During the last interstate road trip, we purchased a 300W electrical power inverter and installed it in the car. It enabled us to recharge our laptop and a swag of electrical equipment using the 12V car electrical system. At the end of the trip a fuse blew so I took some photographs of the auto fuse system, the repair and the inverter and the power point that we used. You can view a slideshow I made for my science students.

Talking about power points .. one of the great ways to make e-friends when traveling overseas with the ACCE 2008 study tour crew was to carry a power board. We would walk about airport terminals looking for power wall points to jointly plug in our laptops to charge etc. I am getting better at spotting them near cafes, pylons or behind vending machines.

Only once I have been asked to move on in Federation Square when somebody accused me of stealing electricity from under a table in their courtyard. I apologised, and took my patronage elsewhere. I wonder what I would be taking if I was to use a solar panel to recharge from their indoor lighting. Probably an urban myth but I did hear of one farmer that was able to tap electricity from the Km of overhead power cables spanning his property by the current induced in his fencing wires.

The day might come when student lockers come with a power point, unless of course the thoughts of students hand-cranking their own electricity has more appeal. Then again, with enough twists and a good induction system, they could be cranking their way into the school grid to generate enough electricity and energy to pay off their lunch. Certainly sounds more productive than making them jog around the school oval to warm up. Imagine issuing a 103 Kilo Joule energy debit to be filled instead of a one hour after-school detention?

It has always been a struggle to motivate my students to even just complete a practice examination. Few will do these under examination conditions away from the classroom, and a some don't even bother turning up to the last few classes. I will admit to stalking outside the examination room with a lingering threat to glare at anybody tho attempts to leave early.

It tears my heart out to see them mechanically slog thorough an examination from start to finish, with no planning, wasting too much time on difficult questions or dribble out their knowledge with brief answers. Whilst teaching examination skills is important, this can be as engaging as relearning to tie your shoelaces or basic breathing. I am a bit feral at this point, jumping on desks, rap dancing, pulling markers from my socks, pulling treats from behind ears and issuing "survivor" certificates. I learned from Keith the value of keeping it fun.

Poor English skills and unfamiliar words will often undermine their understanding and confidence. Words like "Robust" are interpreted as something to do with Robots. Glossaries don't help, using the words in context do help. I learned from Donald the value of just reading the newspaper, asking good questions and using the "big" words in context and mandating a Moodle forum reply to stimulate HOT (Higher Order Thinking) replies.

It helps for me to trim the practice examinations in half so that I can run them over a period. After a flying marking session, I will sit down asap for an equivalent period. Students seem to only be able to learn 3 new things at each session so I find that this helps avoiding overloading their memory. I learned this from my own rotten memory.

Not all students have an supportive family network or even a computer at home. One once complained that his battery had run flat. I was gobsmacked to find out that he was living in a old car and reading under a recharged battery. Many have no stories so I spin yarns about those who struggled and won. They are delighted by the "Mr Mark" who hands out the rose and dog breakfast awards for exam questions and sigh relief at the nice people at the VCAA who just want to see them do their best. Much is true, some I synthesise from my own experiences.

I avoid playing the numbers game of marks, scores and averages by emphasising that we are really only racing against our personal best. When I visit the doctor, he usually snaps on the rubber gloves and prods a bit before telling me that I am still healthy enough with room for improvement. I am average but I think the average has moved (pokes at expanding stomach).

Anyway, I wish all my students the very best with their examination results. Whilst you race ahead and fill your lives with academic clutter and personal baggage, remember to revisit the good memories and hang onto your dreams.

Phil posted an interesting question on the Moodle mailing list about using tablet computers with interactive electronic whiteboards that got me thinking.  Yesterday at the VITTA conference I have heard Don mention about using a classroom set of cheaper graphics tablets, shared whiteboard software and a conventional projection system. This would work in a similar way to this flash based, ImaginationCubed collaborative drawing too.

I had a chance to see Elluminate, a slick Java solution. Whilst free for up to 3 users, it seems sadly overpriced when you consider any enterprise wide. A quick dig about the web showed me some cool open source software whiteboards under development that could be used in the classroom such as HiveBoard, DimDim or Drawboard.

There are a couple of different groups working to integrate these free tools DimDim into Moodle and another group at Cornell that has undertaken an even more challenging Moodle and Second Life integration with Drawboard and other project at San Jose State University.

All up, this is fun collaborative stuff that doesn't lock users or presenters into using a particular vendor or hardware system :-)

We are reinventing many aspects of business and schooling with a focus on networks. It imperative for teachers to understand and objectively enage with the new technologies that underpin these new distributed networks. It is an issue that our ASISTM cluster has been working through.

Glen Boreham, the new CEO and managing director of IBM, points out that Australia's information and communications technology needs to become more competitive to take advantage of new ways of working and doing business. Organisations are being replaced by highly responsive, globally resourced enterprises that do not think of themselves as organisations but as networks. We see this happening with the development of Linux, open source, eBay, Secondlife, blogging and many other web2 and other folksomony initiatives.

