Connectivity

I just realised I am sitting here doing school work at home, with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, my mobile phone for txting , email, and skype all running as i keep in touch with family, friends, colleagues and my class. So cool!
What are you guys doing?

Twitterific!

I use twitter to keep an eye on what some of my friends and colleagues are upto in education. maybe some of you kids might want to try it out and suggest how it could be used for school...

http://twitter.com/home

Bloggers are "monkeys living by the law of the jungle"

"Malaysian candidates required to have blogs"

According to the Malaysian youth deputy Khairy Jamaluddin [A Malaysian politician] people who blog are monkeys, but now even he has succumbed to the usefulness of this modern communication tool.

Read the article by following the link and analyse the points of view contained within. Assess the author's purpose and write what you think it is as comments.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/11/malaysia.blogging.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech






"Israeli officials: Facebook is national security threat"

As cybersafe Room5ians, you are aware of the potential peril's of social software such as Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, etc. As M-learning secret agents, you do not want to give away personal details to complete strangers via the net. It could jeopardise your cover.

The Israeli military is highly skilled and has concerns over the use of Facebook by it's troops. Read the article to establish the main point of their opinion. Write it here as a comment.


http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/04/11/israel.facebook.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech


"Even your dog has a blog"
Even your dog has a blog
It goes without saying that Max, a 3-year-old golden retriever can't talk. But that doesn't stop him from chronicling his dog's life -- as told to his owner Aubrey Jones -- on the blog "Max the Golden Retriever".

- read the article and the blog of the dog, then use your reading stategies to determine the author's purpose or reason for writing Max's blog. State your opinion as a comment.

Professional development conferences

Our blog was discussed at a recent educational conference looking at innovative ways to use ICTs, social software, collaborative learning environments, etc.
See Thusrdays presentation to findour blog being discussed:

http://www.breathetechnology.co.nz/conference

Thanks to Jenny from Breathe technology for sharing our blog and getting feedback on whether or not we should be allowed free access to the web for learning.

:-)

question for educators [no doubt some of my students will read this and comment anyway]

do you believe the students should have access to the "real world" of the net, with guidance, advice, cyber safety education, monitoring by school IT administrator, etc, or should they be restricted from genuine net access and genuine collaborative social software and interaction because of the possibility of access to inappropriate content?
I ask because I am trying to achieve genuine interactive learning and there are pressures to restrict my class's access to the internet to avoid any possibility of "something going wrong".
essentially, my 10-12 year old GATE [gifted and talented education] students can learn online with greater richness and possibilities of interaction and feedback, or they can be restricted to a contained environment.
What do you think? In this case, a contract is signed by all students and if that is breached then they lose their rights to net access.
i sincerely hope some of our "readers" will begin to contribute to enable us to justify our current blogging format.