Merry Christmas everyone

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and well earned break.

It's been a year to reflect on, with such exciting times in education and new friendships formed.
It's also a time to reflect on the loves ones we have lost and the impact they have had on our lives.

Merry Christmas.

Greg

Identity Theft – Identity Fraud

This week I was fortunate to be a presenter at the IRR national Fraud Conference. My session was on Identity Theft of Children and I think I provided a view of what the future holds for children whose identity is stolen, or those who have the skills and knowledge to create identity theft in the future.

Presenters and delegates were from many of the banks, and large companies who have dedicated e-security and fraud investigators. There was also a large presence from the Australian Federal Police and state police groups.

What stood out to me was how wide spread and how common identity fraud is. In many cases police have contacted those who have been scammed, yet many do not believe the police or the bank and still send large amounts of money to places like Nigeria. Nigeria is the number one country where these scams originate from and the concern is that soon, Nigeria will have a high speed free internet connection available to anyone, so expect a significant rise in identity fraud and scams.

Many of the criminals from Nigeria who have been caught often say that Australian’s are the most gullible of any country on the net, thus they target out country as often as possible.

Many of the credit cards involved scams by Asian groups who have skimmed credit cards. Never let your card out of sight when paying at a restaurant. Other areas of risk are providing credit card numbers to companies who run online gambling sites. Card numbers are often skimmed from these sites.

Another growing area is the use of innocent citizens to launder money through e-bay purchases or passing on money to an account for a 10% fee.

There were several case studies provided by police, which were fascinating, however due to confidentiality I am unable to provide the details on my blog. However it is fair to say that the amount of evidence that has to be collected and cross referenced is enormous and in some cases 2 or more police officers have spent two or more years, just putting together the evidence. Sometimes up to 5,000 documents.

One of the emerging areas of identity theft is from letterboxes. Utility statements (gas and power) are often stolen from letter boxes, falsifies and used at evidence for 100 point identification checks. More recently credit cards have been stolen from letter boxes, activated and used illegally. The advice was that everyone with a letter box should have a padlock on it.

When criminals are interviewed about crimes that use technology they say there are three reasons why they do it
• It is the easiest crime to commit
• It is the hardest crime to detect
• It has the lowest sentences if caught

Identity Fraud has created new victims. Those who have had their identity stolen and family members of victims, as sometimes it can take years to clear your name or families name and to get your credit rating back.

Teacher PD in ICT. Australia come on! NZ is leaving us behind

How long is it since I have blogged? Far too long. My busy schedule has made it difficult, combined with dealing with personal tragedy. Not a great mix.
But time to try to put my fingers to the keyboard as I spend another day of my weekend commuting for an early start interstate on Monday.

I thought I should reflect on Ulearn08. I was fortunate enough to be an invited speaker to the Ulearn08 conference in Christchurch New Zealand to deliver a presentation “Web 2.0, how exciting learning has become.”

The conference attracted over 1,700 delegates and provided a great smorgasbord of keynotes, spotlights and workshops. The planning was enormous and everything seemed to flow extremely well. There was a significant trade show with strong support from the corporate sector to enhance the use of technology in schools.

Will Richardson and Sheryl Naussbaum-Beach provided the opening keynote and as always inspired the audience with a focus on Professional Learning Communities and the part they play in education. It was a strong theme as the use of twitter through the conference seemed to highlight the power of professional learning communities amongst educators. I will blog about Twitter and my thoughts in the next few days.

There were many Australian’s like myself providing spotlight sessions with our New Zealand friends. Many were practicing teachers who were sharing their journey. There was also a strong presence of early childhood educators, which highlights how early the use of technology has shifted to a much younger sector in education.

What stood out to me was how well New Zealand was doing in the integration of technology in education. I look back ten years ago in Australia, when the Victorian Education Department was seen as the world leader. We were one of the first to provide every teacher with a laptop; we followed this up with a state-wide Wide Area Network to enable high speed internet access to all schools. All documentations was moved online, Technical support was provided to schools and much, much more. More recently the department invested in leading schools and now are working towards the Ultranet (although its already several years behind schedule).

