StigmergicWeb

This caught my eye in OLDaily today :: LAMS and Moodle Integration. I had never heard of LAMS before, but I have worked with Moodle for 5 of my courses (Computer Networking and Computer Science), and I’m impressed. What I’ve seen of the combination of the two packages, both completely open source by the way, impresses me. Both Moodle and LAMS seemed designed from the ground up to allow for good instructional design, and together they look dynamite! Blackboard and WebCT beware!!

It was a super first day for the AMTEC 2005 conference started by great keynote by John Seely Brown. Rick Schwier has been blogging the conference (so I can just be lazy and link to him). Here is Rick’s post on JSB’s keynote - Rick’s Café Canadien: AMTEC 2005 - John Seely Brown

I could have used my time productively tonight, but instead I put together a brand new stigmergicweb podcast, looking at school websites and how to improve their functionality.

Problems with many existing school websites:

• out of date information
• poor navigation, cluttered web pages (clown pants page design)
• content is maintained by a single person or small group of people within the school
• doesn’t serve the school community

What we need:

• timely, relevant information
• design with web standards
• everyone is a contributor
• enhances the community. Several highly successful online communities exist including slashdot and kuro5hin.

Drupal is a great tool for setting up a dynamic web site that can be maintained by all members of the school community. It has many features that lend itself to enhancing communication and community within a school. My generic high school site is an example of how this might work.

Please leave comments on the podcast here, or e-mail me at robwall [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

OK - time to get some serious lesson planning done!

One of my favourite shows when I signed up for my new cable package was The Screen Savers. Finally, a show that had intelligent reasonable discussions about computers and technology that went deeper than “Windoze sucks“, “No, Mac sucks“. Sadly, after TechTV was purchased and assimilated by G4, the show took a turn for the worse. Patrick Norton and Leo Laporte were gone, Leo finding sanctuary in Canada (and we’re happy to have ya here, Leo!). Even though Kevin Rose and Sarah Lane were still there, the show quickly degenerated into trivialities. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and changed my cable package so I wouldn’t have to watch the slow deterioration of a once decent TV show.

Thanks to podcasting, however, I can now hear the whole Screen Saver gang once again. No longer called the Screen Savers, mainly because they would be quickly sued, they have been reborn as this WEEK in TECH, a new podcast featuring former ScreenSavers Leo, Patrick, Kevin and Robert Heron. John Dvorak has also been (sort of) on the last episode (#3), and other guests may show up.

And I noticed Leo is using Drupal to manage the This WEEK in TECH site. Ubercool!

Yet another report of students facing severe consequences because of inappropriate content posted to the web. Like anything else reported by traditional media outlets, there’s probably more to consider here than the article would let on. Globetechnology: School probes student involvement in anti-Semitic Internet chat room

First of all, I’ll issue the standard disclaimer that I am not supporting the material that was posted. I find racist material of any kind to be abhorrent. As the saying goes, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, its intolerance! :^)

But really, what is this story about? Some students were asked to leave a school. Let me assure you, this happens on a regular basis in our schools, and rarely gets reported. Someone made some highly inappropriate and offensive (IMHO) remarks Again, this happens quite regularly and is normally not a reason for coverage in a national newspaper. Ah, but this is different, isn’t it, since it involves the internet. The combination of inappropriate utterances, students and the internet really does help to sell papers, especially in these post-Columbine times. (Heaven forgive me for quoting Jon Katz :^) )

Here’s what I think the real story is, but the one that will never get reported. The school students of today are growing up in a social environment that is not controlled or monitored by adults. Unlike other social milieu, children enter this one without accompaniment by an adult at an early age. There is no period of watching how the adults interact to learn the norms of what is proper and accepted, and what is not. Children don’t have the chance to begin interacting socially in the presence of adults, so that they have someone to correct their behaviour when they get out of line (as all children do when they are learning how to interact socially with others), and no adults to protect them when situations get out of hand. That seems to be precisely what happened here:

Only a fraction of the messages posted on the external website were anti-Semitic, he said. The rest were just about life in Grade 10. But Mr. Hannaford said the student should not have allowed the offensive messages to stand.

That’s very easy for Mr. Hannaford to say, if he is being quoted correctly, but I’ve yet to meet a student in Grade 10 who will be willing to tell his or her peers that their behaviour is inappropriate. That’s what adults are for. Where were the adults when their children were starting to communicate online, so that they had a model of good behaviour and someone to limit excessive behaviour?

When I was a youth, we would hang out at the mall. Today’s youth are spending their time in a social venue that many parents and teachers may be unaware of, so I’m really glad to see that Alec Couros and Dan Schellenberg have put together a terrific compendium of CyberBullying Resources (worth bookmarking). Alec has also made a cyberbullying presentation available online in Keynote, PowerPoint and PDF formats.

drupal.org | Community plumbing

After six months of development, the Drupal team is proud to announce the Drupal 4.6.0 release! Just in time for the ID-COP site development - the timing couldn’t be better.

James points towards Robert’s post about the WordPress Aggregator Blog. If I understand this correctly, it is a WordPress hack that allows a blog to be created by aggregating several blogs. Fantastic - instant online community, just add water! I suppose there is an ethical/intellectual property issue here - what permission would a blog author need to give to participate in an aggregated blog? Does publishing a blog with an RSS feed imply that the posts are for public use? What about my content being aggregated into a blog with someone whose views I found offensive? Technology always seems to be one step ahead of culture’s ability to deal with it.

It was great to see this article about the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School article in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. This is a model that needs to be developed in more school divisions. The most important difference, by the way, is not the use of computer technology, although it is a convenient medium for delivering content.

“In a face-to-face school what we do is we spend 80 per cent of our time as teachers presenting material,” said Darren Cannell, assistant principal of the Saskatoon Catholic cyber school. “Here the computer actually presents the material so you spend the whole hour helping the students and . . . that allows you to get to know your students and there is more time for us to assist students in an online environment than there is in a face-to-face environment.”

Nicely put, Darren (and thanks for posting a link to the story in your Teaching and Learning Developing Online blog). Keep up the great work. BTW, Norm - nice photo! ;^)

Of course, the fears are largely unfounded. Here’s the story: CBC News: Text messaging among teens raises illiteracy fears

The article does point out (down towards the bottom, where not every reader will see it:

In Europe, where teens have been texting for years, researchers report that claims that texting leads to illiteracy are unfounded.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that having teens communicate by typed text should actually increase their literacy. I am defining literacy as the ability to communicate effectively in a particular medium. If teens are becoming better at communicating through text messaging, would that have a positive effect on literacy in other mediums, such as the standard written essay (which may not be the best measure of literacy in the global sense).