The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
I was having a conversation with a colleague in the car the other day. We were talking about someone losing an iPhone. My mate said “he should have Find My Phone activated, cause then he’d find it easily”
The fact that at that particular moment we were moving along in the car got me to thinking. One aspect of GPS tracking I’ve always wanted to achieve was “live” tracking of some type of movement. You know, like in the movies, when the bad guy’s car has a tracker attached to it and the good guy can follow them in real time.
I’ve already played around with using GPS dataloggers to track athletes, but the appeal of “live” tracking of athletes with cheap, accessible devices has only just moved from idea to reality. I hope.
So it occurred to me, what if I could exploit the Find My Phone app to create a live tracker?
The iPhone is becoming ubiquitous in schools. Exploiting this fact, and using the Find my Phone app, we could work toward realising the live tracking dream. You need to install the app on your iPhone (and I think it needs iOS5 as well). Then, using iCloud on your PC, you can see where your device is, assuming its switched on. For my live tracking idea to work, I’m hoping that as you move, the location of the phone should reliably move too, creating a basic live feed of the route you are taking.
How would you keep this track live and vibrant for posterity? Without trying it, I’m guessing the method of recording the live feed would be a bit clunky, most likely a basic video screen recording of an manually updated iCloud Map, showing the location of the moving device. I won’t know until I give it a go.
A couple of questions spring to mind.
How could this be useful and, more importantly, meaningful in a PE class?
And, has anyone tried it already? Or has someone got another FREE system of live feed GPS happening they’d like to share? I know Instamapper does this, but it doesn’t seem as simple as Find My Phone. Real Time GPS Tracker for Android also looks like a solution for those with Android devices.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
I’m at a leadership workshop with Alec and George Couros, and as part of a reflection exercise the task I need to complete is to create a “sentence” that is “me”.
I like “Seeing the big picture, I will have a crack and try to bring people along with me”
It’s an interesting exercise to do. Try it with yourself, your staff and your kids. It can shape your motivation.
In the job I’m currently working in, I’ve had plenty of information coming over my desk and through my screen on what modern education looks like, sounds like, feels like, smells like. Edu thinkers are not only calling for change, but many are stepping up and going about bringing that change into reality. My thoughts naturally move to what all this has to do with PE and what it will look like from now on as well.
There is certainly a move away from traditional “schooling” and practices in education, and PE is certainly not immune from this train of through. In fact I think in many respects the teaching of PE needs a shake, like a dusty old blanket. The days of the blackboard teacher are rapidly ending, with the reliance of “sage on the stage”, face the front, desks in rows, “repeat after me” teaching consigned to a necessary redundancy. Traditional PE practice of “give me some laps”, chuck them a ball, captains picking teams and ” BMI as assessment” (to name a few) need to go the same way.
The shift to “modern teaching” can be fraught with frustrations for many leaders, with school politics, staff resistance and a lack of change leverage opportunities stopping many transformational journeys before they start. Even the word “teaching” has a redundancy around it – but I’ll come back to this later.
So what do modern students and their teachers need in C21?
There is an absolute plethora of views on what today’s students need to “get” from school. There are common themes.
Most studies say in words to the effect that “Within the context of core knowledge instruction, students must also learn the essential skills for success in today’s world, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration” (http://www.p21.org/)
The implications for teachers and what they do it class is changing too.
Most agree that teaching “knowledge for today” is not good enough – our teaching needs to be for the future. Information ages rapidly. Students need skills that take that into account.
Students need to become lifelong learners – the idea that knowledge and skills acquired at school are just to get you through this year’s exams is redundant. Learning needs to become a flexible and resilient habit of mind – in both students and teachers.
Learning environments need to be agile – as a PE teacher agility is something we talk about as a highly desirable quality in movement. So should it be in our lessons. Immobile, inflexible players on a team are soon found out and become a liability. So, too, does un-agile (is there such a word?) thinking about teaching
ICT shouldn’t be integrated into learning environments – it should be ubiquitous. Mobile devices are carried by our students almost continually outside the school fences, but are mostly banned in classrooms. There is a definite disconnect there.
Professional learning for teachers needs to be individual and situational. And available 24/7. Personal learning networks are no longer optional.
Utilisation of learning taxonomies like Biggs SOLO work, where adding complexity to a learning pathway adds rigour and meaning to learning experiences.
Specifically to PE, there are some great things happening in shifting what we do into the future. Jarred Robinson , Jay Trevaskis, Dr Ash Casey and Vicki Goodyear, Ben Jones, Joey Feith and Clarinda Brown (to name but a few using the #pegeek tag on Twitter) are exploring and sharing their journeys in making PE meet the future.
This brings me back to terminology – the word “teacher” suggests one way movement of information. To accomplish many of the things that I’ve just mentioned, a change in job description is needed, one that PE teachers will relate to.
The word “coach” is closer to what we should do. It suggests someone working with people aiming for a goal, and our job is to maximise that potential through tailoring a program that meets their needs for the future. In saying that, I do acknowledge that the word “coach” has suffered at the hands of people that don’t coach well, and it carries a stereotypical image that we might be best advised to avoid. Who has a better name?
