form communities as a means for our students to learn? I know some tertiary institutions where FB is actually blocked on campus as they don’t have enough bandwidth. Institutions you have to get up with the play here. Having adequate technology is as important as buildings and faculty. If you want to get $$$ from your online students you have to invest the $$$ to get adequate and even better technology.
• Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socialising, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives. For many students, technology is a primary means of socialising and managing one’s own learning. … It places the power to communicate firmly in the hands of students, connecting them to experts, to information, and to one another in powerful and immediate ways.
  So let’s teach with the tools they are familiar with. Turn mobile phones off in class? Not any more. In a large lecture txt, tweet and email me your questions.
• The way we think about learning environments is changing. Because technology is so pervasive in our lives, the learning environment is no longer limited to a physical space. …  institutions must reflect and support the transformation of the learning environment by embracing the means that make it possible: social networking tools, semantic applications, mobile devices, virtual worlds, and other emerging technologies that facilitate collaboration, communication, and learning.
  Faculty have to get familiar with this stuff. So there needs to be a big push in institutions to invest in professional development to inject the pedagogical philosophies of teachers with technology enabled learning experiences. Institutions who wait around on this essential PD will be overtaken by those who meet the need head on. Put every teacher through PD? Provide them with the tools and expect them to be used? No excuses? You got it.

Critical Challenges:

• Practices for evaluating student work will evolve in response to the changing nature of learning and student preferences for receiving feedback. … effective methods of assessing non-traditional work must be developed … new ways to conduct and deliver evaluations and grades must be adopted … and for delivering feedback in ways that are meaningful and convenient for students.
  So can I blog my homework and have you comment on my post?
• Ageing learning environments do not easily allow for embracing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), or enable the sorts of learning support systems being promoted by modern theorists. Many classrooms are not equipped to support the number of students who bring laptops … and are not conducive to collaborative group work. … many course and learning management systems that are used in schools … do not reflect students’ desire for flexible, customisable tools.
  One for CMS/LMS providers here. Allow the student to interface the institution’s LMS with the web apps they use – to find experts, community, information. Learning is no longer that prescribed purely by the teacher. The student is the driver. LMS’s can no longer be predominately content dumps.
• There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy. … There is an increasing realisation that these skills are as important as written, spoken, and information literacy, and they must be formally taught.
  Yep employers want a literate worker. The three Rs no longer cut it. Hours spent forming perfectly formed letters should be a thing of the past.
• There is a growing recognition that new technologies must be adopted and used as an everyday part of classroom activities, but effecting this change is difficult. The difficulty lies in creating new opportunities for learning in a well-established system.
  So new curricula must be created and teachers supported with PD (anyone noticed how this keeps cropping up).

Technologies to watch:

• Mobile Internet Devices.
  Open book exams? No thanks I want open Internet exams. I am marking your synthesis of the information, the presentation of your argument, new conclusions drawn, etc
• Private Clouds.
  So that’s Internet resources with the institution in control. Not so much risk.
• Open Content.
  How long have we been hammering on about sharing resources? Seems like forever. Perhaps economic necessity will finally bring this home.i
• Virtual, Augmented, and Alternate Realities.
  Simulations have now become much easier to do. But lets not forget the PD required for the steep learning curve of learning to do things in the likes of Second Life.
• Location-Based Learning.
  Any time any place really is possible now. But make sure you set the ground rules with students. “Yes, I know you txt me at 4 AM, but I told you to expect replies within 48 hours. I have many other commitments to juggle.”
• Smart Objects and Devices.
  Smart objects and devices are able to connect the physical world with the world of information.
  Mmmm, I need to get my own head round this one. Anyone give me some educational examples?

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I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of spam in my blog comments. In fact only 0.15% are legitimate. Yes the decimal point is in the right place.

Most of the spam is just the usual plethora of smut. But a small group of perpetrators are getting through the traps I have set for them. These are the folks who make comments about my posts, usually complimentary (thanks), but they spoil it by putting a link to something completely unrelated to my blog. I had one only this morning that included a link to a particular Grill. So I edited the comment and deleted the link. I don’t often edit comments, but it’s my blog after all so if the content of the comment is not in keeping with my blog I feel justified in doing an edit.

What these commentators don’t realise is

• I have Askimet in place, which catches most of the spam automatically. It’s very rarely wrong (only 3 false positives in all the time I’ve been using it). Askimet is a plugin for WordPress and very easy to install. If you haven’t got it go get it.
• I use Disqus which allows me to moderate comments, and also to white/black list people. It picks up any links in comments which I then moderate. So if you comment on my blog don’t bother to put in links that are of no interest to my readers (mainly teachers and edu-techies). Disqus is great as it allows me to have threaded replies to comments. It imported my existing comments with no problems. Chris Brogan first put me on to it and I am very happy with it.

So all you spammers out there, stop spamming my comments, you ain’t going to get through.