So why is it that New Zealand teachers are far more skilled in the use of ICT, far more skilled in the integration and use of ICT in the classroom and far more knowledgeable in what ICT can do? In my workshops (I ran 4 workshops in addition to my spotlight,) I was continually surprised at the ICT skill level and knowledge of the average teacher. Most were blogging and using a range of web 2.0 tools, however my experience in Australia would indicate that a smaller percentage are at this level and we still have teachers who are excited because they used power point for the first time (technology that is more than 15 years old in education).

Why is this so? Because New Zealand has invested in the most important area of ICT. Teacher professional development. They have provided significant funds to cluster to run professional development over three year periods. Twice this year I have been to NZ to work with clusters who are using their funding in innovative ways. I am talking about significant funds. In many case more than a million dollars. Many clusters have put in specialist coaches and run a range of PD programs, one on one support and regional conferences. Putting money into PD instead of equipment and hardware as Australia has done has made a significant difference.

I look at ULearn08 with 1,700 participants and reflect on Australia’s peak ICT conference (ACEC) which a week earlier drew less than 600 people for a country 4 times or more larger.
I look at the ICT programs being run in Australia and it is now school based or run by subject associations. The regional and state based events seem to be in the minority.
Australia, let’s look at ourselves and look at where we are headed. Significant money is being spent on ICT professional development and learning programs in NZ, Singapore, Honk Kong, and now India and China.

Yet in Australia, we keep investing in hardware. How many Interactive Whiteboards have we put into schools without training our teachers?

Yes we have our innovators and visionaries who are doing great things in many schools; however the average teacher is falling well behind what is happening internationally.
It is time to invest and invest in new ways. Let’s get our teachers up to speed and then think about what resources we need.

We were the leader. We were the best. Our top educators and being poached, our top visionaries are being recognised more and more abroad, yet not locally. It is time for change in teacher professional development in Australia. Let’s get back to where we once were. Let’s Sho w the world again.

Ulearn08

Goanimate - Looking forward to Ulearn08. I am running a workshop which has goanimate as one of the web 2.0 softwares. Thanks to Betina Sho who found this site.

Apple Store - Sydney

Last week I was working in Sydney and had the opportunity to visit the new Sydney Apple store, the first of its kind in Australia.

There were three floors of Apple, Apple, Apple with the lots of products to try.

The first floor was the full range of notebooks with every model available to ty or test. There were also several i-Macs and gaming stations.

The second floor was portable devices and every type of ipod was available to try.

The third and top floor has several dedicated training areas where you can book a one on one personal training session. Near by is the pro lab where you can join a 4 week class on specialist programs such as final cut pro.

There is also a genius bench where you can bring your apple product in and have a specialist work through any problems or functions you are having problems with. Time is restricted to about 20 minute maximum and again you can pre-book a genius on line.

All of these can be booked online.

Another feature is Youth workshops and you can also book a school night for students, teachers and parents.

More information on the Apple Sydney store web site.

Star Trek and the collective

Have you ever watched StarTrek? Many of us who have a passion for ICT used to thrive on the latest gadgets and what our future might be. It was always the unknown and I guess much of it is coming true.

Many of the StarTrek ideas have become reality. The notebook computer, lasers, the universal translators is almost complete and I have to say the hollo deck is not far from the Wii.

So after a month of non posting on blogger, what made me find time to talk about StarTrek? Well it’s actually Twitter that I want to talk about as I have been following a number of educators who are having the debate, where would Twitter fit into education. I am a sceptic and have yet to be convinced, even after following someone like Steve Whitaker for some time. I now know what TV shows he watches, the food he eats and what he does when he is bored. Hardly educational. I have watched my friend Kathy Schrock grapple with the education use of Twitter as well, while Will Richardson and David Warlick are heavy users and sing it’s praises.

This week I was presenting at the ICTEV conference and in my second session on “The World of Google”, I had several delegates, who much to my amusement seemed more focused on Twitter than my talk.
On closer observation I realised that they were actually very engaged in what was happening in the room and had a very strong network of friends Australia wide who were also technology and education enthusiasts. For many of this network of friends, Melbourne was too far to travel to attend a one day conference, so they linked up, real time using Twitter.

So my workshop was full with 25 participants, however another 20 or more were all over Australia, actively connecting to each hyperlink or web site I mentioned and just as involved and engaged as those in the room. In many cases they asked questions which were redirected by their friends in the room to me. All using Twitter.

