Last night I was lucky enough to play host to the very knowledgeable and laid back Alan Levine (aka @cogdog on Twitter) as he presented to a group of 50 educators. With teachers from 12 schools from around Hong Kong, and a few intrepid students, we had a small, intimate group, an excellent speaker and a fantastic location (the Assembly Hall at LPCUWC). Over the course of 2 hours Alan presented a wide range of ideas, which were eagerly noted down for later application in the classroom. The list below is a summary of some of the ideas I picked out, and my take on them, but it is by no means exhaustive or authoritative.

True Stories of Internet Openness

For the first half of the show Alan focused on the theme of Internet openness, but from a social/content point of view, rather than the more traditional hardware/protocols angle. Through the use of a range of resources, anecdotes and ideas, he weaved a compelling prompt to share what we do online.

The Internet Is So Big - even bigger than the Grand Canyon (which has been Google Maps Streetviewed, as one example of just how big the Internet is). It is so big we simply cannot comprehend it, or in some ways, even understand how just big it is.

Like the Grand Canyon, the #Internet is too big to comprehend. #cogdoghk13

— Ross Parker (@rossdotparker) March 21, 2013

You Can Get Lost – there is so much data and so much detail (often in one place, such as in this 320 giga pixel panorama of London), that it is incredibly easy to lose yourself. But we often also find the unexpected, because we simply don’t know what is out there.

All Because People Share – and because there is such a variety of people on the web, you get a huge variety of sharing. Take for example Into The Continuum, a website which shares crazy Mathematica formulas for creating art.

Massively Collaborative – mix this sharing with some imagination and you get some crazy, massive online collaborations, from which emerge ways of interacting never before possible or conceivable. Take for example The Johnny Cash Project or In B Flat.

And The Tools Are Evolving – with new standards, such as HTML 5, we can create ever more interesting things on the web. A great example is Snow Fall, an interactive story from the NY Times. Another great (self-referencing) example of this is Evolution of the Web, which uses a very innovative interface to help explore the progression of web technology, using some of the latest HTML 5 and CSS 3 techniques.

But Think Of The Children! – and yet, with all this positive potential, we too often focus on the negatives of our new found connectivity. How about spending more time looking at the amazing new ways we have to inspire each, such as 25 Days To Make A Difference.

It Has Become Our Lives – and whether you like this connectedness or not, it is inescapable. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web (not to be confused with the Internet) hoped that it would become not only an information share, but also “a realistic mirror of the ways in which we work and play and socialize”. And he was right.

The way we worked before the Web doesn’t exist any more, especially in creative fields. Do we fight it, or accept and adapt? #cogdoghk13

— Ross Parker (@rossdotparker) March 21, 2013

CogDog Responds – one of Alan’s reactions to all of this, is to share what he calls True Stories of Internet Openness: these are video-based personal anecdotes of amazing things that have happened to people who have opened up and shared online. And the message, if it needs to be stated again is this: share, share and share some more, you never know what amazing things might happen. True to this message, Alan even found some time to record some true stories from the audience during his talk.

Digital Storytelling

Launching into the second half, Alan stepped up a gear as he moved into what I guess is his main passion: digital storytelling.

Getting Started – for those new to digital storytelling, Alan recommended reading The New Digital Storytelling by Bryan Alexander, and in doing so made some links back to the age-old oral tradition of storytelling.

Improv -moving deeper into storytelling Alan made a connection to the art of improv as a way to get creativity started, and to help people lower their inhibitions. He showed us one of his own tools, PechaFlickr, which facilitates improv based on random images based on a keyword. We played a couple of rounds of this (well done to Charlotte, Katrina and Alex), and it really energised the room. Alan did mention that the “Pecha” part of the name comes from Pecha Kucha, which is another really interesting line of investigation (for another day). Another one of Alan’s interesting Flickr API creations is 5 Card Flickr, which is another way to build a narrative, but a little more structured than PechaFlickr.

Narrative – really firing on all cylinders by now, we moved onto narrative structure, and how we can tell compelling stories. How do we hook people, so they are interested. The following videos were all viewed and discussed in this light:

The video below I absolutely loved, and it lead me to this excellent visualisation.