Glen notes that the skills of the future will come at the intersection of the disciplines of IT, science, engineering, mathematics and business yet sadly, the Australian education system fall short of supporting both a fusion of these skills and misses out from our fantastic first hand knowledge of other cultures and languages. The window of opportunity is fast closing. (March 2007 National Press Club address, Computerworld - March 2087- IBM CEO urges Education Revolution)

So what is going on in the minds of our students?The president of the Melbourne PC User Lyn Goodall group recently observed from their aging membership profile that young people don't have much of an interest in understanding the workings of technology. Rather, they seem to be increasingly motivated by the socialisation that happens online than the physical company of others. (The Age - bunch of old mugs)

We also know that technology has changed family relationships at home, sometimes for the worse. Whilst mobile phones and instant messaging can give children a stronger sense of individual identity and independence, these tools may also undermine the time that families can spend together, making it harder for parents to know what is going on in the lives of their children as mentioned in (The Age - Technology threatens family bonding, Parents should monitor childrens web use)

I guess that it is all about swings and roundabouts. With these new freedoms and liberties will come new responsibilities to manage these opportunities.

Parents are responsible to provide effective parenting and supervision of their children, technology should not replace this supervision or undermine this relationship. Similarly, if teachers are going to effectively and safely engage with this technology in the classroom, they need to consider safe collaborative and virtual learning sandpits such as Moodle whilst ensuring that their curriculum covers any important Internet safety issues.

Teachers don't all need to create a personal webblog for every lesson, a Secondlife account, edit a movie, program a game or jump online to play one. They all do need to keep open the channels of communication with their students and critically understand the challenges presented by web2 technologies, drawing upon the interests, language and cultural backgrounds of their students. We ignore this at the peril of our role as leaders in the lives of our students.

The revolution is real and it will not stop because our minds are closed shut.

For all my IT classes, I have created a SciTech chat forum in Moodle. In this forum I post a weekly topical quirky news item, often with an ethical twist or dilemma. Topics have ranged from proposals to track individual student movements with RFID tag implants to letting them digitally airbrush pimples out of their official school photographs.

After mandating a reply to my HOT (higher order thinking) question, students quickly learn to post a reply then assess and grade each others posts using some simple pull down options. We have had some great classroom discussions about what makes for a good or poor contribution to a discussion or thread. I smiled when they started to grade my questions. ;-)

The Silly posts fell away when I found a willing student moderator for a Social chat forum where they could opt in / out and make any posts that I didnt need to constantly track, read or audit. Mostly they chatted about what was on at the flicks, sport or burning fashion advice etc. I recall having to explain the digest option to help package all the daily forum posts into a single e-mail.

It is a great way for students to share their thoughts and collaborate in their own assessment.

A past student mentioned a virus problem that he had on his work computer. He suggested that it was sourced from an e-mail on Thunderbird. I did some research on the web, learning a couple of new things and good suggestions on this discussion thread that considered "Is an e-mail scanner neccessary".

The Thunderbird website reports that:

"There are only two ways of getting infected by email, either opening a hostile attachment or opening HTML email. .. When you use Thunderbird, the HTML displayed will not allow a virus or worm to execute automatically. You can see what attachments have been sent to you without a virus being able to execute, and you would have to save a file to your system and deliberately run it before it could cause any harm. JavaScript is switched off by default for mail and news, so an e-mail cannot run script code just by being opened." (Thunderbird FAQ help)

I now suspect that he could only have either opened a hostile attachment or clicked on a link that then loaded launched a hostile script or malware. Using Firefox as a default web browser instead of Internet Explorer can help (as would using MacOSX or a linux desktop such as Ubuntu).

He should also recommend to his boss that they buy, install and update anti-virus software on all the work computers running Windows to ensure that the , or consider some of the free versions around.

Another option is to store and process email messages on the work mail server. This can help to ensure that malware never gets downloaded into the computer in the first place. My Internet service provider does this for all my home inbound mail and we also do it at our college

The free-penguin project page provides the 'executables' to make your own soft-toy Linux® penguin. On this website are a string of numerous sewing patterns and even an on-line community to build your own soft toy. Like all good software, it is covered by the GPL so can be freely downloaded and shared.

I loved showing this to my Information Technology students, asking them to consider the following: What are the hardware requirements for this project? Do you download the stable version of the sewing-pattern or jump in for the untested but newer alpha model. If you are stuck or break a needle, do you post a question to the forum or first search the on-line documentation for a clue or patch? What are the licence limitations for merchandising?

By adopting the language used by many software project websites and following community development and evolution but within the familiar context of constructing a cuddly toy, my senior students with an ESL background could quickly relate to the different IT terms used.

http://www.free-penguin.org/

VLC is a media player from the VideoLAN project. It supports many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs and various streaming protocols. Like all good software, it is Open Source and free.