I thought to myself. This is just like the collective in StarTrek. It’s how the Borg worked. They were connected at all times, no matter where they were.

So Twitter now has my tick of approval. I have two new followers in Jo and Sheila and I will have to post more often. www.twitter.com/ausgreg

I guess this is also why kids are so drawn to new technologies. They like to be connected at all times. Why are kids so connected and the users in my session using Twitter? Because they have built networks to assist and learn from each other and they value their network members, the conversations, the communication and friendship this brings.

So why do we not have this in all our classrooms?

Healthy Education

This week I was fortunate to be invited as one of the keynote speakers for the Blackboards and Bandaids conference in Brisbane. The conference is attended by welfare educators and has a range of Health and well being presenters on a variety of topics.
The Mater Children’s Hospital have conducted the conference for the past four years as part of the Mater Children Hospital School program.

I was privileged to have a short tour of the school after my keynote and workshop and visited classrooms for junior, middle and senior students. Computers are a big part of their education and the classrooms look similar to those in a normal school, only smaller for less numbers. Some students are short term, however for some; their illness necessitates a long stay. In many cases classes are conducted in the wards as some children are not well enough to leave their beds.

As I passed the emergency waiting room it was sad to see so many young children waiting to be seen by doctors, with anxious parents beside them. It made me reflect how lucky many families are to have healthy children but more important, what a wonderful job this hospital based school does. It means that most children at the hospital can feel that part of their life is still normal and that they are part of a school community, which for young children who are dealing with an illness is a very important to their coping mechanism.

Spare a thought for another wonderful part of education that we don’t often get to see.

Changing classrooms in new Zealand

This week I returned to New Zealand to deliver the keynote address at the Mana-Ota-Tikei ICT Cluster conference held at Manawatu College in Foxton.

The cluster has four secondary schools who are part of a technology initiative to increase and enhance the use of technology in their schools. Allan Webb is the program co-ordinator and coaching facilitator as well as being the conference organiser for this cluster. I have to thank Allan for his hospitality on my trip as well as attention to detail to ensure the conference went well. It was a pleasure to work with him.

There was a good use of technology throughout the cluster and I found most of the teachers found the keynote full of exciting possibilities. A few may have been confronted, however as I explained during the keynote, this is a smorgasbord of technology being shown and the task at hand is to find the one that can enhance teaching and learning in their own classroom. For some, I think they found four of five things.

The day before the conference, I ran a full day workshop on podcasting and digital storytelling. It was a great group of teachers and it didn’t take long before they were all producing professional podcasts.

Attending the conference was Margaret McLeod and Angela Page from Core Education Ltd. Core is involved education research and development and are responsible for organising a lot of the professional learning programs in schools in new Zealand.

During dinner we were chatting about technology and how New Zealand often looked to the state of Victoria in Australia as the bench mark for innovation in Technology as a system.
I can see why. They have provided every teacher in state schools with a laptop for over 9 years now, which are replaced every three years, they have provided all Microsoft applications free to all schools, they have installed wireless to every classroom for teacher laptops, placed computer technicians in every school, installed a centralised administration system to all schools, and now high speed internet access to all schools. Coming soon is Ultranet, a state-wide learning management and document management system that will be provide central access, school access, teacher access, parent and student access. To assist this major implementation they have employed 50 Ultranet coaches.

But what I see missing and what New Zealand has done very well is teacher professional development in ICT. In Victoria, the ICT delivery is left to subject associations or internal training at schools. It is many years since the department ran a state conference and the few regions that run ICT conferences have optional attendance, with only the converted attending. Providing teachers and schools with resources is important, however if we don’t work with teachers to assist them with the pedagogical change that facilitates learning with new technologies, then not much will happen in the classrooms.

New Zealand has provided clusters with 3 year grants to run whole school (cluster) based professional learning using ICT as well as providing funds to employ staff to work as peer mentors and coaches in schools. Allan Webb, the conference co-ordinator works in 3 schools, rotating through each school and provide school wide support as well as one-on-one assistance. It’s the personal one-on-one where Allan sees the greatest gains. The conferences and workshops provide teachers with the vision and inspiration to use the technology, however the making it happen stuff really works because they have the follow up support with people like Allan in each cluster.

