Helping Ontario K-12 Educators to Connect Using Videoconferencing

InteractiveClassroom.caI have been working on a videoconferencing community web site over the last little while and I thought I would give my blog readers a bit of a heads up.  I used Joomla for the CMS and Simple Machines as the forum.  I bridged the registration system between the two, and added modules which allowed for expanded functionality.  Some preliminary content has been added, but we are all hoping for a much broader scope as more community members join.

This new web site is being developed for Ontario K-12 educators interested in interactive distance education.  The web site http://www.InteractiveClassroom.ca will officially launch in the middle of June. 

It provides information for educators who are just beginning to experiment with using videoconferencing in their classrooms to those who have been using interactive distance learning for years.  Created out of a need for Ontario educators to support each other through their videoconferencing experience, the web site was developed through the cooperation of educators across the province, and continues through their support.

Educators can use the web site to organize local, national or international interactive distance learning projects, get technical assistance, or network with others that share similar interests through the interactive forums, contacts database, and social networking tools.  A public aggregator republishes feeds from around the world, and a links directory help educators to find current videoconference events and information.

Membership is free.

If you are interested in participating beyond becoming a member of the community please feel free to contact me. 

Please spread the word. 

May 29, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Writing Sense by Juli Kendall and Outey Khuon Now Availalble Online

Stenhouse has posted the electronic version of the book Writing Sense: Integrated Reading and Writing Lessons for English Language Learner by Juli Kendall and Outey Khuon online.  Scroll to the bottom of the page and download it while you can .

"Juli Kendall and Outey Khuon have collaborated for more than fifteen years in helping ELL students improve their writing. Their new book, Writing Sense, presents a series of small-group lessons for both younger and older ELLs at each stage of language proficiency.

Structured the same way as in their previous book, Making Sense, the lessons in Writing Sense focus on strategies used by proficient writers: using schema, asking questions, visualizing, inferring, determining importance, synthesizing, fix-up strategies, and monitoring meaning and comprehension."

Enjoy!

May 25, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Skype Free Outgoing Calls Anywhere in North America

SkypeSkype is now offering free outgoing calls to any land line in North America.

"Skype is a little program for making free calls within the US and Canada to all phones until the end of the year. Skype to Skype calls anywhere in the world are also free. It's easy to download and use, and works with most computers."

What is really nice about Skype is that it was easy to traverse the school districts firewall to make long distance calls.  Nothing fancy to do, I just dialed out. (+1 area-code then the number) It seems to work over port 80, the same as internet traffic. The call display, comes up with skypes phone numbers, so by default it has an added call blocking feature.

I was able to do a five way conference call, with the other four people using their cell phones.  It worked very well, although the sound was a little tinny at times.  I can't complain though, since I wasn't paying a cent for it. 

There are other offers like VOIPstunt  but Skype seemed to work the best through my districts firewall.  If you want to test Skype out, my alias on Skype is "qdsouza".

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Teaching Hacks in the PubSub Top 100

Number 52 I couldn't believe it when I saw it so, I had to do a screen capture. TeachingHacks.com is listed as number 52 out of 23 million sources on the PubSub top 1000 .  

According to PubSub:

The PubSub LinkRanks 1000 is a list of the most consistently
influential sites that publish feeds, based on their average LinkRank
scores over the past 30 days. To create this list, we've averaged the
daily LinkRanks of over 23 million sources. We've also included a
15-day average as well as each site's current LinkRank as additional
points of comparison.

I went into the statistics and noticed that on April 20th the site was in the top 13%.  I'm skeptical, so take a look while you can, at PubSub LinkRanks 1000 . 

May 21, 2006 | | Comments Closed

School District Internet Filter Killer – Part 2

FiltersI wanted to follow up on the previous posting "School District Internet Filter Killer " and address some of the comments , as well as email feedback.

Arvind states:

"Anyway, schools should not think that using ineffectual filters protects them legally. If a parent asked a tech person (in court) if the filters worked, the tech person would have to say no, right? Wouldn't that make the school liable, using ineffective filters, suggesting to parents that they actually are limiting access?"

At a recent technology meeting, we were discussing the different internet filters that school boards were using across southern Ontario.  There was mention of the various ways that students had figured out to get around filters – proxy servers, VPN's etc.  One board representative stated that beyond the fact that a few students were able to get around the filters – they worked, and it helped to enforce the school board's AUP as well as support any litigation around access to inappropriate web sites. 

Although we would like to believe that educators are teaching their students information literacy skills before students begin to use the internet for research, more often than not, this isn't the case.  The filters helped to encourage educators who would have lesser information literacy skills to explore the WWW with their students, and feel more at ease while doing it.  For educators of students in primary and middle school this acts as a safety net, while giving students some exposure to the WWW.  Even if we do preview web sites, there is no guarantee that live content will be the same the next time we see it.  That does not mean we should abandon the internet, but help to educate our children around critical literacy skills.

While I don't believe that any piece of technology on its own is sufficient to accomplish this task, until information literacy becomes part of the core curriculum, a filter will be seen as having a place in elementary school.  

A problem occurs as Sahmeepee mentions:

"As a school network administrator I have a legal obligation to protect pupils from harmful/illegal content and a professional obligation to make sure that the school's bandwidth isn't being used up by "hilarious" videos of people being run over/fighting/wetting themselves etc.."

