Mindmap for websites

Bookmarking is a problem. Where do you do it? Do you stick to ONE system? If so, for how long?

I have tried the obvious - the star on the left of the url box on Google Chrome; bookmarking on Google Bookmarks; the social bookmarking sites del.icio.us and diigo.

An alternative is a site where you know you will find the link that you are after.

Here is Jesper Isaksson's Mindomo site list E-learning and Web 2.0 sites for schools.

(But where do I bookmark it?)

Old metaphors and new tricks

I wrote in February about the concept of Digital Pioneer - a Digital Immigrant perhaps, who grows up with the technology and embraces it - the Tech Adopter.
Prensky's Digital Native/Immigrant distinction seems dated (well, it was from 2001). This was brought home to me participating in Marilee Sprenger's presentation on "The Digital Brain in the Classroom: bridging the digital divide to improve learning", at the Learning & the Brain conference in Boston. She used the Native/Immigrant metaphor and was questioned about it by one of the audience. He pointed out that yesterday's immigrants are today's natives, and that we have done this always - that is, through each different technological cycle, whatever the technology.
Metaphors and models are useful but have a sell-by date.
You can teach an old dog new tricks, especially when that dog is part of the community learning experience.

Part 2: but here is something interesting. Gary Small's research (i-Brain: surviving the technological alteration of the modern mind) shows how computer naive brains can light up, in the same areas as computer savvy brains, after training (reading a passage - both had similar activation areas in the brain; searching on Google, naives had same reading pattern, savvies had additional areas lit up in the left front of the brain [dorsolateral prefrontal cortex] which controls ability to make decisions, integrate complex information, sensations and thoughts as well as working memory [p16, 17]).

When the net naives where taught to use Google search and practised a little, their brains lit up like the net savvies. So research shows that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Learning & the Brain Conference - Boston

The theme of the Learning & the Brain Society's conference was "Modern Brains: enhancing memory and performance in this distracting digital age". It was fascinating and I will try to share thoughts through this blog.

The logistics - well organised and catered for the huge number of participants. It did not have a virtual side which might have helped participants to participate since it was too huge to find like-minded or team-minded (different fields, research, education, theorists) people for discussion. One strong message from the conference was about the myth of multitasking, producing breadth but no depth. I think that the rather conventional nature of the conference did produce the same, breadth but you really had to work to discuss the depth.

Multitasking. Torkel Klingberg's presentation on "Working Memory - the overflowing brain" demonstrated that you pay for not performing at 100% on a tasks when multitasking. There is a capacity restraint. In dual-tasking studies, he showed that you could work at 100% on one or the other, but not on both. What is happening in multitasking is that attention is shifting rapidly from one task to the other and, importantly, some areas of the brain are required to be used for BOTH areas, providing a capacity restraint.

So there are bottlenecks.

The strong emphasis on evolutionary biology in brain function gave a good explanation to why the brain might work as it does. With no increase in brain volume in the past 40,000 years how do we cope with new things with our hunter-gatherer brains? Neuroplasticity - the ability of our brains to adapt, to learn.

But both ACTIVITY and PASSIVITY have an effect on the brain - neurons grow but they also die (use it or lose it comes to mind).

Our brains are made to learn.

What implications does this have to the use of laptops in classrooms? (or indeed in meetings?!)

If student is note-taking as teacher talks, two tasks but perhaps one can learn to type without requiring anything but an automatic skill. But add to that surreptitiously Facebooking (one further task) and also keeping an eye on the teacher coming around the class (another task with strong emotional consequences and hence taking up brain resources), then multitasking with learning costs is surely to be the outcome.

Learning Intentions - it's all in the words you use.

We had a great discussion on Learning Intentions (or Learning Objectives) - a discussion which distracted us from the main point of the meeting but which turned out to be really productive.
It started when we looked at Doug Belshaw's post on Learning Objectives. His point was that writing LOs is vital to both knowing what you are going to teach and for the student to know what s/he is going to learn.
His initial LO example was "To know who the Romans were".
His improved one was "To list 3 ways the Romans have influenced life in the 21st century". Okay, better in some ways, we thought round the table, but how dull. As a student it might tell me what is required but it would not motivate me. I almost felt that the original would motivate me more.
Doug gave developed it further by showing how the LO could be made "SMART". 
We discussed this and posted a comment - Doug promised a follow-up post on trigger-verbs.
Subsequently he has published a list of action verbs which are linked to Bloom's Taxonomy - and which should make for better, more productive and informative Learning Intentions, useful to both student and teacher. 
A question I had related to the link between the level in Bloom's Taxonomy and the grade given for KS3 and GCSE - surely not as simple as that?
Part 2:
Thinking about grading (reporting, evaluating - could the term that you use determine what your perspective on this is?) and levels in the National Curriculum. Each do different things. The grade for a reporting period is a summary of both expected content coverage and how it was learned or at least what the result of assessment on various pieces of work has been - some rubric based, other not. The NC level says what you can do, taken from a big list of things. Not how well, or under what circumstances. 
So they do different things. This sometimes leads to two very different approaches to reporting a grade or level.
One view would have you start a two year course, say an IGCSE course, at the lowest grade. As you build up your knowledge and skills, so the grade improves. Then at the end of the course, it is possible to get the highest grades. This is definitely the NC levels approach but I have seen some promoting this as the way to work with A to G type grading too.
And the other view is that you grade to show how a student is doing, in terms of expected content coverage as well application, etc.
In the end it depends upon the cultural context and the expectation that stakeholders have.

Alternatives to interactive whiteboards

Was really impressed by Jonny Lee's presentation on TED when I first saw it. He hacked a Wii remote to produce various things including an adaptation of an ordinary whiteboard into an interactive surface for an electronic whiteboard (details from his website).
So when JR produced his own at school and gave me a demo, I was really interested in seeing how it would work (and impressed about how he had put this together - he assures me that it was not a long process). 
This photo shows the remote dangling below the ceiling-mounted projector. It connects blue-toothly to the computer and the infra-red detector detects the special pen - here is a schematic diagram from Jonny Lee's site:

It worked really well. As long as the presenter's body did not shield the remote from receiving the infra-red signal, then it seemed as responsive as a "normal" electronic whiteboard.

JR reckons that it would cost sub $100 including the software. Seems a very good alternative.

I wonder whether its positioning can be improved? Short-throw digital projectors are the vogue so I wonder if the remote could also be placed much "shorter-throw".

We are also going to experiment with the Mimio bar - this also retro-fits on a normal whiteboard. BUT, having seen this adaptation, why is it that the Mimio system and similar others are SO EXPENSIVE? Surely they do not need to be - common manufacturers!

Waving!

Trying out Google Wave (thank you David for the invite).
Since I have only 3 friends on GWave, waves are at a minimum but we are working it out.
This YouTube video from Google explains some features:

Web browsers explained - by Google

Well done, Google!
They are explaining what web browsers are, in a new YouTube clip. The necessity for this, they claim, is that many users would click on the e of Internet Explorer (IE) as the only way to access the Internet. For many years IE was packaged with the Microsoft Windows computer that was purchased - ensuring that this myth was perpetuated.
Now that cloud computing is viable, it's the web browser that is more important than the operating system that you use. So, good that we should be re-educated about this.