Australia might have more individual innovators because they have access to the technology, but I think New Zealand are further down the track in relation to real change in the classroom as a whole.

Having fun in Animoto - Click to find out more

How webciting!!!

ICT in Marlborough, New Zealand

ICT is alive and well in New Zealand. I have just spent two delightful days working with educators in Blenheim as part of the Marlborough Technology in Education Cluster. The cluster is made up of staff from two schools, Marlborough Girls College and Marlborough Boys College.
The two schools had a Teacher Only Day (TOD) to enhance the use of technology. What I found interesting was that many of the workshops on the PD day focused around technologies that children use in every-day life. For many teachers it was a chance to understand and try these technologies. While some of the session involved the use of Learning Objects, Inspiration and other classroom related software there was a strong focus on student technology.

One session focused on cell phones and learning how student text with cell phones, how to use calendars, upload images etc using the cell phone. Another focused on Flickr and how to put photos on line, while the use of iPods’ and how to find and download music was also a feature.
Teachers also had the chance to learn about Skype and how to communicate with family and friends using this low cost or free resource.
There was certainly a buzz around the schools, who jointly hosted sessions. Lunch was at the girls college and the opening keynote and closing drinks at the boy’s college, ensuring that there was no bias for locations.

The evening before over 40 educators turned up to a pre conference workshop that I delivered on the “World of Google” There was significant interest on how the different applications could be used in classrooms.

On the PD day, I delivered a keynote called “Webciting – What all the hype about web 2.0”. This was a chance to inform educators about the shift from web 1.0 to web 2.0 as well as share a range of new technologies being used in education. I followed this with reference to professional learning for educators and how the model is changing and then finished with some international research and of course some "wow" factor with some of the technologies of the future.
My first workshop focused on digital storytelling and it was great to see how excited many of the staff were who had not used this process before. Of particular note was the PE staff who are going to change the face of theory lessons with a whole range of multimedia. My second session was on web 2.0 tools, toonadoo, bubbl.us, freewebs, igoogle and more. Again there was a buzz in the room and at the end of the day, when all other sessions had finished, my group wanted to keep going. How webciting!

I also have to thank my hosts Sandy and Giles, who co-ordinated the conference from their respective schools. They were fantastic and the hospitality and the offers to go out of their way to look after me where greatly appreciated. From bbq dinners and take away, to chauffeuring me to and from the airport and school. Nothing was too much trouble, even though they had the weight of organising the event on their shoulders. Thank you.


So where are they headed. Certainly there was a good level of understanding of technology by teachers. There are the usual number of champions that I see in schools, however there was a far greater general ICT awareness and skill level as a whole staff, than in general.



With Sandy and Giles leading the way, I will expect to see some great educational outcomes coming from this school district.



(Photo: Blenheim District as my plane departed)

Classrooms of the Future

I was just reading an article on Schools of the Future and thought I had to have my say.

Classrooms of the future. How many forums have I been on to discuss this? We need classrooms with access to technology, flexible usage, maybe open plans, modular to allow for the unknown.
What I do see is that children will learn anywhere provided they are motivated and engaged. If we look at technology, for those children with access, learning happens 24/7. There are no classrooms to teach how to upload to Youtube, how to build the best myspace page, yet children lean. They learn through their own networks and being connected.
I think what is sometimes the issue is that we need to teach some of the key foundations in English and Mathematics and to do this we need two learning models. One which has a more open learning mode such as project work which may be based in a non traditional classroom setting, with a focus on challenging the thinking of children; however the other is still traditional in many ways as children need structure, especially around the 11 to 14 yr age group.
They need teacher guidance and need to have structure so that the basics they learn can be used in everyday life and form the basic structures for different types of learning. They need access to a teacher who has a personal interest and not in an open plan room with 100 or so other students. They have individual needs and need a strong structure in place relating to their personal learning. And while children are connected all the time, and I love technology, we have to remember there are times when learning is not done on an ipod, laptop or technology device.
Let’s build schools that allow innovation and learning to take place in many different ways, but let’s also remember we have to also teach key competencies and skills that are age appropriate each year. Schools of tomorrow should have options for learning, traditional and non traditional, however we need to try to understand what belongs in which. I still think the key is not the school of the future, but the teacher of the future.