So what are the implications for PE in the future? I don’t think it’s enough to rest on the bandwagon of “obesity action”. This certainly gives the work done in PE faculties a high profile, but there are some tensions here too. Fighting a society wide problem always seems to be PE’s lot. Competing with much louder and seductive voices can be difficult. It can be daunting to plan for and can easily appear to be on the verge of failure. That’s not to say we don’t try, but our approaches need to be quality. And what is quality teaching in tacking obesity, or any other societal health crisis? Ill-conceived programming can be very counter-productive.
I see PE’s greatest sphere of influence in the skills that researchers are advocating as essential. Coincidentally, they are traditionally core business for PE. From the quote I used before, skills like critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration are what students will need to be coached in. You don’t have to think too much about how PE teachers do this work day in and day out already.
In Australia, we are about to see the birth of a National Curriculum in Health & Physical Education. From what I’ve seen and heard already, it’s draft form caters for many of the things already mentioned in this post , so kudos to the designers for that. PE advocates in Australia will have the opportunity to help shape the final product. Now is the time to build a curriculum that grows into the future for the benefit of both the students and ourselves.
It”s been a while since I posted here, and a lot has changed since then.
Change.
My original motivation to blog was to share stuff that I was doing in the classroom, and avoid excessive navel gazing. The classroom and what I discovered I could do there, with the 1:1 blessing that the Digital Education Revolution provided, was the source of my material. You’ll notice I say “was”, because things have changed.
I was offered (and I accepted) a secondment to work with the PLANE team on an exciting project, building a 21st Century learning space for teachers. The opportunity to change work directions was an exciting prospect, and also resulted in me experiencing the not so exciting feelings (like doubt and insecurity) that many people face when contemplating change. But the planets aligned and the conditions at the time made the decision to change easier.
Having been in the new position for a couple of weeks now, another aspect of change has made itself clear to me. The new working environment (very different to schools), meshing with a new team, new responsibilities and a new daily routine has created a steep curve of not just learning, but of personal resilience and then adaption. I’ve been fortunate to have had (and still have) mentors that helped me cope with change, so I know the steepness of the curve will lessen.
This period of change has resulted in an expansion of my personal and professional terms of reference. 2 weeks ago I was a Head Teacher of a PE faculty, enjoying the vibrancy of day to day life in schools, working with staff and putting ideas about technology into practice and encouraging my staff to do the same. Now I find in my new workplace that I’m still still doing that exciting type of stuff but the scope of what I’m working on will now impact (hopefully positively) on a wider range of people. Daunting, but exciting and satisfying as anything I’ve ever worked on before.
Change.
Train Tracks by mxruben - MorgueFile Free License
Some people embrace it, some people fear it, some just accept it. Ignore change at your peril, especially in a field like education, where the ground is shifting more frequently and opportunities to change what we do to embrace the way our 21st Century students learn are becoming more frequent. We shouldn’t say that it’s too risky, or that the potential outcomes of change don’t mesh with traditional views of student success (often thought up in by gone eras). It’s probably time we used change to make the future what we want it to be.
Some things I’ve learned about Change. I think everyone is capable of taking a risk, to do something different that brings about a change -you don’t have to be special. Leaders should look for change opportunities that enhance, and not see change as something begrudgingly bestowed upon them. Support and encouragement is important – seeds grow in fertile soil. Not fearing failure is crucial – risk taking isn’t perfect and correction and iteration are crucial parts of building something great. Reflecting on what you do is as important as the overt changes. Having a mentor to guide you, even help pick you up and dust you off, isn’t optional - it’s essential.
Enough of the navel gazing! From here on in, I’ll post about what my changed surroundings are showing me regarding the future pathways for teachers are looking like. And I haven’t forgotten #pegeeks either 
This is just a quick description of a project I have going at school. I’m being ably assisted by a student with a love for technology and an understanding of networks (that I don’t possess).
We have been keen to get QR codes working in an everyday way at school. Most kids have a smart phone or iPod that is capable of running a QR reader app. As another way of interesting and engaging kids in the use of technology we decided to build a wireless server that was capable of hosting our QR URL’s.
We got our hands on an old laptop that had been superseded and I had a wireless router that was no longer needed. It would become a local wireless server, with no connection to the internet. The laptop had a WordPress blog platform installed on it. The URLs that the QR codes link to will be posts or pages on that blog.
The trial we started was a Geo-Treasure hunt. Without a Web connection, we obviously couldn’t go out to places like Google Maps, so we came up with an alternative.
We actually created our own Google Map images of the school, with key locations pinned.
We snipped an image of the pin location (using the Windows 7 snipping tool – awesome utility) and embedded the image into a new post on the WordPress blog install. This gave us the unique URL to create a QR from. The QR code was printed out and put on the noticeboard outside the room with the wireless router.
The kids come along, scan the QR code and see the image on their screens.