I saw this software a couple of years ago and it has certainly come a long way. Paul got my interest going on a mailing list by asking how schools could use this software. After downloading and installing it on my home computer, it didnt take too long to use the VLC wizard to stream video files captured from a digital TV dongle on my desktop computer so that they can be played in another part of my house on a wireless laptop. The quality was outstanding and I noticed that unlike my previous media client, it happilied played practically every video format and file on my computer. I did notice that it wouldnt play any Real Media files but this has more more to do with the proprietary nature of the Real Media Codec than any technical issue. (Don't we all love free and open standards? :-)

I later showed this streaming technology to my VCE students. Setting up a video stream between a desktop computer and my laptop fitted in very nice with their Networking topic whilst we talked about protocols, TCP/IP, client/servers and even codecs. They then scurried off to each set up a VLC streaming server with HTTP then work with a friend across the room to configure a VLC client to watch the resulting video stream. Of course the school network didnt skip a beat with 26 workstations accessing the same stream. Another student even insisted on trying it out on my wireless laptop from the school courtyard. Standing outside, shivering in the cold was a cool demonstration of what could be done with even a low bandwidth connection.

Different skins can be used to customise VLC, although I'll admit to wondering why so many people bother to do this. There are skins that can make VLC look very much like an iPod, Windows Media or WinAMP media players. I found the configuration answers that I needed on a web forum to make the skin interface launch when skin interface start for each new file, how to only play one instance of VLC and some commandline options.

It is worth trying this software out. It will install / remove itself clean. It doesnt hurt to let it grab all the working video file associations and stick with the default settings and skin to start with. Enjoy!

The ABC health report had an interesting page that considered how people with Intermittent Explosive Disorder react with an anger grossly out of proportion to the situation triggering it. The condition involves at least three occasions in a year where a person loses control and breaks or smashes something, tries to hurt someone, or threatens to. The article raise my curiosity when I considered the anger occasionally displayed by some students and a discussion with Gary about road rage.

The research notes that an effective anger management technique is to reorder your thinking – replacing exaggerated and irrational thoughts with more useful, rational ones. In addition, it is helpful to identify triggers that set off attacks of rage so you can avoid these triggers with relaxation techniques like Buddhist meditation or taking a deep breath.

Last year, the Australian Government commissioned the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) to investigate</a> and report on models for an Australian Certificate of Education. The 224 page ACE investigation report is now available for download.

Page 100 of the report lists the MCEETYA PMRT definition of ICT Literacy. A considerable amount of work has been undertaken in recent years to conceptualise and define some basic ICT Literacy skills. I helped contribute to some ICT focus groups run by the VCAA last year.

The report recommends the introduction of a national, generic testing of four key capabilities including:

• Reading Literacy
• Mathematical Literacy
• Written English
• ICT Literacy

I have a concern that evaluating ICT skills to access, manage and evaluate information might only consider the student as a passive ICT consumer and not as an interactive user, active builder and innovative team contributor. We have responsibility to ensure that all our students have mastered an adequate level of ICT literacy and functional technology skills. Using Google, e-mail, Word and PowerPoint alone is not sufficient for working in the new, interactive world powered by the Web 2.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

As part of our work with the ASISTM Education in Games project, Tony and I gave a presentation last week to a class of Latrobe University IT student teachers. It was suggested by one that they didn't think the students would learn the concepts of programming as well through our use of the GameMaker software. I don't know the full details of his suggestion but posted the following justification back to Pam.

Making a game is greater than writing a program. Penning a cartoon is more than the technical aspects of writing, it includes elements of artwork, plot and story. Similarly, assembling a computer game can cover many different subjects or disciplines. Whilst most commercial games are programmed in C+, this should not imply that teaching about programming games should use the same software tool.

GameMaker engages students with a programming environment that they can easily use to directly create, test, modify and evaluate their programming solutions. It can even do this in a single lesson, integrating and building upon their graphical, audio, logical and mathematics skills. Whilst GameMaker may inspire some to continue with their studies to learn a higher order programming language, it is not our only motivation for using it.

Teaching in classrooms with differentiated instruction (such as to multiple year levels) is going to be a challenge. As a colleague in QLD puts it, the greatest challenge in teaching is to teach individuals, 30 at a time.

This is discussed at length in some sample chapters published online from a book by Carol Anne Tomlinson called "The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners".

I read an interesting discussion on the Moodle mailing list about a UK report that examined the student use of ICT at home. It notes that schools should encourage a use of ICT at home that supports an informal, independent learning beyond the curriculum. The author remarks that the

"communication and collaboration tools that Moodle provides would be one way of taking some aspects of the leisure use of computing at home and re-purposing it to more educational ends ...and if a school can provide this sort of functionality, then myspace, facebook and bebo perhaps become less appealing." link

The barriers to schools using ICT to support student learning at home are no longer technical. Whilst there is a general awareness amongst teachers what these technologies can do, there is a significant resistance towards changing their classroom practice, adapting constructivist learning strategies and teaching activities that suit learning online. It isn't easy for my colleagues to leave their baggage of old traditions behind.

As we journey forward, perhaps the most significant divide between many teachers and students is cultural, not digital. I wonder how I can best drive change amongst my teaching colleagues whilst giving due respect to their past contribution and collective knowledge?

14 years ago, the following historic e-mail message was posted by computer science undergraduate Linus Torvalds. The message announced his plan to develop Linux. He became the first person to organise volunteers from everywhere across the Internet to contribute to his project under the GNU licence.
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