This is great for teaching #narrative. RT @cogdog: Kurt Vonnegut on the Shape of Storiesyoutu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ #cogdoghk13 @elainenlong19

— Ross Parker (@rossdotparker) March 21, 2013

Just Like The Pros – in approaching our own digital storytelling, it is useful to consider some of the models and approaches used by the professionals. One such model is the BBC’s 5 Shot Method, another is the Three Act Structure. These can help us to engage the audience, using formulas which work, and which are familiar. A member of the audience (a Media teacher from RCHK, whose name I do not know) mentioned the following fantastic video, which plays on such models, showing just how familiar we are with them:

Teaching & Learning – having convinced us of the importance of narrative, and shown us what it looks like, Alan introduced Dan Meyer’s Three-Act Maths (each of the items in this spreadsheet links to a page with more detail), which is a way of using movie narrative to get students engaged in solving math problems. Another example, MinutePhysics, gave another example using narrative in teaching and learning.

Simplicity – wrapping up a 2-hour mind explosion, Alan closed with a disarmingly simple thought on narrative, storytelling and hooking your audience: “Arouse and fulfill“.  Whether you are teaching school kids, selling a product or just telling a story: first arouse the interest of your audience, and then fulfill it. Easy!

Ross Parker (@rossdotparker) March 21, 2013

After saying various goodbyes, I was fortunate enough to snag Alan for dinner and drinks, which we had in a small restaurant in the village in which I live. It has taken almost a full 24 hours for most of the buzz to wear away, during which I have tried to record as much as I can. My own personal and professional thanks go to Alan for a fantastic time, sentiments which I am sure will be echoed by other participants.

Credits: cogdog image by Alan Levine, shared under CC BY SA (just a guess on the license, but sure it is right ; ). Thanks to Nick Cotton, Kalpana and LPCUWC for their help in hosting the event.

Teach A Teacher is part unit of study, part conference. Hosted at HLYIS this year, the event featured students from ICHK, and teachers from JIS, HLYIS, ICHK and ESF Kindergardens.

The aim is for students to work in groups to prepare and deliver professional development sessions for teachers. Students develop their abilities in presentation, communication and collaboration. Teachers get to learn new skills, and see education from the other side of the desk:

“I could sense that the students loved the topics they taught and it showed in their enthusiasm. Made me think of how my students see me when I teach.” – Participating teacher

And students start to understand what life is like for their teachers.

“This activity helped the students to know a teacher’s role and what it is like for their teachers. The interaction between teachers and students was great.” - Participating teacher

During ICT classes, students spent time devising, naming, imagining and planning their sessions. They presented to each other, to themselves, and to a few teachers too. Their work was filmed and reviewed by themselves and their peers. Over 9 lessons of 70 minutes each, groups polished, improved, refined and rehearsed. They strove to be imaginative, creative, clear and professional. On the day, all were nervous, but at the same time they managed to channel their energy into doing a great job. At times, they modeled current best-practice in the classroom:

“I think this group of boys were exceptional in their preparation and communication. I loved how hands on it was and they let us learn by doing.”

Relieved to be finished, students commented on how happy they were, and how much they enjoyed their experience. But, as is the way with technology, not everything went to plan:

“I really enjoyed the Teach A Teacher event. I have experienced that being a teacher is not that easy, you need to plan out the lesson really carefully. I noticed that I should always plan about what would you need to do when you’re having technical difficulties.” – Charlie Yau, Year 7 Student

Asked how they found the experience of being taught by students, teachers reported the following:

“It was a very good learning experience both for students and teachers. I enjoyed it a lot.”

“Loved the fun aspect of the presenter that used the sword in place of a pointer!”

“Great! I learnt a lot and felt very comfortable with the students teaching me. The best thing about this is that I can ask silly questions and not be laughed at!”

This is an event which will definitely be repeated, and hopefully expanded, in 2014. Please feel free to email me if you wish to receive information about next year’s event, either to come as a learner, or to enter student teams from your school.

Backchanneling is an idea that has been around for a while, and is something that I have encountered at various education conferences. Despite the technical-sounding name, a backchannel is simply a real-time conversation, happening online in parallel with some kind of face-to-face communication. For example, a keynote speaker might advertise a Twitter hashtag for their session: as they are talking, participants conduct a conversation using tweets, which are grouped together using the hashtag.

So, what’s the point? Is it just more needless technology, or is there something to be gained? What a backchannel provides is a way for your audience to make extra meaning based on what you are saying. For example, they may require clarification or extension on a particular point, or they may wish to contend an assertion or add a meaningful anecdote. This added dialogue is available to everyone with access to the backchannel, and can be responded to in order to help out or further the discussion. A savvy presenter will keep an eye on the backchannel, and deviate from their plan according to what the audience is saying.