The instructions on the page also tell them what to do – find something, collect something, do something and where to go with the evidence. The winners get a prize. The results of our tests are very encouraging. We are going to roll out the Geo-treasure hunt to the wider school population in Week 10.
No need for reams of QR codes cluttering your noticeboard. A QR code can be re-used, just by changing the blog post contents. The range of the wireless router is pretty impressive too, with reception up to 200m away, which gives us plenty of scope for code content and sites of deployment.
Although we are not in the roll out stage yet, many kids have noticed the wireless network on their devices and want to know what it is. Their interest is certainly piqued. Once this picks up momentum, and I’m sure it will, I’m sure things like daily notices, permission notes and other mundane daily tasks will become more engaging and fun for the kids.
I received a reply from Barry O’Farrell, Leader of the Opposition in NSW, regarding my DER enquiry.
Have a read:
I guess that’s a yes? What do you think?
In most wars, both sides think they are fighting for truth, justice and the ultimate success over the other side.
A lot can get lost in the “fog of war”. Collateral damage can result when the conflict spills into areas it was never meant to go. Innocent people get hurt, areas can be made uninhabitable for years, and the eventual truce can be an uneasy one.
I would put it to you that educational technology use is a battleground, where opposing forces trying to win hearts and minds quite often produce in its citizens the malaise and shell shock an armed conflict can bring.
Forgetting the debate on whether technology has a place in education for the moment – the warring parties crossed that frontier together and are now striking out behind enemy lines. What started as a united front has now taken on the appearance of two generals arguing over what move to make next, a’la Montgomery and Eisenhower in Sicily in WW2
It’s at this point that I’ll jump out of the war analogy and comment on what I see the danger facing many teachers and schools right now. Everyone has favourites. These favourites gained their status for a number of important reasons – for instance they were the best solution available at the time; it was the solution preferred by influential people; or that solution worked for the early adopters, in their setting. And in a diverse population like a school where skill and aptitude differences can be very wide, adopting a common approach can be very important to apply a culture consistently.
Most early adopters become the advocates for technology and change in their school. Their opinion is based on their experiences and what they think their setting can accommodate. Usually a school plan is built around their recommendations, which includes training, infrastructure and most importantly a “culture of usage”. Then the rest of the school flows into the space that has been created. This process doesn’t happen overnight, in fact it can be very slow. I don’t know, but in some settings it may be easy to drop a school wide platform that doesn’t work, or start a new platform in parallel with existing platforms expecting staff to be confident users of both. I haven’t worked in a school like that, yet.
One interesting aspect of the process is platform dissent. I would bet that most early adopters would argue their case for a particular platform with a “glass half full” approach. They will ignore or smooth over the imperfections of their plan to make it sound more attractive. Glitches in general population adoption would be tackled, but not seen as the end of the plan because they know there is too much invested to say “lets find a new way”. And when conversing with peers, not many will talk cons before pros. This lack of “self dissent” I feel adds to the parochialism that is seen when people spruik their favourite.
And this is where the fog of the platform wars drifts in. What concerns me most is when one side pooh-pooh’s the other, highlighting its weaknesses, what it can’t do. The breast beating can be a stimulating exercise in one-upmanship for the protagonists, but it can be a confusing and disengaging experience when it results in people start to doubt their judgement. I’ve been there before.
To me, the danger of a free for all is potentially disastrous. Not for the early adopters. They are generally skilled enough to learn, adopt and implement new strategies and tools quite easily. It’s the collateral damage they leave behind in the schools – the digital immigrants that commit to the corporate plan that isn’t the plan any more. Not being as flexible in their adaption means many may just abandon and seek refuge in what they already know.
So I would suggest a couple of things for early adopter/advocates
Apple v Windows, iPhone v Android, Moodle v Edmodo, EduBlog v WordPress, ….the list goes on. All regional conflicts around gaining supremacy. There is a comparison to football team supporters, music fans and motor racing fans that can be made here. Either/OR doesn’t always successfully sell your platform. Each side has shortcomings that are rarely acknowledged in case it cripples their cause.
So I would suggest a couple of things for early adopter/advocates.
1. Understand that other early adopters appreciate your journey, because they have travelled that path too. But they don’t like hearing that their journey wasn’t as productive as yours, as would you.
2. Most people would like the perfect platform that ticks all the boxes. But there isn’t one. Nothing is perfect, most are pretty well suited to our current educational requirements (ie. our slowly evolving but mainly Industrial Revolution education platform)
3. Acknowledge the limitations of your favourite, along with its blessings. Not just with the platform, but the deployment of it in school. People appreciate honesty.
I’d like to think that like Montgomery and Eisenhower, who were two different generals, with two different plans, but came together against a common foe, the real battle can be won together using a variety of weapons.
Just an correction/update.
I actually DID get a reply to my email to Mr Barry O’Farrell MP about his plans for DER in NSW should he win the election.
Here it is.
I liked Mr Piccoli’s reply better.
So, Mr O’Farrell, I guess I’d like a bit more detail.