There are other options when it comes to bandwidth over a WAN, like segmenting your districts bandwidth so that a certain percentage is dedicated to video, http, etc, but in truth another deeper problem is occurring here.  Is it just students who are watching such a video?  Most AUP's gets transferred down to district staff as well, but enforcing it becomes difficult with teacher unions and lawyers getting involved.  A filter would make it easier to accomplish this goal, while avoiding penalties to staff or perhaps, professional development on a district level to accomplish the same goal.

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School District Internet Filter Killer

FilterAll school boards out there that are employing Internet Filtering software out there listen closely.  The thousands that you are spending on filtering software are going to be useless in a little while, for students with very little know how.  I am predicting that the same technology that is going to allow unrestricted access to countries employing filters (like China and Yemen) will be used by your students to get around Websense and SmartFilter .

A trio at the University of Toronto is developing Psiphon software Psiphon at the Citizen Lab .  This software allows anyone to create an untraceable protected proxy server on any computer.  Web traffic moving along this proxy server uses an encrypted and secure route, similar to eCommerece web sites.  This would mean that students could visit any web site they wish and the web traffic would be undetectable by the filtering software.

Proponents of internet filters will state that it is a good way to legally cover yourself, even if it is ineffectual, in order to show that you are protecting students in some way.  This may be so, but the pervasive use of this technology might force school boards into rethinking this policy, and instead move towards ensuring that staff and students become well versed on information literacy in schools.

Let us Educate!

MSM: 

The Globe and Mail Story

The Toronto Star Story

May 7, 2006 | | 9 Comments »

Kindergarten Podcasts

After I listened to grade one student podcasts I was amazed.  Now I'm even more amazed, Kindergarten students podcasting.  These students are reading stories online.  Kinder PODS Rock!

May 6, 2006 | | Comments Closed

ECOO Conference – Day 2

CrowdThe second day of the ECOO conference went well.  I enjoyed all my sessions yesterday and especially liked sitting down and chatting with other edubloggers.

The first session I attended was "Interactive Videoconferencing: Making I.T. Work" Obadiah George, Steve Smallwood from York University and York Region DSB.

Summary:

Their session was about the ABLE Project  (Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning) and the tools that they were using for videoconferencing.  The goal of the project is to improve student achievement and transform teacher professional practice.  To participate in the project there is a sliding scale that depends on the size of the school district.  George and Steve were very knowledgeable, and shared one of the resources they used VSEE Labs for some of their videoconferences.  VSEE allows you to videoconfernce through VSEE for a monthly fee and works well with firewalls as it can tunnel.

(As a side note, the day before Shawn pointed me in the direction of Isabel a linux application that can be purchased through Agora 2000 at a $2000 for a unit, which is a lot cheaper than the standard videoconference units.  You can then leverage your PBX on other videoconfernce units that you have for full functionality.)

The second session that I attended was "Why Reading Matters Even More in the Digital Age" by Clare Brett from OISE/UT. 

Summary: 

This was an excellent presentation on focus on preparing students effectively for learning from and with the Internet.  I was so glad that she was exploring blogs and wikis with such a large audience. Clare's presentation can be found on her blog posting .  Her weblog as well as the GRAIL project (Graduate Researcher's Academic Identity onLine) pages can be found here .

The third presentation that I attended was "e-Learning Ontario – Learning Object Repository."  I can't remember the names of the three presenters, one was Urs, I think (Carolijn MacNeil-Verbakel, Rob Policicchio, and Urs Bill)

Summary: 

I was very impressed with the K-12 LOR from what I have seen, and I have been very critical of the OKNL/eLearning Ontario's LOR in the past, so that is a big compliment.  I wish I could explore it more and give them some more feedback.  I really like what OISE/UT has been doing on the front end of the LOR.  The LOR can take any filetype that you can throw at it.  It seems to be well though out and has included different levels of collaboration from submission, tagging, reviewing, as well as a service level agreement that is very similar to the Creative Commons license.  The LOR, which might be available in September 2006, includes peer review by educators with similar interests.  The meta-data for the LO's are quite extensive and they are exploring feeds and the ability to subscribe to channels of LO content.

Here are my suggestions:

  • To remove an LO for the repository means contacting someone by email, perhaps a more automated process should be included.
  • The meta-data is too extensive and discouraging, although there might by only 8 mandatory fields this is not clear.  There are asterisked fields with blue highlights that seem to divide up the page rather than indicate required fields.  Maybe include a simple and advanced form, to avoid scrolling through all that meta-data.
  • Home page – Go with big buttons rather than explanations under each of the main sections.  With an explanation on a mouse over of the image.
  • Try to minimize the text throughout the application. 
  • Continue the review process outside of the approval of the LO. 
  • The whole OEN for student access by user name and passwords scares me.  The more levels of security you put in the less likely it is going to be used.

Although I have a few suggestions, I still think that the LOR looks great.  It will be a great tool for all educators in the province.

The last session that I attended was "Learning in Context" by George Siemen.

It was the kind of session that I wished I was back doing my Masters of Education and he was supervising me.  It was just amazing listening to his ideas.  My summary would not do the presentation justice, but George has posted a screencast of the presentation on his blog .  So you can get the real thing, instead of a poor attempt at summarizing.

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