Of course, a backchannel can be a distraction, or might even be used to subvert a presentation (a good presenter should welcome this, I guess). One danger in the classroom is that inexperienced or immature students might get carried away with excessive off-topic chat, with all the LOLs and OMGs that that entails.

On Friday my school is hosting the Global Issues Competition 2013, an event for students in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. Our aim is to encourage a backchannel with the aim of helping the students learn and make new connections. Originally we were going to use Twitter, but have now settled on a less public platform called TodaysMeet. Another good option is Backchannel Chat, which is specfically designed for education, and has some cool features, such as liking posts.

Credits: Image by Miss Barabanov on Flickr, shared under CC BY-NC-ND.

I am very happy to be organising a CPD session with Alan Levine, renowned technologist and digital storyteller.  Teachers and students are welcome. Details of the event are below. Please email me (ross@rossparker.org) to register.

Teach A Teacher is a brand new student-led conference for teachers. The aim is to help teachers improve their ICT skills, whilst exposing students to a new classroom perspective. All schools are welcome, but places are limited. To register, email rparker@ichk.edu.hk. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

Session Details

The table below gives details of the material on offer at the Teach A Teacher conference:

Session 1 – 14:45-15:30

Session 2 – 15:35-16:20

Peer-assessment seems to be a persistent buzz word in education, and it is something I have used in the past with my students. However, until recently, I have never found it to be as useful as others suggest it might be.  Recently, though, I supplemented verbal peer feedback with with a Google Docs form, containing a number of questions on a numeric scale as well as a field for comments. We video recorded each student performing their assessment piece (a rapid presentation on human-computer interaction, 60 seconds at most), and then reviewed the videos as a class. Whilst students did not necessarily enjoy the process of watching themselves on screen, it certainly made them think about how they present themselves. For each video reviewed, every student in the class (including the presenter) and the teacher, submitted feedback via the Google form. In addition, students were asked to comment on each others’ work verbally, which they were at times reluctant to do. This was supplemented by verbal feedback from the teacher for each student.

The result was immediate feedback, backed by a giant spreadsheet containing around 400 rows for each group of 20 students. This spreadsheet contained self, peer and teacher generated data, each of which was weighted equally (no teacher bias here). The spreadsheet was sorted by the name of the presenting student, and then averages were calculated for each of the questions asked. These were then averaged into an overall grade for the student. Comments were aggregated into a single field. This anonymised data was then delivered back to students using our school platform, Gibbon.

Interestingly, whilst the students were a little more generous than I had been, the overall distribution of grades was pretty much in line with previous, teacher-generated grades, with most students retaining their normal position within the class in terms of academic performance.

In total the assessment took two 70-minute classes (one to present and record, one to watch and grade), and all data processing and entry was completed within 90 minutes. This represents a significant decrease in my marking time, but more importantly, the whole exercise gave students ownership of their grades, and demoted the teacher from the position of god-like arbiter of success.

I am calling this approach mass assessment, and am very interested to hear of other teachers doing similar things, or willing to give this a go.

As we move more and more of our desktop work onto the web, we need browsers that recognise and support this. Fortunately, recent versions of both Firefox and Chrome do just this, through a feature called App Tabs (aka Pin Tabs). This feature acts an extension to the concept of tabbed browsing. The idea of an App Tab is to take a website you use often (such as your email), shrink its tab, and pin it to the left side of the tab bar. The image below shows my current set of app tabs (which probably tells you a lot about my habits and priorities online), which are the little boxes at the top left of the window:

To create an app tab, simple right-click on an open tab, and select “Pin as App Tab”. The tab will shrink, and jump to the left hand side of the window.

When you open a new, regular tab, it appears immediately to the right of your app tabs, just like a normal tab would:

If there is a change on an app tab site (such as a new email), the relevant tab should notify you with a blue dot on the tab. This makes it very easy to stay on top of things, without having to constantly check in on each tab. It can, however, be very distracting, especially with sites like Twitter which have constant updates. In the example below, you can see I have a new email in one of my Gmail accounts:

I have found that using app tabs has made me a lot more productive, as I spend less time trying to get back to the sites I use regularly, and have fewer windows open (because my tabs are smaller).

Notes

If you want to try app tabs, keep the following in mind:

• I find that sometimes Firefox resets my app tabs when I restart my computer. This does not happen often, but it is annoying when it does. It does not seem to be a common problem for other users, but if you experience it, you can always save your app tabs in a bookmark folder, and then restore them with just a couple of clicks.
• In the screenshots above, I have hidden the address bar on my app tabs to give me more space to work. This is achieved using the Aaapptabs extension for Firefox.
• I you don’t know what tabbed browsing is, let me know and I can write a post for you ; )

This short movie, introduces copyright and sharing from a teacher’s perspective. It is aimed at students and teachers, and will hopefully help viewers to understand copyright, and inspire them to create and share more. In making this film, I remix Brett Gaylor’s “RIP!: A Remix Manifesto” to produce something similar but different.

If the video won’t play within this page, try it here on YouTube.

A few years ago, just before I started teacher training, I began gathering teaching resources using Delicious. Up until that point I had encountered a huge amount of amazing digital content, but I could never put my finger on it when I needed it. Delicious gave me a neat solution to this problem, and started me on my way to being a connected teacher. This innovation was followed by blogging with WordPress, and more recently conversing with other teachers on Twitter, which has led to an explosion of further developments.

Recently I have been reflecting on the process I have been through, and how it has revolutionised my teaching. This lead to some opportunities to run CPD sessions for other teachers, one of which (HLYIS) I have recorded and shared below. The audio quality is terrible, but hopefully it will be useful for some. Feel free to get in touch (@rossdotparker on Twitter) if you have any questions or comments.

Finally, if you want to run these sessions yourself, the slideshow is available under a CC license for you to use:

• The Connected Teacher (Keynote)
• The Connected Teacher (PowerPoint, may have some formatting issues)

Edit: updated to better video quality video (29/05/2012)

I am, as any of my students will be able to tell you, a huge fan of WordPress: it is stable, sophisticated, powerful and flexible, all whilst being very simple to use. Last year I rebuilt our school website using WP, and this year I have migrated our school blogging platform from Blogger to WordPress. It has certainly made my life much easier. What’s great about WP is that you can run many individual sites from one installation (this used to be a seperate project called WPMU, but it recently got merged into WP). This means that I can create a new blog for a student in a matter of seconds, and administer the whole lot from a single interface.

Whilst I started off working on what I was calling “ICHK Blogs”, the power of WordPress has in fact allowed me to turn into our very own alternative to Google Sites. We call it ICHK Sites (original, I know), and I can now give any member of staff, student team, department or event a website of their own.

Below are some instructions I put together whilst setting up this same configuration one of our sister schools, HLYIS. I used a surplus Core 2 Duo PC, and started off by installing Ubuntu Server. It is a fairly technical process, but any competent technician should be able to follow these instructions. In total it took me around 3 hours to get it all up and running.

Note: useful Linux commands are shown in pink italics, values you need to replace are shown in [square brackets].

Stage 1: Prep server

1. Download Ubuntu Server and install it (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Natty). Ensure to check LAMP option during install, as well as any others needed
2. Set your server’s IP address to a fixed value (http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-networking-configuration-using-command-line.html).
3. Set a DNS record to point to the IP address of the server. It is important to use domain-based URL for rest of setup, rather than IP, otherwise you will just be making more work for yourself down the line. Install FTP server software (sudo apt-get install vsftpd)
4. Install SSH server software for remote admin access (sudo apt-get install sshd)
5. Install phpmyadmin (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/phpMyAdmin#Installing_From_Package))
6. Enable mod rewrite on the Apache HTTP server (sudo a2enmod rewrite)

Stage 2. Install WordPress

1. Go to phpmyadmin (browser to http://[yourdomain]/phpmyadmin, login as root with password created during mysql installation when installing server)
2. Create a new database
3. Connect via SSH (ssh -l [username] [ipaddress])
4. Change owner of server’s web root folder and all child folders and files (sudo chown -Rfv [username] /var/www)
5. Change permissions to get ready for installation (chmod -Rv 755 /var/www)
6. Make uploads directory (mkdir /var/www/wp-content/uploads)
7. Change permissions for uploads (chmod -Rv 777 /var/www/wp-config/uploads)
8. Go to /var/www (cd /var/www)
9. Remove Apache’s standard index page (rm index.html)
10. Download WP (wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz)
11. Unzip WP (tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz)
12. Remove WP tarball (rm latest.tar.gz)
13. Move WP up one level (mv /var/www/wordpress/* /var/www)
14. Remove empty WP folder (rmdir wordpress)
15. Point your browser to your wordpress install (e.g. http://[yourdomain])
16. Follow WordPress install instructions on screen.
17. Log in

Stage 3: Configure multisites

1. Enable permalinks (http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks). This uses Apache’s mod rewrite extension which we set up earlier.
2. Configure multisite (http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network)
3. Create users and sites
4. Add themes
5. Add plugins
6. Play!

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.